Posts tagged "travel"

My Singapore List

Food is extremely subjective, and in Singapore it's a national pastime and passion. The following lists are based on my tastes. Other people may disagree, and you may want to do further research based on your own dietary preferences.

If you're from Singapore, resist the urge to tell me I missed your faves: I'm prioritizing picks that I think tourists will find more accessible. I don't expect anyone to travel to my corner of the woods to find the best of something.

(Or, get this list in one single Google Maps list)

1. Laksa: Sungei Road Laksa, Janggut Laksa, Wei Yi Laksa (my absolute fave laksa but the lines are.. long. I waited 60-90 min the last few times I went, and they sell out before noon. definitely one of the most 'local' and 'old school' of the bunch. This is the laksa I grew up eating), 928 Yishun Laksa
2. Chicken rice: 'what's the best chicken rice' is an explosive question in Singapore. Here are my my picks: Tian Tian (Bourdain's recommendation and has a line to show for it), Ah Tai (similar to Tian Tian, with a less long line, in the same building), Sin Kee (my fave Cantonese style chicken), Tong Kee (my fave roasted style chicken rice), Feng Ji
3. Chwee kueh: a Teochew breakfast delicacy made of steamed rice cakes (different from idlis, they are more.. glutinous and starchy) served with a delightful turnip / chillies relish. I like mine at Bedok Chwee Kueh @ Chinatown Complex, Jian Bo Shui Kueh, Pek Kio Chwee Kueh. This is one of the more unique foods that I can't really get many other places
4. Congee / porridge. Many, many styles of congee in Singapore. I like Zhen Zhen, Weng Kiang Kee, Ah Chiang, Imperial Treasure
5. Nasi lemak (sometimes halal, sometimes not, depending on the stall you go to): Nasi Lemak Ayam Taliwang, Uptown (for Malaysian style nasi lemak, which I love), Dickson Nasi Lemak (take-away only), Mama Lemak, Pak Mandor, Owen Road Nasi Lemak
6. Har jeong gai (fermented shrimp paste coated batter) and other distinct styles of fried chicken wings: Ah Tan Wings, Eng Kee, Ban Leong Wah Hoe, No 5 Emerald Hill (go here if you want booze in a bar in a hidden away spot behind busy Orchard Road, with gorgeous old world architecture. The wings are great. The drinks are middling (just have a bottled beer or something), there are better bars in Singapore but it's a unique spot for chicken wings, bottled beer and beautiful historic architecture
7. A large 'zichar' meal. If you're familiar with the 'dai pai dong' in Hong Kong, zichar is the Singapore equivalent. I always like Kok Sen, JB Ah Meng (hot take: skip the chilli crabs that tourist blogs / videos tell you to go to, and come here instead. Get the white pepper crab, 'san lou' beehoon. It's cheaper and better), Wok Master, Maddie's Kitchen (where I always eat if I'm in the Orchard area), Zhenyi for vegetarian option. Every residential neighborhood will have its own good zichar but I think this list of spots will give you a good introduction to it
8. Soy sauce chicken (hot take: skip the 'cheapest Michelin meal in the world' (very middling after their Michelin star expansion) and go to a better stall, Ma Li Ya chicken or Fragrant Soy Sauce chicken
9. Indian rojak (rojak means 'mixed'. Kind of like a salad, but most things are fried and very tasty): Siraj, Habib's, Haji Johan
10. Fishball noodles or minced pork noodles (very similar: dry noodles with soup on the side. Fishball noodles come with... fishballs. Minced pork noodles come with.. minced pork. Sometimes the lines are blurred): Soon Wah, Hock Lee, Ah Ter, Ah Huat Minced Meat Noodles, Liang Seng
11. Char siu and other Chinese rotisserie: Roast Paradise, 88 Hong Kong, Fook Kin), Foong Kee
12. Curry debal and other Eurasian food: Quentin's
13. Henghwa food: Ming Chung, Xing Hua Family Restaurant (there's a chain called Pu Tian that you'll see in malls all over, it is pretty decent if you've never had this food, but these spots are better). Heng Hwa / Xing Hua food is food from Fujian, but coastal, and therefore a lot of seafood. I really like it and think it's one of the more unique cuisines you can get here
14. Lor mee: Keng Heng Whampoa Lor Mee, 86 卤面 Lor Mee, Feng Zhen Lor Mee
15. Braised duck rice and duck noodles or goose rice and noodles: Jin Ji, Tong Kee, Chuan Kee, Sean Kee
16. Prawn noodles: River South Hoe Nam,Don Don Prawn Noodles, 545 Whampoa Prawn Noodles
17. Yong tau foo: Xiu Ji, Yong Xiang
18. Hainanese curry rice: Beo Crescent Curry Rice, Loo's Hainanese Curry Rice
19. Mee rebus (halal): Afandi Hawa
20. Mee soto (halal): HJ Waliti HJ Mazuki
21. Mamak food especially mee goreng: Hajjah Jamillah Rajmohamed Muslim Food, Hassbawa, Kassim Stall
22. Singapore-style Hokkien mee. Different from KL Hokkien mee. Singapore Hokkien mee is 'white' and not 'black'. also uses copious amounts of pork lard, but it's more 'broth'-based rather than 'dried' (although it isn't a soup). Hard to describe, but I love this stuff: Blue Star, Hong Heng, You Fu, Prince of Hokkien Mee
23. Wanton Noodles: Ji Ji, Bei-Ing, Wei Min, Eng's, Ah Wing's
24. Roti prata (halal): Prata Saga Sambal Berlada, Mr & Mrs Moghan, Sin Ming Roti Prata, any of the Springleaf Prata restaurants (various branches)
25. Nasi Padang / Minang (halal): Putra Minang, Minang House, Pu3
26. Vegan-friendly Hakka Thunder Tea rice: Hakka Thunder Tea Rice at Margaret Drive, Queen Street Thunder Tea Rice, The Thunder Tea Story, Traditional Hakka Rice
27. Kaya toast and coffee: Heap Seng Leong (order the butter coffee too!), Tong Ah, Chin Mee Chin, Ah Seng (Hai Nam), YY Kafei Dian. In a pinch, Ya Kun and Killiney (all over the city) are good too but these places are more old school.
28. Dimsum, like everything else, has 'street' and 'fancy' version and it's here where I truly believe that splurging for dimsum is a better experience than the 'street' version (usually made a factories. Have you seen how much work it takes to make dimsum?! Also we have some really good dimsum spots). My pick for dimsum is Peach Blossoms (call, make a booking for lunch; I believe it's on par with some of the best dimsum in HK) and Ji Xian
29. Bebek goreng: if you can't make it to East Javan in Indonesia, bring East Java to you. Fried duck with lots of spices is a Surabaya / Madura specialty and one of my favorite dishes anywhere in the world. Thankfully, we have good ones in Singapore too (we also have a large Indonesian population) and my favorite is Pak Ndut.
30. Really good coffee: even though I live in the land of Sightglass and Four Barrel coffee, Tiong Hoe (and coffee shops in Indonesia) is probably the coffee I miss the most

If the list is too overwhelming, literally go to any of these hawker centres and eat anything you find interesting. If there's a line, join it. Anything called 'market and food centre' is a hawker centre with an attached wet market (no wildlife. Just good fresh produce, fish, meat. Generally pretty clean).

1. Old Airport Road Food Centre (breakfast, lunch and dinner, especially good for dinner)
2. Maxwell Food Centre (breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper)
3. Pek Kio market (breakfast, early lunch. Many stalls here are Teochew in origin, run by very old folks, closes very early)
4. Haig Road (breakfast, lunch). Best option for halal food
5. Tekka Centre (breakfast, lunch and dinner). The main hawker centre in Little India. One of my faves. Lots of halal options and regional Indian, even Sri Lankan, options. Chinese food at the back. Get freshly made prata. idiyappam, appams, good prawn noodles, and lots more. Wet market at the back is spectacular and is a chef's dream. There's a stall that only sells banana leaves. Another that only sells eggs. Follow the sound of smooth jazz music in the wet market and find yourself at Chia's, an excellent vegetable shop that chefs shop at
6. Chinatown Complex (breakfast, lunch, dinner). I always say that this single building has more great Chinese food than San Francisco has Chinese restaurants. There are different versions of it, and it's massive. Come in the mornings for excellent mostly Chinese breakfasts. Try one of the last remaining handmade 'sachima' shops. Late night, claypot rice, craft beer. If you love seafood, very good, very affordable seafood in this section of this hawker centre in the evenings. Too many to name, but there are dozens like this clustered together around this stall.
7. Bedok 85 (good for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. One of the most famous eating spots in the east of the city)
8. Bukit Merah View (breakfast)
9. East Coast Lagoon (good for supper, and 'on the way to and from the airport' meals as it's very close to the airport). Nice outdoor hawker centre that is probably the hawker centre to go to if you want a jovial, outdoor exotic hawker centre feel, especially if you've never been to one. Most of the stalls are quite good
10. Tiong Bahru market (good for breakfast and lunch). Very popular foodie-ish hawker centre.

1. New Fut Kai for veg versions of things like laksa and other 'Chinese Singaporean' foods
2. Whole Earth for a delightful veg version of Singaporean / Chinese / Thai / Malaysian food
3. VeganBurg: Veganburg started right here! I love the vegan chilli crab burger
4. Herbivore: really good Japanese veg food especially for veg yakitori
5. Almost all Indian places in Little India will have vegetarian options, but especially Murugan Idli and Mavalli Tiffin Room and Gokul and Kailash Parbat

There's more I want to post on this topic, especially the great regional Indian, regional Chinese and other foods you can get in Singapore, but this is a good starter list just for food somewhat unique to Singapore (and Malaysia).

Tanglin Halt Memories

This neighbourhood is meaningful to me. I spent a lot of time here as a child, running about after church, going to eat all of the food, visiting people, going to get charcoal (from the back of a lorry here) and fresh coconuts (grated at the back of a little market here).

I think my child's consciousness of the outside world was first formed here. I first became aware of the world in Tanglin Halt. There were Indonesian women who would take the ferry from Batam to sell food items from the market here, and I remember talking to them and wanting to know more about their food cultures, their language, and how I could take the ferry too (and I would often make the journey in the other direction, when I grew up).

Now that it's all been set aside for redevelopment, I feel a little sad. Some bits of it remain. But I know that when I return next, it's all going to be different, or gone. Such is life in Singapore.

I lost too much money to these machines, as a child.

Public housing apartments in Singapore's Tanglin Halt estate.

Going, going, gone.

All going to be gone.

The old school prata man remains.

All photos taken on Yashica Mat 124G, Portra 400, dev and scan by Whampoa Colour Centre.

Little Myanmar, Singapore

If the Burmese population in Singapore were a city in Myanmar, it'd be one of the top 10 cities.

We have many Burmese grocers, restaurants services in Peninsula Plaza and Peninsula Shopping Centre, conveniently located across the street from each other.

Here's what it looks like.

Snacks.

Menu.

Offerings.

Tea shop.

Groceries.

If you'd like to try Burmese food, my favorite restaurant at the moment is Mandalay Style, in the basement of Peninsula Plaza (try the fried chickpea tofu, tea leaf salad, tofu salad and Shan noodles).

My Little India

Of all of the neighbourhoods in Singapore, I've probably spent the most time in Little India. Not only was I born in a hospital on its edges, I also lived and studied near here for several years. Every trip abroad had to start with a visit to Little India, for foreign currency, electrical adapters, or extra supplies at Mustafa Centre.

Filter coffee.

Coconuts.

Aloo pyaz.

Windows.

Alleys.

All photos taken on Nikon FE, 50mm, Kodak ProImage, dev and scan by Triple D Minilab, Singapore.

Five Frames Chinatown

With motion picture film.

There's a touristy bit of Chinatown Singapore (Smith Street-ish) and a less touristy part. Often, they're just side by side and you need to know which doors to duck into, or which alleys to turn off into, to see the less tourist bits.

Since I grew up here, I think I have a pretty good handle on things. There are the little barely marked doors past my favorite food stalls. Go through a door and turn left, and you'll get to a large wholesaler of Korean toiletries. Take a certain overhead bridge, and you'll get to another part of Chinatown that will soon turn into the bars and restaurants of Clarke Quay.

Buns

People's Park.

Doors.

Wigs.

Cycling.

All photos taken on Nikon FE, 50mm f1.8 lens, Kodak Vision 3 500T, dev and scan by Whampoa Colour Centre, Singapore.

Mei Ling Street

Between 2013 and 2018, I lived near the Mei Ling Street estate. I felt like if I was a housing estate, I would be Mei Ling Street. It's old and crumbly, but it's also got fantastic third wave coffee, one of the best cheese shops in Asia, and a few of my favourite hawker stalls (Sin Kee, Shi Hui Yuan, Ah Pang Seafood, Hui Wei Lor Mee). It's quiet and sleepy, on the surface, but full of interesting stuff if you know where to look!

Old apartments.

Flags.

Grass.

Danger. In all languages.

One of the national dishes. One of my favourite stalls.

(All photos taken on Nikon FE, 50mm f1.8 pancake lens, Kodak Gold 200, dev and scan by Whampoa Colour Centre, Singapore)

Roadtrip to Tretes

A memory I will always treasure: the opportunities I've had to visit Tretes. Going to Tretes always means going on a short road trip with my best friend of 25 years. I remember listening to her describe her home to me, when we met as teenagers in Singapore, and dreaming about going there with her one day.

Indeed, we stayed friends, and I've visited. Many times. While I live ten thousand miles away now, Indonesia, especially East Java, will always have a special place in my heart.

This past weekend, we managed to get up to Tretes again. The trip was remarkably the same as every other time. Consistently delightful food and company. I am going to miss this. And everyone.

Absolutely delightful rawon, pecel and empal. Possibly one of my favorite restaurants in the world.

Sunlight trickling into the restaurant we usually stop at.

I don't know anyone who eats as much krupuk as I do. And it's the best in this part of the world.

Nasi rawon is my favorite dish in Indonesian cuisine. I can eat it a few times a day, every day. That I don't get (good versions of) it, or at all, abroad, is why I feel the need to really focus on my rawon time when I am in East Java.

Check out the view. You can't hear it, but there was also beautiful traditional / classical Javanese music streaming out of a school or home in the valley below. Culturally, this part of the world just speaks to my soul.

(All photos taken on Nikon FE, Kodak Gold 200, developed and scanned by Whampoa Colour Centre, Singapore)

Doors of Surabaya

One of my oldest friends in the world lives in Surabaya. I love visiting her. Not only is the food one of my favorite cuisines (East Java food is my favorite Indonesian regional food, and it can be hard to get abroad), the city is also a place I enjoy photographing. Eat, shoot, eat, shoot. That's basically all I do there.

This was my first time there with a film camera. I brought my trusty tiny Nikon FE with a 28mm f.28 lens, as well as a 50mm pancake f1.8 lens. That's really all I need on a vacation.

I even got the film sent off and developed at a local lab in Surabaya, which I was happy with.

Green.

Old.

Noodles.

No parking.

Rainbow.

I'm getting into the swing of things, shooting and developing film locally. Although I miss developing film since I'm so used to it, it's nice to see what services are available.

(All photos taken on Nikon FE with either 28mm or 50mm lens. All photos are Kodak Gold 200, dev and scan by Impossible Lab Surabaya)

Little India, Singapore

The last time I was home in Singapore, I did one of my favorite alone activities: I walked a lot, and ended up in Little India. I did a 7km walk starting at sunset, and wound up there just in time for all kinds of fun. Since Mustafa Centre is 24 hours, and my favorite naan shop (Usman, along Desker Road) is open till 3 or 4, I am never in much of a hurry.

It was also mango season.

Mango season is my favorite season. And when that happens, I prefer to be in India or Singapore. (More on mangoes here)

The smell of jasmine flowers tells me there are devotees and a temple nearby. It also smells of home.

Mustafa Centre. How do I even describe how much I love it?

I would have loved this, if I was still into booze.

I've always loved this neighborhood the most because of all of the street life.

(All photos taken on Ricoh GR III)

Five Frames in Camp Mather with my Yashica 124G and Portra 160

One of the more unique things about Bay Area life is that many Bay Area cities have their own 'cabin in the woods' programs in the summer. San Francisco has Camp Mather, Oakland has Feather River Camp, Berkeley has two camps at Tuolumne River and at Echo Lake, San Jose has one near Groveland.

Camping in the Sierras is a tradition in this region. The camps all work similarly: the recs and parks departments of those cities manage and operate these camps, which are also excellent places for youths to work summer jobs as they get free board and an hourly rate comparable to working in a restaurant. For outdoorsy youths it certainly seems like a dream, and I wish I had such a thing open to me as a teen. The camps are open to residents and non-residents, though non-residents will tend to pay a little more. The cities also have subsidized programs for lower income residents, and may also run special weeks for the elderly, for families, or for disabled children.

San Francisco's Camp Mather seems to be one of the most competitive ones to apply to. There's a lottery, and if you win it you get to go. On a whim, I applied to a lottery for a 3 person cabin and got it for late August. I went with my wife, and a friend.

The cabin was a reasonable size, with only space for a double and a single bed and a chest of drawers. Mosquito nets all over the windows and doors. Clean bathrooms and toilets a short (1 min) walk way. The camp was very well set up, with good facilities. There was a swimming pool and a gorgeous lake. There are activities for adults and children every single day and evening. There are on-site naturalists who have daily morning and evening walks to nearby spots. We went on one such walk, and found it fun and helpful: they knew the trails that were not widely known, and they'd each had decades of experience in that particular spot of Stanislaus National Forest (where Camp Mather is located) and the parts of Yosemite National Park that are near.

What you can expect: Hetch-Hetchy, the reservoir that provides water to San Francisco, is a short drive away and is gorgeous. Almost as gorgeous as parts of Yosemite National Park, but with far fewer tourists. Plan for a whole day in Yosemite Valley, which is easily accessible, if you haven't been. The kitchen can provide a packed lunch (various sandwiches and fruit) for your days out of camp. A coworker said 'Camp Mather is the only place where I can leave my children and have them entertained from morning to night, while I also get to do fun things on my own or with my spouse, and I just have my kids on a walkie-talkie and everyone has fun'.

Indeed, that was the vibe of the whole place. On the evenings we were there, adult programs included 'wine and paint night in the barn' and 'walk to see the superbloom of a giant flower'. Oh, there are also tennis courts, and lots of ping pong tables. Food was also good, and it's nice to be in an outdoorsy environment without having to manage your food supply!

Overall, I'm a fan.

View of the famous Yosemite peaks from Tunnel View.

Going out to spend time in nature is just a wondrous gift.

Our little cabin that was home for a few nights.

Every cabin has a bench like this in front of it. It's a good place to have a snack or just sit, as the cabin doesn't have much of a seating area.

Yosemite in the summer is extremely crowded. If you only have a day you might only be able to see the car-accessible spots in and around Yosemite Valley. But it is still wonderful. This is a photo of Lower Yosemite Falls. Not pictured: the hundreds of people below it.

All photos taken with Yashica Mat 124G, Kodak Portra 160, self-developed in Bellini C41 kit, and scanned on Fuji Frontier.

Applying for Singapore Visa for your Friend

Citizens of some countries need a visa to enter Singapore. If you have friends or family that belong to those countries, you can do them a huge favor by applying as a local contact.

As long as you are a Singapore citizen or Singapore PR with SingPass, or director of a Singapore-registered business, you can help your friend get a visa. Please make sure that you actually know this person!

I only do this for people I know.

It can save them a lot of time and money. Most of the time, I do this for my friends from India. It's much faster and it also costs less than them going to a visa agent.

The following instructions are for Singapore citizens and PRs who have SingPass.

1. Before you start, send this PDF form to the person you are applying for the visa for
2. Ask them to write down the answers to all the questions in a document, and send it to you. Also ask them to attach a passport photo in the right format
3. Visit this ICA page and click on "Apply for a an entry visa as a local contact (Individual Users)"
4. Log in with SingPass
5. Click on "Individual Visa Application" to apply for 1 person, or "Family Visa Application" to apply for more than 1 person (they must be married; children above the age of 21 must have their individual applications)
6. Fill in the form according to the information your friend provided you. Be sure to get their birthday, passport issue date and passport number correct.
7. Upload their passport photo
8. Pay: you can pay with American Express Cards, PayNow, or eNets (internet banking).

Save the application as a PDF. It will take 3 working days to receive a response, but in my experience it has been usually faster than that (next day has been the norm).

You can look up the status of your visa application here.

So far, I have applied for friends from many countries and I have not received a single rejection.

Please refer to ICA's own documents for screenshots and more explanation for each step. These are all PDF files:

• For local contact (individual user with SingPass)
• For local business sponsor (corporate user)
• How to apply for a family

B Sides (Myanmar)

Some time around 2012/2013, I spent most of my time in Myanmar. The country was opening up: Aung San Suu Kyi was out, reform was in the air, Burmese students and exiles were coming home. There was a true spirit of hope and optimism. I was no longer a photographer or writer at that time, but I had developed a set of skills from my time in that world. I had become the person that tech companies sent to 'figure stuff out in new markets'. It was also a lucrative and exciting gig while that lasted. I did that for a couple of years.

My time being a 'fixer' for photographers and journalists around Southeast Asia also meant that I already knew people everywhere. I was not only okay with bureaucracy, I celebrated it. They just seemed like interesting puzzles to solve. Getting a photographer access to a person in a Bangladeshi village was more complex than getting a multinational company access to the top ten people they could hire, or finding them an office space in a booming market.

Somewhere in Mandalay.

Britney was everywhere.

Being close to Bengal, Myanmar and Kolkata always had strong links. Rangoon and Calcutta were, in the heyday, the Paris and London of the British empire in the east. Many Burmese people have Indian ancestry, and Burmese-Tamil, Burmese-Gujarati, Burmese-Bengali cultures are totally a thing. You see that in the people, food, language and historical landmarks too.

Fried total food. I love Burmese food.

My routine was to get in to Yangon on the early morning Jetstar flight from Singapore. I would land at Yangon airport, and head straight for Tin Tin Aye in Sanchaung for their famous mohinga. No one was allowed to schedule any meetings for me until I'd had mohinga.

All photos: various iPhones through the years.

B Sides (India)

When I think back to the life I led in my 20s, I will be forever grateful and amazed that I got to do the things that I did. How did I figure out how to travel around the world, eating, working, writing, taking photos? I don't think that life exists anymore. Not in the same way anyway. But I really milked it for what I could.

Right out of college, I was a freelance travel and food writer. I wrote about different parts of Southeast Asia. I wrote about chefs. I was interested in history, food culture, people. I still am. But the ways in which I led that life (writing for magazines with "Geographic" in their name, getting advances and payouts from travel guidebooks, selling photos to newspapers), don't and won't exist anymore.

So I continue to do those things, but with a day job.

While I was out on the road, my phone photos were an important 'B Roll'. Today I am sharing a selection of those photos in one place, for the first time.

Chennai was often my first port of call. Whenever I had work in India, I would fly first to Chennai. $100 one way from Singapore. Once there, I deeply explored the world of 'nonveg Tamil food', still one of my favorite cuisines anywhere. That love for Tamil Nadu country food was a love that nourished me and kept me happy. Brain masala, mutton sukka, deeply spiced seeraga samba biryanis. They also called this 'military food', and it was cuisine that was eaten in contrast to the totally vegetarian, 'cleaner' high caste food that I never developed a fondness for. Whenever in Chennai, I ate most at places like this.

Sri Velu was one place that I frequented for this type of food.

Roadtrips across India were a big part of my life. I went on long rides with friends, and one frequent trip was the road trip from Mumbai to Alibag. Vada pavs were mandatory, of course. Till this day, I still dream about the perfect little potato patties, with the right amount of spice, in a squishy white bread.

I spent most of my time in either Chennai or Mumbai. These are the two cities that, even today, if you were to drop me there and have me live there for months on end, I would be quite happy. My social circles and my favorite foods remain the same. Goan and all other coastal Konkani food is also a cuisine that I adore. In Mumbai, I frequently went to places like this, as well as to Gomantak or Malvani restaurants.

My happiest food memories are always whenever I get to get Tamil style biryanis. Orosorru in Chennai was a fave for a long time, but sadly they are no longer around.

Nearly Two Decades Ago

One of the things I love about film photography is how it gives me a good sense of my exact feelings at precise moments in time. Depending on the film stock and camera I used, looking at old film photos takes me back in ways that I don't experience with other types of photos I have taken in the past.

I know, for example, from the low light and lack of sharpness in these first few photos that I was just beginning to learn about film photography, and that I frequently used film stock that was not 'right' for the light conditions.

I know from the photo of the bus stop that this is in 2004 exactly, because I have been taking a bus from this bus stop my entire life and can tell from the way the shelter and seats and ads are set up, that it was when I was heading to university. I also know that I was probably late (because no one is waiting here and it's way past rush hour, so I've definitely overslept, again.)

I can tell from this photo of a woman sitting outside a mosque in Little India, Singapore, that this was when I was experimenting with plastic, toy cameras. I came to this area very often for food, and often walked past this mosque.

I know from looking at this photo that it was in the early 00s. This wide open space no longer exists in Singapore. Every inch of open space now has several buildings on it. The tallest building in the background anchors me and lets me know exactly where I was when I took this photo: my cousins lived in that building.

This photo was taken with my first 'real' camera, which was a Nikon F-601 SLR. I used it to take photos on my first 'real' trip abroad, where I traveled to Thailand and Cambodia overland (by bus and taxi and train and motorbike). As part of that trip, I saw some atrocities (Cambodia has a horrible recent history, as demonstrated by the window of Tuol Sleng prison here). I also some great beauty.

Like the gorgeous architecture of the temples of Angkor.

Increasingly, I started to have more and more nice cameras and film things. I also got to go on more trips.

Taiwan was a firm favorite. It was so close, and always so fun. I miss it.

I even have a photographic record of my unfortunate couple of years where I dressed only in hippie pants and sandals. Here, a self-portrait in Melaka, Malaysia.

I feel so lucky to have been able to experience that part of the world and to have called it home, and that I always had my camera(s) with me.

Five Frames with Nikonos V

To me, the best thing about living in the Bay Area is the easy access to all kinds of nature, by bike and by other means of transportation. You can put your bicycle on nearly every form of public transit (except Muni street car): all buses, almost all trains, and also by ferry. This makes bike-powered weekend trips a lot easier. Our hills are treacherous, and our beer is decent: sometimes you want to skip a hill or roll down one. Put your bike on a ferry, bus, train.

Recently, I did one such trip with a friend where we boarded a ferry to Larkspur and then a train to Petaluma. While I find it easier to just cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge and get in the miles, on days where I want longer rides, I'm thankful to these multi-modal options on easier days when I just want to take it slow but still be further from home, on a bike.

I also recently came into the possession of a Nikonos V. The seller was very apologetic that its meter wasn't working, and that its O-rings needed work before it can be a truly amphibious camera again: but I was not, for I managed to own a Nikonos V for $50 instead of $500. Although it looks like a toy camera, it is one of the most ergonomic and user friendly cameras I have ever used. It puts a modern GoPro to shame. You can even scuba dive with it (after getting the O-rings serviced).

As someone who enjoys manual metering, I am not afraid of film cameras without batteries and meters. The camera is perfect on land as well as in water. I quite like the heft of it: I think it will be my standard biking and camping camera. I have no worries at all about rolling into a pile of dirt, or falling into water. The 35mm f2.5 lens it came with is also very capable.

View of San Francisco from the ferry.

A person looking at Alcatraz from the ferry.

People on a boat near the Bay Bridge.

On the Larkspur ferry, the bike holding area is on the deck, which makes it fun and easy to look at the view while also being able to keep an eye on your bike.

There was a large Falungong rally at the Ferry Building in San Francisco on that day. The Nikonos IV is a capable land documentary camera as well as underwater camera, too.

All photos taken with Nikonos V, 35mm f2.5 lens, Fuji Superia 400, self-developed in Cinestill C41 kit, and scanned on Plustek 8200i.

Scenes from a Lifetime Ago

In 2007, I moved to the United Arab Emirates for my first full time job out of college. I was working at a publisher that specialized in trade magazines. I worked mainly on travel titles, as a deputy editor and also staff photographer. It was a pretty good life (tax-free, high salaries, lots of adventure).

It was not a long term place for me to be in because, well, I'm queer. My long term partner at the time lived in London: it was reasonably easy to go see her, and we also fancied meeting 'in the middle' (Istanbul was a fave).

It was an incredibly lonely time. While I met some lovely people, Dubai and I didn't quite get along. I had some wonderful memories of the people and places I got to see, and it was a launch pad for me to go to all of the other places in that region that I adore. I got to see places like Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, pretty much because they were there, and I could get there for a hundred bucks or less (Middle Eastern budget airlines were my best friends).

It was a weird time. When I got there, Dubai (and many global economies) were booming. A few months later, once we got into 2008, it became a ghost town in some parts. Some of those countries I visited regularly soon plunged into civil war and other turmoil. I hope that I can visit Syria and Yemen again one day in better times. It's awful what's happened to those societies and countries. Truly the most remarkable countries I've been to in so many ways.

I had a reasonably charmed life as a privileged Dubai expat with a powerful passport who got to travel anywhere on the weekends (which were Friday and Saturday!). It was just as easy to get to Europe as it was to get to South Asia, and also to the countries in the region, and I rode that wave for the whole time I was there. Outside of my day job as a staff photographer, I was also writing and taking photos for an assortment of travel magazines and newspapers in India, Singapore, Thailand and the Middle East. When the financial crisis came all of that work dried up, which is also partly why I stopped working in the field.

Still, I got to see so much and do so much, all at the age of 22.

I lived and worked in one of the newer parts of Dubai near Media City that were still under active construction. It was a weird time. There was no train then, and sometimes literally no roads to cycle on. In hindsight, I should have lived in the old city, which I much preferred for culture and food and people. That part of Dubai was, at that time, very alienating if you were not the right type of expat.

I tagged along on a camping trip to Oman one weekend with a bunch of architects. It was beautiful, but I don't know if I'll recommend peeing in the desert for women (it steams your butt).

I LOVE CAMELS. Always have, always will.

Dubai, like Singapore, is a cleaned city: cleaned by other people. Also built by other people. The reliance of these city states on foreign labor, especially from South Asia, and the propensity to severely mistreat them with poor labor practices and living conditions, is appalling. Being there opened my eyes to similar practices back home in Singapore and Malaysia. Later, I would work in migrant worker advocacy in those countries.

I am glad I did what I did at the time, but that's probably not a life choice I would make again. In my 30s, I am less accepting of living in environments where I cannot be openly gay, or be able to advocate politically in that space. However, that experience showed me a slice of the world that I deeply love, and also helped to imbue a certain amount of cultural understanding about some of the challenges in that region. When you know a place beyond the politics, and have met, dined with, and lived with the people, it's hard to see them as just passive figures in newspaper reports.

All photos taken on Canon 350D. Or 50D? One of those.

A Walk Around a Wet Market in Taiping, Malaysia

Wet markets have a bad reputation, because of the 'rona, but their name really just comes from being the opposite of a 'dry market' (like a market that sells pots and pans and such). They are very common in many parts of Asia and don't have wildlife. For many of us, a wet market is our first port of call to make the delicious foods from our part of the world.

These photos are from a wet market in Taiping, Perak, my wife's hometown. We visited with my mother-in-law and her sister, who were preparing a large family feast for the first reunion in the Taiping home in a very, very long time.

Eggs

Salted fish

Essential items

Aromatics

Potatoes

Sambal

I can still taste that sambal. What passes for sambal in the United States (Huy Fong sambal oelek!!) makes me so, so sad.

Lately, I've been thinking about how growing up in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore (and spending lots of time in Thailand, Indonesia, India) really spoiled me where food is concerned.

The food ways I am used to: buying fresh food. On a daily basis. At wet markets. Learning to cook traditional foods from skilled older people from different cultures.

All of those things are vastly different from a convenience-first food culture where I now live in the United States. Even though California, and San Francisco in particular, has a reputation for being farm to table, and for having good quality food, I do find myself feeling, quite often, like I never knew how good I had it until I left Southeast Asia. California is good, for food: my part of the world is better. That's how I feel, anyway. Being able to wake up in any of those countries and grabbing one of many hot breakfasts. Being able to eat hot, savory, spicy food all day, everyday, including at 3 or 5 in the morning. Being spoiled silly, really, by aunties of all types. Being surrounded by people who want to feed you all day, every single day.

Taiping, Perak in Malaysia is one of my favorite little towns. It has beautiful weather and scenery, an interesting history, and some of the best food I've had anywhere. I dreamed of the simple bowls of noodle soups I've had there (Restoran Kakak!!!), for years, until I went back again in 2022 to visit my wife's family. You've not had noodles until you've had the kway teow tng at Restoran Kakak. It takes skill, and really 'giving a damn' to make food like that. I think Taiping (and Perak as a whole) has a higher density of people who 'give a damn (about making food in a very specific way)'. And that's just normal, there.

Fisheye at Pak Ou Caves

I had the good sense to have brought a toy camera then, since I was concerned about my nicer cameras falling into the river. No such concern for my own physical safety... Holga fisheye, probably.

When I was in my early 20s I thought it would be a super swell, super safe idea to get on the 'fast boat to Laos'. I met T, a very old friend who was by then living in Australia, in Bangkok. He wanted me to plan an adventure that would reflect the kind of fun things I get up to, something he might never be able to plan or do on his own. And he wanted me to take him with me.

So I put us on a bus from Bangkok to Chiang Khong, near the border with Laos. We were going to take the fast boat. The slow boat was too slow (two days! I was in a hurry all the time back then. For what? Who knows!), so we would take the fast boat. Only five hours if we take this boat, I said.

T thought it was exciting too. We got on the fast boat from Huay Xai, threw our bags into the back, and we were given a life jacket and crash helmet each. Other backpackers who wisely got on the slow boat looked mildly concerned for us. I had not a concern in the world. I was young. And dumb!

I fell asleep on the boat the entire time. T, however, looked quite sick. I got off the boat refreshed and in no worry at all. The next day, we went to look at some caves.

Seventeen Years Later

I'm thankful to my photography hobby, which has been a part of my life in some way or form for the last 20 years.

I thought it might be interesting to locate photos that would locate me at different parts of my life, in many places, so that I could see, at a glance, what a journey it's been.

In many ways, my photography journey is indistinguishable from my journey through the world. I never went anywhere without a camera.

