laura.darbysingh.comLaura Darby Singh's Blog

- Laura Darby Singh - Reviews Gif Fun Kitchen Antics Rants Costumes Crafts Musical Interludes About Me Sep 24th Ginger Tax Years on the equator. There have been plenty of tribulations involved with living and being in Africa, but one that most others don’t have to concern themselves with is the impacts of the more direct sunlight that hits the equator. Weekends at the coast include others frolicking in the pool at noon, while I hide in the shade until 3pm or 4pm. Mornings at the beach usually include setting a timer for ten minutes to limit the duration of my exposure. When friends wanted to walk along the beach at noon to go and get gelato, I had to decline. My one friend was really pushy, and I had to outline, clearly, what an hour-long walk on the beach meant for me. It was still tough; not only did it leave me alone, but they all sent me photos of eating (very delicious) gelato. I’m the only person on safari in a long-sleeved shirt and hat. When I ran the Lewa Marathon in 2014, I did so in SPF 70, a long-sleeved SPF shirt, and a hat. Careful. Proactive. It’s never enough. In 2010, right before my wedding, I had an irregular mole on the back of my right arm. It was excised, and found to be malignant. There I was, mere months away from my wedding, with cancer. It was terrifying. I remember foolishly checking the internet for my prognosis. They’d told me it was Level 4, but the internet showed me results for Stage 4 Melanoma […] Apr 14th Day 1 – iControl God, a gallon of water is SO. Much. Water. I empathize with others who have done the 30 Day Water Gallon challenge now, who feel weird and bloated and strange. And the peeing. Of course, the peeing. The good thing is that I have to keep up with so much water drinking that I don’t really have the space” to drink much else. I drank a can of Coke Zero last night with dinner and then I was so behind in water drinking that it just didn’t seem worth it. The Water Drink Reminder app has kind of a neat gameification element, in that it has a subtle” little arrow on your progress bar that lets you know where you should be during the day’s consumption, so if you’re behind, well, yea, it can be a little stressful, but it did help me prioritize my beverage consumption. I was almost reticent to drink my tea this morning, but I realized that it’s nice to start the day with a hot beverage. Having water with me is suddenly becoming essential — I forgot my bottle at a meeting today (Day 2) and was immediately regretting missing out on the time to drink more. I liked the reminder that it was time to go to bed, and realized even on the first day that bedtime is something that creeps on me out of nowhere. Having the reminder from Sleep As Android that, if I wanted to get my eight hours, that it was time […] Apr 14th iControl There will come a day when I completely combust and lose my shit, but, if there’s some technology around to help me, I’m aiming for that day to be NOT today. My life feels out of control. Between my more-than-full time job, my distance Masters programme, being a good friend, being a better wife, caring for an elderly and very beloved cat, and editing a novel for my agent and keeping up with publisher’s requests, I don’t know when I find time to sleep, let alone breathe. To top it all off, my fancy Samsung phone had broken and had only just been repaired” and returned, so, with my technological lasso/lifeline, I resynced my watch and decided it was also time to resync my life. There’s an app for that. Mostly because there’s an app for almost anything now. I am going to make changes and give the reins over to my phone, that will push commands to me via my watch, and my life will get more structured and better. Am I crazy? Probably, but the idea of letting someone else” make decisions for me for a while sounds like bliss. Drinking I am a Coke Zero addict. Once I have one,I have one chug, it rapidly becomes 100 ounces in a day. I sleep with a litre bottle next to my bed and chug from it first thing in the morning. It’s probably bad for me, because most things are, so I’m going to try and replace it with water and, […] Oct 23rd Gender Blender I’ll begin by saying that I love the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And, to be fair, I am not a huge fan of remakes. All those facts aside, I have issues with the recent news that Laverne Cox has been tapped to play Frank N’ Furter. As a small tidbit of background, I used to go to Rocky Horror at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. It was a staple of my teens and twenties, and the raucous energy of the 12th Street theatre in New York was intoxicating even on a slow night. I recently got to go to a Rocky Horror viewing party here in Nairobi, where my husband and I were among some of the only people who were actually dressed up. And, bless his heart, I got to fulfill a dream of making up someone as Frank. And it was beautiful. Of course none of the non-Americans in the room had any idea what was going on, and I was literally the only person doing the call backs, but the fact that it’s a film with staying power, that transcends oceans (the host of the party is a huge fan and he’s French), really says something about it. Who would have thought that the cast (mysteriously missing creator Richard O’Brien) would have been on the Today Show forty years later, talking about the anniversary of the film? It’s indicative of how far things have come in society and its embrace of what had previously been considered fringe” culture. Much to my […] Oct 12th The Silent Sadness This post isn’t for you. But if I don’t buck up and talk about my feelings, they will literally consume me, and the only reason I haven’t talked about them is because no one does. It was a beautiful, happy week. I had friends visiting from Dubai and Doha. Every day, my house felt full, and vibrant, and excited. These three friends had never been to Kenya before, and were absolutely enchanted, having just come back from the Masai Mara and having seen the great migration firsthand. And, after months of trying, I had just discovered I was pregnant. Funnily, I had only taken the pregnancy test to exclude it from my self-diagnosis of exhaustion, nausea, and fatigue. But just the morning I’d taken the test, it was confirmed by doctors at the urgent clinic. My husband was over the moon, and I was…processing the experience. I hadn’t expected it; I was in shock. I have a challenging, intense job in a rigorous career track. I am writing a book. I am in graduate school. I have pleasantly complicated interpersonal relationships. We told his mother, and mine. Everyone was excited. We couldn’t help but tell our house guests. they were excited. Ever a knowledge hound, I took to googling what I should and shouldn’t eat, what I needed to stop, what was best for me, and for whatever this little thing inside me was going to be. The knowledge acquisition was the most exciting part, and slowly, I started accepting what […] Mar 28th Girls in Gaming: Finding a Role that Doesn’t Require a Costume Cosplayers LeftRight, Geek girls have an awkward place in the nerd society. We’re the minority in a primarily male-driven pasttime, and, as our numbers have grown, there have been some conflicts brought to light that are not new, but are newly publicized. In my mind, the idea of the Fake Geek Girl and the Cosplay Consent issues go hand in hand. For years, gaming companies have used the idea of HEY BOYS, BOOBS!” to lure gamers over to their booths or to buy their games. Girls, how many cons have you been to where companies hire models and put them in Slave Leia costumes and send them out into the aisles with the sole purpose of bringing smen/s customers back to the stall? Booth Babes” are a common tactic and it’s only recently that certain cons have forbidden their use. Are guys probably inappropriate with Booth Babes? Lewd and awkward? You bet. But those girls were paid, essentially, to be leered at, so, like...