About Alice Pung: Alice Pung is an Australian writer, editor and lawyer. She wrote the memoir Unpolished Gem and edited Growing Up Asian in Australia.
She had always thought the word 'pheromones' made it sound as though molecules were floating in the air, shaped like little fluted horns, ready to attach themselves to the nearest target. Microscopic Edison phonographs flying about, their brassy mout...
Love was a verb with a certain amount of energy attached to it - a daily quota - and you had to choose on whom you wanted to spend this energy. That was love. That was why people had to pray for it. If it were not finite, no one would pine for love i...
Love was like notches on a speaker that could be cranked up and down, the decibels of desire, the frequencies of feeling. Sometimes she thought that she might have cranked it all the way up and broken the dial before the music had even started.
Never underestimate the power of a scented candle!" declared a sign beneath a display of coloured candles. Yes, I thought. Buy two and invade Russia!