So, I chanced upon this piece when I was doing some thinking/research about the topic of beauty for my next post.  It was written 3 years ago as a letter to my self 10 years ago. So in a way, it is a flashback to […]

after writing the post on my grandfather, I realized how much I enjoy writing about my cultural past and started to sift through some of my writing published on the blog I ran during my time in China. I found a few gems that I […]

Fong Hing was his name. The road sweeper, that is. His olive sun-burned face was always gently kind, creased in with wrinkles too old for his actual age, although no one really knew what that was. What we did know for sure was that when […]

Hi friends! Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve written. To be honest, since coming back from China, I’ve just been getting back into my regular rhythms and haven’t had much time to sit down and write. Hopefully that will happen again soon, although my […]

This is Nemo. He makes sculptures out of soapstone and sells them for a living. He shows me the caribou antlers his father sent him from Nunavut, running his hands across the polished, white surface. “Whenever I go home, he always gives me a lot […]

This is what swamp feet smell like. Usually, the air is musty with snuffed out cigarettes and stale coffee – familiar and comforting like a sweater worn too many times. But today, a pungent smell slices through the mustiness. It becomes extra strong when Greg […]

I wasn’t made for the island.   There’s this scene in Moana where she’s hanging onto the trunk of a palm, and looking out to a sparkling blue ocean. And there’s just something about the words she sings: See the line where the sky meets […]

I don’t like being political. When my sister and dad get into their debates that somehow always circle back to the subject of “yay-or-nay Trump”, I prefer to remain silent. “Don’t you have an opinion?” my sis once asked me, frustrated when I hadn’t backed […]

What surprised me most about the village was how people sat by the streets and watched. It seemed like they had nothing better to do. Men with white singlets, limp cigarettes hanging out the sides of their mouths. Grandmothers with plump babies bobbing up and […]

I stumbled across quite the gem of a book while perusing the shelves of an Indigo bookstore last week. Written by Michael Puett, a Harvard professor of ancient Chinese history, “The Path” is a summary of his most popular course, one that students flock to in […]