{"id":543905,"date":"2026-06-19T18:16:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T18:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/543905\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T18:16:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T18:16:31","slug":"would-they-revoke-my-passport-for-how-unpatriotic-i-am-to-australia-dublins-more-my-home-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/543905\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Would they revoke my passport for how unpatriotic I am to Australia? Dublin\u2019s more my home\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dublin was my home for 13 years, so coming back to work here from London<\/a> is always nice. I stay with friends, go to Clement & Pekoe for coffee, sit on South William Street and know I\u2019m going to bump into different people I know. Then it\u2019s going to Grogan\u2019s and having a pint, and then to Fidelity or Mother if it\u2019s the weekend. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been attending Mother for years, and I\u2019m DJing at the Mother Pride Block Party opening on Friday, June 26th. I\u2019m supporting Peaches and Scissor Sisters, which is so exciting. Pride is one of my favourite parties to DJ, and I feel honoured I\u2019m being trusted to do this slot. I\u2019m buzzed for it. <\/p>\n

I feel very Irish. My dad is from Belfast<\/a>, my mum is Malaysian-Indian. My parents owned an Irish pub in Alice Springs in Australia<\/a> and everyone that worked there was Irish, so culturally I\u2019ve always been more Irish-leaning than anything else. I moved to Dublin<\/a> from Alice Springs in Australia when I was 20. <\/p>\n

I was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, excited to live in a city for the first time in my life. My town in Australia didn\u2019t have public transport, so I was psyched to see a double decker bus. I had always wanted to live in London<\/a>, but my parents were like: \u201cYou\u2019re going to have a heart attack if you move to London, it\u2019s such a big city, why don\u2019t you try Dublin first?\u201d<\/p>\n

In Dublin I moved into a terraced gaff in Smithfield Square with people who were all part of the creative space. I was a musician at the time \u2013 my plan was singing and playing guitar. I used to play open mic nights, in Bruxelles, The International, in Workman\u2019s. But I didn\u2019t enjoy performing. Even though I\u2019m quite confident, probably more confident now, l loved music but I didn\u2019t like going on stage necessarily. When you\u2019re singing your own songs it feels so vulnerable and personal. I couldn\u2019t get past my nervousness, I used to get really shy and anxious. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Amano De Londra Miura: Being Japanese-Irish is possibly the least interesting thing about meOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

So radio to me sounded like the dream. I could be on my own in the studio, playing songs, telling people these are the songs they should be listening to. That was the ideal thing for someone who is an extroverted introvert. That\u2019s why I went into radio, at 2XM and then 2FM, doing the new music show. When I fell into DJing, it was very different from what it is now: now there\u2019s more performance, you have to be confident, but then you could just be in a corner.<\/p>\n

When social media came into the mix, I was like, yeah I\u2019m going to do that as well because it\u2019s important not to have all your eggs in one basket. It can be such a fickle world, especially radio. <\/p>\n

A big driving force in my career and life generally is that I\u2019ve never wanted to have regrets. I don\u2019t want to look back and be like, \u201cGod, I wish I had done that.\u201d When I started to say to people [about leaving 2FM for London], they were like: \u201cYou\u2019re insane, why would you give up a job like that?\u201d I thought about it for a year. I started going to London more and networking. Once I started getting booked to DJ there, I thought, okay, there\u2019s a place for me. <\/p>\n

\"DJDJ Tara Kumar at BBC Radio 1 <\/p>\n

When I made the decision to leave 2FM, it wasn\u2019t easy at all. When I walked out, I was like: \u201cWhat the f**k have I done? That\u2019s crazy.\u201d But I wanted to see what London had to offer me, and I loved the vibrancy of London, and the multiculturalism drew me as well. I just wanted to give it a go. I moved in with two girls I knew from Dublin. And now I\u2019m living with two boys I know from Dublin, from years ago. So there\u2019s a sense of home. I wear a necklace every day with a Claddagh that my friends got me. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re Irish, people want to see you, they want to meet you. Having an Irish passport feels like a creative passport to this city, and I\u2019m very grateful for that. I DJ at events and festivals and do cover presenting on BBC Radio 1, which is great. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to Australia to do a few talks at a festival there in a couple of months, which is exciting. I went to get my Australian passport renewed recently, which hasn\u2019t been renewed in five years, only because I\u2019m going to do this job. In the embassy, I felt like: \u201cGosh, this is so weird. I\u2019ve not lived there for 15 years, I wonder if they\u2019re going to revoke my passport for how non-patriotic I am to Australia.\u201d Dublin feels more my home.<\/p>\n

In conversation with Nadine O\u2019Regan. <\/p>\n

Scissor Sisters, Peaches, Tara Kumar and more will perform at the Mother Pride Opening Party at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, on Friday, June 26th. See dublinpride.ie<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin was my home for 13 years, so coming back to work here from London is always nice.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[1128,3412,52,18,117,19,17,130,361,14232,71326,1181],"class_list":["post-543905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-australia","tag-bbc","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-london","tag-magazine","tag-me-myself-and-ireland","tag-pride","tag-rte"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116778145347961635","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}