About

My name’s Bronwyn Joy.

You can say it in a gentle sing-song (Bronnnnwyn Joooooy…), as if I’m the kind of manic pixie dream person who frequently gets distracted by the beauty of the moon or deep thoughts on subjects everyone else pretty much just takes for granted whilst getting on with their day. Or you can say it in an exasperated tone, through gritted teeth (Bronwyn! Joy!), as if I’m the kind of manic pixie dream person who, well. You get it.

In real life, I’m not manic enough to be a manic, or pixie enough to be a pixie, and I’m not sure I’m anyone’s dream person, but I do know how to use a free app to make birds fly around my head:

This used to be a picture of me sitting in front of a telescope with cartoon birds flying around my head but I decided to go more for Rambo-if-he-was-sleep-deprived-and-liked-pink-bows just because. To be honest, my expression in this one is actually better.

You’ll have to take my word for that, though, because I disliked my expression in the cartoon bird photo so much I actually feel more comfortable showing you this one, in which I’ve been styled by my three-year-old.

What’s Journeys of the Fabulist?

Right! So. This is a little trove of family-friendly adventure. I write about kids, travel, geography, history, culture, social responsibility, logistics, marine biology, civil engineering, and sometimes, coffee or wine (plus anything related) but most frequently and usefully about how we manage to travel with young children, how we get along as foreigners in Singapore, and the stuff we accidentally teach our kids.

You might find my posts useful, either as travel guides, or as homeschooling fodder, or as topics to segue into if you are frequently faced with questions to which you don’t know the answer and you need to waffle on about something until the asker gives up and goes elsewhere. Or you might just be amused at my expense. Who knows? Let’s find out together.

Where Can I Start?

Gosh. Well wherever you want to, obviously. A few suggestions:

  • I also have a brag page for content that’s been featured elsewhere, collaborations, guest posts, and award nominations which were probably mostly sent in by my mum.

How Can I Contact You?

You can email me at journeysofthefabulist@gmail.com

I’m also responsive on twitter @JOTFabulist, and google+, where you can drop me a limerick under the hashtag #randomlimerick.

Facebook will notify me by roughly ten different channels if you leave a message there, and if you have any advice on how to cut down those notifications it would be awesome.

Or you can leave me a comment on one of my posts, pinterest pins or youtube videos (but it won’t do any good to criticise my dancing).

If you’d rather not choose but instead want clear, specific directions, you can fill out this contact form.

FAQ

Q: Who’s who around here again?

A: I get mixed up myself. Æ is my husband. P is my son, and T is my daughter. You’ll pick up the others as you go along.

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Q: In popular parlance, the word “fabulist” can mean either “teller of fables” or “liar”.

A: I see your unarticulated question. I use it in the “writer of narrations intended to convey useful truths” sense. If I fail at that, it’s not because I was aiming for the other, it just means I suck. Everything you read here is true, especially the bit where my son once peed in our carry-on suitcase as I was washing diarrhoea from his clothes, from which instance I drew several useful truths, and some swear words.

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Q: Can I read a previously-written blog by you?

A: Certainly! You can read about our overland trip from London to Hong Kong and our semester as English language teachers in China here, although the pictures have long since mysteriously disappeared from the site.

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Q: What’s that on your side bar?

A: Yeah, I do that from time to time. Try not to let it bother you.

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I’m Still Confused

Everyone is. Enjoy it.

Boring Blog Policy Stuff:

Copyright

This stuff is all my words and pictures, unless otherwise stated. You’re very welcome to create backlinks or use a short quote with proper accreditation. For other uses, see my creative commons license. If you’d like to ask for a waiver of any of these conditions, please contact me directly.

Comments

When you comment it fulfills my basic human desire to be heard and acknowledged – even when you’re commenting to disagree. I’m not even going to ask whether you truly disagree, or whether you’re indulging in a bit of good, old-fashioned sophistry. How would I even know for sure? Asking if you’re a liar would be circular and pointless.

But aggressive shouting and blatant self-promotion make me feel neither heard nor acknowledged – they make me feel used and abused. You are welcome to include links in your comments for the purpose of joining and furthering the conversation, and, like, try to be nice and stuff. I reserve the right to edit or delete comments.

Reviews

I only review items I’ve owned for a medium to long period of time, because I don’t think anyone can give a truly useful review in the shiny, happy, honeymoon period. Therefore, reader: rest assured you are getting my fully considered opinion! Also, I hate clutter and I hate decluttering, so on the off-chance you are here to offer me a freebie in return for a review, that’s terrific! but it should be something I was thinking of buying anyway and I hope you don’t mind waiting months or longer for me to write about it. Reviews are very occasional and all reviews contain a description of how I got the item and any personal connections to products or businesses.

Random facts:

14. I can’t tell the difference between caffeinated and non-caffeinated supermarket tea.

13. Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica.

12. I am simultaneously concerned that I may have just put too many widgets in my footer, and that I have lost all notion of what constitutes a valid reason for concern.

11. Something that happens 25% of the time can (in my books) be classified as “common”.

10. I may have been wrong about the agoutis, although in my defence it’s hard to keep up with taxonomical reclassifications.

9. There have been rather a lot of good things since sliced bread.

8. If it were me, I would probably have stopped reading this page by now.

7. I say I’ll go crazy if I hear those same four bars of music from that computer game repeated for a single minute longer, but actually, I won’t.

6. There are more things in heaven and earth than are lost behind our TV cabinet.

5. I edited fact number five at an undetermined point in the past.

4. There should be a word to describe the unique sense of relief one feels when one’s daughter chooses the Tigger toothbrush instead of the Disney Princess one.

3. At the time of writing, my son weighs less than the average adult agouti, no matter what he says.

2. In late September, 2013, I started adding random facts to my about page whenever I made an edit. It is my hope that one day I will draw a following as large and as fervent as that of Randall Munroe, and that these updates will become small pieces of internet subculture to be scrutinised minutely and at length, probably on their own wiki.

1. At 21:01 on Monday the 30th of September 2013, I could think of exactly zero interesting random facts.