Every morning on the way to school, my dad would buy his paper from the street vendor at one of the traffic intersections. If the traffic lights were green he would slow down, stick out his hand with the coins and the vendor would throw the paper inside. I would be in the front of the car sitting next to him. My dad would read the paper at every chance while smoking on his cigarette. Ah, the joys. It was the morning ritual.
In South Africa, the news headlines would be plastered along the street lamps every morning. So by the time you reached your destination, you had some idea of the current news. This was one of the things I missed when I arrived in Sydney. A few days passed and then I realized, I have no idea what the headlines are! There are no billboards.
Nowadays, I read my news online. Sometimes I get stuck on hot topics. I have two at the moment. The first is around Jacob Zuma and his friends the Guptas. Zuma is the president of South Africa, and has been judged (officially by the constitutional court) to have acted inconsistently with regards to the constitution. This ruling was made two weeks ago, and yet, he is still standing. Not resigned, not fired, nothing.
And my new hot topic is the Australian 60 Minutes Lebanon story. A team, including Tara Brown who I see every week on the Sunday evening episode, have been detained in Lebanon. They were attempting to reunite children taken by their Lebanese father with their Australian mother. They have had their passports taken, and are currently being detained (what were they thinking, grabbing children in a foreign country to give back to the mother?).
Poems and Petals 