Thank you readers for pointing out that no, the election date hasn’t been called yet.  I got a bit excited at the weekend headlines.  I’m still in need of distraction from the election though…  Post updated accordingly.

SSG xxx

We’ve still not gotten ourselves an election date.  And it’s been a pretty slow news week to boot. I’ve read my Prince George edition of the AWW and surfed the net in search of the Duchess’ Jenny Packham dress to no avail, North West and her parents were yet to surface and two of the trainers from Biggest Loser who suddenly got together were now just as suddenly no longer.

There was false hope in my suburb on the election front, though. Look who I met at Coles this morning after the gym and before my first coffee of the day? It’s going to be a long four weeks. I can feel it already. Need to escape? I’ve started already. And the best bit? I haven’t even had to leave my lounge room and risk being paper bombed with more election themed reading material.

Better Man is a mini series that was recently on SBS. It tells the story of Vietnamese Australian Van Nguyen who was arrested in Singapore and convicted of trafficking a large amount of heroin. The series begins by filling in the back story that lead to Van trafficking heroin in the first place. A young man saddled with too much family responsibility at too young an age, Van finds himself in serious debt trying to protect his family. With no way to earn the money required, Van ends up being a mule for a vicious drug syndicate. Arrested in Singapore, Van cracks under the pressure of his own exhaustion and the interrogation process. He signs a statement confessing to trafficking before the Australian Embassy had a chance to get involved. The rest of the series explores the three year legal battle of his impassioned legal team.

True stories like this will always be difficult and painful to recreate for entertainment, especially when many of the central characters are still alive and grieving. However, Better Man has been beautifully crafted – the harrowing scenes of the drug trafficking industry and the effect of poverty on vulnerable lives blend into the lush, natural beauty of Vietnam, Singapore and Cambodia. And then there’s the stellar cast including David Wenham, Claudia Karvan and Brian Brown. If you missed the series, SBS have the episodes on demand via their website.

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight is my first obsessive Kindle read for the month. The Amelia of the title is a teenager who lived in New York until her untimely death after apparently jumping to her death from a balcony at her exclusive Brooklyn school. Kate, Amelia’s mother, is the person doing the reconstructing by reading the hundreds of messages she found on Amelia’s phone. Did Amelia really kill herself or was she pushed? McCreight offers an interesting take on what life is like for teenage girls in this age of social media and compulsive text messaging. If you thought things were pretty intense when you were young……

Google tells me that Nicole Kidman has the film rights to Reconstructing Amelia. It’s a novel made for a film adaptation. I’ll be waiting on developments with interest.