Winter is gone, and Spring 2018 is doing a five-steps-forward-eight-steps-back sort of shuffle in between sleet-rain and sun shimmer. Coming from the tropics, this sort of ballet of the weather does make me wonder a lot about how much of my consciousness is constituted by the climate (I think A LOT)... but anyway, for those … Continue reading Springtime

It is the long road to 2019, the year where Singapore commemorates its colonial past like a benevolent inheritance. This is a series of ruminations on empire, which is after all an ongoing spiritual crisis disguised as an economic miracle. 1. I think of all the languages I love. Cantonese is the sound of my … Continue reading Empire is an ongoing spiritual crisis

1. ... the way my neck stretches up to reach the mouth of this skyscraper boy with the floppy hair, wonky smile, and concerned-looking Polish eyes. It’s the first time I’ve had to climb for a kiss. How simple the prelude had been, some small talk about art and moving to Athens like all the … Continue reading I want to catalogue it all

What am I supposed to make of these ghostly winter dreams of woodfires and hotpots, when I've grown up in the tropics? My ancestors seem to haunt me through a thick fog of forgetting. They will themselves past my incomprehension, nattering away in languages that are barely intelligible, like childhood memories, but I tell them … Continue reading Hotpot

I've now been in London for a month, which calls for a sort of 满月(full month) moment of reflection. 1. First off, 满月is exactly the sort of sudden over-demonstrative Chineseness that has lately possessed me. I am working through it with some amusement, to see how far it can go. It started with me very … Continue reading 满月

1. I saw two statues at the Great Court of the British Museum. The plaque on the plinth described them as Guardian statues, from China, from several centuries ago. They were installed, marginally, at some corner of this indoor courtyard, a space so massive it dwarves you. It is architecture that evokes divinity, or, at … Continue reading Some Observations from my first two weeks in Albion:

1 The day of departure is a study in normalcy, with subtle variations. My mother potters across the house in her pajamas, but places a cup of coffee in front of me as I type this. It’s the first time she’s made me a hot drink in a long while, not since the milo waiting … Continue reading Leaving home for the first time at the age of 30

is the fat boy's love. He cannot speak it but, grunting, lards his verses with it. He scratches his arms to bleed the grease, its oily sentiment. At night, he grinds his love into his teeth. The words strain out, are gelatinous, wrung out like an apology for the vessel in which it comes. Because … Continue reading The love that dare not speak its name

I'm presently somewhere in North Wales, a little way from a stunning view of mountains across the Irish Sea. For the past few days I've been at Ty Newyyd, which is the national writing centre of Wales, and former residence of David Lloyd George (also nearby is a bucolic river, overlooked by a very Elven … Continue reading North Wales

I never dreamed I'd live through a small scale moral panic about the territorial behaviour of otters in Singapore waters. For context, a local otter watching group has taken it upon themselves to defend a pack of otters that recently lost its alpha male (the Marina otters) against an aggressive larger pack (the Bishan otters) … Continue reading A crisis of otters