What to do, what to do

What to do indeed. My major assignment for my literary journalism class is to write a 4000-5000 word literary feature.

This is daunting.

I haven't been able to come up with an idea. Things kept popping into my head, but I either find them boring - and if I can't get interested, how could my reader? - or are going to be too difficult to pull off.

My first solid idea was to write about ex-pat lifestyle. I grew up in Singapore, and moved to Australia when I was 15. It was a huge culture shock for me to move here, and the differences between an ex-patriot lifestyle in an Asian country, and living in a western country are immense.

We were bouncing ideas around in class, and but when I pitched it, my tutor said that it would be too difficult considering I don't live in Singapore anymore. To do the piece justice, I would need to return there to interview people.

I was left empty-handed, and although I could have taken another spin on the story, I wasn't interested. I went from idea to idea daily. One was to interview Sydney's white supremacists. I was really surprised that there was actual organised neo-nazi factions in Sydney, and I wanted to know what made them join, and what made them, well, racist. They didn't reply to my emails.

Another idea was to write about the Deaf Community. I came across an article about a 25-year-old woman receiving a cochlear implant who had been shunned by some of her deaf friends. I don't know if this is naive, but I would have thought it was something to celebrate. Apparently not, as some deaf people believe that it's better to sign, and be around people who are like you. It's called Deaf Culture. I found it fascinating, but it would have been hard to write about, and to interview for as I don't know how to sign.

In the end, we were going around the class pitching our rough ideas, and I was really stressing. I had recently decided to do my documentary journalism class on my grandfather. He moved to Papua New Guinea in his twenties as a general trader, and then began PNG's first pearl farm. He raised is two sons there, and began a pearl trading business that now successfully operates out of Hong Kong, run by my father.

He faced local animosity towards his hiring of Japanese, and he was the first trader into China after they opened their doors to merchants. I just thought it story was really interesting, and to my surprise, my tutor agreed. So I'll be heading to Brisbane in a couple of weeks to start interviewing. I'll post my synopsis and an example piece up soon. It's nice knowing now that I actually have an idea to start working on.