Howdy, !

Coming to you LIVE from Melbourne Cup Day! For those not in Australia, the Melbourne Cup is an annual horse racing carnival that's pretty big here in Melbourne to the point that the state has a public holiday! Have you been watching today? Win anything? Let me know!

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Week in the life

Last week was a busy one indeed. Not only with work, but also including a nice day trip down the coast of Victoria to catch up with friends I hadn't seen since the pandemic! Somehow in all that, managed to squeeze in a flying lesson in the one tiny spot of sunshine in the torrential rains that have been happening in Melbourne and huge swathes of Australia.

It's also been the week of lot's of multitasking and public holidays, but more on that over on the blog...

Creative update

randint S02E16 - Dr Evelyn Chan - Breaking the medical trope with SmileyScope

We're back on schedule (ish) with more randInt and this time, it's with Dr Evelyn Chan! Evelyn is a paediatric doctor who is currently the CEO of SmileyScope, a health-tech start-up that has been embraced across the globe.

Chandra and I have both known Evelyn since medical school and seen what an impressive journey she's had thus far.

Gadgets/Tech

PxR 2023 Photo Calendar

This week is a shameless plug for the 2023 Photos by Raffy calendar! The final images have been selected and I'm just doing final adjustments to make it print ready they start the batch being in production! If you'd like to grab one, use the code PREORDER to get 10% off.

This year, I decided to poll people and found that most wanted photos from my travels so there's a few from around the place in there. For those that have already ordered, thank you for supporting the project! 🙏🙏🙏

Other gadgets/tech

• Aeropress Go - If you're after one of the tiniest ways of making great coffee, this is it!
• Kindle Scribe - Ebook reader and general writing pad with weeks long battery life. I want!

Read

World's dirtiest man dies after bath

I was more amused by the fact that given polarised media is these days, an actual newspaper, not just an online only publication decided to print this story!

Made me want to go back to physical newspapers that had odd stories from around every neighbourhood just for the sake of amusement and nothing else!

Currently reading...

• The Myth of Normal - About half way through now. While it's slow to get going, it's probably a good book especially for the Type A people out there...

Watch

Never Too Small: Small Australian Tiny Home

This channel has become one of those things that I put on in the background. It has short episodes on tiny apartments and interiors that have been converted into some amazing living spaces. They go through the thought process of how they maximised every inch of space. Not sure why exactly, but it's very relaxing and inspiring for me!

Quote I'm pondering

"We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.”

— Bill Maher

This week's quote comes from Bill Maher, yet another late night satire show that I occasionally watch. I do find this paradox in American legislation interesting: there are all these rights spelt out in most countries, but not everywhere has a corresponding responsibility that makes that right happen.

For example, in a democratic country like Australia, you get to choose the government. That's the right. The responsibility is that you HAVE to vote. I suppose you could take it further by having a "nutritional label" so you can compare policies you're voting for but so many other things don't really have a responsibility that's well defined.

The best example I can think on this is social safety nets. I'm very much for them and have personally benefitted from them, but without an attached responsibility they can grow to engulf and entire nations expenditure...

That's my food for thought this week! What do you think about it all? Let me know - I love getting emails from readers!

That's all for this week! See you next time!

- Raffy

PS - You've read til down here?! Thank you! As a superfan, I'd love to know your opinion. Let me know with 1 click!

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