She died alone at night. One by one she had watched the lights go out around her, including her husband Tony a few years earlier. At home, she had always found something or other about him annoying, but in their final years at the old folks home, his presence became a surprising source of comfort.
Category: blog
As a writer and reader it’s always difficult to review books written by writer friends you know. How much I like a friend has no…
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I will say this off the bat: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between The World and Me is the most powerful book I’ve read all year. And everyone should read it.
Between the World and Me is an electric force. And yet his words are never complex or bombastic, but slow and quiet. His words have a life of their own so that they are not just words, but an energy that leaps off the page. To read Coates is to burn; to come so close to fire something in you ignites. To read Coates, for me, is to realise the gap between the writer I am right now and the writer I want to be.
One or two years into my new job at a large Singaporean organisation, I found out that my senior from high school had been appointed to shadow a prominent minister. Over lunch, I asked him what he had learnt.
My cousin in Shanghai was two years old when his mother, an architect, was taken away by the Red Guards, a student-led paramilitary movement, during the Cultural Revolution. All he remembers is his mother suddenly disappearing; his father, a doctor, had also gone missing days earlier. For what felt like an eternal darkness, he and his elder brother, who would have been five or six around that time, were left alone in their flat. He doesn’t remember how they survived those days. Maybe neighbours came by and brought food. Maybe an extended relative checked in on them. After what felt like forever, his mother returned, but she was a completely different woman.
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Sometime in my youth it became cool to make fun of the military displays, tacky costumes and cheesy mass dance performances at Singapore’s annual National Day Parade. As a working single National Day became a welcome day of rest, perfect timing for a short getaway.
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In which I write about my fear of creepy-crawlies and Bong Joon Ho’s genius…(no spoilers. Mostly)
A pair of lizards live behind my fridge. On occasion after mealtimes I spot them scurrying out in search of food. Sometimes at night I hear them chirping as they enjoy free rein of the kitchen. I have a physiological fear of insects and creepy-crawlies, which probably has something to do with a lizard dropping from the ceiling onto my head when I was a child. But I have learnt to live and let live. Usually I just stomp my foot and make some noise, sometimes I hiss Can you please get out of the way, which sends them scurrying back behind the fridge.
1 Comment写了几个推，删了，写了又删了
事实上我从没觉得自己是所谓China watcher，也没什么代中国人说话的想法或资格。
10多年前刚开始在中国发展时有位资深老板和我讲了一句话：你很理解中国你应该懂，枪打出头鸟这话。回想起来其实我当时根本不理解国内实况，否则他也不需要提醒我。
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