First year of college

My first camera was a Nikon F-601. I brought it with me to Koh Chang, a beautiful island in northeast Thailand.

This was the first overseas trip I went on by myself (with a former partner). We were in our first year of college. It took a fair amount of convincing (and saving) to make this trip happen. I planned an ambitious trip that got us to Koh Chang for a brief respite before we went north into Cambodia by land.

I don't think I was interested in being a backpacker as such, but I felt very drawn to immersing myself deeply in the countries around me. I had a sense that this type of travel would open up many opportunities for me: but I didn't know what. It didn't make financial or any other sense then.

All I knew was that I did not want to be sucked in to the corporate rat race in my home country, and that if I followed my nose for adventure, maybe things would make sense later.

All through college

I kept returning to Thailand. Often with friends, sometimes alone. It was my place of peace and happiness. I had a friend who let me stay with him in Bangkok (RIP Dave! I will always be grateful that we became friends the time and the way that we did). It was also a hub: eventually I started taking on assignments for magazines and newspapers, and being located in Thailand (during my college summer vacation) was perfect. I could get on a $80 flight to India, or take a bus or motorbike to Cambodia, or go meet someone and work with them in Vietnam relatively easily.

When I was home (I actually had full time college to complete, though it often did not feel like it), I sought out exciting things to do. Growing up, I often heard people say 'Singapore is boring' or 'there's nothing to do here' (even from people who were from there), but I refused to believe that was true.

I certainly got up to a lot of mischief. Some of it good, some not. In any case, this sort of exploration fueled my curiosity. In this period, I actually wound up writing travel and food guides to Singapore at a variety of places, some online, some in hard copy: which was an exciting way to make money to fund other onward adventures. I also wound up eating at every corner of the country because of that, and I certainly have no complaints.

My university wanted me to do an internship at a bank, and I balked. I fought to have this work be recognized as an internship. Eventually, I won. But it was hard fought.

Last year of college

In my last year of college, I fell in love with a woman who lived 250 miles north of me. We met sometimes in the middle. I knew my life was about to change: big time. I guess this photo was a tentative record of that moment. Shortly after, we moved even further away. She moved 8000 kilometres west, and I also moved halfway there. Years later, we would finally live in the same country, the one originally pictured here. We had such an adventurous life together. I got to see a lot of the world with her, and I got to do many things in this period of my life. We started companies, we made software, we made food, we had a dog. A dog that's still very much a part of my life today.

Present day

I never thought I would move to America. It wasn't my dream, the way it was for so many people. But life brought us here. Specifically, my marriage brought me here. We needed a place to live that was going to be more... amenable to our lives.

I think we've built a good life for ourselves. It'll be five years soon. Five years of being married to Sabrena, my wonderful wife, and five years of living here together. I now speak in Fahrenheit, much to her horror. She keeps tabs of all the ways in which I am 'turning American'. "You speak way too loudly, and just yesterday you scared me when you told me the boiling point of water was 212."

I am sorry.

We're part of a community. We go to things. We learn things together. We explore our environment. We fuss over Cookie, our 14 year old dog, and Mila, our 16 year old cat. We trace the ways in which our lives have changed, the ways in which we have, inevitably, become, well, American. It's a bittersweet story.

But we are here now. And if you were to tell 20 year old me in the very first photograph that this is going to be my life in the future? I'd be very thankful for the adventures, and be looking forward to this one.

The Best Camera is the One You Have

I have been an avid enthusiast of phone photography and videos even before iPhones arrived in the world. To that end, I still chuckle when I think about how in the mid 00s, I not only took cool photos that I still love today, using a Nokia N73, one of them even went on the front page of Flickr for a while!

A photograph of a cow on a pile of limestone. Cherrapunjee, India.

A photograph of a limestone kiln in Cherrapunjee, India.

A sign that greets you as you enter Cherrapunjee.

I had to take a screenshot.

This was the first photography and writing assignment I ever went on. I met a photojournalist in a bar in Mumbai, and ended up collaborating with him across India and Bangladesh. He took the cool pictures (I thought, at the time, as I was less confident in my photography skills and equipment); I wrote many of the stories (which were published by various magazines). We were there to document climate change in the world's wettest place at the time. Not bad for a still-in-college kid (me, then), to have had the opportunity to do things like that.

My First Time in Myanmar

Photo taken on Sony Nex-5 in 2012.

Around a decade ago the world was a vastly different place. Aung San Suu Kyi had been released and was poised to run her country, finally. The country, so close to mine yet so far apart in so many ways, was opening up. I set out to try to see it before it became another Southeast Asian tourist hotspot with breathless growth and development. I think I was concerned about ecological destruction then, but boy, there was that and so much more to have been worried about.

This was maybe the second last time I traveled anywhere that had no Internet connectivity whatsoever (the last place was Cuba, 2016). 6 months from the time this photograph was taken, you could get data on sim cards at the airport for five bucks; at this point, I still had one of the infamous three thousand dollars (yes, green bucks) per Burmese sim card arrangements, that I got through work. It also had no data on it, in spite of the cost. (For a long time, the market in issuing Burmese sim cards was very much like the used car market in an oligarchy. The elite officials ran the whole thing.)

Friends with Burmese connections helped me plan this trip. You couldn't buy a domestic travel ticket for bus or plane outside of Myanmar, because that was closed, but you could do it in Peninsula Plaza, Singapore, the hub of one of the largest Burmese diaspora in the world. You couldn't use an ATM there, but you could send money to someone in Singapore, whose uncle would then meet you at your hotel to give you a bag of cash.

I was trying to get to Bagan. "Go to this place, wait there, and someone will come and help you sort out everything."

It was a whole thing. I waited here for a long time, so I had plenty of time to take photographs. Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the people in the photographs I took a decade ago. But it's hard to think about it.

Later, I went on to spend much more time in Yangon and Mandalay. I was there on a project with a company for almost a year. It's one of the countries I love so much, and so terribly, and I stand with the brave Burmese people who rise up, decade after decade, against crushing military rule.

Hari Gawai, some years ago

One of the things I love about my home region is how it's home to so many unique cultures. Even in countries that I know well, like Malaysia, I never run out of things to do, people to meet or things to learn. In 2007 or so I went to Sarawak, one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, and lived with a local Indigenous family. June 1 of each year is usually the day of Gawai itself, which concludes the harvest season, but as many people return home from the city or even from other villages, it's also a time for merrymaking and reconnecting with family and friends. Festivities can go on for a month or more.

Read more here. It can be difficult to arrange without an 'in' to the community. Some people go to the traditional tattoo artists in Kuching and ask if they can get a tattoo, AND be invited to their family celebrations (with adequate payment, of course).

We were lucky to have been invited. Way too much local alcohol was made and consumed, and while my liver can't make this type of journey anymore (since I no longer drink), I have many fond memories of the longhouse we stayed in, and the families we met.

A young woman dressed in traditional Iban dress for Hari Gawai.

A child looks on as his cousins play, in a long house. We slept with everyone, with a mattress pulled out, on one side of the long house.

Getting there required expert navigation of the Skrang river. We were in good hands with the penghulu himself, and his sons, carrying us up the river from a small town a few hour away.

All photos taken on Canon 50D.

Silhouettes

Most people love the Golden Hour. I also love the moment just before the sun sets where the light changes so quickly you don't know what you're going to get.

A photo of temples at Angkor Wat, some time in 2005. Nikon F-601, not sure which film stock.

A photo of camels in Jaisalmer, India. 2006. Canon 350D.

Roadtrips and Chicken Rice Balls

In my last year of university I started dating a person who lived 250 miles away from me. It was my first serious relationship, and my last long(ish) distance one.

Before we found a living arrangement (that involved me moving to her city), we met sometimes in the middle. Luckily, her country was full of fun towns and cities with delicious food, so I didn't mind.

That relationship eventually fizzled out after several years, but I got from it: Cookie, a deep love for that country, and many years of happy food and travel memories.

A black and white photo taken in Melaka around 2007. Probably with a Leica M3 and 50mm Summilux, unsure which film stock (I'm guessing it's Tri-X).

Past Life: Sana'a Street Life

Getting to see Sana'a in 2009 was an honor. It was one of my favorite cities: ever. Anywhere. I stayed with a friend and I got to wander around sometimes with him and his family, but sometimes alone. It was the weight of history and the air of what was about to happen: I frequently described Yemen as 'better than a set from the Passion of Christ'. It felt old, dusty, but also warm and familiar.

At the time, I made some videos of my trip. You can see me talk about spending time with some local aunties, and how they fed me. I also have a stack of photos from that trip that I never looked at. What's happening in that country is truly horrid and makes me feel sick to my stomach. (My friend managed to leave, but his family remains in Sana'a.)

You hear about the hospitality of that part of the world but you never truly understand it until you've been a guest. Then it's a memory that you'll never lose.

Street Life: Air Mata Kucing

As a child, my parents would put us on a bus or train to Kuala Lumpur to see friends, visit people, or just have a weekend break.

One of my strongest memories of KL: getting out of the overnight train at the old railway station, and strolling to Chinatown (Petaling Street) for breakfast. Air mata kucing (literally translated to 'cat eye water'), is a sweet drink with ice, rock sugar and longans. This stall in Petaling St is extremely famous, and probably still there today. I loved drinking it out of the little steel bowls they used to have, the ice cooling me down in the ever present Malaysian heat.

This photograph was probably taken in 2005 with a Yashica Electro 35. I can't wait to go back there and have it again.

Longans are now popular in the west as a sugar alternative: 'monkfruit' sweetener is popular with fitness types. I like the fruity fleshy taste of longan, or 'luo han guo', in a traditionally made beverage like this. To this day, I haven't found a better version than this stall, though nostalgia is a drug.

The Market in Mae Salong

Mae Salong is one of the most interesting little towns I've ever been to. It is said that many of the town's folks are descended from the southern Kuomintang army during the Chinese civil war. They went south through to Thailand with instructions to wait there in case Generalissimo Chiang wanted to mount a southern attack against the Communists. That day never came.

My mother and I went to spend a week here together once (she also likes adventurous and historical vacations), and I wound up meeting so many people because she's so good at talking to people. She speaks many languages, including the several languages spoken by this community.

We went to the market every day for fresh soy milk and you tiao. It's a memory I will cherish, and I think I have my mum to thank for why I am really interested in people, adventure, food and stories.

I love the wet markets of Asia, especially in Thailand. There's always so much to see, so much to eat.

Five Frames: Chinese Gods

Singapore is technically a secular country. A large number of its ethnic Chinese population practices traditional Taoist rituals, though evangelical Christianity is encroaching quickly. As an ethnic Chinese person raised in Christian traditions, I felt surgically removed from these practices and I wanted to document them and learn about them whenever I could.

You'll find signs of faith everywhere you go. Outside local 'coffee shops' (kopitiams), inside wet markets and hawker centres, under trees, in a street corner somewhere. At various Taoist festivals. At 'void decks' (the ground floor of a public housing building), especially during funerals.

From my archives, some photos of how faith is professed in black and white. First photo is a film photograph, the rest are digital (some kind of Sony Nex camera from 2012).

The ground floor of a public housing building is used for weddings and funerals. Here, a scan of a film photograph taken with a Leica M3. The Chinese characters are a call to prosperity.

Even in downtown Duxton Hill, hipster central in the middle of the Central Business District, you can see altars everywhere if you look. They tend to be hidden away.

There are different hierarchies of Taoist gods. The ones on the street tend to be lower ranking, and serve different functions from the 'higher class' gods.

At big Taoist festivals, like the Hungry Ghost Festival, we have traditional singers on stage. Many traditional Chinese arts are deeply entrenched in Taoist practices; or is it that Taoist practitioners tend to be the keeprs of many traditional Chinese rituals and arts.

A close up of a Taoist altar with various deities.

Here's a link to an interesting story about how some of these deities are made by craftsmen.

Touching Grass: Taroko Gorge, Taiwan

Taiwan's Taroko Gorge near Hualien is a place of great beauty.

I spent a fun day here in 2006 with my family, with my Leica M3 and some black and white film (I am guessing it is Tri-X 400, which would have been what I was using a lot back then).

I don't photograph nature or landscapes very much, so am very out of my depth here, but I do like the way these photos turned out. Taiwan is a place of great natural beauty, and I don't feel like I've seen enough of it even though I've been many times. (I haven't had enough of the food either, which is in my opinion one of the best in the world.)

In 2023, I am far more into being outdoors in nature than I was at the time. I will take more photos of the Californian outdoors shortly.

Taroko Gorge from the top.

Water enters the gorge from the Liwu river.

Photos taken on Leica M3, 50mm Summilux, probably Tri-X 400, probably processed at Ruby Photo in Singapore

Well Fed: Two Artisans

As you may know from elsewhere, I love food. I am obsessed with it. I love eating, I love food stories, I love writing about food, I love writing about people who make and eat food.

I did that more actively in the past where I wrote a few travel guidebooks and cookbooks, and also published a few articles about Asian food culture and chefs in various publications around the world.

From my archives, photos of two true artisans. One in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the other in Roses, in Spain's Costa Brava coastal region.

I maintain that you haven't had satay / sate until you've been to Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand. The quality and artistry of this type of grilled skewer is on a whole other level. Xinjiang style BBQ skewers are also very good, but in the realm of well spiced, fatty satay Nusantara style, this is my favorite. Unmarinated and unseasoned chicken breast satay in Asian restaurants in America make me weep.

I had the opportunity to eat at the 'best restaurant in the world' (El Bulli) in 2008, shortly before they closed. It was a memorable meal, but the ridiculously great seafood at Rafa's in the town of Roses was even better. Here, Rafa himself weighing the seafood he's about to feed the hungry patrons of his tiny restaurant.

Photos shot on Canon 350D and 50D, with a 17-40L lens, probably one of my all time favorite lenses.

Five Frames from Ceylon

Between 2013 and 2016, I went to Colombo quite frequently for work and relaxation. An old friend of mine from school lived there, and it was such an easy flight from Singapore that I found every excuse to go there, really. The scuba diving is phenomenal, too.

This past year, Sri Lanka has been in my thoughts. The troubled island continues to have a difficult time economically and politically. I highly recommend my friend Rohini Mohan's book, The Seasons of Trouble, for a gripping read of the civil war era.

It's a beautiful country, and I hope to return some day.

I don't remember what camera I used here, but it's quite likely.. an iPhone 5S definitely a Sony Nex-5 with 16mm lens!

Old school cool in one of Colombo's many historical department stores.

Friendly faces everywhere.

So many of the cities I love—Colombo, Chennai, Yangon—former British ports, have a very similar vibe in their port areas.

It's always time for tea.

The languid afternoons felt like they went on forever.

Outtakes from a cookbook

In my mid-20s I was involved in the production of several cookbooks behind the scenes. That helped start a love for food. I helped to write and photograph a cookbook for an international hotel chain's Dubai restaurants, which had all types of cuisines (their Thai chef also taught me how to cook the Thai food I now love cooking). Later, I helped a Thai-Punjabi restauranteur publish a cookbook for their restaurant in Pattaya.

These were the outtakes from some of these projects.

The essential ingredient in many cuisines, garlic.

The best part about any cookbook project: going to the market.

To make good chai, start with good milk.

I love those steel cups.

Spices are the variety of life.

All of my wildest dreams

I spent the past weekend hiking. Some of it was on a dried out waterfall, such as this one.

For a long time now I have wanted to lead a wilder life than the one I had. Earlier in my youth, wild meant something else altogether. Today, it means: backpacking, camping, going on long walks in the wilderness, birdwatching, and hiking.

Now that I live in California I have access to tremendously beautiful landscapes, often hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean. Local parks, state parks, national parks and more: there are lots of avenues for weekend exploration. While I didn't always feel fit enough, or brave enough, to join many of these activities, I've finally gotten around to making the most of this access. On foot or by bike, there are lots of outdoorsy options and this past weekend I did my first ever backpacking trip for 2 nights at Wildcat camp in Point Reyes.

I joined a local adventure club that organizes trips and activities and was quickly put into a carpool with one of the organizers. While I didn't know anyone from the trip, we did a Zoom call to say hello and discuss logistics.

The plan was for us to meet at Bear Valley Vistor Center in Point Reyes on Friday afternoon at noon. The drive from San Francisco's Marina district took just over 90 minutes, with a last minute Sports Basement Presidio scramble for camping lights and other forgotten items.

We met the other folks at the visitor center, 12 of us in all, where we enjoyed our last moments of Internet and restroom access.

The hike up the Bear Valley trail was not especially brutal, but for most of us this was our first time carrying full backpacks and walking up any amount of elevation. Carrying tents, sleeping bags and stoves, we slowly meandered up the hills of Point Reyes and nearly 3 hours later, made it to camp.

Wildcat camp was reasonably furnished with two clean toilets and a tap.

As quite a few people on the trip remarked, it's amazing how little you really need until you have to carry it on your back.

We hiked, swam, walked on sand, cooked basic meals on camping stoves, and thankfully nobody got hurt or into any type of accident other than a handful of blisters.

I was lucky to have sought advice from experienced camper friends who told me: do whatever, have fun, but you must have good shoes, good socks, good tents, and a very long spoon.

That advice brought me far. I then supplemented that with more essentials for myself: I brought Indomie, packets of mala fish tofu snacks, Japanese sea urchin cookies (a fave), along with the dire 'dehydrated backpacker meals', and had more of a blast than I thought I would.

I've now been initiated into a group of outdoorsy folks who have the organizational and logistical expertise to make these weekend trips happen, so I'm excited to finally have consistent outdoors plans in my life. Next up: bikepacking at China Camp.

Maybe one day I'll write a quick guide to how to do all of this stuff in the Bay Area without a car. It's time for me to learn how to drive (!!) so I can access more cool spots, but for now, I think I saw a lot of my region without ever knowing how.

Jharkhand Task List

Some of you may know that I have spent the last 9 years or so working to support children's education in Jharkhand, India. In better times I visit them 2-3x a year. I want to share something that stuck with me the last time I went: one of the girls we work with showed us their daily schedule.

Tribal Jharkhand girl's daily schedule (24 January 2019):

• Keep house clean, 30 min
• Help mother in her work, 30 min
• Wash my own school dress, 15 min
• Help my sister in her studies, 1 hour
• I have to found (sic) my socks, 20 hours
• Wash utensils used by me, 5 min
• Put my bags, school dresses in appropriate places, 10 min
• Use Whatsapp to write all the notes I have missed as I am not in class today, 2 hours
• I have to call my grandmother as she is sick, 20 minutes

• School time, 5 hours
• Tuition time, 1 hour
• Study for approximately 3 hours a day

I am nowhere as organized, or as funny, as this girl.

Going to Jharkhand twice a year has always been the highlight of my year. I'm glad to report that the girls are well, as are their families, which is an amazing outcome in spite of the current COVID-19 situation there. I've seen them grow up over the years: they are absolutely committed to wanting a better life for themselves and their families, and hopefully through the work that I facilitate there I can help to open some doors. If you pay tax in India, you are welcome to make a contribution to the team (other options coming, in the.. future. Overseas contributions are very difficult). The local team is amazing and I am so glad to be able to support this work.

Travelogues, Ten Years On

It was the summer of 2004.

I don’t remember things like seasons before 2018 (I did not live somewhere with real seasons until 3 years ago). Unless they had to do with travel. In 2004, I was a college freshman in a school in Singapore that was also the only one at the time which followed American semesters, terminology, and that conferred you with things like summa cum laude when you graduated. Accordingly, we were also the only school that used things like, “summer”, “spring”, “fall”, “winter”.

Summer of every year in college was glorious. I knew it at the time, probably, but maybe didn’t know exactly: all four summers would be the best days of my life. Just endless amounts of time to not-study, for I was not a very good student (my undiagnosed autism and ADHD then made it very difficult for me to stay engaged)), and unlimited amounts of time to really just do whatever the hell I wanted.

Like many students in Singapore, it had always been an ambition of mine to study abroad. I wanted to live and study somewhere with... seasons. In hindsight, I probably just wanted the space and bandwidth to figure out things like ‘am I gay’, ’can I do certain things recreationally’, ‘is there a path beyond let’s marry some man at 25 and have babies and live in a HDB flat’, and I probably wanted those things more than I wanted to study abroad.

The realities of a middle class life in Singapore set in quite quickly. The deal I struck with my folks was: ”If I stay and study in Singapore (the economically sensible thing), I guess I can... travel... regionally... with the tens of thousands of dollars that you’d be saving?” (They said yes, but that I still had to pay for those things myself. Years of studying amongst real-life Crazy Rich Asians did not leave me with a reasonable understanding of money.)

Much later, some family friends remarked at Chinese New Year: Mr and Mrs Tan, isn’t it marvelous that you allowed your daughter the space to go out and see the world? To which, they laughed: there is no allowing or disallowing with her. She’s so strong-willed, our options with her have always been: ok do what you think is best. Just remember to tell us about it. As soon as you can.

(Thanks mum, dad! If you’re familiar at all with Singapore, you’ll know that that’s... exceedingly rare. I feel extraordinarily lucky.)

And so I worked two to three jobs all through college in order to fund that life. It helped that I loved a good deal so I made it my goal to get the best prices on everything. If I had $100 in my bank account that was me going off to a nearby country for two weeks. It also helped that I was fine with—perhaps even saw it as a teaching moment, or a story to be written about ten years later—that I really wasn’t bothered by things like creature comforts. I was also not bothered by creatures. $2 rooms in Kolkata and $5 beds in Bangkok. Those felt more free than the small bedroom in a high-rise building I grew up in. Now that I’m a little older, I know those felt liberating because those were different from the comforts I grew up with, that I could always return to. They were novelties. They were stories to tell.

I hope I have better stories to tell now.

—-

In the summer of 2004, I woke up every morning and I got into a little boat. I paddled aimlessly. I tried not to knock my head with the oar. My ex, bless her soul, did most of the paddling. We walked around from bed to beach to estuary lazily with all the time in the world. Of college kids who had April to August to do whatever they wanted. Most of our peers were doing internships, chasing good jobs: I wanted to row boats badly and wear not too much clothing for as long as I could.

The plan was hazy. We would get up from bed a few days from now, whenever we felt like it, and head for Cambodia. We would take several modes of transportation from the beach towards the mainland, where we would board a minibus for a town named Trat. Then we would find a motorbike taxi, and we would tell them to head to the border. There, we would disembark from the motorbike taxi, and then we would find a car, any car, headed for Phnom Penh. That trip involved an overnight stay in a small Cambodian town. We weren’t fazed by it, but we weren’t prepared either. Especially not with the minimal clothing that was the ethos of my travel at the time.

On arriving in this small Cambodian border town, we checked in to a room in a wooden structure that had seen better days. Our budget was $2, so we couldn’t complain. As with all such huts in Southeast Asia, the highlight of the room was the dirty and dusty mosquito net. It’ll only be one night, I told myself.

As we walked around the small Cambodian town the main people we saw who were not working in the hotels, who were not pedaling autorickshaws, were older men from a certain continent with clear persuasions of the nature that would lead them into criminal trouble back home. Being as sheltered as we were, we felt relatively carefree and perhaps even safe. After all, we were... almost 20. We were expired goods for the men who came to this town.

As a person on the spectrum, the true nature of the things that I saw and the sticky situations that I may have been in only revealed themselves later when I was already detached from that moment. Ah, so that’s... what it was. I mention this because I have been frequently guilty of saying that I never ran into any trouble traveling solo; perhaps I was truly lucky. Perhaps I, as an autistic person who has a complete inability to read new social situations, just didn’t see what was right there. This episode comes back to me sometimes as I think of the leering men who said things to me like, I can no longer be with western women, they don’t know how to treat men and they are not attractive. At that time, I simply did not have the context. I certainly found it weird and strange, but today I would have the tools and the experience to have found... disgust, perhaps.

That night was over relatively quickly. The next morning, we climbed into an old Toyota Camry that was bound for Phnom-Penh.

Five other people climbed in.

[To be continued..]

Memories of Home

Every overseas Singaporean has the same fear: that when we return, we will not know our way home.

Our city builds and tears down much quicker than most other places. Nothing is safe. The price of progress: everyone's memories. No time for nostalgia, or poetry, when we can have... growth.

When I move between worlds, my words and ideas shift.

Apartments. Flats.

Elevators. Lifts.

Use public transit. Take bus and MRT lor.

Nothing ever stays the same.

Jalan Besar, Singapore. 2019. Public housing and transit.

When we return, there are more towers of glass and steel. Like our displaced accents when abroad, moving between Singlish and that of wherever-the-hell-we-live, our country's buildings now look like they want to be a little bit of everything.

I hate those buildings. I hate that waterfall in the airport, I hate the infinity pool on the top of the world, I hate the overwrought fake plastic trees and every single thing in a tourism board glamor shot. Glamour shot.

Instead, I take long walks along the old civic district. There, old buildings, colonial and brutalist, form my happy path. In a way, I love this part of town because it changes, but it stays the same. Hours of riding on the top level of the meandering bus to the ends of the island and back, sometimes ending in a boat ride to an island or more frequently, noodles.

3 A.M. staggers between hostel and Mustafa, my tummy filled with warm naan, kadai chicken and Punjabi uncles giving me lesbian dating advice (Their advice was usually some variation of "always pick the Indian girl").

Wandering every story (floor) of Sim Lim Tower, looking at batteries, wires, cables. My grandfather worked at a dry goods market that is now a nearby field, probably slated for a new apartment (condo) or hotel.

Memories are a leaky, unprofitable thing.

Jalan Besar, Singapore. 2019. Wholesale electronics and late night food.

But I live here now. Somewhere with giant babies holding weapons.

How did I go from a small city to an even smaller one? I'm living car-less in a pandemic (I don't drive, because, I've always had transit), in a seven by seven mile city. So many things are happening in the world, but this country feels... like a lot.

It is a lot. It's a whole lot.

For now, we're strapped in and waiting with bated breath to see what's in store for the next couple of months. As I write this, there's a man furiously banging on cars and cars driving badly and there's another man yelling stupid bitch at the top of his voice at an imaginary person, but they don't scare me as much as the politicians.

We take long walks in every direction.

To to west, we walk by recently gentrified Hayes Valley, with murals and giant babies.

To the east, we sometimes stock up on Asian snacks and all the Indomie we need from Pang Kee in Chinatown. To the north, a range of outdoorsy options. Chrissy Fields, where you'll eventually see the Golden Gate Bridge; the municipal pier, where I've been known to sprint up and down when I feel like I need to run very fast for no reason at all.

Hayes Valley, San Francisco. 2020. Giant baby mural.

Hayes Valley, San Francisco. 2020. Dog and wife waiting for me to be done taking photos with a manual camera.

Unlike where I'm from, this home of mine barely changes. We recently watched footage of Charles Manson's San Francisco days and... so much of the city is the same. The gurus have left Golden Gate Park, and they've moved online to become productivity deities who preach the gospel of four hour work weeks and cryptocurrency.

It's going to be okay.

Hayes Valley, San Francisco. 2020. Wife in yellow dress waiting for me to be done tweaking my camera settings.

May the next roll of the film not leak light. And this country not go completely to the dogs.

A World of Adventure

On Twitter, where I live, I posted snippets of the things I have done, the places I have been, the places I have gone. Where they might have felt jumbled up and messy on a blog or Facebook post, the Twitter thread / tweetstorm format seemed to be a natural home for my adventures. I am grateful for the mess that my early adulthood sometimes felt like.

Growing up in Singapore, my future felt as small as the country of my birth.

A mere 31 by 17 miles, it was the island that was also a city that was also a state that was also, somehow, a country.

When you bought anything online you'd get tired of typing or picking: city, Singapore. State, Singapore. Country, Singapore. Credit card issuance country, Singapore.

Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. Singapore.

Yet when I was in school, it was not the lay of the land that felt suffocating. It was the geography of the mind, the mountains we did not have, never even got the chance to climb, that I could not stand.

The moment I could, I ran away.

At first, it was for a few hours at a time. Age 13, I would grab my passport from my mother's chest of drawers where she kept all of our passports, passport photos, and other important things like that, guessing (correctly) that she would not notice.

School ended at 1.40 P.M. Everyday felt as warm as the next. If you grew up in the tropics you don't describe the weather as 'sweltering' or 'oppressive'. It simply is. In my school uniform, with sweat patches under my armpits, I would board SBS Bus 170 bound for Larkin Terminal, Johor.

It was a trip I had made many times. My grandmother was born there, Johor Bahru was the Teochew homeland outside of Swatow. Johor. It wasn't Bangkok or Phnom Penh, the capital cities with large numbers of Chinese people from the same patch of southern China like I supposedly was from. Johor was more like Pontianak. Sleepy on the surface, but a different world on its own if you knew its secret language.

I did, and I liked that.

In those days, it was not surprising to see children dressed in the school uniforms of another country wandering the streets of Johor Bahru. The city was joined at the hip with mine, except it was tethered to another. Pass all of the rubber plantations, seeing the landscape become more oppressively green and witnessing the heat become even more so, and you'd end up in Kuala Lumpur, three and a half hours later (two if you drive really quickly, like my ex used to).

14 years later.

I made the journey in the reverse. It was the morning I was to pack everything I owned, and a dog, which I now owned, alone, into the Proton Kelisa.

Five years before, that car would speed southwards to say hello, a few times a month.

That day, it sped faster than it ever had, eager to dislodge its contents after a few difficult months. There's never an easy end to a story, even when you try hard to make it so. I moved north with two bags, a vacuum cleaner and an ice cream maker. I moved home with two bags and one dog.

In less than three hours between Bangsar and Tuas, I was ready to present Cookie to animal control. We had to join a line full of chickens, which is maybe my only memory of that hazy, no good day.

What would her life be like in the country of my birth, I wondered. I hoped she would like it. In 2012, I thought I was going home for good.

I have had a life of adventure. I have lived in more cities than most people have visited; I have gone to many, many more.

How did I do it, people often want to know, expecting some kind of secret like "I was an influencer and people paid for my trips".

There isn't one. It didn't feel glamorous, not when I lived in $5 rooms and avoided rats on 30 hour train journeys.

I used to think the secret was that I jumped headlong into anything fun or exciting that I saw, with barely a consideration for the cost or trade-offs.

I now know that I was handed a huge amount of privilege, and that's the secret. I worked two to three jobs all through college, at the same time, so that I could make the hard cash to go on these adventures. That wouldn't work if I wasn't also making Singapore dollars.

I had the luxury of taking off for months at a time, not having to be the caregiver for anyone at home, because everyone was healthy and financially okay, and I could live off the SGD to THB or MYR or INR exchange rate for quite a while.

Eventually I rearranged my life to lead this sort of life. Even before graduating from college, I made GBP and USD and EUR as a freelance writer and photographer, on top of the other two jobs I had in Singapore when I wasn't traveling. And when I was done with the freelance industry, because print media was dying, there was no shortage of even-better-than-SGD-paying tech jobs for me with the skills that I had.

My life has been a series of opportunity after opportunity, of good luck following another, upon layers and layers of privilege.

I turn thirty five this year. When you get to your thirties, you no longer say "in three months", or things like that. You're officially thirty-something.

My wife thinks that I am the luckiest person she's ever met, even after accounting for privilege. Maybe.

I am lucky. If there is a random game of chance, whether it's to win prize money or an inanimate object or a piece of bread (actual thing I won, a few weeks ago), I usually win it.

I was almost in a suicide bomb attack, but I wasn't. I boarded the wrong bus instead.

Coming back to the capital, I was almost in another suicide bomb attack, but it wasn't. It hit the car ten cars down instead.

I was almost in the worst flood to ever hit Nepal, but I couldn't find my train that was going to take me into it.

I was almost in so much shit, all the time, but I wasn't.

I have had a ridiculous combination of luck plus privilege plus little to no trauma, which, now that I am thirty-something, makes me feel like an alien at times. I have, at most, been a spectactor in bad things happening to people, and when I have been in the thick of it, it has been brief.

Good things happen to me, all the time.

A combination of pandemic and visa woes means that right this moment is the first moment in time I haven't been constantly on the move.

I thought it would feel more suffocating, but it hasn't.

I've since learned that the contents of the life that I wanted to shape for myself were just as important as the shape it took on. Earlier, the frequency of the travel, the blur of airports and bus stations, were the external symptoms of the why behind why I sought out a life like that.

Now, I know why, I think.

I've always been interested in people, and their stories. Travel gave me the easy stories. Go everywhere, and it was bound to be different. Some places, more than others, feel like stories waiting to happen. Some lives are lived in the open.

I want to know what drives people. On my travels in my early twenties, I would frequently devour every historical book about the country. I wanted to know why a country existed, how it came to be, what their scars and bruises were. When I got there, I would read, or attempt to read (if it was in a foreign language), the lifestyle pages of their local media. I thought I was looking for 'people who do interesting things' and 'things I have never heard of', like poets from Sudan who do spoken word poetry about displacement, like 'sheikhs who race camels using robot camel jockeys'.

The writing, the photography and the videos were just ways of telling other people's stories.

Now I know, however, that what I'm really interested in is in learning new things from people and situations I know very little about.

I don't go anywhere these days, but there will never be a shortage of things I don't know.

Fresh Off The Boat

When I first moved to America nine months ago, I was perplexed by a never-ending list of things. They were not the 'big' ones, like having to learn a scary new language. We already spoke English. We'd seen enough movies. Our accents, we were told, were non-existent! You sound Californian!!! You have no accent! (Didn't that mean we had a Californian accent?) But the little things started to add up.

Nowhere was this clearer than when my wife and I stood in a Bed Bath & Beyond, overwhelmed by nearly everything. Not because we were from developing countries (we were not) and all of this was shiny and new and amazing, but because we just didn't get it. First, we gawked at the escalator that was purpose-built for one's shopping cart to ride up at the same time as you, the person, riding the other escalators. Then, we found ourselves in surrounded by bed-linen, utterly and completely lost.

"What are comforters? What are duvet covers? What is a quilt? What is a flat sheet? Do people in this country really need so many pillows?"

I ran to the nearest human who was not my wife, saying, "Hey I need to buy a bolster, you know the type you cuddle between your body, and I have no idea what it's called in this country." He scratched his head, then his beard, before finally saying, "well I'm from the UK and I just moved here…"

I still don't understand bed-linen in this country. Across our studio (I very nearly said 'flat'), we are treated to full-glass windows into our neighbors' bedrooms. Every last one of them has a bed that looks like a hotel bed; like it would take twenty minutes to peel the multiple layers of ribbons, throws, miscellaneous sheets, and other types of softness, before one could have a good night's sleep. I felt anxious looking at them. I felt more anxious thinking about having to make up such a bed.

