ABOVE: 'The Indie workplace'

The tick of the office clock is just audible enough to severely irritate, your once steaming coffee is cold and a little congealed, the pulsating fan is a constant reminder that everyones deoderant is starting to wear thin - yes, the signs are all there and the time is ripe for some workplace procrastination. And I've discovered just the thing - forget Cyanide and Happiness - Toothpaste for Dinner is the ideal tongue in cheek comic to waste away the hours. For the ultra-keen (and perhaps aesthetically challenged), clothing merchandise is also available via the website.

With the days getting warmer and the nights getting lighter there's only one important question to be asked - who's gonna deck you out in Summer-time gems? And the answer my friends is simple, Samantha will. TV host, model and all round entrepreneur Samantha Wills is launching her Spring/Summer jewelery collection, Tiny Dancer, this Thursday night at Sydney's exquisite harbour cocktail lounge, The Loft. The twenty-six year old's decadent vintage pieces have progressed a long way from their humble beginnings at good ol' Bondi Markets to the Fashion Week catwalk and the perfectly preened parts of Hollywood starlets (Nicole Richie claims them as a fave...not sure whether that makes them more enticing or not). Having kept many females well adorned throughout the winter chills, it's pretty safe betting that Wills' newest offering will do anything but disappoint. Head to The Loft from 6.30 - 8.30 on Thursday or check out the lust-worthy wares on the website.

After exploring the darker gothic romance of the 80's, French electronica and shoegaze masters M83 decided it was better to dip their toes into the era's delightfully wasted astro-pop than dismiss the fetish altogether. Kim and Jessie was the emergent single, a sugar-coated, acidic trip into the realm of teenage lust.

For those that know me well, technological adeptness is probably not one of my greatest personal traits. Sure, I can down a bowl of mi goreng noodles in less time than it takes to stir in that delectable packet flavouring (two minutes max), and thanks to a stint in the riveting world of retail, I can fold any shirt you throw at me as neatly as, well, a really neatly folded shirt. But despite these seemigly super-human qualities - give me any kind of contraption involving wires, buttons and plastic casing and I'm completely lost. I'm inevitably the very last to hop on the proverbial technological bandwagon for any fandangled new commodity, and the iPod is no exception. Although its a treasured travel companion, my 80 gig black classic model is notably, and rather suprisingly, lacking in musical content. This is possibly due to the fact that I still have no idea how to make a playlist.

So it came as quite a suprise, particularly to myself, when I began to develop a borderline obsession with sussing out all I could about Apple's latest Nano offering. I scoured the net for hours attempting to get any sniff of information - forget photos, a blueprint drawn by your blind cockerspaniel would have sufficed. Luckily, it didn't come to that. Highly coveted images and information of the svelt fourth generation Nano have finally been released, giving all techno (and psuedo-techno) whiz kids some much needed closure. With a new brushed metal surface and curved screen, the latest Nano features an accelerometer (which changes display from portrait to landscape as you move the device), an improved user interface and impressive innovations such as the 'shake to shuffle', playing a song at random after a mere jiggle. It also serves as what Apple describes "a personal DJ", creating playlists by finding songs in your library that mesh rather nicely (it seems the kings of the portable music player had me in mind there). For those who need more storage space, a 16GB version is also available. Check them out here. Even I know something rather clever when I see it.

With influences spanning from the effervescent pop-beats of Michael Jackson to the maudlin harmonies of Edith Piaf, Swedish songstress Lykke Li emblematizes (rather ironically) all that evades label or category. The sultry, nymph-like twenty-two year old is quickly gaining a cult following in Europe and America following the release of her debut album, Youth Novels. Produced by the prodigious Björn Yttling of Peter Björn and John, it’s bursting with sweet, melancholy soundscapes, frank, intelligent lyrics and the odd rupture of electro-rock. With a heritage embodying all that is achingly, achingly cool (her artist mother was a member of an all-girl 80’s punk band), it’s no wonder Li’s turned out a rather unique musician – she recently paused mid performance in a New York gig to let everyone know “it’s all right to kiss at my shows”. Once you've heard the brilliantly crisp alto though, I'm not sure why you'd want to.

New York illustrator and cut-paper collager Jessie Hartland creates fanciful, child-like works with a sharp, underlying wit that will take you back to the good ol' days of Sesame Street. Ch-ch-check it out kids.

Child sex tourism is a very real and frightening contemporary human rights crisis. In many developing Asian countries, mass tourism is an ideal financial strategy to boost struggling economies. As a result, domestic human rights laws are often watered down, or even abandoned in the hope of securing foreign revenue and ultimately, pecuniary well being. Many affluent predators are lured to these nations by cheap accommodation, ambiguity of identity, and frankly, rather ethnocentric assumptions of cultural submission and vulnerability - factors that have dramatically increased the demand and supply of impoverished young girls as mere commodities. More than 250, 000 sex tourists visit Asia each year, with 13 per cent coming from Australia and the UK. In Cambodia it is estimated that one third of prostitutes are children, with the majority being female; their defenselessness willingly abused by locals and tourists.

With no intercontinental police force, UN legislation such as the Convention on the Rights of a Child, is impossible to implement effectively. Instead, the work is often left to resource-drained NGO’s. Child Rescue is a World Vision initiative aiming to assist sexually exploited, trafficked and orphaned children and give them a chance to experience the frivolity of childhood we so often perceive as internationally homogenous. View their current projects and ways you can assist them here.