DEBORAH KALIN was once addressed by a recruitment agency as ‘Cheng Soon’ no matter how often she corrected them.

A resident of the east coast of Australia, she shares a birthday with Pablo Picasso, was born in the year of the Fire Dragon, collects books beyond her ability to read them all, and once worked at an aluminium smelter where a sparrowhawk routinely ripped pigeons to pieces on a lamp post just outside the cafeteria.

She mostly ate not the meat at this cafeteria.