Voicemail is another American practice that strikes fear in my heart. Perhaps it's because I have never lived in a society where voicemail was actively used (and I have lived in many countries), or maybe it's due to my general levels of social anxiety relating to being on the autism spectrum, but hearing a chirpy person say "hey leave me a voicemail" makes me want to hang up, even if I originally had something to say.

I came to America after four years in Indonesia. My conversations in Indonesia inevitably ended with "hey, add me on LINE, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, what else do you use?" This was true when I hung out mostly with rural housewives for work; this was also true when female teenagers would come up to me to ask me for my Instagram account because "I want to know a woman who has tattoos". This was true of every motorcycle taxi driver I met, who sent me "what's your closest landmark" in Indonesian short form internet slang to multiple apps and also SMS, in just four or five letters small caps no spaces, even though the pickup location was always on the damned app.

In America, there are just three texting camps. Blue, green, and don't-text. Leave me a voicemail… nope, no, never.

You have no accent, has both been a blessing and a curse. It's certainly perplexing, for everyone around me, when I forget which words are British and which words are American.

It's hard for me to say "restroom", when "toilet" has sufficed in every other context I've lived in. Concepts that exist for me in one English don't seem to exist here. Prepaid-anything, like in phones, are 'pay as you gos', which seem so inefficient. A Clipper card is to be reloaded, or have value added to it, not recharged or topped up. Telling someone you don't know know how to drive, have never driven in your life, is like telling them you're from a different galaxy (I was indeed, from a galaxy with good public infrastructure).

Mostly, I'm so fresh off the boat I don't even know that it's an insult. I'm so far-removed from the pains of the Asian-American community: their pains are not my pains, I have not been a minority for long enough; and nope, I have absolutely no qualms bringing my own chilli sauce to restaurants because I cannot abide sriracha. Team spicy forever, no sour.

I'm still figuring out what it means to be here. Mostly, I like that nobody ever asks where I'm from, because everybody is from somewhere else.

Until I tell them I still don't know how to drive.

Then they exclaim, "you're from Manhattan!"

Munduk

Munduk.

Two people, suspended between heartbreak and fury, met on Hong Kong Street after almost 2 years without each other.

Their hearts, recently broken by others, found each other agreeable — even safe.

They made a plan. The universe attempted to foil it. To no avail.

Through long public holidays, expensive flights, an expiring passport and the logistics of homes, broken and renewed, no unfortunate event stood in the way.

I stood behind the multitudes to wait for you: the many sweaty, smelly men waving flags awaiting their Chinese tourists. Me, in my shorts with holes, a top that's much too big and my hair that's floppy and flat after an hour on a motorbike to come to see you.

Even on arrival, the universe was determined to place one last obstacle before us: the long amble, actually scramble, along the railing, past the sweaty tour guides, into some tourists, around the ATMs, and then you, there in the flesh.

As with the start of new things, my pulse sped up mostly in not knowing how close I could be. It had just been a few days since I had been with you, and here I was furiously making plans to cancel all of my plans.

There's a curse on this island for couples who come here together, they say.

What they didn't say: come as a not-couple, leave as a couple, uncursed?

I hoped.

In the most improbable places, we found fireplaces and each other.

Before long, you would say, coming to Munduk to see me was one of the biggest gambles you had ever taken. Next to Bosnia.

In the first week we travelled many towns, lakes, forests and hills; sat in many cars and planes together, discovered how a plane aisle was much too jauh, so soon.

The odds were long, but our odds are good. And I don't even like Bali, not one bit. I love us in it.

Panic at the Disco

Gay clubs were for flowers.

Update: I wrote this piece before we learned more about what happened. I'm sorry about misgendering or mis-identifying the victims.

I'm 31 in a few months. Not old, but old enough to remember how coming out was not on Tumblr, it was at Taboo.

I would go with my best friends, all of us so drawn to each other (boys and girls) because we saw a spark of — what was it? We thought it was weirdness at the time — in each other. It was a badge nobody gave us, but we saw on ourselves anyway.

If only someone could have told us: this badge, it is a badge of queerness. Use it well, do not sleep with worthless people, and you'll be okay. One day.

Why did the Orlando shootings reverberate across the world as I knew it — on the walls, timelines, of every queer person I know, and their allies?

The idea of safe spaces, and sanctity, kept coming up. Weird, perhaps to consider something like a sweaty, sweltering gay club sacred. But it was. And will always be.

Even if I never felt like I was of the scene (there was literally nothing for me there), being a woman, outnumbered with my persuasions out-persuaded, it was, in so many ways, where I found myself.

I'm a terrible dancer, but some alcohol with the encouragement of men who don't care about sleeping with me, made gay clubs the only place I felt safe. I didn't have to worry about men, even if I went alone. And most times, I did. In Singapore, in Bangkok, in Helsinki, in every place I have called home or visited for longer than a day. A gay club had always found itself on my itinerary. It was my window into the pulse of the rebels, the misfits, the mostly straight but didn't want to be fag hags I could sometimes persuade.

Most of all, the complete sense of belonging and the unadulterated self. There, I could be myself, long before I could be that person at school, at home, in my places of worship.

When Omar Mateen went into a gay club halfway across the world, spraying bullets and quite literally hunting down gay people, my memories merged into one, as it did for many queer people everywhere. He didn't kill 50 gays in one club, he reached into, placed himself in, and ripped up the safe space we have all found.

But how to explain a safe space to people who have never needed one?

18, venturing out timidly with my best friends. Seeing educators; kissing each other (of the opposite gender) to pretend, badly, that we were all straight.

20, between life milestones, trembling and swooning every time an older women picked me (hahaha, I was very young and very hot; they should have been swooning instead).

More recently in life, being protected and cared for by wonderful gay men in cities all over the world. From Istanbul to Helsinki and San Francisco.

It was not just 50 gay men that Omar Mateen killed.

It was all of us on the dance floor. The veteran gays who go to see friends and dance with them. The young man peeking out from his closet, having to hide his queer clothes in his bag. His career as a hot young stud, vanished. The fag hags who love the gay men they cannot have. The old couples who go because they want to believe they still got it. The amazing dancers. The not so good ones. The long lines for the men's toilets; the lack of one, of the lack of a toilet, for women. The bad vodka. The cheap rum. The smell of leather and sweat. The promise of darkness and kink — but is it really that dark or kinky if you were the one getting it? The camaraderie. The cliquey lesbians who think anyone talking to their girlfriends is infidelity, even when gay men do it. The stolen kisses once outside. The sobering effect of a greasy meal early in the morning when you didn't meet someone interesting or you made the right choices in life. Kebabs and Chinese food. Drunk friends you send home vowing to never let them drink again. The sullen faces that sometimes harbour disgust the moment you walk out of the door knowing you will not be accepted outside.

That's where Omar Mateen took us all. He sprayed his evil bullets into our sanctuary, hiding his last minutes in the toilet of a gay club. Let that sink in for a minute. Possibly the worst homophobe the world has seen since the Holocaust. And he hides out in a gay club toilet before he dies?

All across the world violent acts are performed on minorities every day. Queer people are persecuted. Women are beaten. Trans people are murdered. Immigrants are hunted. Other ethnic and religious groups including atheists are tortured, hated, cussed at. What you think is casual racism, homophobia, transphobia, funny jokes that won't hurt anyone, magnifies with a weapon in its hands.

So if you've ever stopped to say, why are you people demanding your rights? It's a playbook from Western activists wanting to erode our culture! What next, marriage?

Yes. We are demanding to not be massacred. To not be spat on and beaten in Albania. To be not pistol-whipped and left to die on a fence in Wyoming. To be not raped — correctively and incorrectly — in South Africa. To not be kidnapped by your parents and sent to pray the gay away camps, all over the world where evangelical Christians have found money and warped theology. We are here and we are queer. Do not kill us like deer.

Kolkata Kalling

12 years ago I came to Kolkata for the same time. At the time it was still mostly referred to as Calcutta.

The city doesn't change; but you do.

Every picture I have of it from 12 years ago still looks like it could have been from December, when I last visited. Perhaps even today. When I land at midnight later, there will not be the crisp, muddled air of the winters I love in that city, just the night time counterpart to the heat that I know will pound on my face, and the ground, sometime in the morning.

All that I know, all that I do, I owe it to this city, even if it will never know it.

When my school friends were road-tripping across European cities for summer breaks, or perhaps even the big cities of China and America for work and school, I found solace here. It can be hard to see, but Kolkata is a hard act to beat. It's the ultimate summer. Followed by monsoon. And the sounds of:

It's a monsoon and the rain lifts lids off cars / Spinning buses like toys, stripping them to chrome / Across the bay, the waves are turning into something else / Picking up fishing boats and spewing them on the shore — James, Sometimes (which somehow always comes to mind when I think of this place

How to beat it?

The start, really, of empire. The fall, or rather the fading away, of one. The majesty of India's cricketing hopes and dreams, and occasionally the dashing of, projected unto Eden Gardens even when the matches aren't in season. The death of Marxism, available for the world to see at every adda and every failing piece of infrastructure. Tagore's poetry. Indian Coffee House. The children of Tollygunge, who taught me so much, 12 years ago. Sandesh.

On hot afternoons when the sun hits the ground and meets engine oil, the smell reminds me of my first love among the many other putrid Asian cities I have come to love:

“So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger to really see which drives people to travel to strange places.” — Tagore, My Reminiscences

This foreigner is not done discovering.

In Small Rooms with Betawi Women

Not for the first time, I found myself in a tiny room on a hot day, the youngest among old women. Each with a different thing to say to me, also the only person not from around these parts.

You're so old now! And unmarried!

Your hair is too white! Eat more soy beans!

One woman rubbed my tattoos, making a screechy sound with her teeth, before announcing to all the other old women around her: these are real.

No judgement, no scorn – I was local enough to be in a place like that, but not local enough to be judged.

Can you bring me some white chocolate next time you come, girl? I had them once and only in your country (Singapore). I've never had them since. She rubbed my back some more.

At places like these old women collectively talk, soothe each other's tired or injured muscles, and together not give a damn about anything outside of those doors. At least for an hour.

I went often to places like these, my severe back pains often needing urgent attention from anything that would give them rest. In Jakarta, I am a frequent visitor to Haji Naim – a group of famed healers in the Betawi community. I figured that if it didn't work there was at least delicious soto Betawi to be had next door. Now that I come here so often, a massage almost always precedes a lovely bowl of soup and beef.

I've always been glad to have the ability and opportunity to bond with old women anywhere in the world – their wisdom and unlikely sorority is what I look forward to, whether in Yemen or India or Singapore. Here, the Betawi women took turns rubbing my tattoos, shrieking when they discovered (repeatedly) that they were real.

Most of my time in this city has been about discovering, for the first time, scenes that played such a large part in my youth. Hot afternoons with old Indonesian women. Dusk on the street with teenagers singing with their guitars. Children begging. Families living under bridges. The Indonesian movies that used to play so often in my tiny, hot Singaporean shoebox apartment, now alive in parts of the city.

And yet the other parts of it are real, too. Large gleaming buildings. New shiny things. Cocktails as expensive as Singapore's. Malls full of only imported things. My feet in both worlds: one in the village and one in Pacific Place. One in meetings with fancy people, another under the firm thumbing of extremely old women.

It's a difficult balance to keep up, but I enjoy each moment. White chocolate in Betawi houses; going home to my $5 room after a day out in $5 coffee houses. Improbable things and inevitable places. As I chug along at work and in life, I'm relieved to have the opportunity to make things work again.

When I Was Young

I'm seated now by the side of an old vending machine in Jakarta airport, with power sockets so dirty and old I had to think twice about plugging my cables in. Yet in all of Terminal 1, one of the oldest airport terminals in a country not known for modern aviation facilities, there was only this one socket free. Confined to my fate of temporarily sharing power with a giant Teh Botol (not Coke!) machine with no seat within range of my Macbook charger, I am, obviously, on the floor yet again.

Sitting on floors: a practice cultivated in many countries across the world. Sometimes involuntary, most of the time because my inner hippie wants me to. The difference between now and then — I am now at the kind of age where you would, if you did not know me, expect some kind of manners from me. Wear proper clothes, wear proper shoes. Sit on proper surfaces. I imagined I would too! That one day, I would finally learn how to be proper. How wrong I was on that, and many other fronts! I am happy to still-sitting-on-dirty-floors. No — I am overjoyed. Overjoyed to be still a chapalang, anyhow and anyhowly chapalang person.

So much has happened since the last real post of any substance here. Mid, early 2014 perhaps. I started a company. It still lives. I have teams, collaborators, all across my different endeavours. The foundation I started in 2012 is still alive, too. I am relieved and grateful for all of the opportunities thrown my way, all of the paths revealed and then some.

Why did I not write? I did not write, because life overwhelmed me and kept me away and sometimes light-headed. I did not write, because I forgot how to. It isn't like riding a bicycle — it's more of riding a unicycle where you know eventually you'll find your balance but only after falling flat on your face anyway, no matter how many times you've ridden one. In my pursuit of achievements, exceptional or otherwise, prizes, awards, Silicon Valley-style work yourself to the bone for some big undefined payoff (emotional or otherwise); I lost myself in the race. I lost myself, too, in the unclear idea of what it meant to be an adult.

An adult, I was told, lived in a proper house with a proper bed with a proper pillow (for all of the neck pains you're bound to have). I have neck pains, indeed, but realise I can do without all of the rest. I haven't sat on dirty airport floors for years. I haven't gone somewhere with nothing in my bag other than the clothes currently on me, in years. I haven't gone somewhere without a plan, without a place to stay, without any idea of what i was going to do. I don't know how else to live, and forcing myself into being the opposite of those things brought me further and further away from who I really was.

Maybe this year, after learning to like myself again, I'll finally get my groove back again. I'm proud to be an anyhowly person. I'm proud to extreme and spontaneous. I will no longer knead the image of who I truly am into the uninspiring ideas of what some people had wanted me to become. I don't want to achieve things for the sake of doing that — I want to learn to be alive, again. Let's see how we go on this journey, I'm excited but also shit-scared about it.

But as I once believed (when I was much younger) — if it doesn't scare me like hell, it probably isn't worth doing.

Paths

12 years ago this time I was deciding where I should go, what I should study, at university. I was also four months away from deciding I would try to be happy in spite of my newfound queerness.

11 years ago this time I was in Kolkata, volunteering with an organization, not knowing I would go on to do that in the future. I was awful at painting walls, and not much better now.

10 to 8 years ago this time on the road learning Southeast Asia out of backpacks I still carried, before my back went bad.

7 years ago this time I got back to Dubai from Istanbul to find beetles had infested everything that I owned in the world. It was the first time I learned you could be truly alone in the world.

6 years ago on the Syria/Turkey border with no money and no clothes. Auto-rickshaws. My first businesses. An annoyingly debilitating illness. Recovery.

Three years ago I was back in Singapore feeling lost and forlorn when I left someone and a city that had spanned half a decade. Two years ago my life of endless pitching had just begun.

Today, 30 and in Indonesia on the cusp of everything. Bring it on!

The Borneo Express

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be somewhere else. In all of my childhood day dreams, of which I had many, daily, and often, I imagined being an explorer out at sea. Being a pilot about to set off for yonder. Even the short stories I scribbled all had to do with stowing away, seeing new lands, discovering curious and wondrous foods.

Reading about Robinson Crusoe made me wonder what the natives ate, and why he never tried to just fit in (rescue seemed like a horrible ending, I hated it); Gulliver's Travels only made me wonder how the Lillputians lived with their neighbours before he came around. In my imagination, if I shipwrecked, stowed away, or was kidnapped to a foreign land, I would quite enjoy the adventure.

My parents travel in ways few other Asian parents do: cheaply and adventurously. The first time I ever left Singapore, we went to Sarawak. It wasn't a 'cool' story to tell your friends in primary school - no, you didn't go to Disneyland in Hong Kong, you didn't even live in a real hotel, you went to… Borneo.

Every day we walked for miles and miles. We never took taxis or cars, only buses, trains and boats. No matter how much you sweat, my parents don't care: they've got a backpack full of iced water so you have no reason to be sad! Just keep walking.

I don't remember much else about those times. Just that they were fun. That they made me. That when my parents wanted to take a bus four hours into the interiors, you learn to sleep anywhere. That when they want you to stop complaining about the hygiene of the food you're eating, even when insects of all kinds have landed on your food, you shut up and eat it and discover the best food in the world, or you go hungry.

There's a funny picture of me from this era, age 7. I had just showered. My mum had combed my hair in the way she always has: like a nerd. I'm sitting at the table of our 'hotel', looking straight at the camera like the little nerd that I was. I was writing. Writing about the blowpipe I just had the chance to blow! About the shaky tooth that fell out of my mouth on the four hour bus ride out from the interiors. About how my parents calmly put my tooth into their pocket, said nothing, alighted and fed me the most delicious noodles I'd ever had.

How much of my life is still exactly like that, and how lucky I am to be able to still have these adventures with the two people who taught me adventure and love.

I'm glad we never went to Disneyland!

Lying on a Sack of Rice

I had one of those days today. The day when your to-do list is piled so high that you can't see the end of the tunnel. The day when your caterer cancels your big order a few days before Culture Kitchen. The day when all of your mega business problems are on the verge of getting solved, but almost. The day when you feel your heart pulling in a million directions, but there are no right answers, there never were.

I find myself having to lie down on a sack of rice quite often these days.

I work out of an office where the outdoor area has outdoor furniture made out of up-cycled gunny sacks. It's become my favourite place to sit on, to think.

A lifetime ago I used to travel around India by train. My dad would give me a sack of rice (minus the rice) so that I can lay on it in the sleeper class trains I would travel on, the ones without bedding or sheets or pillows. My backpack as my pillow. My rice sack as my bedsheet.

Waking up in the morning to find my arms imprinted: 100% Thai Jasmine Rice.

Today, I didn't have an imprint of anything. But I did sit on my sack for two hours. Trying to breathe.

Today, I fixed most of the problems, but not all. Maybe the day I fix every problem will be the day I find more to solve.

Why can't I be superhuman?

My Life on a Bike

Every morning, I get on a bike to work. Except I don't ride it. I bargain with someone on the street, or use an app to book one at other times. Do you want masker? They ask. It's the Indonesian word for face mask. Gak mau masker, makasih pak. Sekarang pergi ke Jalan Hang Tuah bisa? A string of words that I sometimes don't know I know, come out of my mouth. Every morning, I am on the road at a time when the entire city has already decided to get moving. I am in traffic. A lot. You can't miss it, really. I am not a morning person, but I am always thankful for this. This is being on a bike going to work in one of the world's most exciting cities at the moment for what I am doing. This is not having to stand in an MRT every morning for 30 minutes, packt like sardines in a crushed tin box. This is having difficult problems to solve, every single day. Being able to solve most of them.

I've never been one for job descriptions, but the only one that would truly work for me would be: "Adrianna Tan, Street Fighter". I find peace and equilibrium on the streets of noisy Asian cities. I know exactly where to find the things I need. I know where they are. If they are in buildings, I am not interested in looking for them anymore. If they are not wrapped up in an impossible puzzle, I don't know how to solve them. Somehow the best place to do any of this is precisely where I am, every morning: on the back of a motorbike, travelling over rubbish, driving by someone's wet laundry, turning out of a tiny alley before merging into the big city again.

I like this life. I like this bike. I like this city. The rest of it, we'll figure out.

Stress Balls.

Some time ago, some people (read: entrepreneurs) I follow on Twitter posed a seemingly innocuous question. What drives us, as so-called entrepreneurs, to do what we do? Is it hubris? Ego? Is it an out-sized and unrealistic view of one's abilities? For most of us, choosing this life also means the opportunity cost we left behind, often reluctantly: decently-paid jobs with career growth at startups, VC firms, tech companies, banks, even… bars. There has been no better time to be a tech exec. My friends, and I am sometimes envious of them, clearly smash through the income and lifestyle brackets in the top 1% of the cities they live in, even the world-what we do is such a upwardly mobile trajectory. The lifestyle, with the stock options in soon-to-IPO companies, global travel as part of international "launch teams" in the most successful tech startups, fuelled by the globalizing of venture capital and focus of said capital in my part of the world, is certainly tantalizing. No longer do you need to work in finance, it seems to say, with each job offer and recruitment mail, in order to eke out a nice life for yourself and your family. The stock options certainly don't hurt.

So what can it possibly be that some of us choose to do this? Even though it's easier than ever before to raise money and do your thing, the fact is no matter where in the world you do this, building a business is just terrible. It's fun, otherwise we wouldn't be drawn to it. It can also be rewarding, otherwise we wouldn't try. But. It's hard.

I'm torn:

Between the deluge of entrepreneur porn articles and this shit is hard articles (like this, but 10x more pity): I'm torn.

On the one hand, having the ability and the opportunity to start and run your own business, even to try, is a damn privilege. It really is.

On the other, there are so many moving parts. Skill sets you need to suddenly and abruptly become a ninja at. As a founder, from HR (super important) to project development to technical skills to payroll to accounting to taxes to… whatever challenges it throws at you, really.

The last couple of weeks have super hard.

Stressful.

Energizing.

Insane.

Gut-wrenching.

Incredibly amazing.

Many startup founders come across founder depression at some point, and I think it's a real risk you expose yourself to when you put so much of yourself on the line. No matter how well-adjusted you think you are, you need all the help you can get.

This is my second company. My first, right out of school, was a dev house that specialized in creating innovative marketing projects for advertising and FCMG companies through the then-new mobile and social platforms.

Pushing 30 this year, doing this at 30 is a world apart from how it was like to do this at 22. I'm sure there are many young startup founders who learn and grow on the job, or perhaps possess a certain self-awareness and ability which I did not have. But. I find myself, this week, making dozens of decisions daily-on the sorts of things which would have caused me a lot of grief, time, money or existential angst, back in the day.

I have the opportunity, the right teams, and the business partnerships to push through with the sort of tech business I have always want to do: tech, finance and social good.

Now?

Now, we ship. And learn. And ship again. And learn again.

I love it. I hate it. I love it.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a bit of both, really.

I'm not one for the mumbo-jumbo of the Myers-Briggs test, but I suppose it was striking that when I did it before my startup I rated very strongly as INFP, and yet now I'm very much on the ENTJ spectrum. It appears that having to do shit in a prompt, aggressive way does bring out very different approaches.

So, startups are hard. You already know that.

In my case, every attempt to think that through inevitably ends up being a little self-pitying.

How and why did I decide that leaving my family, and puppy, coming to a foreign place, to work on some problems involving the silos of payments, mobile, commerce and gender equity, was the best life and career decision of all?

Yet… I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yes, I know the rates of failure are high, in any startup. Not to mention one with foreign laws, language, culture, and way of life/business.

Yes, I know that there's only so much hustle can bring you. There's also the regulations and expectations of archaic industries and economies in certain countries.

But man, it's exhilarating. If shit hits the fan and nothing goes the way we intend despite the best laid plans of man (and woman), then at the least we can say that I now have very specific knowledge and connections in some fairly obscure Asian markets.

It was a brutal week.

I lost a kid in the community my foundation does a lot of work in. She was 14. She had dreams. She was vivacious. Perhaps, her undoing, in an unforgiving climate.

I lost a key team member. To the same brew of inexperience and lack of discipline and foresight. But team before product, and it's never going to be easy.

Also, some huge gains. Solved some massive business obstacles. Created some solid partnerships. Brought in many valuable individuals to build the team. Net-net, a good week, if a little brutal.

There's shit to do and a world of problems to solve. A glut of solutions we can create and design, and hopefully do so beautifully, with elegance, sensitivity and impact.

In late 2012 as I stood on a similar crossroad contemplating major life decisions, mostly relating to the geography and type of work I wanted to surround myself with, I found tremendous opportunities, but I also found my heart had already decided.

My 30s are to be spent in my backyard. In Asia. In the emerging markets of Asia. Doing as much insane and crazy shit as I can possibly throw at it. I feel honoured to even have a single shot at it.

I am.

It was the best of times, and the worst of times. Ask me again some weeks from now. Months. Years.

I think I will say that there's nothing else I would rather do, and nowhere else I would rather be, than here in the heart of Java, toiling for a dream.

Do You Know About Galau?

I was just telling someone tonight: I force myself to meet a different stranger in Jakarta every single day that I'm here.

Even if I'm exhausted after work (which I usually am), I try to meet a new person, or eat a new food. Go to a new area.

The first time I lived outside of Singapore was when I moved to Dubai in 2007 right out of university. Then, without the metro or a usable public transport system, I was lost, angry and disoriented (I don't drive). I hear it's different now, but I'll never know.

Jakarta, despite the terrible traffic (and I don't think I'll ever stop saying that; I certainly haven't heard any locals stop complaining), works for me.

Between the ojek (motorbike taxi) and plentiful and good taxis, I'm pretty much covered.

I try to practise my Indonesian with total strangers, too.

Tonight's conversation went a little bit like this.

Cabbie: Why did you not get into the cab earlier! Is it because I am black?

Me: No!

Cabbie: Okay!

Me: How long have you lived in Jakarta!

Cabbie: 20 years! I'm from Timor! I play in a band! Check it out on YouTube! T-I-B-E-T B-A-N-D G-O-M-B-A-L

Me: Tay- ee- bay- aa- tay… fuck, what's this G in Indonesian?

Cabbie: Watch my videos! I'm singing! Let me put on some of my other music for you!

Me: (recognizes words like… cintamu, denganmu… JIWANG ALERT GOES UP)

Cabbie: Do you know about the galau?

Moments like these.

Rockstar cabbie in ridiculous YouTube video.

Nus Bany, is his name. He's the one in the insane costume. He also arranged and composed most of the music.

Nus Bany is now my regular taxi driver contact.

I intend to unleash him on all of my unsuspecting business visitors.

Yes, I know about the galau.

And it might be a sign that I'm moving further away from my Peninsular Southeast Asian roots when I now say galau over jiwang.

I love galau music. What's your fave?

Mahabandoola

At the hotel I had the receptionist scribble the name of my lunch spot in Burmese. Lunch that day was to be outside my sphere of Yangon familiarity: I had never been there, but I had been told by some locals that I must have a typical Burmese lunch at Aung Thu Kha.

So to Aung Thu Kha I went.

After gesticulating at each other for a while, my taxi driver stared at the piece of paper, looked up at my face and laughed: you speak Mandarin, don't you?

I speak Mandarin, don't I? I think I do.

I have always been perturbed at how people seem to be able to deduce secrets about me just by peering at my face. This happens at alarming frequency whenever I travel. Some days, I'm told I must be Burmese of Chinese origin. Other days, I'm Thai. In northeast India I am accepted by all of their tribes; my linguistic inability explained away for me by what must be my probable fluency in some another tribal language. Yet in China, the country of my grandparents' birth and heritage, I am too Southeast Asian. Too dark. Too English-speaking. I am the colour of the sun beating the earth, and China is a distant, lost memory a long way away from the sun.

So yes, I speak Mandarin. The ability to converse in it has followed me throughout the world, sometimes paying handsomely with access few other languages can offer.

He asks the inevitable. "How do you find Myanmar?"

Like everyone else who has asked that before me, before I have a chance to reply he gripes, "It must be terrible for you. It's terrible. All of it."

"I love the city and its people - surely all signs point to improvement!"

"Yes. Improvement also leads to traffic jams," honking angrily as a car tried to cut our place in a jam in a tiny residential lane.

In our brief conversation I learned he was the grandson of Yunnanese immigrants, economic refugees in their time. In the thirties, Rangoon was the shining light of Asia. Its opulent hotels filled with important people. Its white-only clubs invented cocktails such as the Pegu Club. The Yunnanese of China's deep south fled south to seek their fortune. Some have done exceedingly well; they have assimilated, in a way, taking on Burmese names and speaking Burmese fluently on top of their Chinese identities, preserved and left the way it was when they left in the thirties.

I wanted to know what languages they spoke at home, what they ate. He indulged me.

"My parents made us speak Mandarin at home when we were kids. If we slipped into Burmese, we got fined. They were born here, but they wanted us to stay connected to our Chinese identities as well. Oh, and Burmese food is way too oily," he shook his head as he dropped me off. "Let me know if you want Yunnanese or Dai food when you're back in town. It's better."

When 1962 happened, among the many atrocities that ensued: Chinese schools closed. Burmese citizens not from the Barma ethnic group were banned from attending certain institutions of higher learning. Just like that the lights went out in Asia's leading metropolis, and stayed off for a very long time.

In 2014, some of those lights have come back on. And with them, traffic jams. The unpaven road outside a bank near my hotel was, two days later, a pavement. For some, it's a clear sign Burma is going to be the gold rush of the east of this century: five star hotels' bars and Chinatown noodle stalls are similarly filled with businessmen from mainland China seeking fortune and glory.

"Perhaps I'll buy factory equipment from back home and ship it here," an enthusiastic new arrival announced loudly at a Cantonese-run noodle stall on the streets of Chinatown, rattling off his entire business plan in Mandarin while the other customers looked on uninterested.

Maung Maung, a middle-aged Cantonese-Burmese man jumped up with an oversized Chinese phone and pulled out a floor plan. They looked at it intently. Maung Maung went back to his noodles, slurping. (Maung Maung of just a few moments ago: "My Chinese name, lady, is Jin Bo. Jin for GOLD!")

"We'll make plans. See what help you need. I can help," Maung Maung told the newcomer.

"Do you have my phone number? I still don't remember what it is," the young mainlander said in a way that sounded like a plea for help. He'd either just gotten here or still hadn't shaken off his "overwhelmed by Burma" look.

"Of course I do," Maung Maung laughed as he perked up. "I sold it to you."

Rebuilding

1. Almost exactly two years ago I was, too, on a flight to India.
   
   Only then I did not know exactly how drastic a turn my life would take on when I returned.

2. More and more of my friends are getting diagnosed with diseases similar to mine. Autoimmune diseases are the new black.
   
   Across all of these experiences the one we've all had has been the extreme upheaval in all of our emotional lives.

3. Sometimes I wonder if the person who made those decisions at the time was me, or the severely impaired bodily part that's wreaked havoc in my head and my heart.
   
   Even if the conclusions are the same in the end, I would still like to know that I had some control. But I did not.

4. There is nothing I hate more than feeling like my self-determinism, even if it doesn't really exist, has been impinged upon.
   
   Even if the other person making decisions for me was just a temporarily damaged version of myself.

5. I've spent almost two years rebuilding my life.
   
   I've subjected it to some pretty extreme versions of what it could have been and can be, and now I've chosen the version I like best.
   
   I like this one.

6. This one:
   
   This one is happy and confident, pushing 30.
   
   This one is writing more, and better.
   
   This one has had a handful of career highlights and is working harder to create the sorts of situations and opportunities that will define the next decade; it's within grasp.
   
   This one has an incredible support system in Singapore, Malaysia, India and all around the world and feels like the luckiest person in the world to experience such love.
   
   This one has a loving family. A beautiful dog. A lovely house in a magical part of the city that she loves more and more. A slew of projects taking shape.
   
   This one is learning to finish what she's started.

7. I've struggled to articulate what I feel whenever I return to the city I once lived in.
   
   It is a living museum of my loves and losses.
   
   It is a diptych where one side is the city that I once knew and the other is the one I no longer do.
   
   Time has stopped for me in that city. But I am learning to love it again after.

8. The city that is a living museum of love and loss merely preserves them so I can learn to love again.
   
   The streets I walked in in them will never be the same.
   
   Just as it should be possible to hold two opposing positions at once so as to form a better informed opinion, so too should it be possible to hold multiple feelings simultaneously so that we can love better.
   
   For now I pick: terrifying, amazing.
   
   Life's too short for compromises. I'm too fond of jumping off boats then learning to swim, anyway.

An Indian Decade

I've been coming and going from India for the last ten years.

In 2004 I started to hatch the first plans to flee the terrifying life laid out for me - that of a student in a Singapore university, doomed for the corporate world or for the civil service - into the wide open arms of India, which changed everything, and who I have grown to love unconditionally. Those early escape plans evolved into a lifestyle I would not trade for anything in the world, one which has given me ample global career and life opportunities simply because I could not sit still when I was 19.

I've written a lot about India in various forms, but here are some posts previously posted here about India:

• Portraits Unphotographable
• Bombay Burning
• We Have No Dungarees, Saar
• The Great Southern Trunk Road
• Lakewood
• Sudder Street
• A Bus and Chai Story

Speak of India and its great cities, and someone is bound to correct you.

Mumbai, they say, offended, as though you didn't know any better. In other situations, Chennai. Yet I do say and I do like saying Bombay and Madras because those were the names we had for those cities, growing up a sea away from the subcontinent, and nostalgia counts for something, nationalist political correctness be damned.

It's a weird question I cannot answer whenever someone asks the inevitable, why do you love India so?

Where do I begin?

Do I begin with the story of how hearing my China-born grandparents conversing in market-Tamil with our Tamil neighbours as a child mesmerised me whole, leading me to watch Tamil movies endlessly wondering why I could not understand the dialogue?

Or perhaps it has something to do with how I was born a stone's throw away from Little India, how my parents were wed on Diwali, and for the astrologically-minded - of which I am not - that made perfect sense to explain away my identity confusion? My solo walks around Little India as a teenager led me into informal Tamil lessons I can no longer remember, and spice shop tastings that made me feel, for once, that this is a home I understand? _

_

Or that nearly all of my early mentors in childhood and adolescence were Tamil-Teochew poets and Sanskrit scholars who imparted in me a love for rhyme and meter and an irrational fear of booming voices; that later in life, nearly all of my friends, lovers, business mentors and collaborators would also be connected to India in some way or other?

None of that matters.

What does is that in 2004 I walked out of the airport in Calcutta and felt immediately that I had come home, through no other prior connection; and that every year ever since I have returned, twice, thrice, and more each year, sometimes staying for months.

Whenever I read travelogues about India I am often unable to understand why the authors keep writing about the Indian Arrival Syndrome: something about throngs of humanity and masses of people and rotting flesh and cow dung and about needing to flee. The only time I have ever felt that way upon arriving anywhere has been in the great cities of America and Europe, where I have arrived and thought: oh my god, where are all the people? I need to leave. (Eventually, I got over it. But I certainly don't write travelogues about arriving at places I don't know and wanting to leave.)

I love that I am at home in Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta and Bombay (I'm only just learning to like Delhi). That I have my secret places, amazing friends, and a world of possibilities. If I want to drop in on a film set, I can; if I want to organise a great conference, I can; if I want to do business, I can too; if I want to set up a foundation and educate a hundred and fifty girls, it's possible as well. I am aware everyone's mileage varies, including that of the people who actually live there - but that's just how it's been for me: it gives me an imagination. Mostly by showing me the extremities of the world.

After every breakup, illness, death in the family or other assorted tragedy large and small, my first instinct is to go to India - anywhere in India. It works. It's been called my Prozac, but what it is is really far simpler. India is where I go to make sense of the world when the world no longer makes sense for me. That arrangement has worked so far, this past decade.

I'm excited about what the next five or so Indian decades will bring.

I Follow Cities

When I think of the 1980s, I think of the news. In English and Mandarin, both brought to you by Raymond Weil.

When I think of the 1990s, I think of Michael Stipe's sonic-drenched wailing about his religion, or his lack thereof. And about the one sorry period of global history when everyone wondered too much about yellow lemon trees. Dookie.

If anything happened at all between those decades and now, they were these: the news was broadcast again two minutes afterwards, in a different language (the stories were the same). We flung playing cards at each other in school. We were told in many languages that New Zealand has nearly no people at all, and millions of cows, a fun fact all of us would remember for the rest of our lives. Between 10 and 11 many mornings, children stood by a very large (at the time) drain, brushing our teeth in unison. We rubbed our eyes to relaxing music to prevent the onset of myopia (too late for most of us). I carried a backpack from ages 7 to 13, which I know today to be nearly as large as the travel bag I would carry for the rest of my life, perhaps even as heavy. A battery of life-defining examinations - with as much relevance to my life as other acronyms like WITS and ACES - were survived, even surpassed, before I was deemed fit to be released into the world at large. In quick succession there were also the people I loved, the ones who left, the ones who migrated, or quite simply died. Raymond Weil faded into our collective memories like the playgrounds I never went to until they covered all the sand with foam so our children would no longer bleed when they fell. Perhaps they needed the sand to fill the new lands beyond our shorelines.

Sometimes, I moved one chess piece while my China-born grandfather brewed a pot of tea and filled out his little notebook with calligraphic scrawls I could not read.

We pretended, all the time, that I was winning.

I'd been acutely aware there were two worlds, even within this tiny country - I was born into one, and pulled into the second, kicking and screaming. Growing up I spoke no Mandarin, some English, but I spoke the sort of Teochew which made hawkers giggle as they scooped extra fishballs and minced pork into my noodles. "Girl ah," they loved to say, beaming at me. "You speak this language like an old woman from Swatow." My other grandmother brought me to the wet market and showed off my encyclopaedic knowledge of Hokkien classics, the kinds which sound like war cries and power ballads at the same time. "Sing", she said. "Sing the song about what you'd do if you had a million dollars."

I would sing. There would be more fishballs, more minced pork, more noodles for the little girl who could speak and sing the languages of her forefathers, but not say a word in Mandarin. I now speak Mandarin but I have forgotten the songs of my childhood.

The world I was pulled into was the one I entered against my free will when I turned 12. I had done well enough, they said, so I should go to the type of school which would improve my station in the world. My new classmates lived in large houses and apartments five minutes from campus, not 45 minutes away in a HDB flat as I did. They were chauffeured to school in Bentleys, Audis, and Jaguars; I took two buses to get there. Their mothers and grandmothers and even their father's grandmothers had come to this school, which was proud of its secular, elite heritage spanning more than a hundred years. It took pleasure in taking in young, scruffy girls like me, and slowly it turned us all into the same people: young women with poise, education, and class. "I've never been to a hawker centre in my life," my new classmate confessed. "I don't think I ever will."

In one English literature class, and we were the school known for producing writers and lawyers, there had been a discussion on the theme of protagonists who'd lost it all. "I imagine if my family lost everything we had, we might have to live in a HDB flat," a classmate said in horror. "In Clementi. Or Toa Payoh. Or one of those places." I lived in Clementi; I was pretty certain she had never been to any of those places.

For the most part, the school succeeded in turning me into the archetype. My Mandarin shaky, my English accented, my grades stellar, my sights turned not to Raffles Place and the local universities, but to Wall Street and Ivy League. I would be one of them. It was written.

What was also written: the writing on the wall. The boy in the boy's school next door who'd gotten a public caning for writing my name on his school walls. I was to be the heterosexual young lady with poise and education and a District 10 lifestyle ahead of her, but that was never my world. I shuffled in my feet when the boy I dated brought me home, and home to him was a grand dining room with a painter mother, several Lamborghinis, and uniformed servants - all ten of them. I balked when I realized I did not have, nor want, a walk-in wardrobe filled with the spoils of shopping trips to Paris and New York. Or at least Hong Kong. Straddling two worlds: one foot in the Clementi hawker centre, delighted by my $0.60 chwee kueh, the other learning to like $6 lattes and $60 set lunches. I must be a communist, they said, because they'd found a copy of the Communist Manifesto in my bag. My father was summoned. He said he was glad I was considering the vast spectrum of political opinions. I am not a communist.

The social mobility that afforded me, with all its trappings of 'station' and 'opportunity', propelled me to anywhere I wanted to be. London. New York. San Francisco. Sydney. Dubai. Delhi. Bangalore. Beirut. Helsinki. It was all there for the taking. I flirted with other cities, angered by my city-country's small-ness. Beware small states, the title of a book reads. I was afraid my city's smallness would close in on me like a beast of the sea, its tentacles firm around my neck. I was afraid I would never learn to breathe, much less fly.

I sought flight: I flew, and still fly, 250 000 kilometres a year. I sought breakup sex with Bombay and Bangalore: my lover, my city, would never be as free and uninhibited as you are, I told my Indian dalliance. I sought space: the vast expanse of the Empty Quarter, the ancient civilizations, the churches which stand on precisely where Cain slew Abel. Then when I was done I sought adventure. I raced tuk-tuks, I washed my hair in the river Skrang upstream from where the entrails of dead boars lay before they were to be cooked. I boarded the modern-day successor to Agatha Christie's Orient Express, after drinking bad Syrian beer at the Baron Hotel where she and Lawrence of Arabia had once lived. I donned burqahs and boarded the public bus to Aden, drinking tea with pirates real and imaginary, seeking refuge in hotels I associated with the James Bond movies I had come to love as a little girl in Clementi. I went to London and Kuala Lumpur in the pursuit of love. I flew too much in those years.

Then I came home.

I came home, road-weary, wanting to sleep in the bed I'd slept in as a child. The Sundays with 'mee lay', soggy yellow noodles simmered in pork and anchovy soup, boiled together for hours, helped. I came home, exhausted, wanting nothing more than to hold my grandmother's hand for as long as I can, which is, not very much longer. I lost my grandfather to sudden disease when I was gone on one of my adventures, and I don't know what I would do if that happened again. I came home to walk the streets of Jalan Sultan to talk to garbage-scavenging, tissue-selling old women who will never recall my name, but whose names and faces have been etched into my mind: Madam Chua. There are many Madam Chuas in this city. Madam Chua who walks with a limp, Madam Chua whose disabled children cannot work, Madam Chua whose family lives in two-room government rental flat, who makes a few dollars a day selling tissue to yuppies like me who most of the time turn our faces away and say, sorry auntie I already got tissue no need already thankyew. I can only speak to Madam Chua because my grandmothers made me sing Hokkien songs on demand. I can only speak to Madam Tan who swoops in on our beer cans because my grandmothers taught me to talk like the girl fresh off the boat from Swatow. That world is at once my world, and it is not. I came home to learn more about the Singapore I forgot.

At the Queen Street bus station at 6am one morning, I stood on the grass patch waiting for a bus to Johor. I imagined my grandparents making that same journey: the Johore Express, or whatever they called it back then. The decades-old ticketing office certainly still used tickets which looked just like they would have, when ah gong and ah ma boarded the bus in the opposite direction, to make a new life in Singapore after they got married. After they were match-made on a hill whose name they cannot remember. By way of Swatow, by way of Johor, here I am now, boarding the $2 bus to my grandmother's city, the one she doesn't even know anymore because she has dementia.

We build so quickly in this city, such that if I didn't have personal geography here I would have never known what stood here before: on this very spot between Queen Street and Victoria Street, the tiny man that was my ah gong carried gunny sacks many times his body weight, every single day, gambling it all away, making the little boy who would become my father the most determined person I'd ever met, hell-bent on giving his children a life better than this.

When I experience other cities even as an insider, even as someone who has lived somewhere else for a long time, there is curiosity, and there is joy, in exploring their streets, in learning their names anew. When I walk these streets I know them by their old names. The ones on which there had been the stunted walk of my gunny sack carrying grandfather, once attacked on the head by a cleaver on these streets, lined with the washer-boards his wife had used to wash the laundry of the rich women who did not have to wash their own. The old names and the new overlap: I was born in the 'bull pen', not in the gleaming women's hospital down the road. The policemen of my memories still wore shorts, and had their fearsome batons for the troublesome Chinese gangsters. The nurses were known as the white shirts, and the Hotel New World wasn't just something I saw on TV, but experienced through my mother, a white shirt who happened to be there looking for something to eat after a shift, but spent hours attending to people who had been picked out of the rubble just like in the movies.

Then there are the landmarks, some of which no longer exist: on that grass patch and its adjoining streets, near the wholesale market which no longer exists, my grandfather carried spices and dried goods for decades. Five decades later, memories of bittersweet happiness would be formed just around the corner: of being shy and 17, stumbling out of a movie theatre, holding tightly the hands of the first woman I'd ever come to love. They were the neighbourhoods we came to know, and the places we'd called home.

The other cities will always be there. The bright lights of our imagined better places will always be on. I can build a life anywhere I want, whenever I want. For now, perhaps it is nostalgia, perhaps it is misplaced political optimism, but I choose to build my life in my late twenties, right here where it all began. Even if I can never call my wife my wife, even if I have to adopt my own children before the state will let me call myself her mother, it is the home which was set into motion for me: sixty five years and a bit ago.

Even though people like us live a life on the move, we still need a place to call our own. I choose to walk these streets, to call them by their old names, and to remember the reason I love this home is because I have one foot in this Singapore, and the other in the one that will only get better.

Strange Damascus Memories

2009.

"If you are really a lesbian, proveeeeittt! Kiss me NOW!"

A giggly girl shrieked, rather loudly, flapping her long, luscious hair about as well. She also had the Arabic equivalent of a Valley Girl accent.

In most situations, this might have been a proposition to consider.

Except we were in Syria. And I don't like giggly girls who shriek, anywhere in the world.

I fumbled uncomfortably, and looked at the television with all the men, pretending to have taken a sudden interest in Syrian football.

I really do have the strangest experiences on my travels.

"Wanna see something cool?"

Before I could reply or enquire further, S stepped on the accelerator and brought his little Fiat car across five lanes on the road at a deathly angle, chuckling the way only a Russian-Arab person can in the face of extremities. "Damascus," he proclaimed, "is kind of like a real life Grand Theft Auto." I agreed, once I collected my breath.

Everything he took me to confounded me.

"I have a drive-thru liquor store!" - okay.

We stocked up.

"Let's go drinking and dancing! On the mountain!" - okay.

We went.

We go-karted - drunk. I may have crashed.

His friends pulled out an old Nokia phone packed with classic Syrian tunes. All of them were Russian-Arab, the offspring of the Syrian men and the Russian women they married when they studied in the former Soviet Union. For that moment we all linked arms and fell about our sides laughing as we attempted our best impersonations of Arab Village Dancing.

The next spring some of them would be dead.

Stranger experiences followed me everywhere I went in that country.

I found myself in a farmhouse in the outskirts of Damascus, sitting by a large wooden oven in a garden. It had been purpose-built to cater to the roasting (or proasting) tendencies of the proprietor and his Russian-Arab friends.

My mother made this vodka, someone started, from the potatoes in her backyard. It was delicious.

I cured all of this Baltic herring and other fish myself, another Russian in Damascus announced. It was delicious.

Somewhere between eating cured herring and drinking homemade vodka I found myself in the middle of a large field. When I awoke a middle-aged Russian lady of the cougar variety was hovering over me, massaging my back.

But damn if I knew what she was saying for I had herring on my mind.

Back in the SL

I have become one of those people.

For the fourth time this year, I am sitting at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Colombo airport drinking the world's worst coffee and the worst food.

I am also strutting around in heels. Here. Also in Indonesia. In the Philippines. Everywhere. I walked into a TASMAC in dodgy neighbourhood in Madras in my Asian office lady dress and in my heels. Everybody stared. The truth is I have misplaced my flip flops and the hippie that was wearing them along with it.

The heels make my friends laugh. A, who hasn't lived in Singapore for the last five years, literally dropped her cocktail all over our bags as she stood there marvelling at how I was wearing proper shoes.

Here I am now in a designer top, hippie pants, heels and uncombed hair. I have lost my hairbrush, too.

My life these days is at once more stable and at once more colourful. The opportunities get larger and more varied. The opportunity costs increase. There is clarity. I say "epic" and "amazeballs" a lot. I also say "let's jam" when talking about meetings because I work with so many Americans and call so many of them my friends.

I've had the chance to pursue some incredible opportunities at work (in tech), for play (in writing), for causes I care about; I am pleased.

My dog goes to doggie kindergarten and camping trips, and I go to meetings. Sometimes I remember to comb my hair. I pay rent in one of the world's most expensive cities and I travel once a week, sometimes more. I get to see my lovely family all the time now, which is a vast improvement from 2008-2013.

We ringed in the new year in an apartment overlooking the Singapore River. The fireworks were beautiful but the best part was the good friends I love. Years ago in the back room of a tiny political party's office - an episode we will probably laugh about for the rest of our lives - I met N and S, and they have been exactly what one Facebook caption said, "together through good and bad, politics, broken hearts and unwritten novels." The all-nighters will come to something. The elections were our becoming. The friends to whose sides you flee to for refuge and for pineapple tarts and gin when you've had your heart broken are the ones to keep.

Last night I attended a beautiful wedding in Sri Lanka. Normally weddings make me want to cry with how trite and awful they are, yet despite the rituals and the chaos, this one was full of love and light. It was clear every single soul that made it out there came because we truly loved these guys. From Johannesburg to New York to Singapore, guests were family to the couple, jointly and separately, at various points of lives led in Sri Lanka, Singapore, New York City and elsewhere. Here were two souls who had withstood trials of such intensity and magnitude, who had moved mountains to be with each other. Though the guests fumbled, we eventually managed to let loose a flurry of wishing lights into the sky over Pannupitiya.

That's what all this is about, the bride not so tearfully (compared to her best friend) told us. Family, friends that are family, and love.

In the balmy Sri Lankan heat I felt at home in the tropics, my heart full of love and happiness for the first time in a long while.

Never again will I settle for second best, nor for anything short of extraordinary, unconditional love.

Another List of Things

(63 Random Things in 2012)

1. Causeway

I still remember the day you drove me across the Causeway with our dog and all of my life's belongings in your little car. We made that journey many times, usually in the other direction. Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Happiness, not desperate anger. We were even talking back then.

I held Cookie's paw in my hand while you silently, angrily, stepped on the accelerator and brought me home - to my other life, the one I hadn't known for five years - in record time. Bangsar to Johor in an hour and a half. I used to wait up as you drove your little car to see me, at the start.

In the end, Cookie slept. My laundry basket swayed. Your little car rattled. I wrapped her in our blanket and told her it would be okay. Some day.

2. Brooklyn

If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere; everyone should live in New York at least once in their lives. This city is a city of clichés, but it deserves every single one of them. I rented a crazy/beautiful place where nothing was as it seemed. I was in San Francisco just before, where everyone said I would find the life I wanted, the work I loved, the woman I would fall in love with. But I felt nothing for San Francisco and it felt nothing for me. The moment I walked out of the bus into Manhattan, I knew I had fallen hard: there was poetry in its streets, birdsong in its buildings. Possibilities. New York was a dream, and not a permanent one, not even a very long one I could savour. And yet but she taught me everything I needed to know about being fearless.

3. Cherrapunjee

From the world's wettest place I called you, wanting a glimpse into your life from over there. Over there and up there in the mountains, everywhere but here. You could not let me in but you could not tell me why.

In my younger days I did not know how to straddle my worlds. By day and for most of the year we were just college girls, in love with each other. We went to class. Wrote essays. Went home to our suburban apartments with our families and worried about our GPA. Then I stumbled into a world of an accidental nomadism that pulled me away completely.

In the years to come I would get better at leading multiple existences across different cities around the world. I would have a different life in Dubai, Delhi, Singapore and Bangkok. My life in Bangalore would not be discernible to someone who claimed to love me in Singapore, and eventually I would learn to be okay with that. What I would also get better at: discerning the silent pauses on the phone and the "I'm seeing someone else" crack in your voices, miles away from home. I would get better at not having a home.

But not before I learned the sound of a heart breaking in a monsoon in the world's wettest place could be soothed by the warmth of a real fireplace roasting my fish from the marketplace.

4. Dubai

A fortune teller told me I would meet you, and that you would love me, and that you would - and could - but can't - be one of the great loves of my life. Maybe this person is married. Maybe he's a man?

When I tried to call this desert my home, briefly, you drove me down Sheikh Zayed Road into the old city and it seemed we both knew we had known each other for a long time, even if we had only just met. You and your bald head and your Russian grin and your checkered shirt and the life we would never have. You were my phenomenon of unknown quantities, and I will never know you. Nor you me.

5. Shanghai

I came in the cold to a country I do not like, to see you in a city I do not love, because you had become important to me - unexpectedly. You wanted to know when we first met if I wanted a relationship with you at all, if I wanted to explore alternative arrangements, but if I wasn't ready that was okay too. That's why it worked when it did - even if just for a blip of time on the rest of our lives, we shared moments of brutal honesty and open love. You were, and we were, what we both needed at the time, and yet I could not scale the wall of hurt which had existed before us, one I had no stomach or place to attempt to cross. But for that moment in the French Quarter, when we were eating dumplings, when I was shivering in the cold, none of that mattered except that I was right there with you.

6. Haji Lane

When I was 20, I was a different kid then. I was the sort of kid who wrote things like: "When people kiss in dark alleyways they are usually making promises. When we do, we break a thousand of them, including the ones we have been hanging on to for any semblance of survival." (from "Art & Lies, And")

In hindsight they were not broken promises, they weren't promises at all, and we weren't dying. But at that moment, and for many years before and after, you were all I ever wanted. My kryptonite. We wrote - and we wrote. We rewrote our story repeatedly until it became a myth, but we never found a happy ending, nor in fact any kind of an ending at all. Years later I would sit at that exact spot as an outsider to someone I tried to love with her kryptonite beside her, just marvelling at how life and love comes full circle and the best I can do is walk away from anyone who doesn't want this right now or ever. Or can't.

7. Elsternwick

A week ago you said, "I want to build a nest with you." A week later you wanted to flee it. A lot happened in Melbourne, it's true, but I wanted you to be my greatest adventure and you just did not believe me.

You fell in love with the woman who brought you flowers, who made you the centre of my universe. I brought you flowers until the end. At some point you stopped noticing. Love on its own was never going to be enough, but I didn't believe it was all we had to keep going.

You and me will probably move on quickly enough to never get a chance to think about what really happened there, but as for me I will let my last memory of you be the moment you stepped off the plane, when for a minute you let yourself be there. That was the last glimpse of you I recognised, and the last time you noticed. I wish I never went to Melbourne. There is nothing I like at all about it except the coffee.

A Weekend Getaway

As many of you will know by now, I have spent a substantial part of the past decade travelling through India. I still feel like I'm barely done with scratching the surface. There's just so much to see in that vast, amazing country that I call my second home.

For some time now I've wanted to go to Coorg.

Coorg, also known as Kodagu, is a hill area in the state of Karnataka, in the Western Ghats. Its people are known as Kodavas (not Coorgis!) and all I knew about the place was that it had coffee, beautiful people, and pork curry. All that was sufficient to inspire me to plan a trip there.

From Chennai, I took a quick overnight train to Mysore Junction (book early, book ahead — this route is headed towards Bangalore, and therefore sells out early), but you can also take a bus. At Mysore Junction, I arranged for a car to pick me up for breakfast and to my resort of choice.

An acquaintance from Mysore highly recommended Travelparkz, and he was right: they were a very reliable car and driver service, and it was good value. I hired them for a pickup from Mysore Junction railway station to the resort in Coorg that I was headed to; and for a drop-off from the resort to Bangalore city a couple of days later. I highly recommend these guys, though it's best to reach them via phone. They speak English.

I had heard about The Tamara from friends in Bangalore, so I decided I would give it a shot. It's a very new place and it gets most things right. My only complaint is it didn't have as much pork as I would have liked.

You can wander about the grounds of The Tamara on your own, or sign up for one of their daily walks with their on-site naturalist. I did none of the above as I was too busy resting after a long week at work in India!

Highly recommended. I will be returning to Coorg shortly, although I may want to check out Victory Home next, since I've just met these guys in Bangalore.

Damn I love this country.

The path to my cottage

Happy feet

All rights reserved, The Tamara Coorg

The Belated Bangkok Diaries

In several status updates

Admittedly I have posted very little on the everyday occurrences in my travel. Here are some snippets, culled from Facebook.

Day 1: Two sleep-deprived people board a plane full of evangelical missionaries offering ‘free healing' in the plane (true story), dinner in the streets and accidental romantic date at a blacksmith-themed cocktail bar with a toilet that was so awesomely creepy it freaked out the one half of us that actually writes horror fiction as a profession. Shai halip in Little Arabia, 24-hour tacos and the latest episode of Scandal.

Street vendors selling holographic pictures of puppies, kittens, Jesus and Mary, naked women and ferocious tigers, across from a fake Viagra/Cialis/ made-in-China sex toy shops.

Bangkok is my happy place. Tomorrow: at least two massages.

Day 2: In no particular order: grilled chicken hearts, the breakfast of champions; flashing at passengers on the Khlong San Saeb river taxi each time (not me, btw), having random thai men cat-calling us coz Sam is in a very sessy dress (they called us ‘black and white girls'. Um. Brown and yellow is more accurate); beef boat noodle carnage, talking security guards into letting us trespass private property so we can take a shortcut, Gibson-esque massive overhead bridges, stalker pandas and mushrooms, great crackling massages, pork cracklings;

Pork satay, dogs and teddy bears and dogs in frilly clothes; hanging out with exes, discussing whether one's Portuguese ancestry is to blame for epic marine vessel conquering flag-planting fantasies (no: it's just Sam); ominous Elliott Smith songs in hotel toilets, streetside mobile bars. Pork tacos in the fridge.

A swim is on the menu tomorrow. Pandas are everywhere.

Off my rockers/tits high on chilli padi. It was a beautiful yum poo dong – raw blue swimmer crab salad smothered in beautiful chilli – the cold raw crab tastes like crab ice cream. But so off my rockers chilli high coz I am so clever I ordered it extra extra spicy. I love chilli padi highs. So beautiful, this world

Day 3: Looking for soi Polo chicken and seeing random chickens and people wearing I ♥ Chicken T-shirts everywhere (surreal), having a crab-gasm over the raw blue swimmer crab in a yum poo dong, coffee in random little sheds in Lumpini, more great massages, Phra Athit jazz and beer and evil plotting, a knock-out pad thai.

Home tomorrow!

Sam and I are at a girlie bar on Nana, showing bar girls pictures of fried crickets. We are looking for the Nana Cricket & Grasshopper street vendor. I don't know how to say "where are the edible crickets" in Thai. Yet.

Apparently I accidentally cock-blocked an Italian dude at a bar in Bangkok. All I did was drink whisky and talk about apps and their project timelines. A thai MILF then decided to tell me she thinks I must be gay, and proceeded to tell me she used to be butch with many girlfriends until a guy drugged and raped her and she got pregnant. (all this happened in thai)

The Italian dude left, very sadly.

Must. Stop. Accidentally. Fang dian-ing at people. Even sideways in my peripheral vision while eating potato chips and drinking whisky.

Note: 'fang dian' = a Mandarin term made up by some friends, meaning ‘to put electricity'. It refers to my track record of accidentally attracting unwanted attention through what they suspect is the sheer Cyclops-like, err, traits in my… eyes.

Day 4: jok moo! Pork porridge with salted egg, century egg, innards! Flip-flops and Hello Kitty (don't ask) and cable shopping! Skyfall! Prawn bisque! Accidentally fang-dian-ing: me at people, Sam at buildings! Giant sea creatures! Girlie bars! Mobile bars! No crickets!

New Bangkok Notes

• I still love Bangkok as much now, as I did when I first started frequenting it… circa 2004?
• Oh gawd I feel old these days.
• That's directly related to how all I want to do these day is have massages. My back creaks; my body creaks along with it. My new go-to place for a massage is at Ruen Nad massage studio on 42 Convent Road, off Silom. It really is one of the best massages you can have for that little money (1 hour goes for 350 THB). It's a little pricier than the less fancy places but the masseuses are uniformly great, and the ambience — in a restored old house in a fancy part of Bangkok — is really unbeatable. Also, Convent Road has some of the best street food in that city.
• The row of street stalls next to Sala Daeng BTS station still has a curious mix of gay p0rn and pirated DVDs. The latter tend to be arthouse (non-p0rnographic) movies, including a great many films which are simply just not available online… or in your local video store. The range of movies is quite breathtaking. I love Silom.
• If you are ever in Bangkok, do yourself a favour and eat a meal — go for the degustation — at Bo.lan. Chefs Bo and Dylan create exquisite food — slow food — and are rather experimental whilst strongly grounded in the traditions. Every meal I have had there, which is still too few, has been revelatory.
• I like the northern neighbourhoods. Victory Monument is home not just to impoverished foreigners/English-teachers, it's also home to Boat Noodle Alley, a massive Gibson-esque skywalk/pedestrian bridge, as well as to Saxophone jazz bar, which is a reliable spot to kick back with a beer and listen to some great music. I also like the neighbourhood of Ari, which has too many pleasures to name.
• If you like jazz with some fairy dust, Iron Fairies is a Dickensian blacksmith workshop restaurant and pub (seriously). It's beautiful. Think Steampunk meets Dickens meets jazz meets industrial chic. There's great live jazz featuring local musicians, some nights. We were there on a Monday and it was going strong. The Thonglor neighbourhood that it's in is also chock-a-block full of great little spots. They tend to tend to lean quite heavily towards ‘hiso' (the Thai equiv of the Singaporean ‘atas', with regards to class).
• Hiso/atas is totally fine by me. I like my upper-middle class hipsterism in strong doses. I also need a bit more down low to counteract too much hipsterism, though, and Thonglor does dish out the down low in appropriate amounts too. soi 38 on the other side of the station is packed with great street food, but one of my favourite meals on this trip was at Jok Moo. Like the name suggests it specializes in pork congee. It was quite a battle ordering two bowls of pork congee in the specific configurations we wanted (salted egg and century eggs, one with innards and one without)… in my limited Thai, but my hunger prevailed and we succeeded. The porridge held its own against some of the best Chinese congees in Singapore/Malaysia. They also seem to have solved the age-old problem of never having hot-enough fritters: they have these little packets of fried fritters resembling you tiao but not really, and they're always cripsy. There is nothing more disgusting than soggy you tiao in your congee, and nothing more wonderful than having congee with fresh, hot fritters as well. It's one of the biggest conundrums I think I face as a Chinese person: would I rather eat soggy fritters or not eat any at all?
• Jok Moo is at the start of Sukh soi 38. Alight at Thonglor station and head for the even-numbered side. Locate soi 38. Jok Moo is the first corner shop on the right at the start of the soi, after some watch or hardware shops. It only has Thai words written on its signage. There's some seating at the back. Have the lemongrass drink. Basic English is understood here. Pointing helps, if all else fails.
• The pad thai at Thipsamai on Mahachai Road really is what it's cracked up to be. A tip: don't order the version with the shrimp oil. I love my calories and I love my oily fried noodles in all shapes and sizes, but the shrimp oil really kicked me in the guts… after. They also have a new dish: pad thai without the noodles. If Mos Burger can do burgers with lettuce instead of buns, I guess Thipsamai can do pad thai without the noodles. Although both food concepts totally go against every fibre of my being.
• The fried chicken at Soi Polo, off Wireless Road near Lumpini. Run, don't walk. Also order the yum poo dong — the cold crab salad that gave me the chilli high described above. Both are beautiful. The Star Trek movie dubbed in Thai, not so much.
• One day I will find the fabled coconut ice cream at Sam Yan.
• Did I do anything other than eat in Bangkok? We watched James Bond. Took photos with giant sea creatures. Introduced Sam to grilled chicken heart breakfasts, and to the river boat experience I love (the commuter Klong San Saeb, not the one on the tourist trail).
• Bangkok is still one of my favourite Asian cities and I don't understand how anybody can ever hate it. Well, I do — it's not for everyone. But if you like hulking, in-your-face Asian metropolises like I do, Bangkok is It.
• One day I will make a concerted effort to get better at my Thai.

It Was All New

I have a tattoo on my lower back. It was given to me by the grandson of a tribal village chief. I grimaced for hours on the floor as he used the primitive tools and ingredients that had tattooed his Iban people for centuries, on me, a girl from a big city.

I'd always wanted a tattoo, but didn't know what; this one crept up on me. Like the girl I was there with (we had a crazy idea: we would visit and live with an Iban community in a longhouse and celebrate Hari Gawai with them), I wasn't expecting any of this. The girl, the tattoo, or that I would have such a story to tell many years after the fact. I chose a bunch of tribal motifs from an album and told him to make it up. I got lucky: I like my tattoo very much, even if it is what some people would call a tramp stamp. I'm proud of it. There's a story to tell each time anyone asks about it.

The girl is no more in my life but the tattoo remains, defiantly representing all of the new beginnings I will embrace in life. Tomorrow, I start a new life and more and more I feel as though the year of grieving and floating, which so profoundly altered my path and direction in life as well as my livelihood and future plans, is finally about to draw to a conclusive close.

I am finally ready for another tattoo. This time, I know exactly where it should be, what it should say and what it should look like. I would not have known this without the pain of my first tattoo. It will be a beautiful Sanskrit verse from the Bhagavad Gita and I intend to have it inscribed on my upper left shoulder. This time, I will harbour no plans or illusions about the permanence of anything other than that of the Sanskrit verse on my shoulder; this time, I will learn to love without needing to know the world.

Five of Each

Five Places I Visited and Loved in the Past 12 Months

1. Helsinki
2. Copenhagen
3. San Francisco
4. New York City
5. Stockholm

Five Things I Learned in the Past 3 Months

1. Diving
2. Swimming
3. Git
4. Ruby
5. Still looking for the fifth big thing. For now it looks like it's going to be Fightshape

Note: I could swim, but badly. I took up Shaw Method swim lessons to dramatically improve my technique and confidence.

Five Things I Bought Recently

1. A 27" Korean IPS monitor (A Yamakasi Catleap Multi)
2. Steelcase Leap
3. A Sony NEX-5 with 16mm lens
4. Xbox 360 with Kinect and many amazing games (Assassin's Creed! Borderlands 2! Dishonored! Wow)
5. Das Keyboard

Five Challenges I Will Soon Tackle

1. Advanced diving course with many specialties
2. A job
3. A hopeful transformation into a real programmer
4. A massive overhaul/redesign/ renovation of my room in Singapore. It needs to look less like a place that 12 year old me once lived in.
5. Another tattoo

And at some point, a haircut, too. And a piece of fiction.

Oh shit.

63Random

63 random things from the past 3 months (inspired by Michael Ruby's "Fleeting Memories")

1. Arriving in Budapest knowing absolutely nothing about Hungary
2. Drinking palinka for the first time, feeling the flush
3. The Hungarian energy drinks I drank while wearing funny hats
4. Walking with team Photogotchi along the Halászbástya, feeling a little like Ezio Auditore da Firenze
5. The boys who were carrying giant swans and crocodile paddle boats onto Lake Balaton
6. Sitting in the yard of old times
7. Leaving Hungary thinking fröccs is the best idea in the world
8. Arriving in frosty Helsinki once again
9. The cute studio in Apila
10. That Finnish rapper in a Tiki bar
11. Being miserable, cold and desperately wanting you
12. More palinka, Timo's flat, tiny spaces and uncrossable chasms
13. Red-heads in the rain
14. Remembering that karaoke in northern Europe is pretty damn weird
15. Mushroom-picking, mushroom-cooking
16. Cycling on a Jopo through the rain
17. Beautiful Finnish brunches on Sunday mornings
18. A lot of fish
19. Tactical Nuclear Penguin
20. American Airlines, truly a terrible way to fly
21. Arriving in America for the first time
22. Pacific Heights. Not having change for the bus to Market Street.
23. Speaking badly in Cantonese.
24. Father of my future children showing me a iBaby monitor in the Apple Store
25. Brilliant people all over San Francisco.
26. Being chased up a flight of stairs by a bouncer in the Castro for not having an ID.
27. Losing my ID. And my credit cards. And my iPhone. In a bar. In the Tenderloin.
28. Being stupid.
29. Being on a work call with Sydney while sitting next to a painting called The Chronological Wall of Dicks and Cunts. Ah, San Francisco.
30. Staff at the Singapore consulate giving me cup noodles and soya bean milk from their personal stashes.
31. Buying a bright yellow Fuji Finest on my second day in San Francisco.
32. Toning my ass, cycling uphill everywhere
33. Excellent vegetarian Japanese food in Valencia followed by a free meditation class down the road.
34. Folsom Street Fair. Many things cannot be unseen, once seen.
35. Ethiopian with Jiten and Family.
36. Family of four sitting in a hipster coffeeshop in San Jose, each with a parrot on their heads.
37. Watching The Nationals vs the Phillies at the Nats Stadium.
38. You never forget your first Shake Shack.
39. America is so great because you can order beer and hot dogs online, and expect to have them arrive at your seat in a baseball stadium in three minutes.
40. One day I will understand more of this great nation, the same one that invented SPAM and Chicken in a Biskit. These inventions speak more about a national character than any other great invention.
41. Rolling my eyes at groupies of ‘famous tech people'.
42. Walking to the Lincoln Memorial, wishing I had seen it earlier because all I see now in that statue is Abraham Lincoln (Vampire Killer)
43. Eating fish tacos with Jason Scott Jones, who knows more about Brooklyn than anybody else
44. Having the cashier ask me why I want to pay US$12 for a can of tuna. Not having a good answer other than ‘it's very good tuna. Spanish.'
45. My crazy/beautiful Crown Heights pad.
46. Being in love with New York, like they all said I would.
47. Talking to my aunt at JFK for longer than we have ever spoken to each other, all our lives.
48. My 27th birthday party in Crown Heights.
49. The Met Museum with Michael Ruby and Dave Gurien.
50. Leaving New York, loving New York.
51. New York to Budapest via London, Budapest to Singapore via Doha, 12 hours apart
52. Those miserable long layovers in Doha.
53. Wanton mee
54. Having everything fall into place the moment I got home
55. The first day Cookie got home
56. Cooking a delicious spare ribs pasta
57. IKEA, burgers, Thai supermarkets and Mustafa
58. Finally getting my diving license
59. Doing the Gangnam Style at 10m underwater
60. The corner store in Tioman
61. Thinking that learning to dive in the middle of the monsoon was probably not too clever
62. Floating upwards uncontrollably before learning to trust my own buoyancy
63. I am finally ready, maybe.

Boomerang

National Day came and went. I haven't written any of those essays I promised to. Sheepish. I will write them, I just need a little bit more time.

I did, however, contribute a piece to the Straits Times after PM Lee's National Day Rally speech, which I streamed from a house by the lake in… Hungary. I know, I'm still waiting for my life this year to get less random. I don't think that's going to happen.

If you're interested, you can read it here: link (opens a jpg image).

Speaking of random, and Hungary, I am currently hiding out in a secret location there.

What am I doing?

Huddling in a house with a team of talented designers and developers, and we are building an ambitious app in a little over two and a half weeks. It's called Photogotchi and it will be available in mid-September. Yet another example of how the little dots connect for me over and over again, one of the contestants on the autorickshaw rally that I went on a few years ago runs this amazing program where he sends a group of people from all over the world to go to a location in Hungary and live, work and eat together for three weeks, and basically live and breathe tech for that period. You learn a lot: how to work in a group, how to work non-stop fuelled by Hungarian energy drinks (burn, baby, burn..!), how to play hard and even cook for your team and do your laundry like your life depended on it (my current dilemma every couple of days). Most importantly you get to be a part of a motivated team that breathes code, design and ships product — every aspect of it. I'm getting a lot out of this, and if you're interested you should definitely apply next year to the App Campus program. It helps that Hungary is as amazing as I thought it would be.

When I'm done here, I move on to Finland. Yep, Finland yet again, even if it was only six months ago that I was there. I'm in love with that country, its people, and I've made so many wonderful friends that I just had to go again just because I was going to be on the same continent! Finnair, my new favourite airline, takes me there for an affordable price.

When I'm finished with Finland (if I ever do), I'll move on to San Francisco, where I'll get to see new friends and old, visit companies I deeply admire, and learn as much as I can from the best brains in my industry. Then I'll head to Washington DC to see a very dear friend who currently works at the embassy there. Then it'll be my birthday, and it'll happen in New York City. This sounds cheesy but I feel like I have been waiting my whole life to finally make it there (just like the song), and I have an incredible schedule lined up already, mostly comprising of meeting people who have inspired me, having a superb 27th birthday party surrounded by some dear friends, going to classes, and doing new things.

If it isn't already obvious, I am on a mission. I have to sort out myself, reconfigure my life and priorities, and two weeks into my travels and challenges I am already halfway there: I'm closing off bits of a past best left behind, bravely — some say foolhardily — navigating new, unseen waters. I'm in a different headspace from the one I was in six months, a year ago.

Even though it looks like, and God knows it felt like, I was wading in a cloud of randomness for the past six months, my method to this madness has been simple: figure shit out, get stuff done. Fix what wasn't working, improve my skills.

What I did (God help me if I sound like a pop self-help type now) was easy enough for anybody to do. The main tenets: Ask. Do. Give.

It amazes me how far one can get just by asking. It opens doors you previously didn't know existed. When I made some of the very big decisions I had to make, on business, love and others, I was temporarily frozen by the fear — what happens next? I didn't know. The fear was crippling. But eventually I came to see that if I didn't let fear cripple me in so many other aspects of my life, I certainly wasn't going to let it win in the most important areas, the ones that affected me directly. I made decisions, some of which I'm not particularly proud or happy to have made, but that were necessary — to me — with less collateral damage now than if I make them years from now. I didn't know what was going to happen, in terms of work, money, life. But I've come to think that maybe I really am one of the luckiest people ever — everything fell into place, and got going, pretty much with a life of its own in which I was a mere spectator who occasionally hit a ‘yes' or ‘no' or ‘let's move on' button. None of that would have happened if I hadn't developed the shameless ability to ask. The right people at the right places. What's the worst that could happen? A no? So I did, and I'm all the better for it.

I actively identified a few key areas in my life that needed to be fixed, and tried to find inspiration on how to go about fixing them.

I knew that I had boundless energy when it came to starting things up, but not when it came to completing things — to running the race through to the end. The tedium and minutiae of everyday life bored the hell out of me. So I learned to delegate, and I learned to separate the important from the less so.

I knew that I had no trouble making a lot of money, but plenty of trouble understanding the flow of money, so I went to a handful of trusted older acquaintances and friends and basically said to them: here I am, this is where I am at, this is the situation, this is where I want to be in 5 years, 10 years — in your shoes. Teach me what to do with money in beneficial ways, and not only to myself. One day I'll write a ridiculous self-help finance book on this process.

I knew that I had no shortage of ideas, all of which excited me and made me jump out of bed — but I needed to make them show for something. That tied in with how I previously and historically always ran out of steam and had no ability to see things through to their full potential. I threw a couple of things at it to try to fix it — mostly through consistency and coffee-fuelled attempts at hard work — but seen through the perspective of what I need to achieve within the next year, there are always creative ways to fix any problems, and in the next few months I will be able to hold actual things in my hands and say: I made this, and I finished it.

Doing stuff has never been difficult for me. I'm the crazy friend who gets sent these emails saying "I have this great idea. What should I do?" And my only answer is: do it. Or if I can afford to, let me help you. This quarter, whatever stars are aligned (if you believe in that hufflepuff), they're certainly all pointing at how I'm learning to pick my battles and to keep doing stuff, but only the stuff that really matters in the end. Steve Jobs' famous line to Sculley rings true in my mind at every milestone: do I want to sell sugared water? Or do the important stuff? In some truly funny ways I think I'd let my grip on reality cripple my ability to see the big picture. Being bogged down by the small stuff, the details — I stopped being able to dream. Of course the dreamer in me now at 27 versus the one at 17 is a very different one: I already know the small stuff and I won't sweat it. But I don't ignore them or wish them away. So now, I do, with the tempered mania of a recovering hyperthyroid patient on metaphoric and literal energy drinks (but properly medicated, don't worry, mum) — banging away at my keyboard, and the world, and all these things I am going to do in it.

This is the point where I say with an Austrian bodybuilder's accent, I think — I am back. Bitches.

A theme that has persisted in my mind recently is that of how I need to give back. To my community. To the people who made me. My family, my country, my adopted country (India). I have launched or am launching initiatives in all of these. These are battles that are worth it. One project is Culture Kitchen, a food and art project that aims to connect Singapore to the rest of the world through delicious food and intriguing, sometimes edible art. Is Singapore becoming more xenophobic? Maybe. Is there any justification for it? Never. It becomes xenophobia when it stops being about the policies, and when it starts being about the people — anybody. The guy in the train speaking in a foreign language you don't understand. The waitress who doesn't speak the correct language. But how can we undo this? I don't know. What I do know is that I think saying "you are xenophobic", even when truly well-deserved, already splits the people in camps. In its own ironic way, that also puts people into defensive modes — us versus them, all over again. We must always, always call out xenophobia and never tolerate it. But we must also stem its growth with a light touch. Just as how I will always call out homophobia when I see it, whether it is directed at me or not, on a personal level when I meet somebody from a background that hasn't given him or her any opportunities to meet real gay people, I would rather give him a chance and be the living example of the gay person he could never hate, than flat out deny him the ability to re-evaluate his opinion. I also have the kumbayah belief — hope? pipe dream? — that Singaporeans, and our electorate, are by and large rational beings who are averse to extremism on either side of the spectrum. Yes, there is some danger that we are following the global trend of slipping towards unfounded nationalism based on birth and race. But I think we can avoid that by starting to have open, honest conversations. Do I think Culture Kitchen will be able to fix anything? I wouldn't dare be so self-important. I think my job is done not when I change the mind of somebody who is already anti-immigration and/or xenophobic (is there a difference?), but it is when it inspires other citizen-led projects, and when it plants the seed in the mind of just one person — hey, I never knew that about this country. We actually have these things in common. Let me find out more.

In addition to Culture Kitchen I will also have a host of other small mini-projects at ThisIs.sg, which is currently not ready but the basics are there: small island, big heart. Quirky projects celebrating the Singapore spirit.. As a young Singaporean who has chosen a somewhat different path, I am always asked by even younger Singaporeans, "how did you do this?" Since I know so many other kindred spirits who are doing likewise, in their own fields, across a spectrum of various industries and activities, I thought I would collect them all in one place and have them answer such questions in a publicly accessible database. It is my hope that with these, others will see that it's actually not that scary, not that hard, to follow their dreams, to do stuff, to start first by figuring out what matters to them. God knows I could have done with something like that myself when I was younger and clueless.

So. Giving back. There are tons of other initiatives that we've dreamed up, and that we're laying the groundwork on, but for now there's all of this. And then some. I wish I started an active giving process much earlier, but here we are.

In between all these projects, shuttling back and forth between various countries, and other things, I haven't had very much time to sort out the homefront. My dog is now in Singapore, and will be out of quarantine soon. When she does get out and come home to live with me in my family home, I think it will be my first real shot at real life this year.

It's been a crazy year but at least you can't call it uninteresting in the slightest way.

Just yesterday I tweeted as a monster, designed a game, went to float on a crocodile boat in lake Balaton, and came back to the house to help set up an NGO.

Perhaps the biggest discovery this year may be that I possibly and probably have an attention deficit disorder too?

Thank you, mad world, for giving me all the shots I have. I am having a ball of a time. And I have to go away to figure out where I'm going to live. I said that to a friend, two decades older, and she simply laughed and said "that's so Millennial of you." I'm glad I'm a Millennial (even ChannelNewsAsia thinks so) — it's damn confusing, but it's a damn awesome time to be doing all these things with the world as your oyster, baked, fried or freshly shucked.

The Places We'll Go

Five years ago, I said: "Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and all I will remember is driving up, around, up, around, up, around, in the swirling clouds as the rain lashed at my windows and I feared for my life, balanced so daintily in this tin can navigating itself on the hairpin road."

Plenty has changed, these five years, but at least this part remains familiar: "Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and I will still tell you the same thing: I’m not sure why I do the things that I do." Then, I was referring to the heady, exciting days of a student who had the chance to criss-cross across the hill tribes of northeast India and investigate the ailments of rural Bangladeshis suffering from leprosy, TB and lymphatic filiarisis. I got to go on the amazing adventure of my life, never really expecting it to end. It hasn't.

Much has changed, but adventure has never left me.

The last five months have been tumultuous. It was the sort of chaos that was ultimately a blip in the universe (though still a large one), and not, thankfully, the sort that led to destruction and the end of the world as I knew it.

In a few days I will make that trip to Kuala Lumpur for the last time. It will be awkward. On it, I will return to the apartment I've had for two years, but haven't lived in for the last five months, and I will assemble everything that I own in that city and that country, and pack it into several boxes. I last packed all the things I owned in the universe into several boxes under far happier circumstances. This time I pack a dog into the car, too.

I don't regret a moment. Life has dealt me a pretty good lot, and I have milked it for what it's worth. So from Singapore to Dubai and the Middle East to London to Kuala Lumpur I now find myself surprisingly, but not that much, in Singapore. I left a Singapore I didn't like very much, and returned to a Singapore I absolutely love (there's an essay in that somewhere). You can't come home again, but you can definitely make it home again, for the first time.

The single life is interesting, but difficult, in equal parts. I haven't dated in such a long time, I really don't have it in me anymore.

The life with hyperthyroid is worse.

I can't remember shit. I quite literally feel like I've lost a major chunk of my former cognitive abilities. It sucks.

How am I dealing with all of this? I'm… dealing. If you know me in real life, you probably can't tell. I've worked very hard to keep it invisible. My heart rate still goes nuts. I drop a ton of weight or I put it back and I drop it again. I am manic and then I am exhausted. I am utterly intolerant to heat, even in an air-conditioned room I am hot. I don't need any medical diagnosis here (I am actively under the care of the medical professionals here, no worries). I just wish I could get my memory back. I've gone from one of those people with super memories to one of those who has to scribble down everything. I don't remember people I've just met (this has never happened before), I don't remember even meeting them, most of the time. It's amazing I can even work at all.

The last five months have felt like a massive blur. I feel like time and space has compressed for me. Or that I'm living in a time warp, splitting myself between two universes. One: pre-illness, pre-breakup, pre-everything. When life was, I thought, sorted. For the time being. The second one, the one I inhabit right now: plagued by a disease that doesn't threaten but bothers me, learning to find my feet again without the woman I love and the life and businesses we had. Breaking up gets more and more expensive as you get older.

I'm okay, I'm good, I'm pretty happy (seriously) — I was just telling someone that I thrive in change in ways that many people don't understand, but I do. Change works for me.

I should be more careful what I wish for, you know? Now there's so much of it I am still finding my feet, but I'm not sure how. That suits me fine for now.

It's just that I hate packing.

The Road Less Ridden

In my mother tongue we have a brilliant turn of phrase. Geh kiang. Separately, they mean fake clever. Together, it means some approximation of 'smart alec', but that's not quite good enough. It's hardly translatable at all. 'Smart alec' does not embody the degree of stupidity we are usually referring to when we say 'geh kiang'.

My mother will tell you I embody geh kiang, every bit of me.

I was especially geh kiang when I packed up my bags and bicycle, mostly under stressful circumstances, in order to take them somewhere.

Why did I bring a bicycle to northern Europe? I found myself wondering that all throughout my Nordic escapade. I wondered the loudest and grumbled the most when it was time to pack up my bags and my bicycle all over again. Five times. I know, I counted.

I packed up my bags and my bicycle when I had to move, when I had to get in a plane, when I had to jump into a train, when I had to do all of that entirely by public transport (cabs are totally out of the question in Europe!) and onto train platforms and then into trains.

It was difficult, to say the least. Lucky for me — and my sanity — my love for cycling, and the relative benefits of having one's own bicycle in a foreign place, far outshone the logistical barriers. I will probably do it again.

When you commit to having such a piece of equipment by your side of the entire duration of your trip, you're committing to a relationship that will be the primary relationship, one that will be far more important than the by-now boring concept of luggage. You have to look after it. Endure the glances. Fight for it at airport check-in desks. Hold it, dance with it, around the feet of heavily pregnant commuters and swerving around nervous people, trying your best not to jab anybody with your hulk of a piece of equipment.

So what happened? In a nutshell,

I broke my bike

Finnair treated my bike brilliantly. I flew them three times: to Helsinki, to Stockholm, back from Copenhagen. All three times my bicycle more than survived, and the entire experience was very easy. I highly recommend Finnair for their quick, no-nonsense flights to Europe from Singapore. Helsinki Airport is also my new favourite airport.

I, however, was very stupid. I tried to fix what I thought was a loose nut, myself. Being no bike mechanic, I promptly broke the weirdest little part I could break — the plastic doohickey in the stem of the folding post of my bike. Without it, my bicycle could not stay folded. Foldable bikes like mine haven't taken off in that part of the world at all. Even though the Finns speak amazing English, most people anywhere have never heard of a plastic doohickey. Not unless you are very familiar with foldable bikes of the Dahon make.

Somehow, I managed to find an excellent bicycle shop where its owner and mechanics were super helpful. Since it's not even a part that my bicycle's manufacturer offers for sale, it seemed pretty dire. Thankfully, a quick-thinking mechanics with extraordinary ability in plastics (he had a degree in plastics engineering) took a look at the broken plastic bits, and he made a brand new doohickey for me. That entire process took a week so I had to go to Tallinn without my bicycle, but I was relieved that I wouldn't be travelling around with an unridable piece of junk for the next 3 weeks. More glad that it got fixed. I got lucky.

I had to be rescued by Swedish police

Not something I care to repeat ever again, but.. what an experience.

I was cycling along the bike lanes from Kungsholmen to Stockholm Central, happily zipping along at 25km/h with an air of familiarity. I was starting to really get where things were in Stockholm, and I'd had some amazing city rides. Seems like Stockholm Central hates me for some inexplicable reason. The last time I was there in 2010, I got locked out of Stockholm Central for many hours while my luggage was locked in.

This time, I guess I missed the sign that said "IF YOU ARE A BICYCLE, GO LEFT! NOT STRAIGHT!"

I went straight.

I realised something was amiss when I started descending down a steep flyover. I saw many heavy vehicles. I saw that I had no way to filter right (they ride on the right) without being in the middle of oncoming, converging traffic from another steep flyover. I jumped out. I saw that I could not go back up, and that there was no way I could walk off that bridge (water, water, everywhere).

I jumped onto my bike and kept going.

At some point it dawned upon me in my puny little brain that if I went any further, I would be bus chow in the middle of the underwater tunnel that crossed islands into Södermalm. I got out.

I don't know what I was thinking — probably nothing — I remember I was extremely calm. I called a Swedish friend, who could not help; I texted the Swedish friend I was riding to meet and told her I'd be late, that I'd explain later when I saw her.

Mostly I just stood by the side of the road and looked pathetic, I think.

A Stockholm city police car came within ten minutes, bundled my bicycle and its stupid owner into the back of the car, and drove me to Stockholm Central. I figured motorists might have called in to tell them that an Asian tourist was dangerously obstructing the lives of motorists on the highway by looking pathetic and helpless.

(They did confirm that they received calls about me, which is why they came; I didn't care to ask what had been reported!)

Stockholm police's parting words to me: "you should take a photo and show it to your friends."

Damn malu.

I had to carry a ton of weight every step of the way

Let's just say travelling with a bicycle, no matter how light, is not for the faint of heart. I only moved all my bags and the bicycle when I moved to a new city or went to the train station or airport, but when I moved, I moved.

One of the last minute decisions before leaving for Helsinki was that I would bring a silly little trolley with me. The kind that aunties go to the wet market with: the flimsy, plastic ones that are given out free at computer fairs or promotions. I don't know how I managed without it. Although my Dahon D7HG is quite tiny when folded, and it was also in a soft bag, the overall package including the paddings, foam and bubble wrap made for an uncarry-able package. I also had my large backpack and camera backpack. Why didn't I just pack it in a Samsonite case? I've tried that many times, each time to devastating results. First, dismantling the bike is pretty easy. Getting it to fit isn't. Unlike most other 20″ Dahon bikes, the D7HG Vitesse that I have has a large rear fender. It is close to impossible to remove, and without removing it, the bicycle does not fit into any luggage. It also has a hub gear, which makes it difficult to remove the rear wheel. More importantly, because of the hub gear and the rear fender, I'm not able to confidently put it back. I decided to avoid that nightmare this time. mrbrown and Ryan helped me zhng a makeshift soft bag carry method. It served me well.

Eventually, I gave up on the lousy trolley and went to a trolley superstore in Stockholm (yes, there is such a thing!) and purchased an amazing, sturdy, well-made Swedish trolley.

Would I do it again? Yes, absolutely! That was my first time travelling with my bicycle. To be honest, I don't think I was ready for it. I'm lucky in that I didn't get flats, I didn't need to change tubes (though I brought them anyway), that I didn't need to remove my wheels or do any repairs of any sorts on my own (other than the plastic doohickey incident). I'm no bike mechanic. I'm a little stupid about those things, in fact. I will get better at it because I now know what and where are the gaps in my knowledge.

I had an amazing time on the bike.

The Nordic countries are light years ahead of us in terms of cycling as part of the urban landscape. It was such a joy to ride there, especially in Copenhagen. Real bike lanes, bike traffic lights, an entire culture and city where cycling was a real, and sometimes the only, way of life. It was liberating.

Before going, I was quite shaky on the roads. I did not like the idea of riding on the roads in Singapore as I was not confident enough to do it. Because I got so much mileage on the roads of Copenhagen (breezy sweat-free 40km days were typical), I learned many things about what I needed to know from them. I now ride on the roads of Singapore regularly, and don't find it particularly difficult, although there are some challenges to be mindful of (car-dooring, for example).

Since I got home to Singapore, there's been a lot of talk about how public transport has become absolutely terrible. I agree it has deteriorated substantially, but my own personal way of getting around that problem is to ride more and talk less. I would be quite happy to cycle-commute at least 40% of the time in Singapore. Next time I travel, I am taking the bike with me again. Anywhere. Everywhere.

Super Geh Kiang Me.

Did you hear the one about the Swedish chocolate cake?

I'm home now of course, whatever home means, and I've been retelling a couple of stories. The same ones, but many of them, just because I've had such a crazy time in the Nordics.

This one isn't very much of a story. Just a little tale that, once again, shows you how crazy we Asians are about our food.

I spent the first three weeks of my big Scandinavian/Finnish vacation on my own, and/or with friends from that region. In the last week, a friend from uni came to meet me in Copenhagen.

We did stuff, mostly in this order:

Eat. Drink. Eat. Drink. Eat. Cycle. Eat. Drink. Eat. Bring our bicycles to Sweden.

To buy chocolate cake. From a supermarket. She'd been on student exchange in Sweden, now lived in Geneva, and missed Swedish supermarket chocolate cake terribly. I'm sure it's nice and all, but damn if I ever go to another country to buy chocolate cake again.

Wilderness TV

I can't say I've been away from my phone or Mac for more than 24 hours, not at any point in the last 10 years. I can't say I have at all. They feel like such natural extensions of my arm, they are almost artificial appendages themselves, not just of my body but also of my brain. I needed to switch off and I needed a drastic way to do it.

Which is the backstory behind why I found myself living in a hut like the above.

170 km and 2 hours northwest of Stockholm, lays a little town called Skinnskateberg. Its pronunciation eludes me, and still does; somewhere between a huin and a hun instead of skinn. I'll take whatever you throw me, Sweden, but your compound sounds and accents are something I'll never get (I've just learned how to pronounce Nässjö… Promptly forgot it too).

When some Stockholm friends wanted to know my weekend plans, I told them I was going to be in Skinnskateberg, only to find most of them had never heard of it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't my pronunciation too, because I showed it to them on the map.

I was only headed there because of one thing: my need to be one with nature, in a way I knew how.

Ever since I got sick, I've been struck with the overwhelming need to go be one with nature. I can't explain it, and I can't reject it. After rejecting nature all my life (damn the insects and sweatiness of the tropics), I now want to do it all: camp, start fires, cook in the open, fetch water from natural water sources, and whatever else my city slicker mind romanticised.

So off to Skinnskateberg I went. Why there, of all places, instead of the far north? My metrics for selecting this place were simple: I didn't want to freeze my bits off, didn't want to have to pack snow shoes, knew I couldn't pack a winter-ready tent or sleeping bag (can't justify the cost of one), and I needed to be close enough to the middle to travel south to Malmö afterwards.

Which left just one place: Kolarbyn, near Skinnskateberg.

I wanted to go to Kolarbyn because it promised no electricity, no running water, and a series of huts that resembled hobbit holes, to my untrained eye.

Of course they were just replicas of the huts that the charcoal-burners of the region once lived in, hundreds of years ago, first built to educate the modern crowd about the area's history after the industry died, then turned into the eco-lodge it now is.

Kolarbyn proudly advertises itself as "Sweden's most primitive hotel", and they'd be right.

I booked myself on a two night stay there. Though I freaked out a little when I was told I would be alone all throughout the three days, things quickly worked out when I found Roxanne, an ex-classmate now working in Stockholm, would join me on my unconventional Easter break.

I was enamoured by the romance of the whole set up, but I worried about the details: how would I do with starting fires? What would I eat? How would I chop wood? What water would I drink? How would I even get there? I wrote emails to Andreas, the owner of Kolarbyn, pleading Asian virginity in the Scandinavian outdoors, and asked him to please show me how to do everything once. His Swedish efficiency of language and character was a simple, reassuring "don't worry about anything."

As it turned out, Andreas himself is ex-Swedish military, almost like a more realistic Bear Grylls (arguably better looking too). I mean, the man teaches courses teaching people how to start fires without anything, how to forage, and survive in the cold wilderness — I could not ask for a better teacher. He had me starting fires successfully in something like 5 seconds. Which just does not happen with me, usually. With non-digital skills I usually have the mental and psychomotor facilities of a five year old child, possibly worse.

He showed me the stream, from which I would fetch water, in which I would wash my cooking utensils; at which I could optionally clean myself, an option I would decline as I did not want to go home in a freezer (not to be morbid, but I'm just learning to deal with the cold and I really need more time when it comes to being in a frigid and cold body of water).

The communal fireplace was where all the cooking would take place. Though I was alone on the first night (Roxanne was to join me the second morning), I was lucky that I had a Swedish couple for company. I could not have asked for a more Swedish experience: we shared cans of Sofiero, they fed me grilled choco-bananas, and one of them even worked with Roxette. I cooked a simple pasta with mushrooms and asparagus, and dinner I made myself has never tasted as wonderful. The wilderness helps you redefine everything, including food — slow food with slow sources of fuel is indefinitely slow, slower, slowest.

My little hobbit hole, all mine for the first night, was called Botvik. All the huts have old names — such as Olof. Mine, Botvik, sounded less of a hulk than Viking-sounding Olof, and more of a bumbling little Viking version of Baldrick, which suited me fine. The Swedish couple complained that the huts were smaller than they looked online. Since I was expecting, and hoping for, a hobbit hole, Botvik was my idea of a dream come true.

Sheepskin was laid out on each side, on which a warm, winter-ready sleeping bag would go. The fireplace was a small, but sturdy little box that would be my best friend for the next two nights. A large stone apparatus enveloped the fireplace, and I came to think of it as a convection oven for my warmth.

I was worried I would be cold, but I was far from cold. The fires I started, and nurtured in Botvik were enough to keep me plenty warm at night and to keep me returning to all through the day. I was especially happy to return to the warmth of my hut after a morning hike to the compost toilet, and after the temperatures sank at nightfall.

Can it be that we have a genetic disposition to watching fires, and to wanting to make them bigger? Asked another fellow camper the next night. We had no answer, Roxanne and I, for we were busy learning about snus and stuffing our faces with soup and pork, but I certainly think he has a point.

Having never come close to a fire, or a fireplace before — I mean I do come from that breed of urbanites for whom sparkles are not good sounds, and who feared fire — fire became my best friend. Not necessarily in a pyromaniac sort of way. Fire draws you, in an elusive but unforgiving way. You can't not look at it. You need it. Everyone can have it, but not everyone can build the right kind of fire. It sounds base and primal, but it made me think about what little our primitive ancestors had and how they made use of what they did have; fire really does change everything. Not having my phone or Mac around was totally okay, then; we joked that every time we go out camping we sit around fires watching wilderness tv.

It's a channel I'm starting to get used to, I think.

Chocolate, Nudity, Helsinki

I have seen some places in my short travelling life, but rarely a place that offers me chocolate and naked women within two hours of arriving.

Helsinki turned out to be such a place.

Unknown to me, mostly since I knew so little about Finland other than Nokia, Angry Birds and the cold, when I pinged some local friends on what I should do while waiting for them to be done with work, they almost universally said: have lunch and chocolates at Karl Fazer Cafe, and then go to the pool and sauna at Yrjönkatu Swimming Hall — it was a women-only day the day I got to Helsinki.

What should I wear to Yrjönkatu, I asked? I came prepared: I brought a bikini, even though bringing a bikini to a place that was going to be 0 degrees Celsius seemed a little silly.

Erm.. you wear nothing. That is the idea, my Finnish friends said, so it might not be for everybody._

I stuffed myself silly with soup and chocolates at Fazer (sidenote: starting to be quite a fan of Fazer chocolates, they ARE tasty), then cycled around downtown Helsinki for a bit. I thought I would worry about the sauna only if I saw it — I wasn't about to go out and look for a place just because of pfft naked women — but of course I found it within minutes.

When travelling, especially when travelling alone, one has the tendency to do as the Romans (or Finns) do, and plunge right into the deep end, so to speak. Not knowing any Finnish at all, I timidly found my way around the inner workings of a place dedicated to the dark arts of naked bathing and steaming.

Like tattoos, dating twins, and other much-talked-about concepts, this is something I would do just once; the downsides are far worse than the supposed benefits. But maybe I'm just unimaginative: I don't really feel like I can breathe in a sauna, and I get toe cramps the moment I hit cold water naked. Travel expands your horizons, makes you learn things about yourself: I learned I would rather be warm and fully clothed, around other fully clothed women.

Miracles.

After such a colourful start to my Nordic adventures, things only got better from there. I have met some great people, eaten some nice food, and done quite a number of things. If you have Instagram, you can follow me at my regular online handle; if you don't, you can use this instead. I update Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in real time while I'm here. I'm just taking it slow and chilling out — a lot — a lot for me anyway.

Four Hours Light

"Tallinn, Estonia 028 - Catedral Alexander Nevsky/ Alexander Nevsky Cathedral by Claudio.Ar, on Flickr"

Somewhere between lying in a hospital bed, travelling, and coming back to a hospital again, I decided: man, I really need to go away. I knew that my default go-to place was India. Until it wasn't.

Don't get me wrong, I still love India very much and it still holds a special place in my heart, as the one country that has given me much, but in 8 years of intensive India travel it is no longer "a destination I know nothing about" type of experience. India is a home I go back to, in grief and in celebration, and always will; I just needed to flirt briefly with other countries and climes, and so I will.

Tomorrow, I depart for Helsinki. After that, Tallinn, Stockholm, Skinnskatteberg, Malmö, Copenhagen. I know I said in my previous post that I needed to slow down, and learn to live again — this is exactly my idea of slowing down. It sounds mad, but I have a plan.

Ever since the hospital, I've stopped smoking and drinking, even casually. Even if not life-threatening, the episode convinced me that I wanted to do more with my life, where lifestyle was concerned — it also convinced me that I wanted to see more of the outdoors. I've been cycling, running, and cycling even more. I will bring my bicycle with me to the Nordic states (yes, I know I can rent bicycles there… but. I want my bicycle! Not somebody's else's!), and I will get to enjoy the onset of spring in some of the best cities in the world for bicycle commuting.

I don't know what to expect: I know so little about that part of the world. The only thing I know for certain is I will be cold. I've prepared for it, but I've never been in that type of cold until now, so I'm just going to have to make it up as I go. I'll be completely shut off from work for a while, which will be the first time in some years. I will be completely shut off from the world, and the world wide web, for a couple of days, too, which will be the first time… since I discovered the world wide web. Work-wise, I'm excited about that part of the world as it's the land of Spotify, Angry Birds, Minecraft — some of my favourite things in the world — along with awesome salmon and mesost, which I also love. I spent 3 all too brief days in Stockholm in 2010, and now I'm going to be back there, in the company of friends this time with the possibility of a superb dinner.

I can't wait.

Taj Mahal Foxtrot

A note from New Delhi

Taj Mahal Foxtrot, namesake of the book by the same name by naresh.fernandes

Another new year, another bad habit: I'm late, again.

Just a few days ago, I was sitting at the back of a Toyota Innova, stuffing my face with mithai and chips — not at the same time — thinking what a nice surprise it'd be for my readers, to finally post, and on New Year's Eve, too. I didn't make it. I got busy.

The landscape outside my window was of rural Rajasthan: familiar. Not as brutal as the Marwar I came up close to, the last time I was here, at the peak of summer. Not too long before that I had arrived in Rajasthan with my young traveller tie-dye pants, led by nothing other than the youthful desire to do something unexpected, terrible and difficult. Things are quite different now: I have a ‘job' to get back to. No doubt it's a business I own and run, but I still can't get away for as long as my college summer breaks allowed me to.

Everything feels different. Only India feels the same.

This winter made Rajasthan different from the last. It was much better, with its cool — almost too cool — air, dry spells. Not quite as cold as Delhi.

Hurtling through traffic, avoiding cows and camels, stopping occasionally for a ‘sulabh' break — BYOTP (Bring your own toilet paper), the Innova, the "metal cow" of the Indian road made its way through all places familiar and strange.

We made a makeshift cinema on the rooftop of the small bed & breakfast we were staying at, shivering in the cold under bundles of blankets, with a dazzling view of the Umaid Bhawan in the near horizon.

We drank copious amounts of lassi.

We ate, drank and made merry — with our hands, of course, for to eat with a fork and a spoon is just like making love through an interpreter.

We didn't break up at the Taj Mahal.

I'm in a different place now. A good place.

Not too long ago I was hopping around some parts of the world on a series of one way tickets, with nothing to hold me down to any place or any one. Just me, my backpack, my cameras, notepads, my lone self in a hostel room for one, on the lonely (but fun) road to self-discovery. That part of my life seems to be a distant past now. The places are the same but the package is different. I could not go away for a year now, not without looking back wistfully at some people, things and creatures.

The things that bind come when you least expect it.

They were the crazy thoughts that slip into your head when you meet someone for the first time — at a bar, or at least that's how it was for me. The furious back-and-forth binary exchanges through various electronic sources. A text. An email. A few stamps in your passport and many flight tickets later, and you're settled. Sort of. Settled as far as you can be. You go to a city, rent a house, set up a business, own a dog, and suddenly you're one of those people boring hippies to death about how you love Singapore because you can go jogging at three in the morning and feel safe. Suddenly you're one of those regular people who can go someplace breathtakingly beautiful like the Taj Mahal and feel nothing except annoyance at the incessant crowds, and you're not the sort of girl who goes to the Taj Mahal and breaks up with the person next to you anymore.

No one ever tells you it's going to get better in your twenties.

They don't. Okay, so you can drink Yakult everyday before lunch and after lunch, and nobody tells you you've gotta eat a vegetable. That's where it gets tricky. No one tells you anything — you're supposed to know. About everything. About salaries and savings. About weddings and funerals. About businesses and jobs. About children and insemination. About… everything. It's up to you. You can drink as much Yakult as you want, but if you lau sai, you take yourself to hospital and you pay for your own medical bills. You can go through life never eating a single vegetable if you don't feel like it, but when you're constipated… well, never mind.

You amble through life, finish college, and if you're lucky, acquire some sense of purpose — I like to think I was lucky in that department — and then you try to make yourself a success. Somewhere along the way, one of your friends is going to die in an accident, another one of your friends is going to be diagnosed with a terminal disease, and there's going to be absolutely nothing anyone can do when faced with sudden mortality: something most of us have not had to think about until now.

I'm not sad or anything like it. Quite the opposite. I love what I do (btw, it's a combination of writing, speaking, and separately of selling and making apps and running a small company that makes apps), I wake up every morning the master of my own time and location — which is something I established a long time ago as a bare minimum for any endeavour. I will be where I want to be, when I want to be. This has meant 800km trips up and down the North-South Highway every other week, crazy meetings packed in rapid succession, and some sort of invisible third arm growth that is my iPhone and high speed internet connection.

Some mornings, though, I wake up missing the part of me that's long gone. That part of me that used to write furiously, take good photos, chase stories, pursue any trail of human interest in my vicinity. I'm not complacent or anything: I've just lost it. Like not knowing how to play a piano again from neglect, despite banging on it for 10 years: I've just lost it. I've lost my need to go to places, see things, talk to people, take photographs, write stories. I've lost my wide-eyed curiosity and innocence — I've seen it all before, my brain tells me, and there are precious few things in the world that leap out at me the way everything once did. Absolutely none in the developed world, which doesn't interest me anthropologically or culturally in any way, and a dwindling number in the developing world. India. Yemen. Syria. Places like that — full of raw energy, waiting to be unearthed. And in India's case, ever-surprising and ever-ready, no matter how many times I go back there.

Then there's the writing. Not having had the discipline, time or desire to write as often or as much as I once did, the year or two of utter neglect is leaving me scrambling to pick up the pieces before I lose it forever. It's difficult to keep writing when you've been stuck, as so many writers before you have been, on that one debut novel you've been hacking away at for years. On the bright side, I am at a better place right now to write — and finish — that novel.

So the point of all this, I guess, is to figure out what's next? Lots.

There's that book to write. Like an awesome Chinese soup on slow boil, it can't be hurried. I'm just doing what I know best, although I should know better. But that's for me to figure out.

There's the business, which appears to be growing. I've had the good luck to work with great people, so I'm excited about what it's going to bring in 2012.

Then there's the travel. I've been lucky to be able to visit all these amazing places and to know a few of them quite intimately. There's plenty of travel scheduled for 2012, some work, some leisure, and I may finally be able to get to a few places I've dreamed of going since I was a little girl. Places that were difficult to get to.

On the home front, my resolve to spend more time with my family in Singapore appears to be going well. On the home front in KL, we're at a good place although there are some plans (on my part) to move back to Singapore at some point this year.

I don't know. For someone who hates planning, I've certainly planned too much. Always the big picture, the big goals at the end of the line; never the small details. Maybe it's time to think about the details, too.

Health-wise I'm in pretty good shape. I'd let myself go — so typical of a long-term relationship — but I think I'm back at a healthy weight, build and BMI. Never again. Although the rapid and massive weight loss means I need to shop for a wardrobe anew, it's a step in the right direction for 2012!

I won't bother with setting any resolutions since those so often disappoint. Let's just say I have my eyes on the prize… or prizes! Lots to do, lots to work towards — a combination of company work, personal work, and community work — and I can't wait to get started. Though I'm currently nursing a flu from the brutal Delhi winter smog, I can feel it in my bones that 2012 is going to be a year without precedence, one that will blow the last 5 out of the water (and I've had very, very good years recently)!

Also, I've been going back to India really, really often. That counts for something in the greater scheme of happiness. Happy new year, everybody.

Lakewood

Thiruvannaamalai to Yercaud, 155km, though it ended up a lot more

I come from a place with no highlands. No real ones, anyway — the highest point, Bukit Timah Hill, is a mere 163 metres. Enough for families and joggers to work up a sweat on Saturday mornings; not quite enough to keep going. You run, you jog, you break up a tiny bit of sweat — then it's time to "descend" for breakfast at the nearby hawker centre.

Not so in India. Home, after all, to the Indian Himalayas. My first time in India was magical, and one I will never forget. As a naive amateur traveller at the time I had mistakenly assumed all mountains were the same. I had only experienced winter, once, in Mount Sorak in South Korea. I remembered four degrees Celsius was quite doable, even without too many winter clothes. I packed just as light, then, for the Indian Himalayas. On reaching Darjeeling I realized what a mistake that had been. This time, I was no newbie: I had been to India about fifteen times since, and knew a thing or two about its disparate climates. I also knew a little bit about its hill stations, and its rickshaws. Something in my body — common sense? — also told me it might be a bad idea to climb a hill station in an autorickshaw.

One of the things that people who know me are likely to say is that I like to do the very things that I'm told would never work.

Like driving an autorickshaw up a hill. Remind me to never do that again.

The last we ever saw of our route book.

The real story began the moment we left Thiruvannaamalai. The breakfast briefing made it seem easy enough. Take off at 8am, get lunch somewhere on the way, meet in Harur to make sure everyone was on time, meet again somewhere near Pappireddipatti so we could time our ascent uphill together.

Andrew and I were to get horribly, horribly lost, that day. For the first — and only — time.

Karthik left us that morning in Thiruvannaamalai for Chennai. Having just obtained his PhD days prior to the race, he was slated to move to Brussels soon after. Due to some bureaucratic screw-up, he had to bus it back to the capital for a medical appointment for his Belgian work visa, then head back to meet us in Yercaud that night. Not having a Tamil-speaker onboard was doable, but my team had gotten used to the idea that we could muck around after flag-off, have breakfast, hang out with locals, see a few sights, then start moving.

Flag-off at Thiruvannaamalai was as uneventful as it could be — I could not wait to get out of there. Karthik bid us farewell even before we woke up. When Andrew and I got to base we were pretty sleepy, still, having spent the previous night sleeping on terrible beds (and I on the floor). When the horn sounded and all the teams started for Yercaud, we headed to the nearest coffee shop to eat a quick breakfast (muruku and some other snacks) and to take swigs of coffee before we started properly. It must have been 8am, usually an ungodly hour for me, but the faithful were already awake.

Hungry, we had kothu parotta in Kambainallur.

At the coffee shop near a temple on Chengam Road, we looked quizzically at the legions of old, white people in "spiritual clothes". I looked even more quizzically at the firingi prices we were obviously paying here for muruku and kaapi. We read the newspapers, chatted a little, then with some reluctance got back into our rickshaw to begin the drive. Still no clue what we were in for. You know how some mornings when you wake up you drag your feet and don't want to go to work?

That morning I woke up and dragged my feet and didn't want to drive my auto. Off we went anyway. My job, since I was no good with driving these things, was to sit in the backseat and navigate. My tools? Google Maps on my iPhone. Google Maps in this part of the rural world was fine — if by fine you mean, places, villages, towns and cities actually show up, in English. The directions they came with were impossible. Being from the big city, you understand: if Google Maps screws up, it is the end of the world as you know it.

So we followed these maps on my phone, and the navigational directions they gave us. Except that we got hopelessly lost in the end. We kept going anyway, and the people we'd stopped for directions were no help. "Which way to Harur?" This way, that way, you go straight there and then you turn left… India is a pretty bad place to get lost in. Everyone wants to help, and does; except when you're lost, all that help is really no help at all. At a petrol station we got the usual "OMG, foreigners! Driving a rickshaw!" curiosity. And still no worthwhile directions. We kept driving, driving, following one lead after another.

We passed lots of farmland, and lots of construction. We drove over bumps, we drove on very awful roads. We found ourselves in a village where I got out, and gesticulated wildly. Yercaud! Yercaud! Which way? (Making a note to myself that I should have paid attention to what little Tamil was spoken around me, growing up.) "There!" — followed by the Indian octopus. The one where at least eight arms point in eight separate directions. If you're a newbie you end up following directions given by the person who made his case most forcefully and most convincingly. If you've been around these parts, it's that guy you learn to ignore. We kept driving, in some direction.

With another happy passenger. Fare: zero rupees.

More farmland, more cows, more farmers and more awful roads. The lead we had followed previously now led to what seemed to be a dead end. I jumped out of the rickshaw and gesticulated wildly. Is Yercaud back there — pointing at the direction in which we came from, so at the least we could find out if we were going in the wrong direction — or that way? Nope, all the answers came fast and furiously. It's the other way, just keep going.

I was driving on one of the smaller highways, emboldened by how easy it was becoming, when the highway suddenly led into a town, and the town led to lots of people. Remember, I don't really know how to do this — I'm just not good with manual gears, not yet — so I suddenly felt I could not control the rickshaw, and it was cruising along at a speed that was much too fast even for an small town. Andrew, who was chilling out in the backseat, was starting to realize this too.

I kept going anyway, freaking out and yelling "ANDREW I NEED YOUR HELP!" but by the time he scrambled and leaned over to take control of the gears, the rickshaw had already hit a motorbike. There was an old man on it. He fell. I felt like everything that could have gone wrong already had — and yet here we are, about to be in the middle of a large mob with possibly no way of getting out of it.

True to my projections, a large mob had formed around us and the old man. But they were not yelling, nor were they demanding anything. They gathered in large numbers but then some of them helped him up from the ground, another group picked up his motorbike and brushed off the dust, and others yet just stared at us. "It's okay, just go," the mob was saying. But I knocked over someone's bike and it's possibly not working now! "No, he's fine, you should get on your way." I tried to give the old man some money to fix his bike. He shyly refused, acknowledging the power of the mob around him. They were so nice to us, almost to the point of assuming that we must have been so unlucky to have had a tiny accident here in their town, even though it was my fault, that I felt embarrassed instantly. Knowing I could not out-talk the mob, not in a language I didn't speak, and not wanting to embarrass the old man either by insisting openly that he take my money for his bike, I made it seem like we agreed, gathered our stuff, and got back into the rickshaw. But not without shaking the hands of the man whose bike I had knocked over (even if it was gently so), and pressing a small wad of cash into his hands. We took off then, and kept going.

Then the phone rang. It was Aravind, wanting to know where we were — everyone had already assembled somewhere for lunch — so where the hell were we? Ask someone, he said. With no Tamil between Andrew and I, and sign language not cutting it for when actual explicit directions are required, I passed the phone to someone who spoke in Tamil to him.

When I got the phone back, Aravind calmly told us we were at least two hundred clicks in the opposite direction. Please drive back towards Harur ASAP. Still the villagers pored through our route book, and were unanimously convinced we just had to keep going, there would be a turn, go up that hill, and then it'd be Yercaud. I could see it, and I wanted that hill to be Yercaud, quite desperately. But of course it wasn't.

So we doubled back and drove off in the other direction.

One hour. Still no sign of Harur. We were, instead, in Kambainallur. This being a good-sized village, and by this I mean there was actually a place we could stop and eat a proper meal in, we parked outside a little hut where I saw something I recognized. An iron griddle. With food on it. Food being kothu parotta, one of my favourite childhood foods. This far out from home, and from the places I knew in India, having something close to home like kothu parotta was a wonderful feeling. It reminded me of all those nights I walked from my university hostel in Singapore to Little India to eat parotta, chopped up, with egg and chicken. I decided I would have the same thing right here in Kambainallur just so that I could feel we might somehow find our way to Yercuad later.

The people at the restaurant were bemused, to say the least. When I think of rural Tamil Nadu now, I will forever remember it for the sweltering, still heat beating down on our backs. No wind, no breeze — just the slow oscillations of a very old, very dirty ceiling fan. Tic. Tic. For half an hour we ate our tasty kothu parotta in the hut, and entertained the people of Kambainallur who were coming into see what we were up to. Yes, we are driving this thing…

I'm often asked, wasn't it dangerous? Dangerous, to the extent of possibly damaging life and limb on the road, yes — theft and other crime, not so. We usually parked our auto somewhere in sight. By the time we were here in Kambainallur we had gotten so comfortable in this part of Tamil Nadu we even experimented with leaving our bags of expensive camera equipment in the rickshaw, although well-disguised. Every single time we — as foreigners in this part of town — were treated with far more curiosity and amusement than anything we owned (which probably didn't look like very much, considering how we were dressed).

We clambered back into our rickshaw with a small post-lunch stupor, armed with cold Pepsi and Thums Up, and took off somewhere into the distance. This time we had a small feeling we might be on the right track. We kept driving, and noticed people were trying to flag us down. This time we were in the small country roads that cut through the villages, not on the state or national highways, and not on the larger arterial roads between the towns either. There did not seem to be any public transportation — nor any other autorickshaws — around for miles. We decided since we had just had a small spot of good luck (with the tasty lunch and finally figuring out which way to go), we would pass on the karma. We began picking up passengers.

All of them were going a short distance, usually to the next village, so each ride lasted an average of 10 minutes.

With our music thumping in our rickshaw, food in our bellies and cold drinks in our hands, Andrew and I started feeling rather invincible. We stopped for every single passenger who flagged us down. Each time, happiness as we drew to a halt, then confusion, horror, as they looked into the vehicle and found us looking like that. They all climbed in in spite of the incongruity. Not knowing how to speak with them we simply drove on straight, and they told us when to stop.

Lady we gave a ride to in Kambainallur.

First, an old lady near Kambainallur who wanted to go to her sister's house. She climbed into the backseat with me, her orange sari so long it flapped into my lap. She was mostly silent, being rather shy as some rural old ladies can be, only using her hands to direct how we should go to her destination.

After a few minutes, her curiosity got the better of her and she asked, in Tamil (which I understood a very limited amount of), "Where are you going?"

"Yercaud."

"By rickshaw?"

"Yes. From Chennai."

"Why didn't you take a train? It's so much faster."

With that, she pointed to the village she wanted to alight at, and ran off into her sister's house. I often imagine what she might have said to them. "I came here to your house in an autorickshaw, driven by an American and a Singaporean, and they were dressed like rickshaw wallahs." I often imagine that might have been the rural equivalent of saying you just saw a spaceship.

We kept going. We picked up at least four people, each of whom was just as incredulous as the last. One man had huge gunny sacks of spices with him, and he too sat in the back seat with me. Each started out shy, embarrassed, but burning with curiosity — each ended up wondering why we were doing this. At that point I was starting to wonder myself.

One happy passenger after another, we were finally well and truly on our way. Harur was in sight. Our team phone was low on battery, so we had no communications from the Mothership (the convoy) since the last time we spoke. We found that M., who was responsible for making sure all teams got rescued if anything went wrong, had been waiting in Harur for us for hours. His pickup truck was recognizable from afar, so we drove up to him. It was 4pm. All the teams started making their way up to Yercaud about 3 hours earlier. "So you better start now before it gets dark."

At Harur I don't think either of us had any idea we were only halfway there. It seemed such a tremendous accomplishment to have made it thus far. I started to feel relieved, like we could take things easy from here. We even celebrated with a 20 minute fresh fruit juice break. But we were to face a truly uphill battle.

We left Harur and made for Yercaud. We were so hot and dazed and frustrated by this point that even the relatively straight road towards Pappireddipatti, from which we would begin our ascent, was difficult to find. M. drove his pickup truck alongside, doing the convoy equivalent of kicking our asses, and we were finally in Yercaud!

Not so.

After 45 minutes up the hilly roads into Yercaud, a gear and brake problem we had been ignoring for the last four hours began to act up. The rumbling sound from the rickshaw was growing so much louder we had to pull over on the side of the hill. M. was not far behind, so we got him to take a look. Yet another 45 minutes spent not-moving, even though M. had really talented mechanics working with him, the sun began to fade. I have been to many places in the world and I'm supposed to be used to this — but it takes a huge effort for me to remember that when the sun sets, sometimes what follows is total darkness. And so it was. "Turn on the front lamps," I said to Andrew. "But… they are already on." They were just feeble, and really quite pointless. We could not see a single thing. M.'s team sped off and we soon lost them, driving in the dark ourselves. Our feeble lights did as much as to allow us to see when something was immediately in our faces, but not much else.

We were heading to the base hotel, but there was still a substantial climb to make. We were probably driving in the dark for about an hour before we finally saw a sign that said "Glenrock Estate" — our base camp for the next two days. Despite following the signs, and the instructions we received earlier, we could not find it. We would go straight, make a left bend, and then be in complete darkness again with no signs of a hotel anywhere near us. We kept going in what must have been circles in the dark. When we finally saw a bunch of lights, we knew it was not the hotel but the small village of Kakampatti. We pulled over for me to get some directions.

I ran into a store with a telephone, and dialled hopelessly for our friends. No luck — nobody had any cellular reception at the hotel. I asked a few villagers where Glenrock Estates was, and they said it was just ten minutes away, just up the slope we just came down from, where it was so dark we could not see the sign that said "turn right", so we missed that completely. When I got back to the rickshaw and to Andrew, he was on the ground peeking into the underside of our rickshaw. Disaster, yet again.

A bolt had fallen off the rickshaw some time in the last ten minutes. It could not start without this bolt — there was a risk the rickshaw would simply fall apart, if we did. But it couldn't even move at all. At this point I was beyond wanting to cry. Somehow I had some blind faith in how India always comes together for me.

A villager got on his motorcycle, and said he was going to buy the part for us from the garage 15 minutes away. When he returned, we found he bought the wrong bolt, and before we could even thank him for his help he got back on his motorcycle with someone who knew more about mechanics than he did, and they both went back to buy the proper part.

I sat on the ledge, wanting to help but really not being able to, just tired beyond belief. It's the sort of feeling when you are not sure when the work day will end — except in this case you don't know when the day will end, or whether you will get to where you need to be. I was fully prepared to spend the night in the village.

Suddenly, loud roars came riding down the hill towards us, and two men on quad-bikes came towards us.

"You must be Adrianna and Andrew."

I thought they must have been angels.

"We're the Bosen family, from Glenrock Estates. One of the village kids ran up here to tell us, quite breathlessly, that there were two foreigners whose rickshaw had broken down in their village. Since you were the only people not here yet, we assumed it must be you."

The beauty of my mother India is in how in spite of the chaos, things come through. If you don't panic, if you don't worry too much, if you don't allow yourself to be swept away by how different, and how insane, India seems to you, she will be good to you. Our rickshaw stayed in Kakampatti that night, but we didn't have to — we got into the quad-bikes with the Bosens, and they brought us uphill to their comfortable coffee plantation estate where we joined the teams around the bonfire, with Kingfisher and coffee magically appearing each time we wanted some.

Coffee. Beer. Food. A comfortable bed, even though it was one I shared with 20 other beds in a dorm, I was happy we made it. Now that the worst was out of the way on the second day of the race, surely there could be no worse moments hereafter?

The villagers of Kakampatti fixed our rickshaw for us, and even drove it to the hotel when they were done.

Yercaud may not be in the Himalayas, or any other majestic mountain ranges, but as a compact and quaint hill station in the Shevaroy Hills it was all I needed it to be, right there and then.

Aside: Visit the Bosens at their lovely Glenrock Estates in Yercaud! Great coffee and quaint place to stay.

Private Islands for Everyone

I've been spending a lot of time in the Philippines lately...

There comes a point in every traveller’s life when the experience of going to a foreign place no longer feels the same, nor as exciting as it used to be when she first began. Cities blur into similar skylines, restaurants and bars. Non-cities remain precisely that—good in small doses but rarely more. The magic of travel fades into a succession of airports, suited executives and boring business hotels, or a kaleidoscope of lobster-red package tourists and concrete bungalows on dirty beaches.

Even I could not avoid that fate.

Having travelled around many parts of the world on a student’s budget not too long ago, I used to skip perfectly affordable, mid-range hotels in favour of Rs100 rooms. I was used to travelling for three months or more at a time, and had a strict travel philosophy: “It’s got to be all or nothing. Either luxury on a private island scale, or whatever I can get for next to nothing.”

The Philippines, with its 7,107 islands, was especially appealing. Under-visited and often overlooked in favour of Thailand and Indonesia, the Philippines has a certain charm that sets on slowly, but lingers on long after you’ve left. It’s so large, with each region and group of islands distinct from each other, that it feels disjointed; and so disorganized and chaotic that it can be hard to pinpoint what exactly the Filipino experience is about. Is it about the colonial heritage of Intramuros in Old Manila, or the pine trees and mountain ranges around Baguio, where strawberries, ube (yam) jams and hot springs rule?

Why the Philippines is not overrun with tourists is the reason why it should be: It can be experienced in so many spectacularly different ways.

Download the PDF here

Read online

The Great Southern Trunk Road

Madras to Thiruvannaamalai, 185km

I've often said India never calls for me, she mostly shouts. With India, there is no moderation: you either love her, or you hate her to death — she never cares for you, or you can't get enough of each other. It's clear which camp I fall into.

I could have been in class, somewhere in Singapore, dying in a statistics lecture on an unbearably hot day. A message would come in from friends in Mumbai — usually about their plans that weekend — and I would not be able to work, talk, study, or function. Not until I booked a ticket to India. I could never explain it, I just had to do it.

It was like that again when I sat at the void deck of my apartment, decked out in my funeral whites, missing my grandfather terribly, not knowing how I would ever stop. Other people need Prozac; India's yelling, honking and shouting did it for me. It did it for me every time I needed her.

When the horn sounded at flag-off, we left Kodambakkam High Road behind. The gaggle of reporters, photographers, radio personalities, curious onlookers and well-wishers faded into the distance. Our destination: Thiruvannaamalai.

If you looked on a map, the holy southern Indian city is merely 185 kilometres from Madras. If you took a bus, it would take just under five hours. If you travelled by car, perhaps three and a little bit. Since we took an autorickshaw, our estimated travel time was something like eight hours. Or before nightfall; whichever came first.

It takes a while to actually leave Madras. The city is a sprawling mess of neighbourhoods, many of them neat and compact and middle class and manicured — by Indian standards anyway. We passed Thousand Lights, rode on to Cathedral Road, our music thumping in our DIY in-rickshaw entertainment system.

Near Menaka Cards factory on Arcot Road I made us slow down to stare at the ridiculous sign I have always loved on the side of its building: "Marriages are made in heaven. Marriage cards are made in Menaka". We strode on confidently — empowered with the sort of zeal only people who knowingly embark on insane adventures can have — past Mount Road, on to Saidapet. Guindy. St Thomas Mount. Chennai Airport. And then it was the open road from there, our first "highway" on an autorickshaw.

From then on we were well and truly on our own. We would lose sight of all the other rickshaws in the rally, most of the time, and only run into them when someone broke down, when we ran into another team in a random village, or when we caught up with the rest of them somewhere on the road. It would be up to us to decide which way to go and how to get there.

Relief.

Most mornings we were armed with little else other than the name of our final destination. At our daily morning briefings we were given tasks, and sometimes hints of how we should make our approach, but that did not preclude the fact that we would be waving our arms frantically outside our rickshaw most of the day, shouting at someone who was walking, or riding a bike or rickshaw: "Thambi! Chengalpattu, where? Left-ah? Right-ah?"

We perfected the art of speaking without words. Most times we received instructions with a bob of the head, and we replied and expressed our gratitude in the same way.

Thiruvannaamalai was not a difficult destination to get to. Excited and pumped with adrenalin, we raced our rickshaw through the Great Southern Trunk Road and then the National Highways like champs on three wheels. We stopped when we found the first breakdown of the day, Tim and Gary's, but otherwise stopped only to refuel, and to drink sugarcane juice. We got there fairly quickly, and without much incident. (Other than when we'd stopped for a train crossing in a small village, and a little girl came up to me to ask, "aunty aunty, what are you, white or Indian?" I said I was yellow, and drove off before she could ask me what a yellow person was.)

Chengalpattu. Tindivanam. Vallam. We stopped outside Gingee Fort to take photos of the fort and of the bulls with painted blue horns. Pennathur.

I have a love-hate relationship with India's religious, holy cities. I know how my skin colour, and the fact that I was born outside the structures and strictures of traditional Hinduism, means I will never encounter holy life in an Indian holy city the way it was meant to be; I will always be an outsider, always a firingi, in the religious places far more than in most other cities. It also means I see much more of the harassment and the stupidity that their most aggravatingly frustrating touts and pimps and drug dealers subject to foreigners, who believe we all come to India's holy places to seek darshan with the gods of drugs and sex, without exception, and must thus be given what we want: sex and drugs. In Benares I felt no holiness, only sexual harassment; I did not have high hopes then for Thiruvannaamalai.

Karthik at a rest stop.

By the time we found Chengam Road, with some difficulty, it was already dusk. The town's sacred vibe was apparent: in addition to the numerous temples, priests and sadhus, there were a great many white people in what I call "enlightenment attire", wandering around town. When we pulled in into the grounds of our first base hotel, a fancy resort along Chengam Road, we were tired, but victorious.

I could not have asked for a better way to end the Rickshaw Challenge, having had such a great first day; but something about Thiruvannaamalai did not sit well with me. The hotel's staff started off friendly and grovelling, but when they found out my team did not intend to plan to stay the night and spend a ridiculous sum on their "affordable luxury" they quickly turned sour. The cheap hotels we wanted to stay in were sneered at by them — we CANNOT stay in those hotels, they said, because "these hotels allow smoking", and "they serve alcohol and meat." I have utmost respect for teetotalers, vegetarians and non-smokers, but it's this sort of holier-than-thou attitude practised by a small number of you that makes me run in the opposite direction and do those very things you dislike.

So off we went, back onto Chengam Road, back towards the town centre, in search of the Promise Land: a cheap hotel with alcohol and meat.

We were turned away by many budget and mid-range hotels, because I was "gasp a WOMAN!" I was a woman who intended to share a room with a white man and an Indian man, but the idea was inconceivable to many. I was told by several hotels that they were looking out for me by not letting me stay there, to protect my honour or something flaky like that. Others said they were protecting me from the many bachelors who stay in their hotels, as though these bachelors would not know how to deal with the presence of a Chinese woman in a rickshaw wallah uniform. Dejected, exhausted, and still ranting about self-righteous vegetarians, we finally settled for a bright pink hotel with a decent fan room for a handful of rupees.

A shower never felt so good.

I slept on the floor, deciding it was preferable to the hard double bed shared by the boys, and dreamed a long dream about driving down the Great Southern Trunk Road.

Tomorrow, we would conquer Yercaud.

We Have No Dungarees, Saar

Madras, India

There are slower ways of seeing India. On a buffalo. On a "two wheeler", a motorcycle, stacked to great heights with assorted luggage until you can't see what's in front of you. Or on foot, "by walk", like a sadhu with no clothes on.

We travelled by autorickshaw.

An autorickshaw isn't too bad an idea on paper: it is, after all, capable of hitting up to 50km per hour. Which would be comforting if our speedometer actually worked. Instead, ours wavered meekly several times per day, mostly settling for the number 65. How machines lie. I wouldn't even call our autorickshaw a machine — a primitive piece of equipment, yes, but machine, implying any form of mechanical achievement or efficiency, no.

We set off from Madras one hot morning, dressed to the nines. It was a good idea before flag-off, this brilliant idea we had of dressing just like a rickshaw wallah. The previous nights we had been in Pondy Bazaar every night, looking for various items to complete our get up. We'd planned to dress as Super Mario characters at first. The mustache and beret were no problem, the theatre costume company we'd checked out earlier had plenty of those things. They were initially designed for Roman centurion characters and other popular roles, such as various Hindu gods, but we could appropriate those items to create our Mario outfit. But the suspenders were impossible. Even the salesmen at Saravana Stores laughed at us when Karthik described what we wanted. "You mean you want dungarees, saar? They're so old-fashioned. You cannot find them in Madras. They're too old-fashioned, saar, we have no dungarees." If a Madras salesman tells you they are out of fashion, they are out of fashion. So we thought we'd dress like a rickshaw wallah instead.

Saravana Stores is a bit like Singapore's Mustafa Centre. Mustafa scores better on the "has all the crap you ever need to buy" front, but Saravana wins on the "has an entire section of the store dedicated to rickshaw men's uniforms" front. We skipped over like crazy firingis, trying out different types of singlets (who knew there were so many?); a variety of khaki shirts, and patterned lungis. A few hundred rupees later, we were in business.

The author dressed as a rickshaw wallah with a tilak.

We took off from our base in Kodambakkam High Road, much to the delight of the local press. I was interviewed several times, very likely because I was a girl with a tilak on her head, dressed like an autorickshaw man (thereby bending gender norms a little bit). I smiled nicely and fiddled with my lungi, and put on my best I am a foreigner accent. All was forgiven. Foreigners can do whatever the hell they want because we're all supposed to be crazy. Crazy enough to be driving a three-wheeler for 21 days continuously anyway.

Among the many questions posed to us by the Indian media, the one I could not answer was, "What do you hope to achieve by doing this? What is your intention?" Insanity has no intentions. It simply happens. Likewise, when I first read about the Rickshaw Challenge five years ago in Wired, I knew I had to go. The insanity took over and consumed me until I finally bit the bullet and went for it.

Where we would live, where we would spend our nights, how we would repair our auto when it broke down (and we knew it would break down at least once a day), I had no idea. Everyone else had booked the hotel package that came with the race, but we were too cheap adventurous for that. If we were going to see South India the way none of us had ever seen her before, we would do it the proper way. We would drive an auto everywhere and we would stay anywhere, as long as it was close to a TASMAC and a good breakfast.

With that policy of insanity and inebriation firmly in mind, we set off for the open road, cruising on the East Coast Road. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Southeast Asia for Lovers

I have a piece in the Valentine's Day issue of Mint, the Indian paper. Read it here. I have not written much since my cover story in Reader's Digest Asia in July 2010, so I'm feeling pretty good about my "comeback". I will be writing more regularly, here, as well as for a handful of publications.

Two Hundred and Nine

A year in review

2009 was a year of many things: it was the year of change and death. More so it was the year of change because of death. Many famous people died that year; my grandfather, who was not famous, somehow also did the same. In April I called him from a phone booth in Beirut at US$2 a minute and had a 30-second conversation with him about minced pork noodles. In May I called him from London and had a 30-second conversation with him about minced pork noodles. In June they called me 3 hours after I landed in Kuala Lumpur from London, on the brink of my new life not far from home. 12 hours later I was sitting by his hospital bed, in a hospital 5 minutes from where I have lived all 24 years of my life, feeling like the last 24 hours of travel was about to change everything I knew about those very 24 years. By the middle of the month he was dead, and I didn’t get to see it. All I know is that 3 different people woke me up at 6 in the morning that morning and told me in 3 different languages that my ah gong was gone.

In Chinese familial taxonomy, the standing of every person in your family is relative and also language-dependent. Depending on your relationship to that person, and which linguistic branch is dominant in that side of the family, you call him or her a different thing. So your father’s mother is ah ma, your mother’s mother is gwa ma — if both sides of the family more or less speak the southern Min languages like Hokkien or Teochew, like we do. Your father’s younger sister is one thing, older sister is another; depending on their position among the siblings, and your own relationship to that person, each person is called something else. Like knowing whether tables, ties, or street lamps are feminine or masculine in French, everybody inherently knows this. But ah gong was only ah gong. To all of us.

I lived with this man and his wife almost every second of my existence. Then I grew up, travelled madly, lived abroad, and came home expecting not very much to change but instead everything did: no old Chinese man berating me about cigarettes and alchohol, no grumpy old man coming into my room at 3am every morning to check if I was alive, no funny old man who was a head and 3 foot sizes smaller than me telling me his slew of so bad they’re funny jokes that weren’t really jokes.

Then bloody 2009 took him away from me. We found out he was born on the same day as Michael Jackson. (Chinese lunar calendars and their ever-changing dates; we only found out when the date went up on his tomb.) A week after that, Michael Jackson died. Sometimes when I think about it, I think it was cosmically timed so that my ah gong could shine his torch at MJ’s face, laugh at his nose, and tell him that in Singapore we’ve immortalized him in a soya bean milk and grass jelly drink, after the ambiguous colour of his skin (and his famous song).

The rest of it in a nutshell, because they just don’t seem as important: I lived in the United Arab Emirates. I went to a camel market. Some camel trader offered 20 camels for my hand in marriage. I said no. I went to Yemen. Missed two bombs. Called my parents to tell them I was alive, and they said “okay, good”, because they were asleep and thought I sounded too happy for someone who’d just had a bomb scare. Happened to be in Pattaya and Bangkok at the precise moment the Red Shirt/Yellow Shirt April demonstrations erupted. Swatted flies with a tennis racket electric mosquito swatter while watching Thaksin on TV, with all his evil. Did my ultimate roadtrip: Beirut, Bekaa Valley, Damascus, Palmyra, Homs, Aleppo, Adana, Antalya, Goreme, Istanbul, London. Messed around in London for a while. Went home. Ah gong died. Mourned for a long time. My friends say India is my Prozac, so I went to Chennai, Fort Cochin, and Mumbai for a while to, well, “find myself”. Moved to KL. Settled. Got a dog. Started a business. Spent the new year with my love without having to spend a thousand dollars flying to see her.

2009 was good; but I can’t wait for this one to really kick off.

You Asians Have Two Stomachs

Some friends from Turkey came to visit this past weekend. I had a great time hanging out with Melissa and Emirhan in Antalya when I stopped by en route to Istanbul (from Damascus), so I naturally returned the favour and put them up at my place. After three dinners (not at the same time, albeit the same night), Emirhan gave up at the sight of three relatively small Asian girls chomping away at their 20th meal of the day and said it must be that we all have two stomachs, the other one being the one that leads straight to refuse.

Kuala Lumpur is a funny place. It contains no immediately obvious tourist attractions (not to me anyway) and the lay of the land is hard to grasp. It’s a sprawling mess of cities, townships, and everything in between; the lack of acceptable public transportation makes it hard to get around. In other words it’s a city not for tourists, but for visitors who have the time and ability to stay, sit around, drink teh tarik, and make new friends.

Unless you’re here to eat and have both the ability and desire to match us locals on our tremendous stamina for eating.

To say “eating” is a national pastime and obsession is not merely stating the obvious, it also woefully understates the true extent of the obsessive nature of this common indulgence which is the mark of a born-and-bred Malaysian (and to an extent, but less so, Singaporean). It is neither a task nor a hobby — it is a way of life. Every aspect connected to the act of eating is performed with loving care and preponderance; the final act of eating is nowhere near a climax, for there is no start, nor finish. Evidence: have an awesome lunch or dinner with a group of Malaysians (or Singaporeans), the ones who are passionate about food (almost everyone is, but there are some who are far long gone). Say nothing. Listen to them speak, and make a mental note of what their conversations are about.

I’d wager that 90% of the conversation is about food. Not about the food they’re eating at that very moment, no, not at all (beyond the expected “this is good”, “this is fucking amazing”, or “this is awful”, which pervades in the first five minutes or so) — it’s more likely to turn into a rare moment of Malaysian/Singaporean introspection and cultural analysis. “This is far better/worse/comparable to/cheaper than/better value for money compared to…”, the connoisseur declares, not with the pomp or authority of a food critic, but with a heart of tender love, “but I’m afraid to say the hawker in (insert any other part of town) is better.” He is bound to be accosted with fierce interjections, because everyone’s a passionate food critic in this part of the world, and sometime cultural and culinary commentator too.

If you’re truly lucky, and understand the local vernacular well enough, you might be witness to a display of shocking real-time food gossip, one that knows neither state nor national boundaries. We all do this to some extent — we know exactly how many of the famous hawkers got started, how their families fell apart from intra-family bickering, how the secret recipe diverged into dozens of different locations and took on their own styles, which one remains true to the original secret, right down to the very last minutiae such as “the chilli in the 4th brother’s version is inferior to the one made by hand daily by his 2nd brother. However the cousin’s newly revised version (open from 10am to 8pm at this other location), is by far the best.”

We even plan our holidays around food. I know my family does, and so do many of my friends. In fact it was no big deal to find that so-and-so’s family had just driven 8 hours northwards to spend a night in northern Malaysia, in order to eat wanton mee at that location, nor was it surprising that they would choose to drive back down not on the expressway, but through the trunk roads that would take them through certain other locations where they could, you guessed it, eat some more (hard-to-find versions of food we love).

From the time I was 15, I developed a strange habit of stealing my passport and bringing it to school with me. I had the good luck to have gone to school in a fine educational establishment. It gave me many wonderful things: it developed my writing abilities, and my school-time activities in those days taught me how to multi-task like crazy and how to play truant, but above all its location on Bukit Timah Road, Singapore, featured one untapped resource — bus 170 to Johor, Malaysia. I hopped on it frequently to lunch (alone, for I was an introvert — and still am) in my school uniform. Then turned back around and went home to a suburban estate in Singapore like it was the most normal thing.

Because it was. At least where I came from.

Moving to Malaysia made this even more unavoidable. I am surrounded 24/7 by fantastic local food, much of it towering heads and shoulders above the Singaporean versions which, despite sharing the same characteristics, are now mostly inedible from a combination of neglect, lack of innovation and tradition (at the same time), rapid development killing our long heritage of ‘street’ food, and other things like that. Say what you will about how the food is better here because it’s ‘unhealthier’ or ‘dirtier’ — I don’t care. (The free use of pork lard is a Malaysian Chinese habit I fully endorse, and begrudge our Singaporean hawkers for not indulging in.) I wake up most mornings in Malaysia thinking about eating noodles. I have travelled far and wide but I care for little in the world (with the sole exception of jamon iberico) than a good bowl of southern Chinese Southeast Asian noodles. bakchormee in Singapore; pork noodles, soup or kon lo in KL. And wanton mee, the northern Malaysian version of which I find far superior by far to our chilli and tomato-addled sickly versions down south. When I am not thinking of noodles, I am thinking of nasi lemak. The very idea of eating noodles and rice for breakfast is alien to many. No scene is more striking than one onboard any airline leaving or entering Malaysia or Singapore on a long-haul flight, when breakfast is served at 5.30am. Stewardesses, onboard Emirates, Malaysian Airlines, or Singapore Airlines flights, come by patting passengers on the shoulder with breakfast options, having to explain the only local option, nasi lemak, to those who don’t know. “Rice steamed in coconut milk… served with chicken curry… fried bits of little fish.. and… a big dollop of spicy sambal.” Of course, all the locals happily tuck into our spicy chicken curry coconut rice at 5.30 in the morning, while most other passengers think us insane.

So while we didn’t have very much time to re-educate Melissa and Emirhan on the wonders of local food, we tried our best. Since there are few pleasures greater than the delights of a superb Ramly burger, the sort that can only be found in Malaysia, we headed straight for one. Followed by satay Kajang. Followed by two rounds of lok-lok. (A lok-lok truck is a contraption of a truck that’s been pimped up to allow for the display and storage of fresh sticks of meat and seafood, to be dipped into communal vats on the rims of these trucks, each filled with boiling hot soup, into which one cooks your sticks of food in a DIY fashion. It went out of fashion (or was outlawed) in Singapore even before I was born, so I eat at one every other day in Malaysia and find great pleasure in it.)

By this time Melissa had already given up on the idea of eating anymore, but Emirhan tried his best. We had one round of lok-lok, rested for beer, and returned an hour later for more.

That’s when I realized how much of a stereotype we had all become. Scurrying to the truck at 2am, we noticed most of the sticks of food had been packed away for the night. Anxious, we all did a spontaneous mini-sprint to the steamboat — separately. In another moment of unplanned synchronized gluttony, we immediately took out our phones from our pocket… and laughed. We knew precisely why the other person was doing it.

We had to check the time the lok-lok truck stopped selling food… because… we just had to.

And then we ate. And ate some more. And went home and planned what to eat in 5 hours’ time.

That’s when I knew I am indeed native to this land. A gluttonous, perpetually hungry native.

The Torino Express

Beirut

Downtown Beirut was swanky. Saifi Village was strange. I had to duck into a hair salon and get my hair cut by a gay man in Ashrafieh to avoid the guy following me on his scooter, and the other guy trying to sell me drugs. All I wanted was a steak. Walking around Beirut, glamorous, fashionable Beirut, the party capital of the gay Middle East, where everyone, straight, gay, and in-between, was artsy or beautiful or a bit of both, was mind-bending. Here was a United Nations tank, soldiers armed with rifles. Here was a pockmarked building, riddled with gunshot wounds, the architectural reflection of Beirut’s own wounded but eternal soul. In the fashionably frumpy quarter of Gemmayze, I joined the artsy young Beirut set for a night. Saturday nights in Gemmayze’s many hole-in-wall bars and clubs felt right; in early 2009, this was where Beirut’s heartbeat was to be found. Every couple of years, that changes, according to my friend Dana. Like many Lebanese, she left the country as a teenager because of the war. Never quite settling elsewhere, she joined the permanent Lebanese diaspora in Montreal and then in Dubai. I cannot imagine what it’s like to call such a beautiful, vulnerable strip of land “home”; it must be hard to juggle so many identities. “The New York Times Travel page just ran a story about how ‘Beirut is back’. Bars, clubs, it’s so hip now, yada yada,” I said. “Oh, please. Every five years or so the New York Times “rediscovers” that “Beirut is so different from the Middle East” and “and how we’re a party town,” she scoffed. “It’s a surprise only to them. Every five years or so somethings blows up, the shit hits the fan. Then we’re okay, and we make the New York Times again. And again.” Meanwhile, a gorgeous gay Lebanese man held hands under the table with his strikingly handsome French partner, while Dana ordered us more beer and whisky and expounded at length about how weird it is that Middle Eastern culture places so much importance on what’s been between her legs. I remembered what a foreign correspondent once said about this city being every old-school foreign correspondent’s dream: you could interview the Hezbollah at lunchtime and count on foie gras, wine and beautiful people showing at your parties after, on the other side of town. I love this place.

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And All The Roads That Lead You There Were Winding

I came to the Middle East to do just one thing: see a part of the world that I felt I needed to learn more about. Its language was alien, but familiar – many Malay and Hindi words have roots in Arabic. Its customs and food strange, but not dissimilar – much of the Indian subcontinent that I love and call home was influenced, for the better and the worse, by centuries of Mughal rule. Dubai and Singapore had many things in common, and then not at all.

My months through the region are coming to an end. As I travelled through Dubai I fell hard for the United Arab Emirates, but not for its most famous, brashest city. I loved Abu Dhabi and I loved Al Ain. I loved the weekend drives into the desert, and camping trips to Oman. I discovered the lengths people will go to for bootleg alcohol, when liquor licenses and hotel drinking start to dry up (driving to Ajman to get bootleg supplies etc).

And as I embarked on my quest to see the real middle east, after giving up on Dubai – I was in for a treat. Yemen, bombs and all, shook me; it was like nothing I had seen before. Then my ambitious overland journey, beginning with Beirut. That’s now drawing to an end.

The last month or so that i’ve been properly on the road, I’ve navigated my way around Lebanon through Syria through Turkey, without once knowing how to drive a car. I’ve met ridiculously awesome people. I’ve had countless cups of tea with strangers. I’ve seen some sights.

And the sights I’ve seen, I’m amazed by the opportunity – and good luck I’ve had in seeing some of these wonders. From a castle built by one man, still alive, in Beiteddine, to the phenomenal Kraks des Chevaliers in Syria (the embodiment of all childhood castle jousting fantasies, says Theroux, and he’s right – again). The ancient cities of Damascus and Sana’a. The friends I’ve made all through Beirut, Damascus, Palmyra, Aleppo, Antalya, Cappadocia and Istanbul.

The long bus rides. I left Damascus last week and 36 hours later arrived in Antalya, but not before being stranded in Adana with too many Syrian pounds but no Turkish lira – and no money changer or warm clothes in the freezing cold of an eastern Turkish morning.

Done with my last bus ride (12 hours from Goreme to Istanbul), I now sleepwalk through Taksim Square at 7 in the morning, pleased to be back to one of my favourite cities in the world. One that makes me thankful for the beautiful people I call my friends, who last shared this city with me

But journeys never end, only their chapters do. It strikes me now that for all my complaints and grievances about the middle east, this region is truly special and needs to be seen to be understood. And I’m glad I had the chance to see it while I could.

If I could do it again, I would do a few weeks in Iran. But that will have to wait.

For now, long Turkish bus rides and what’s left of my Istanbul days – one filled with lots of ‘midye dolma’, wet hamburgers, fish sandwiches, Bosphorous views and raki when the sun goes down, I’m sure.

Then London. Then moving into my new pad in Kuala Lumpur. Then a new chapter in life, love, and adulthood. I think I have airtickets booked or planned for every month from now through January, though, so the adventure doesn’t end – it’ll be the last of the middle east and Europe for some time, but more awaits.

Time to finish breakfast, put on my heavy backpack, and walk the last 1km to my hostel. It shall be the last hostel in awhile – I’m not giving up backpacking, I’m just… Upgrading. Life, travel, trading in my hobo life for the chance of getting to own things beyond my baggage allowance for the first time in a while.

I’m happy.

The Country Codes My Girlfriend And I Have Known

Some people do long distance relationships. Most don’t.

Some can’t spare the time or the effort. Others can’t be bothered. Some refuse because they think of the potential heartbreak the distance will cause: the time difference will compound the distance, the new social environment will open up possibilities that exclude you, or worse, what if they cheat — as we’re told they will, since that’s happened to all our friends who’ve tried?

Or in the words of male friends, in characteristic male bluntness: “What do you mean you need to travel hundreds of kilometres just to fuck?”

(Some people are worth it.)

Not too long ago the idea of having to travel any distance for anybody was a foreign concept, having secretly ruled out relationships with dates who professed to live in the wrong parts of my island, one that’s 42 kilometres long. Too far north? Too far east? Too far northeast? East, at all? No go.

One year on. I surprised myself, but I’ve been seriously dating somebody and have the phone bills to show for it. And it’s incredible.

My girlfriend and I possibly run through more country codes in a month than some people do in years. We’ve practiced to high art the art of putting the other person (and/or ourselves) into various modes of transportation on various continents. For over a year I’ve had a weekly ritual of rushing to get into buses, almost missing them each time, and missing several on different occasions. Or I’m sitting in my balcony tapping my foot awaiting the arrival of a small car after a long drive. More frequently, I’m counting the trees on the North-South Highway and predicting which billboard will come next in each state. Her entry in the address book on my phone has the four latest phone numbers from the most recent countries she’s in. I have in my head, a running list of the best international calling cards and how many minutes each one buys me to the country she’s in that week; my Jajah.com account perpetually refills itself . Our friends have stopped trying to keep up with where we are and turn to our blogs, Facebook and Twitter for hints. Between us, we… need a shared Google Calendar to keep track of our activities.

One thing I didn’t count on was dating someone who sleeps as deeply as I do, seeing as that this was an impossible feat and that my girlfriend strives to exceed my expectations in every imaginable way. This means we find ourselves springing out of bed at 5 am in Borneo one week, late as hell for our boat ride into the dense interiors, and two weeks later we’re jumping out of bed in a fancy room by Trafalgar Square, about to miss a flight to Barcelona. She’s the only person I’ve met who can dress and get ready faster than I can when we’re desperately trying to catch yet another mode of transportation, which is no small feat either. Before I’m out of bed I’m sliding into my clothes, putting on my watch, combing my hair. This woman beats me by two whole minutes. (Being a woman with a woman also means you can use toilets together at the same time, anywhere in the world.)

As recently as six years ago I was sneaking out of my house to go on dates. This past year made sneaking out of my country for lunch or dinner, or both, a fairly regular occurrence. I’d be having dinner with friends and then getting into buses to travel a few hundred kilometres northwards, then heading back the next morning to make it in time to get a book deal signed. The coming year might see that upgraded to the enterprise of sneaking out of continents. Not that we haven’t had any practice: I’ve put her into planes in random Spanish airports so she can fly back to London to fly back to Southeast Asia. Just last week I travelled 400 kilometres to drink a milkshake and a bottle of wine, took off for Jakarta that evening, and from a couch in Jakarta watched a live feed of her packing her life’s belongings to get ready to move to London — the next morning. I’m now packing my bags for my Middle Eastern adventure, and something about the idea of going on dates in any of the exotic locations in between us is rather enticing, particularly the one starting +90.

It all began with +65, and the hot, balmy night in my city. We were strangers with impossible situations, yet hardly a month later in +60 you were mine. Every other week since that one, somewhere between +65 and +60 i find myself wishing: if only half the state of Johor would disappear you would be so much closer to me. One week I’m punching +27 to call you in Stellenbosch, and the next you’re telling me silly jokes about St Francis from a +55 number from your hotel room in Porto Alegre. With a surprise 6 hours with you in Singapore since it’s supposedly partway between Brazil and South Africa, and since you do seem to like popping into my city to surprise me.

I squatted by toilets each night in +88 to talk to you on Skype, when trying to win your trust, continued the next week from +62, but it was the country codes I didn’t have to dial that did it for us. Not needing to dial a prefix means you are here. Not needing a country code means you are next to me. The country codes I haven’t had to dial made, and shaped, us; they were those times we were finally alone, those times we were going somewhere together, those times I was waiting for yet another delayed flight and you were by my side. It was those magical times in various parts of +66, in deserted islands or in bustling cities, between +66 and +60 in a cabin on a 15 hour ride, that we found each other’s place and pace in our lives. Other times, intoxicated with too much tuak, asleep with half the village in our bilik: you were always next to me, on that tilam in**+6083**. Then of course, cycling adventures in +34, after +33, +44.

To put things into perspective the 10 000 kilometres between us means we you are only 20 times further from me than you usually are, and soon that will half to merely 5000. I can’t talk to you without shouting into a computer or pressing a million calling card digits followed by # followed by country code#city code#yournumber#, and you’re not here for dinner 95% of the time. Why this works, I think, is because the 5% of the time in which we are having dinner, in which there are no country codes needed, no matter where in the world dinner or conversation is for that particular date, we are a hundred and twenty percent about the big things. What life brings, what careers we build, the places we will travel to, and the future; our place, in all of this, the things we will do and places we will go together. Why this works is we actually end up doing these things, and going to these places, even when we least expect it. In the other 95% of the time I sometimes potter to my telephone forgetting I’ve run out of phone credit to call you at your latest prefix, but know anyway it doesn’t matter where we are or what you’re doing at that exact moment in time. Because when it’s time to get into planes it’s to come home to you.

Because this works, with or without a country code, and it’s one of those improbable things and combinations you never think of but that work out to be the best idea. Like chocolate and potato chips, peanut butter and ice cream, you and me. Us, the world, and all these possibilities.

Peanut Butter, This What?

postcard from Banten

I never learn.

If there are two items you must not forget when travelling, they are your universal travel adapter and your watch.

I keep forgetting either one but that is seldom a problem. Forgetting just a travel adapter means you can tell time with the other essential item, the watch; forgetting the watch but having the adapter means you can tell the time with your mobile phone, iPod, or computer.

I had neither this time.

And so it was that I woke up on Thursday morning with a jolt. I had a flight and it was one I could not miss: I had a dinner appointment in another country. Not having a travel adapter meant my phone was dead for days and I therefore couldn’t inform my dinner date of any changes in the plan; the only alternative then was to make it for dinner. Not knowing what time it was I leaped out of a sofa in downtown Jakarta and sped into the bathroom, having stripped fully and redressed entirely in the 5 steps it took to get there, swept all my toiletries off the bathroom counter, administering the contents of these toiletries on my face and mouth before they got into the bag, relieved myself concurrently, and was out of the house (also having checked three times that I didn’t leave any thing behind, which would be disastrous: I don’t have the key into this apartment) exactly four minutes since I woke up with a jolt.

Downstairs at the foyer I cut the line and jumped into a taxi still worried I might miss my flight. It was 11 am.

On checking my flight ticket I realized I was, for the first time, grossly early for a 2.55 pm flight. At least that gave me enough time to get through the predictably unpredictable Jakarta traffic.

By 11.45 am I was at Soekarno-Hatta airport. If you’ve ever been there you know how that airport does not in any way resemble the airport of the capital city of the fourth most populous country in the world. The way it’s built it looks like someone took a bunch of the dullest looking Lego bricks and lined it up in a row. At each break between a set of bricks someone else started labelling them: International, terminal A, B. Domestic, terminal C, D. You can only enter the airport if you have a boarding pass and a passport, everyone else had to clamber up some steps to the Waving Gallery. The only thing you can do at the terminal is check in. The international terminal is too crowded; it makes you sprint from place to place looking for where you’re supposed to be, before going through another hurdle (to pay fiskal, 1 million rupiah for Indonesians, 100 000 rupiah for everyone else), then getting into the grotesquely long passport control lines. The domestic terminal is far more sedate and cuts to the chase. You enter the terminal; look at the screen; the check in rows are 5 feet in front of you. You check in your bags, then walk 100m to pay fiskal (30 000 rupiah, domestic). Then you get on the plane. I have seen airports in small tribal town India that work and look better. Guwahati airport in Assam, for example, is light years more advanced.

But never mind all that because Soekarno-Hatta airport has a Krispy Kreme outlet — outside, as all the shops are.

While attempting to check in early I notice my flight had been delayed to 4.15 pm. I take to delays with a certain degree of nonchalance that only experience with budget airlines and Indian trains can afford. I sit at a restaurant eating overpriced soto babat, and only because A&W Indonesia doesn’t have curly fries, and talk to strangers. One man sitting next to me with an Eee PC tells me he is Vietnamese American and is travelling the world; he’d quit his job, but as a world class backgammon player… plays backgammon online and makes more money from that than some investment bankers I know. We both have not showered in many hours and as solo travellers, need each other: to watch our things when we go to the toilet to wash our faces.

When it was time to check in for my flight at the new timing, I roll my trolley all the way back to the domestic terminal. The screen has been saying “retimed: 4.15 pm” all this while. Announcements are impossible to hear in this airport, if they exist at all. While trying to check in I find out my flight… berangkat! Departed. At the old time. It wasn’t delayed after all. Although the screen still said my flight is leaving at 4.15 pm.

So I’d missed it and was put on the next flight to my destination… at 6.40 am the next morning. I was running out of Indonesian currency, and money changers don’t really exist in this airport (or they do, but in the most inconvenient place possible — at a location which necessitated me taking a shuttle bus there); I was getting cranky. I decided to stay in the village nearest to the airport rather than brave traffic back into Jakarta, preferring village life to hanging out at Soekarno-Hatta even though I knew my new friend the backgammon champion was going to be playing backgammon online at the airport until 10 am the next day. Every minute there was depressing.

Someone booked me a decent hotel in that village, and they also came to pick me up. When I arrived in Banten I felt nothing. No panic, no horror, just one question: what am I going to do until 4.30 am tomorrow? (Remember, not having travel adapter = no laptop and mobile phone.)

The hotel was decent enough. I’m used to hotels of all stripes. My accommodation preferences sway two ways: either extreme luxury of the private retreat sort, or bottom of the barrel. I mostly dislike everything in-between and would rather stay at a place scraping the bottom of a barrel than yet another soulless hotel. The bottom of the Banten barrel, this Sri Permata place, wasn’t too bad. I mean, I have stayed in leprosy mission guesthouses in Bangladesh, longhouses hours away from cellular coverage in Borneo, and box-sized rooms in Calcutta. And enjoyed them all.

It’s the sort of place where everything on TV is in a language you don’t understand.

In my case, everything on TV was in a language I understood in fits and starts. My grasp of Malay/Indonesian is shaky, not having done it in school, and with the sentence structures of a two year old and the vocabulary of a three year old, it’s frustrating to understand bits and nothing else. Though my dedicated efforts in reading signboards in Malaysia mean my abilities in this language are slowly improving (Me: “What’s_faedah_?!”, on an insurance signboard. Her: “Say it again! Hahaha!” Me: “Frown!”) it still counts for nothing. If anything at all I feel like an idiot. Watching TV affirmed this. I understood one in ten words.

So an Indonesian comedy program, which I’m sure was very funny to the native audience, sounded to me like this:

“Where!”

“Here!”

“There!”

“Who!”

“Mosquito”

(Audience: “Hahahaha!”)

Me: “There are many mosquitoes in this room alright.” (in my head, and in English /switches off TV) Though to my credit, I did understand that they’d written in a product placement for Hak Hak Bento prawn tempura: they’d erected an entire shopfront on the set and were discussing how delicious prawn tempura was. Not entirely useful linguistic skills, then.

By which time it was 5.50pm and every channel on TV was a call to prayer for buka puasa(break fast). I wandered out into the village in search of food.

Since I had 11 hours to kill in this place I picked a warung at the brightest spot in town — Cafe Rindu, right outside Indomaret, Indonesia’s answer to 7-Eleven. In a town like this, 24h convenience stores did not exist. They closed at 10pm. I had 4 hours to go in the bright lights of this warung.

Reading Indonesian menus are never too harrowing. Being from where I am I understand 98% of menus in Indonesia and have probably eaten most of it. It seemed like a day for_roti panggang_ (toast), but so many options! Coklat! Keju! Strawberry! Selai kacang! It didn’t seem like a night for chocolate, cheese or strawberry. But just what was the last option?

I puff up my chest slightly and furrow my brow.

“Kak. Errrr… selai kacang. Ini apa?”

If anyone ever asked me that in English I would react the same way 18 year old Yati did. Stumble, laugh, giggle, and not know what to say.

“Peanut butter. This what?” What is the world? Why is the sky blue? Why does my Indonesian suck? Why am I so hungry? What is life? Why are we here? How does one answer that?

Yati pondered the deepest existential question posed to anyone since The Answer is 42. What is peanut butter, indeed?

She made me some, and I understood. I understood the secrets of the world, and why we are here. To eat peanut butter toast at a warung in a random, faceless small town in Java. To do all that while attempting to talk to people in a language I don’t entirely understand or speak.

When it was all over she asked me to be her friend. In Indonesian, of course. (“What? Huh? What did you say? Speak slowly? I is from Singapur. me speak Bahasa Indonesia a little bit a little bit.”)

I wanted to ask her to leave me her address so I could send her a postcard.

“Please give me your maklumat.”

Blank stare.

(Maklumat = information)

“Sorry, please give me your alumat.”

Another blank stare and a giggle. I vow to stop trying to speak Indonesian if I get it wrong again.

(Alumat = doesn’t mean anything)

“PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR ALAMAT.”

Yati clapped her hands, giggled, actually shrieked and did a little jiggle. And wrote excitedly on my writing pad. In English. Name = Yati. Age = 18. Address = xxxxx, Banten, Indonesia.

I’m not used to girls behaving like that towards me at all, certainly not used to tudung-wearing girls in Java (or anywhere else) being so excited about me.

I wish I could tell her peanut butter is the world, but knowing my shit Indonesian it would probably come out as “in the world, peanut butter is”. Or “peanut butter, in the world”.

It was time to leave. And I had her alamat, and all the maklumat I needed. Now to tidur, and balik ke Singapur. Langsung!

A few Malay/Indonesian language elves died in the process of writing this entry.

(Incidentally, for years my mother thought I was dating a Javanese girl named Yati. And chose to call her Yeti. How that’s anywhere close to Z’s real name is a mystery to all of us. My mother was also fond of boasting to her friends that Yeti was the colour of _kopi susu_and like hitam manis — milk coffee, and black and sweet, which I guess ties into the whole abominable snowman idea — so I guess irrelevant Indonesian skills are something I inherited.)

My City

My city is often made out to be a boring business city, sterile and lifeless. Not entirely. No amount of protestation at how we’re really unique, though, is effective in driving home the truth about (some parts of) my city — how there are bits you can really love, if you look hard enough.

My city, tonight, started off innocuously enough, with a solo train ride back to the city from the airport. Wondering around the east, feeling like I’m exploring a new country altogether, one I only go to in order to leave and return to the country, before running back towards the familiarity of the places I know and the places I love.

Little India was my first love. It was here where I wandered about, as a kid visiting relations, demanding ice cream and discovering kulfi, my first taste of something new, different, bold — pistachio, spices, cream, all the better to quench the heat. Then as a teenager, discovering the back roads of Little India, talking to everybody, wandering into every shop; how I can always count on being fed for free by Indian hawker families who now treat me as their own niece, how after twenty years, I am still in awe, still finding new places, new tastes, and new people. Then going to places like Triplicane, Chennai, and feeling entirely in my element, knowing where to find things and occasionally, what to say.

Then Arab Street, adjacent, separated only by that canal. It is a walk I make often, in either direction, past the thieves’ market at Sungei Road where I followed my father to as a child, complaining, sweating under the heat looking at old, dirty things and deciphering rude Hokkien shouts they call Hokkien conversation, which I now love. Past Kelantan Road, which I know for the laksa my mother loves. Jalan Besar: that Chinese fringe of Little India. Kitchener Road, Maude Road, Tyrwhitt Road. The parts in which I find myself, often, thinking of as Scissor Cut Curry Rice, Pu Tien (Henghwa restaurant), Min Chung (Henghwa coffeeshop, amazing clams), and Northern Thai (what was once my favourite tomyam soup haunt, with fried fish).

My city, tonight. First off the train into the city, then Haji Lane, Bussorah Street, Arab Street, Kandahar Street. These are the streets where my memories, both happy and tragic ones, were made. Then that walk across that canal and into Little India; years before I was born my grandfather worked at that huge market in the area, now I know it almost instinctively. Desker Road — you know it for the transvestite brothels — I know it for Usman, the Pakistani coffeeshop at the end of the street, in bright blue. Shahi paneer, fried dhal, kadai chicken, and the first palak paneer that even remotely agreed with my by now demanding tastes for food from this region. They knew us, we regulars; after all this is where I once ran up a tab for the copious amounts of tea I used to drink here. Tonight I was here with someone more regular than I, someone who could actually speak their language (someone so regular they deliver to his doorstep when he asks!). My rudimentary Hindi won me plenty of points.

If you don’t know a thing about South Asian cultures, you might find Little India one big, scary, monolith (I still find it appalling that Chinese people here think there is a language called “Indian” and one uniform “Indian identity”). But you get the South Indian, Tamilian influence everywhere along Little India, them forming the primary Indian population after all; but the further north you get, the more diverse. Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants and shops, sporadic and not entirely large enough to form Little Pakistan or Little Bangladesh, but thousands of miles out of the subcontinent, co-existing in harmony. Tonight, I wolfed down my lovely Pakistani meal, had a never-ending discussion about travel in Pakistan and Mughal-e-Azam, then popped over to a Bangladeshi restaurant on “Bangla Square” to get us a misti doi each.

Cultures clash so often in this part of the world, I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore — but as I made vain attempts to show off what little Bengali I knew (this doesn’t take very much effort for a yellow girl), the owner of the place spun around from the hilsa he was scooping and said: ni zai wo de guo jia… zou lai zou qu ma? (were you walking around in my country, Bangladesh?), and was happy I’d been to his “native” (Rongpur). He apparently worked in Taipei for a while, and his Mandarin was probably as bad good as my Bengali. But still. The misti doi was great. The misti doi made me ache a little for the subcontinent. As a parting shot, I took a stab in the dark and asked if he would know where I could buy Hemanta Mukhopadhyay’s Bangla music. This being Little India, after all, he shouted out of his shop — someone came running by waving a TV controller about shouting “what is it?” — and promptly led me away to a little cornershop in an alley. The name? Dhaka Corner. They had my Mukhopadhyay, as well as the Ornob album I wanted, and recommended a new Bangladeshi popstar called Habib, who really is excellent. All this, just a stone’s throw away from where I spend so much of my time, Mustafa Centre. So in one evening alone, I had dinner at a Pakistani restaurant with a Nepali boy and some Chinese friends (and generally felt like we were showing them around a new country), bought misti doi from a Chinese-speaking Bangladeshi, found the Bengali music I’ve wanted for ages, then long conversations about Lahore with random intriguing Pakistanis.

Some nights, I really love my city. Tonight was one of them.

Chasing the Monsoon

Where I dig through my archives and repost the stuff I like. This is from 2007.

Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and all I will remember is driving up, around, up, around, up, around, in the swirling clouds as the rain lashed at my windows and I feared for my life, balanced so daintily in this tin can navigating itself on the hairpin road. This being Meghalaya, where everyone loves their rock ‘n’ roll, Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” blasted from this tin can while I said a little prayer.

The purpose for this journey? To spend the tail end of my summer living out the monsoon in the world’s wettest (inhabited) place. If London gets close to 600mm of annual rainfall, where I was hitting up racked up 12000mm consistently, also the holder of two world records: highest monthly rainfall, highest yearly rainfall.

Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and I will still tell you the same thing: I’m not sure why I do the things that I do. Except that I was chasing the monsoon, that year and it just so happened I was paid for it.

We’d gone from my beloved Calcutta hurriedly, up to Darjeeling. I was eager to revisit that hill station with such a huge chunk of my heart before the rains shroud my beloved Kanchenjunga in the monsoon mist. I remember walking, walking for no particular purpose, just as it’d been the last time. Even in leaving, I remember driving, driving for no particular purpose. We drove down the winding mountain roads, stopping in Garidhura for a chai. In Garidhura a toothless man grinned at us, saying he’d been an English teacher for decades but hasn’t had much practice in a while. We only had time for a chai and a chai’s worth of conversation; then we continued driving, driving very fast, driving around bends, past tea plantations, past army barracks. Rapidly descending in circles but what the air took in altitude, it gave back in the freshness of tea plantations and the lingering scent of Darjeeling, my sweet, strong, Darjeeling without sugar.

But to chase the monsoon across to the west coast and down south — there was a quick intermission of the scorching Indian summer in the plains, by the Ganges and in the desert. Before long the three weeks of enforced vegetarianism had passed, and so had the worst of scorching Indian summer nights, there we were in Bombay. Expecting the monsoon to lash at Bombay as it had the past year, we quickly took off to catch a bit of the beach before the sea devoured it. Palolem, Goa. The monsoon had caught up with us. It didn’t rain but it poured for more than 15 hours a day — a few died in a neighbouring state, while they began to dismantle everything on the beach slowly. We were one of the last huts standing, still reluctant to leave, even though the monsoon had taken our electricity and internet and phone lines, and the sea crashed at our doorstep every night. A man stood in a raincoat knocking at my door at 10pm, saying he loved me and can you please come to Palolem in December. I broke poor Jailesh’s heart without him being ever able to understand why. We packed up the next morning, waited for the rain to subside before braving the journey out of Palolem and into Canacona. Even within the comforts of my air-conditioned sleeper bus to Bangalore, water went drip drip drip on my face, and unlike more natural elements, a broken air-conditioner right above me is more predictable than I’d like.

Ask me again in a year, or three, or five, and I don’t think I’d be able to explain how I got myself to Bangladesh just one month after suffering from a faulty air-conditioning unit somewhere between Goa and Karnataka. Dhaka, Sirajganj, Syedpur, Rangpur, Bogra. What I really want to know is why in the year of 2006, every restaurant costing more than a hundred Taka had simultaneously decided to call themselves “Armani Restaurant”. No matter what anybody tells you, remember that Armani Restaurant in Dhaka, and Armani Restaurant in the Hotel Anik (Residential) Sirajganj, and the Armani Restaurant on the national highway to Syedpur, and the Armani Restaurant in Rangpur, are all uniformly bad. Even if an organization hands you an open tab for food and drink and rest, steer clear of the Armani restaurants that every man and his brother-in-law’s-cousin-in-law-owns.

I missed the monsoon in Bangladesh that year, but certainly had plenty of flood victims to interview. One week I was sitting in an upazilla health complex between a man and his last toe (severe, untreated multi bacillary leprosy), the next week I found my monsoon in a mad taxi ride from Shillong to Cherrapunjee. Pulling closer and closer into where I was going to stay the night, strange romantic signs painted on the rocks before me began to appear. I will hold your hand in the rain, one went. I remember thinking: great, if only I had a hand to hold out here, and could do so without being blown away to Sylhet by this rain. Sohra, Cherra, Churra, Cherrapunjee. Sohra charmed me out of my raincoat, amusing itself with my feeble attempts at their language. I think it rained in Cherrapunjee every time the worst Khasi speaker in the world said ai sha dut laitilli, called someone khong, asked her for doh terkhong, and said kyublei.

But it didn’t rain quite as much as I needed it to. The morning I left Sohra, as I sped from Shillong to Guwahati to Calcutta and Bangkok, I think it began to pour, and I’m never going to be able to eloquently describe what it’s like living in a Victorian governor’s house suspended between one thunderstorm and another, the precise moment before the rain begins, how the clash of light dances across my front door and across my fireplace. How your conception of the basics: as basic as love, and what you feel about rain, can be changed by experiencing the wondrous rain in the monsoon in the world’s rainiest place.

Sudder Street

Reposting stuff I like from the archives. This is from 2007.

At the stroke of eight each morning, I awoke. All my days in India have always had purpose, and it was especially purposeful in Calcutta, my crazy, lovely, chaotic, I hate you I love you Calcutta. This was a luxurious hole in the wall, 400 rupee a night room — a fortune. One could live on 400 rupees (S$13, US$9) for two days, but we blew it on a room with two beds, 24 hour hot water and electricity, items of much greater fortune. My purpose that morning was to get my eyebrows threaded in the neighbourhood beauty salon (oddly enough run by fourth generation Chinese immigrants who look like they could be my aunts, but speak only Bengali and Hindi now), queue up at the Bangladeshi High Commission for my visa, and zip over to Apple and Canon’s little hole in the wall offices to have our equipment returned.

I opened my door and closed it immediately, an act which had come to become a signal to The Boy. All over the subcontinent, establishments of all shapes and sizes from the 400 rupee “luxury” of Sudder Street (like the one we were in), to 15000 rupees a night Park/ Taj/ Oberoi hotel rooms, The Boy, one of the several members of the entourage which you will deal with each day (The Boy, the bearer, the sweeper, the caretaker) is one of those inevitable legacies which outlasted the British Empire. The memsahib this time was not a colonial wife or daughter, but a scruffy yellow woman always dressed in tie-dye pants and a shirt which said “Om”. The moment the signal came, the boy would come to my door, and bring me a tray of coffee and tea, on the house. The boy in question here was about 25 (much younger than the Boy in Planter’s Club, Darjeeling, who was about 90).

As a veteran, one occupies your own space in the ecosystem of Sudder Street. Or perhaps an ecosystem forms around you. I had been to Sudder Street four times in two years, and was slowly settling. Before long I graduated from the fearful Oriental who scuttled away when approached by drug pushers, semi-giggling and blushing, to the old India hand who had the entourage of neighbours to meet and greet. There was the Spanish group, who huddled together eating omelettes. They all looked bronzed and supremely attractive. The French-speaking always occupied the same table at the Blue Sky. The Americans and the Britons were buried in their Lonely Planet India, a tome thicker than the Mormon Bible and in a sickening shade of blue, perhaps as homage to the pop-art kitsch Krishna on its cover. Everyone, regardless of where we came from originally, said “namaste” when greeting each other, “dhanyabad” in gratitude, subconsciously complementing these with that Indian head wiggle and punctuating our sentences with “accha” and “baba”. Everyone was either a volunteer at the Mother Teresa home, or was travelling for a year, or both.

A man walked up and down Sudder Street every afternoon and night, with a bag full of wooden flutes, looking so comical that you could make a Bengali arthouse movie (pop trivia: Bombay’s Hindi-language Bollywood is crass, commercial and popular; Calcutta’s Bengali movies are arthouse, obscure, and difficult but beautiful) starring him, the Piped Piper of Sudder Street. He would be leading a pack of backpackers and volunteers, playing his own wooden flute to classical Bengali songs. He was friends with the fruit seller, the man who stood outside the phone booth with a push cart hawking the best of Bengal. The fruit seller’s sister was a homeless 21 year old woman-child with a beautiful baby, and when we met we couldn’t stop talking. Each time I planned to meet friends at the Lindsay Hotel’s rooftop restaurant for dinner, I had to leave my room 2 hours earlier, because I inevitably ended up in her living room — on the sidewalk where she lived with her baby, just opposite the Blue Sky cafe. Tomorrow, she will sneak into a train on unreserved class with her baby, to go home to her parents for the festivities. If a train conductor catches her, she might give him half of her money — 10 rupees (S$0.35, US$0.22), but either way standing all the way to the station at her village.

After speaking to her, I might nip across into Blue Sky for a quick apple juice. The boys from Sikkim, Assam and Darjeeling who had to travel to Calcutta to sit for examinations or go through job interviews would hurry up to greet me in Sikkimese, Assamese, Nepali, Khasi, just because I was the only person in the room with the same skin colour. Embarrassed “Oh I thought you were from Sikkim/ Assam/ Darjeeling/ Meghalaya/ Mizoram/ Manipur” comments would be exchanged, then I might sit down with my apple juice to read all the Indian English newspapers available. The Occasional Orientals might drop by, sit at the next table, and gossip enthusiastically in that loud voice we love to speak in when we think nobody understands our language. I just keep very quiet, eavesdropping, wanting to hear what they might say of a place I hold dear to my heart, in a language only three people in the whole street understood. They’re usually terrified of Calcutta, terrified of India, and for a good reason — most people are. The world would be better off without hacks like us contributing further to its literature of chaos and its teeming humanity, so I won’t go into that; but if you love this place, you can be sure you’re very, very much in love.

I’m not sure why I keep returning to Calcutta — in writing, and in person. Is it because it’s my first Indian city, and that I had spent a month living there in Narendrapur, a little hamlet in its suburbs, showering with hot water the cook had heated over a cooking cauldron, eating rice cooked in mustard oil with my fingers and drinking tea in alleys with no street lights for miles? That wherever I may be, College Street still cheers me up, and the Indian Coffee House still amazes me every time? That their beautiful, poetic language is what I’d heard someone I loved once speak daily for two years, and its food was what I discovered and fell for, the same time I fell for and discovered a great love? That many nights were spent here in cheap hotel rooms, with Bob Dylan and the Arcade Fire for company, writing, and writing, writing some more and editing our photographs for print? I may never know.

I opened my door and closed it — but no Boy came to my room with a tray of coffee or tea. I walked a distance to get to my neighbourhood Bengali restaurant, but its cardamom tea, its katti kebab, its Kolkata briyani, was a sham. I’d come so far to see you, and you welcome me with acid rain, endless electricity shut downs, and drug pushers on my beloved Sudder Street. Like the great love I can’t explain — so I can’t explain you away. All I know is how here, more than any place else in the world, more than even my home in Singapore, is where I have loved, and loved, and fallen out of love, but like a reliable lover Calcutta never fails to cheer me up, even long after I’ve gone.

Hungry Asian Woman On The Road

Reposting stuff from the past. This one's from 2007.

I’m a horrendously bad sightseer and tourist, that much is true. You have no idea how bad I am. I almost never manage to visit any of the attractions of the city — unless they’re glaringly obvious and utterly compelling, like, say, the Taj Mahal — other than that, I really should take a keener interest in museums and palaces and memorials. Somehow the idea of traipsing along with my nose in the Lonely Planet, paying a camera fee for each of my cameras and an inflated foreigner’s admission fee, visiting places where my pictures will inevitably turn out with the ubiquitous Korean or Japanese or American tourist with a sun hat and sunburnt skin in the corner, doesn’t cut it for me anymore. At home my idea of torture was to be taken to Sentosa or the bird park, so why should it be any different abroad?

Before I’m flayed alive, in my defence I have a convincing excuse: I know exactly why I travel. It’s not to have the best shopping deals in the developing world, neither is it to rough it out or live it up in the cheapest manner possible. All of those are byproducts of my greater task — to eat.

I love food with an extraordinary passion only an Asian can understand. You’d expect it to be so if my entire life revolves around it: have you eaten? is an acceptable, indeed the predominant method of greeting. It doesn’t matter if you’ve truly eaten. Just bloody say you have. After all, nobody ever says, “oh, terrible”, in response to “how’s it going?” As a family, in our personal capacities and in all of our social settings, the extent to which we’d go for a good meal is mind boggling to the uninitiated. Think of me — and my family — as an extreme version of Asians who love to eat; it’s not just the good meal we’re after these days, it’s the mind blowing meal that drives us further and further in search of it. All those stories you hear about crossing the Causeway to eat a specific dish for lunch, and flying around Asia to satisfy a craving for roast meats or herbal soups? They were probably talking about us! My English friends were shocked to hear about that. To their mind, it was as unfathomable for someone to be so obsessed with eating, as it was for that person to remain skinny, as it was for there to be more than one such person, or to even have a family full of such people. They couldn’t even fathom the idea of going to France for a good meal over a weekend. Now, if France was as close to me as it is to England — I’d be there to eat up a storm by now!

Backpacking brings out the best and worst of national stereotypes. We inevitably end up banding with the Australians or Dutch or British or Canadian backpackers we meet along the way, and fall into that “doing stuff together” routine. I’d participate intently, in all the most important initiations this temporary alliance brings — especially in that inescapable discussion always taking place five minutes after meeting each other, the one about our bowel activities (“So I got diarrhea in Benares! It was really bad, out flat you know, 7 days.” “You were lucky 7 days was all you got. When I was in Dharamsala..”). Yet when it comes to sightseeing, I’m out of the picture. Minor temple? Palace? Sorry man I’ll see you later — I’ll be at a restaurant. In fact I’ll be at five restaurants today for pre-lunch, lunch, post-lunch, and tea. And I’m not exaggerating. My itinerary is vastly different, yet you can’t call it inferior. It depends on what you’re after, I suppose. I’m after a good meal, or two, or three or four, as I am with every meal I eat back home.

Abroad, my sense of purpose becomes amplified; you could think of me as a younger, poorer, less famous, Asian version of Anthony Bourdain on a Cook’s Tour. My segment would be called A Hungry Asian Woman’s Tour (notice the clever and subtle turn away from “cook”). Aided by spectacular research and some insider information, nothing can faze me. I have had life-changing experiences eating at culinary institutions of each city, such as Bangalore’s Mavalli Tiffin Room. I have traversed the lengths and widths of Thailand and Laos in search of the somtam (papaya salad) fiery enough to put a fire on my tongue and to turn me purple. I’ve developed an unfortunate omnipotent immunity to spice, such that I barely feel a chilli buzz anymore, and that depresses me. Like an addict with eyes glazed over, I’m indignant to find my chilli high. All the food in India and Bangladesh was not spicy enough either. Time after time locals advised, challenged, and urged: what you are about to eat is deadly spicy. I eat. They watch for a reaction. There’s none, just disappointment on my part that if Indian food is not spicy these days, and that I’m blasé about a supposedly terrible tomyam or somtam which has driven my Thai and non-Thai companions to the point of almost pointing fire extinguishers into their mouths, maybe I’ll never find food spicy enough for me.

After a certain amount of travelling in a certain area, you can’t help but feel fatigued by a certain sort of attraction a region has an abundance of. In Southeast Asia, it was wat-fatigue. In Europe, it was cathedral-fatigue. In Darjeeling and other Nepalese/Tibetan areas, I was ghompa-ed over. In Rajasthan, it was forts. Straight off the bus in Jodhpur, when the rickshaw-wallahs tripped over themselves thinking they could rip us off on a round trip to the fort, I turned it down flat. “No fort. You go Sardar Bazaar. Drop me East Gate. I go Shree Mishrilal. Drink best lassi in the world, accha baba!” I stayed in Jodhpur for 3 days, and made 6 stops at the lassi shop. We drank perhaps 5 servings of Mishrilal’s lassi each day, and brought 2 more back to the hotel. Then walked out of the bazaar to Shahi Samosas, best in Rajasthan, 4 rupees (S$0.14) for one, and before they were consumed we’d hail another rickshaw-wallah. “High Court Road, Paraswanath Khulfi”, for the most amazing khulfi (ice cream) you can have for 20 rupees. We never made it to the fort, but we certainly ate a lot.

It’s not all gluttony, but a firm belief that if you want to know Asia — know what Asia eats. Best if dietary restrictions can be put aside temporarily, because to be vegetarian in Southeast Asia is pure torture. Eat everything once, and forget about your developed world idea of hygiene. Sit out by the streets, and bloody eat. See if you don’t have an epiphany. If I get diarrhea, I first think: was it from a good meal, or from a crap one? If it was good, I would probably excuse the cook for the murder of my loved one, and diarrhea’s just the unfortunate side effect so will you give me one more plate, please. So at soi Texas, Yaowarat (Bangkok), we found Lek Seafood in 1 minute, consulted the menu and decided on items for 4 people within 10 minutes, the food came in 3 minutes and we fell silent, deliberating upon the most fantastic crabs, mussels and prawns that S$6 per person can buy. The food was gone in 10 minutes, in the most silent meal ever, as each person had a quiet revelation about why we were there. In Luang Prabang we eschewed the mediocre restaurants on the main strip (where each item in every restaurant was at least US$5), tired of the renditions of Western food and mediocre versions of local food costing an arm and a leg. Stumbling into an alleyway for US$0.50 per person you can have a vegetarian all-you-can-eat buffet plate in a corner shack; forging on, since vegetarian does not cut it for me, we settled on excellent feu ga (pho ga, chicken noodle soup). We doused it in fish sauce, decorated it with lime and small cut chillis, bought a whole fish and chicken from the shop next door, a big bottle of Beer Lao, and what an inspiring meal it made — sweating in a little noodle soup stall in a local market in 16 degree Luang Prabang.

Food Street (Bangalore), Lindsay Street (Kolkata), Ari (Bangkok), Petaling Jaya (Malaysia); the places I ate the best are the places I was happiest in. In a tiny shop in dusty Syedpur, Bangladesh, nobody spoke a word of English and I didn’t know what I was eating. But boy, the “cow”, “chicken”, “fish” (fascinating, the choice of vocabulary I learn when learning a new language) they fed me turned me into an instant convert in the school of Eating With Only Your Right Hand. In a family’s dining room in Mawmluh village, Cherrapunjee, Meghalaya (Northeast India), a family watched me engrossed in eating rice with fermented bean and beef and stewed pork, eating raw little chillis to go with my food (it’s a custom). Aoky’s mother thought I was so truly into Khasi culture and food that she believed I would have no problem chewing 2 betel nuts too. It was on that part that I faltered, though I’m sure if betel nuts tasted better, I’d be all over them too.

Now I’m hungry again.

A Bus and Chai Story

Reposting stuff I like from my archives. This is from 2006.

Rajasthan, at the peak of summer. There are no tourists around for miles, except the two of us. For a good reason too. Tell any Indian you were in Rajasthan in May, and he is bound to exclaim, “Vhat? It’s… hot!” And when an Indian says it’s hot, believe me, it’s hot. I believed them. I just didn’t care. Some people like it hot. Rajasthani “hot” means 48 degrees Celsius, or 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I went because nobody being around meant I got 75% off hotel rates, at whatever hotel I wanted to be in. I can’t help it — I’m Asian. The name of this region, Marwar, came from the Sanskrit root word, “Maruwat”. “Maru” means ‘desert’, while “Maruwat” roughly translates to ‘region of death’.

By this time I had a way around the Indian public transportation system, in any city and town I chanced to be in. I also knew this far out in the desert, air-conditioned Rajasthani state buses were non-existent. Besides, proper travellers took non-airconditioned buses everywhere, didn’t they? We were proper travellers. But even the Third World has its own sub-divisions. Where we were, was moderately more difficult than some other parts of the Third World we’d been in.

As our bus ticket was written entirely in Hindi, my nascent grasp of the language had not yet developed from “attempts at letter identification” to “actually useful application of language”, so with no knowledge of my bus other than where it was going (Jodhpur) and the time it was to be expected (6.45am), I had to depend on my auto driver to take me to it. He took us to the side of an empty road which seemed to stretch into the desert as far as the eyes could see.

We stood by the side of the road for what seemed like hours. We flagged down each bus which came by — none of them were marked in English, nor had as much as an indicator of where they were going. Jodhpur? We asked, hopefully, each time. After countless cups of tea and nimki for breakfast (there was a little dhaba near where we were waiting), someone frantically screamed at us: “Jodhpur! Jodhpur!” Together with what was probably “you’re going to have to sit among those chickens if you don’t scramble up fast enough!” We got up, and got a seat each, miraculously, at the back of the bus. The only acceptable time for bus travel in Rajasthan in the summer is between 5am and 7am, and you’d better pray that you get to your destination before it starts the daily heatwave by noon. At 10am, we were well on our way, and happy about it. Perhaps complacently so.

The bus stopped by a dhaba for a break, or so I thought. I dipped out to go to the toilet (or the hole in the ground), toilet roll in hand. Toilet rolls are bound to cause stares here; they are believed to be unsanitary compared to the far superior system of water. My embrace of the country had not yet translated to a full embrace of its toilet habits, I still needed my toilet paper. On the way back to the bus I saw fit to order myself two cups of tea, special (costing more at 2 rupees instead of 1; where 1 INR=US$0.02). As the chai-wallah pushed the two cups of tea into my hands, I saw the bus which was supposed to take me to Jodhpur — and it was leaving. Leaving with my partner, my luggage, my passport and my money. I was there with my two cups of tea, and 10 rupees in my pocket, thinking for a split second that if I didn’t catch this bus I might be stuck out there on a Rajasthani highway dhaba with no mobile phone and no identification papers. I ran — I sprinted as fast as a girl with two cups of chai in her hands could sprint. My partner’s attempts to stop the bus was futile, all she could do was shout “stop! stop!” from her seat at the back of the bus. The bus was so packed that even if she managed to make her way to the driver, I might have been married to a Rajput already.

My travels have assured me of the certainty of determinism, a higher being, and my place in the world as someone whose every step is, quite literally, an act of faith, guided by the divine. Because I actually managed to catch the bus, and when I got on I was relieved I had my two cups of chai intact. Now at the front of the impossibly packed bus, I faced the arduous task of getting my chai through the bus, led by the sole vision of myself sitting by my window, looking at the desert and sipping a cup of tea. As I made my way through the bus, people made way reluctantly for me, all the while shouting to each other in Hindi and Rajasthani: look out! Mad china-woman has tea that can kill! And indeed my tea could kill — I had two of them, and they were, in line with our geographic position at that point in time, the Rajasthani kind of hot. The Rajasthani kind of hot tea which threatened to scald anyone who was in my way, and also burned my hands as I held them.

I made it to the back of the bus, two cups of chai intact, after 5 minutes of mad chai-balancing kungfu. When I got there, Z seemed capable of snapping my head off at that moment.

All I could do was smile with relief: “Chai, baby?”

Before she could strangle me, the bus jolted while avoiding a truck, and I spilled tea all over her shirt.

Portraits Unphotographable

Whether it’s a long-haul transatlantic flight or a regional short hop, or even just a trip out on a local bus, the process of meeting and eventually talking to strangers, can lead one to use quick heuristics in sizing them up. Perhaps it’s our automatic mechanism to do so in order to pass the time, while travelling and moving, or that in the restricted space of train carriages, cars and buses, the lack of activity means we entertain ourselves by making up stories about other people, knowing we will never meet them again after you shared space and shared experience has passed. The woman across looking down — maybe she’s broken up with her boyfriend, lost her job, or is having a bad week, you begin. Before long you find yourself elaborating stories about these people, in your head, and these random strangers: soon you start to believe the girl in the school uniform at 11 am, when she should, by all accounts, be in school, is a truant. The inconsistency that is her presence in a school uniform, in public place which is not a school or school-related venue, leads you to draw upon what you already know, what you’re already familiar with, the joy of truancy. It develops further; she becomes a truant perhaps because she has problems at home, or maybe she’s just come from a doctor and found out she was pregnant, and perhaps the person who made her pregnant is a junkie and soon you ponder upon the incongruence of her presence at a place unrelated to what she is supposed to be. Then you catch yourself thinking this whole enterprise going on in your head is ridiculous.

I first noticed *Neha Sahoo* on the platform of Yesvantpur station before we boarded the Bangalore-Guwahati Express. It seemed straight out of a movie, especially a Bollywood one, or one not unlike a typical Asian afternoon soap opera — it was a typical teary goodbye scenario, with the couple glancing nervously at the clock every once in a while, looking frantic as the scheduled departure of the locomotive became eminent. I felt like a voyeur, watching them and imagining stories for them, yet I cannot help it and have no noble excuse to vindicate myself: I write. I eavesdrop. I peek in. I make up things while negotiating the line between fact and fiction, never succeeding. Like all seasoned Indian train travellers, Neha Sahoo and I both head to the man at the platform selling snacks — we know we’ll need it, while we sit on board our berths, waiting for the latecomers to settle in, waiting for our tickets to be checked, waiting to begin. Train travel is precisely like that, tentative and genuine. Tentative while we sit there waiting for something beyond our control, something as much physically larger than us as a train, to decide our fate, our punctuality in our next city, and our sleeping habits for the next two days; as genuine as Neha Sahoo pulling all her life’s belongings on board, while I silently fight with her for space under our berths, chaining my backpack tightly under seat 33. If farewells at airports are already as piercing as only those of us who have experienced them will know, farewells at train stations are in another league of pain altogether. Airport farewells have an element of closure; no matter how much we would like to dispute it, you can lose sight of what you’ve just left behind quite easily, if you let yourself. Train farewells, through the fact that you are connected by a railway line, most probably still within national borders, tosses heartbreak through geographical distance up into the air, making things uncertain though they shouldn’t. The emotions felt by this young woman and her lover were already piercing and intense, even to a casual observer such as myself.

At least with airport farewells there is no chance to see the person you love inside the vehicle which will spirit her away, waving her goodbyes, with all her life’s belongings contained in three trunks you helped to pack. Hidden in my upper berth in seat 35, I was a lone female traveller about to cover 2000 kilometres with only 1 rupee chai, a neighbour who will spend the next 36 hours sobbing and talking on the phone (chalking up huge inter-state roaming phone bill), and my Hindi language books for company. I watched Neha Sahoo’s still unnamed lover watch the Bangalore-Guwahati Express carry her away from the Bangalore in which they had spent 2 happy years together, to the Kolkata which will be her home from now. And in a selfish moment, decided all my farewells from then on had to be neatly and cleanly incised.

36 hours later, we pulled into Howrah station. I helped Neha Sahoo pull her three cases out onto the platform, hired her a porter, lifted my backpack onto my shoulder and walked off quickly without one. This was it, this is how it ends for us all — me, headed to Sudder Street for the third time, a career and a life on the subcontinent to be discovered; Neha, bound for Salt Lake district, for a new job in a new city, just to be close to her sick parents six hours away in Orissa.

Half an hour later our paths crossed again — the big yellow Ambassador taxi I had bargained down to 50 rupees to take me to my two dollar room, stopped in the traffic while crossing the Hooghly. I had come to Kolkata once in the winter, once in the summer, and here I was waking up with the city in the monsoon. I shut my eyes and let the lightly acidic Kolkata rain fall onto my cheeks through the window, which was predictably jammed. Always happy to be in Kolkata, my body adjusted itself to the city, the distinct aroma of Kolkata others find to be a stink, my linguistic brain adjusting to the switch in languages from Kannada to Bengali, trying to realign myself geographically from Karnataka to Bengal, from South India to the East. I saw her in another taxi, a few glimpses away, stuck in traffic while crossing the Hooghly too. The rain fell upon her cheeks through the predictably jammed window of her big yellow Ambassador taxi, though she did not notice: she was gazing out into the river, or what was visible of it. This was me, happy to be away from the city which had my comforts, my lover, my defining moments, in the monsoon on a famous bridge in an infamous city, seeing myself, my own recent pain in the beautiful Orissan lady I had spent 36 hours sleeping across from; a beautiful Orissan lady just two years older than myself. As our taxis diverged and mine sped into Sudder Street, backpacker central, and hers left for Salt Lake, upper middle class district, it also took her deep into a city which her heart will never be in because she left it back in Bangalore, on platform number five, at 6.15pm precisely.

Amar Shonar Bangla

Where I dig into my archives and repost stuff I like. This one’s from August 2006, when I'd spent some time in both sides of Bengal.

Nine in the morning, every morning — a chef in Sirajgonj district’s “only acceptable hotel”, the Hotel Anik (Residential), cooks me a breakfast of two parathas and two eggs. My decision to omit a dish of “vegetable” (pronounced “va-gee-tay-ble”) caused many eyebrows to be raised, when it was first heard, as if you could even hear cooks and waiters alike exclaiming in Bengali: “What? No vageetayble? Is she mad?” It’s one of those cultural idiosyncrasies, when it comes to food — waiters puzzle at how we can possibly eat roti or naan with only tandoori chicken (bread and tandoori, both considered dry), without a gravy, and leaving out any component of the rice-vegetable-dal holy trinity is considered absurd. Until we foreigners came along with our ketchup and eggs (sunny side up) inside parathas or rotis, rolled up, trying to form a pita wrap. Even India, so used as she is to hosting a wide, mostly eccentric array of foreigners for decades, still noticeably struggles to figure out her guests. The bashful new kid, Bangladesh, at 35 years of age, naturally has even more issues on that count. Especially out here in rural Sirajgonj.

I looked forward to Bangladesh with the earnestness of a long time lover of all things Bengal. Bengali culture, poetry, their towering figureheads — I worshipped people like Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen; almost melted and died of shock and ecstasy the first time I heard Tagore recite the Gitanjali at his Nobel Prize reception. I sat in the cars of my ex-boyfriends, as a teenager, often suspecting I liked the classical Bengali music which emanated from their fathers’ CD collections in the car, more than they did. As a familiar lover of Bangladesh’s cultural cousin, Calcutta, I felt the need to get on The Other Side of West Bengal.

I knew Calcutta’s accents, her dingy streets, and felt at home in her local tea shops where three cups of tea and three biscuits cost me only seven rupees every morning. I knew Calcutta’s history, her public infamy and private fame; I knew how she woke up and went to sleep. My SIM card was considered by the telco to be in its “home circle” whenever in West Bengal, be it Calcutta or Darjeeling, even in the states of Sikkim and even Assam; her street food comforted me, as easily as a cup of fresh misti doi did at the end of every meal. It is in Calcutta where I land, pick out the exact change for a prepaid taxi (Rs 210) then head for the hotel that is my home every time I’m there, change, freshen up, and go out and see friends. The staff at the Blue Sky Cafe whoop and rush up to shake my hand the moment I walk through the door, leaving the French volunteers’ pancakes to become cold. I wolf down a quick breakfast, then go to look for Sanju and her children, spending my next few hours sitting down on a pavement sharing a cup of tea with the family. Not entirely a scenario that is difficult to imagine, until you find out that Sanju is a beggar that lives outside my hotel, but who has never asked me for money. I connect with her for reasons I cannot explain, other than how she is 21, as young as I am, has two young children, and has the look of a fighting woman, the sort I look up to. If cities and countries are languages, Calcutta is the one I have learned well, the one where I have begun to imitate her inflections of speech and colloquial habits.

Dhaka was a shock, coming from Calcutta. Bangladeshi roads were smoother. The city even seemed cleaner. The air did not have as much pollution — an index I know from how the contents inside my nose at the end of every day were not as dark as they are in Calcutta. Everyone smiled, or stared. But there wasn’t time for Dhaka, we had to be shipped off to Sirajgonj, one of Bangladesh’s 64 administrative districts, two hours away. Sirajgonj was a dusty town not unlike the other dusty towns in developing Asia, the ones I spend so much time traipsing around. Only the very old or the very young could be found here; only the enterprises of family, and family business; no venues of extravagant leisure or recreation, no places for the young to mingle and socialize, for the opposite sex are not to mingle so freely. Cycle rickshaws happily stopped, even with passengers in tow, to stare indiscriminately at my foreign face — the passengers don’t mind, they want to stare too, a practice I attribute to how television channels in developing countries have not yet exposed their viewers to the Global Village.

It’s never easy to be a foreigner anywhere. To be a foreigner in a place with no tourist or business appeal, no culinary highlights or natural beauty, a place such as Sirajgonj, was simply to court attention with a capital A. For six nights we hid in the Hotel Anik, tired of stares, tired of the attention. It was to be in any village, trying to escape the mob by sliding off for a fag in a quiet corner, then looking up to find 200 or more people staring at you having a fag. Conditions did not improve even as we moved from one part of Sirajgonj to another, then through Bogra, Rangpur, Syedpur, Nilphamari. The same things happened with such uniformity: everywhere, people stared, hung around. One evening, after what seemed like our millionth village mob, done with work and done with shouting over 10 heads at a time trying to get answers from interviewees, my escape plan backfired dramatically. I had tried for a stealthy exit but before I could take my second step out of the village compounds about a hundred and fifty adults children had gathered to give me a memorable send off — children surrounded me, running alongside and behind me, whooping as I indulged them by letting my camera and camera flash go off in their general direction. Young disabled children hobbled around on their wooden twigs pretending to be walking aids, running much faster than I could have on two feet. My British colleague, still scarred by his country’s poor showing at the World Cup, decided that if the Union Jack could not be raised at Germany this year, he would at least try to make her name resound through the country of Bangladesh, and led the chorus of children in chanting “England, England”, even if they did not know what it meant. To them we must have appeared a duo of whacky looking characters out of a movie, who for no particular reason, decided to appear in their village to teach them a chant about England.

As “England, England” resounded through the village of Rudapur, I drifted away. My phone rang and a familiar voice I had loved said, “You’ve probably been to more parts of Bangladesh than I have babe, welcome home.” My head was bursting to say, “Oh? Apnar gram naam ki?” (What is the name of your village?) yet I had to remind myself I was here, sitting at 1.30 in the morning having a bowl of century egg porridge at Crystal Jade — a sign that I was “home”. Not long before that I was sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Anik, bottle of contraband Indian whisky in hand, and together we sang a song. “Sometimes… I look into your eyes, I swear I can see your soul…”

Sirajgonj, the district that loved to stare, left me alone for the first time, or so I thought. A family standing on the roof of the building across from me caught wind of two mad foreigners singing James and Radiohead anthems on their rooftops. It was that evening that I learned to wave madly before they did, and returned the stare for the first time.

Other Mornings in Other Places

What I have noticed about being away, and still can’t shake off, is how mornings in each foreign place are so strikingly different from what one is used to; how different they are from each other — how foreign the word foreign sounds after a while. I like to believe it never hits you you are away until you wake up feeling displaced. Or that you haven’t really made a place your home until waking up comes so naturally and matter-of-factly there is nothing to it; until what was not your bed now feels like yours, and is even adorned with your peculiar smell.

It is brighter, earlier, in some places. Your mind races to make all the connections — back home, comparing, you might have been (1) preparing for school (2) relishing a particularly delicious dream (3) kissing your lover at the crack of dawn. And you think of how, back home, it is similarly bright only at seven. Exactly twenty minutes before flagraising.

Instead of being awoken by an alarm, Vanna’s motorcycle pulling into the front porch, does. He brings with him a motorcycle trailer to ferry us and all our bags to the bus terminal. There was no time to lose. We left Phnom Penh on our third morning, scarcely enough to have completed the tourist circuit in and around the capital — much less enough time to have stocked up on the US$9 cartons of Davidoff cigarettes. There was no time for contraband cigarettes for the Angkor Wat beckoned.

The Mekong Express ambled out of the city, and in the vicinity — as far as the eyes could see — mornings here, meant, baguettes; streets full of them. The more cynical among us say baguettes are only the good that French rule had left to Indochina. Well before noon we are midway there, when I notice for the first time on the road in Southeast and South Asia, that I have not given any thought to the condition of the road I am travelling on; either because the roads have improved, or I am used to them by this time. Instead, I happily recline ten degrees, smash into my neighbour’s lunch, and attempt to enjoy the on-board Khmer “comedy”.

My neighbour, a Khmer-Chinese man, laughs so hard at the ongoings onscreen, culminating into an already creaky seat rocking under his weight, when an effeminate man in the program is paired with a masculine woman. Then in a language I seemed to understand, he describes the hilarity of the situation to his wife, who is only marginally interested.

I shut my eyes and found myself at home in Indochina, somewhere between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (though before Kompong Thom). Where my mother tongue, Teochew, is widely spoken and even overheard in buses, when other mornings in other places see the same middle-aged men finding humour in the same bad jokes.

I recline another ten degrees, this time smashing into my neighbour’s lap. Curling my thigh around hers, I begin to think: I want every morning to be like this.

Roundtable

Where I post stuff from the archives, the stuff I like. This is from 2005.

Do you remember how when we first met, I thought you were Adrienne? You were in blue jeans, and a black, backless top. I was in what I used to wear years ago, and still do. Haha I guess things change, years pass, we move on, but not our dressing. Well I’m a bit drunk now so pardon my bluntness. I think about you sometimes. I often wonder if you do. I mean, of course, fondly — you know. We used to be close. I still don’t know what to call it, but I miss that. The uncertainty. The testing of boundaries. That streets had no name. The desperate feeling of wanting what you can’t have, the intense guilt. God the guilt. How intimacy was so innocent, how we were young. Adrienne. You thought I was someone else, who had the same name, but different hair. On my rare night out tonight I was with people I hadn’t seen in years. Classmates. People I knew back when I still bothered to dress up, before this jungle and this inanity became my home. People I knew back when there was you. Us going out in school uniforms. Disappearing. Years ago. When longing was young, and we were even younger. When longing was never wrong.

Let it go, pal, let it go. It hurts like fuck, sure. We can’t ever see beyond our pain or our loss. [glaring sideways for a second, then corrects himself] I’ve been there before. Recently. When you love someone so much and want nothing more than her happiness, yet she thinks you can’t give her that anymore. How can you go on, knowing you can’t make her happy, and she won’t let you try — knowing every moment you hold her, she’s thinking of that goddamn woman — [tense, tearful] It used to be simple, you know. Boy, girl, happy photos and expensive dinners. Birthday surprises and Christmas presents. It was simpler when we were younger. But at twenty five I suppose we know by now this is transient, that things run their own course. At least they’re — she’s — happy now. [wistful, sideway glance] And that should make us happy too. She was the first woman I loved. Only, perhaps. I suppose I should be happy to be the only man she’s ever managed to love. It’ll be our turn to be happy. [Inshallah.]

Semi-imaginary dialogue involving several people who have never met each other, all speaking to me in a bad dream: I had a part dream, part nightmare; we were kissing in my room and our parents caught us. I need to know it didn’t mean nothing to you. I had a luscious dream which ended too early. We were kissing in my room and our boyfriends walked in. Did it? We lit types — so obsessed. With symbolism, coincidence, signs, literary devices. Pregnant pauses. So obsessed with tragedy, and obsessed with obsession. You’re in love with the idea of being in love with me. And I’m in love with the idea of you being in love with me. Another lifetime perhaps, another place. Am I just a friend to you? It stopped being simple, the moment we kissed. You don’t know what it means to be loyal. She was my friend, you know, God, the guilt. She even hugged me. Come to London. Come see me in San Francisco. (Don’t come to my wedding.) You’re loyal, and well, loyal. You’ve been different things to different people, in different dimensions and places. In another time and place when this longing is never wrong. See me there, won’t you? I’ll dream about it, and hope it doesn’t end earlier than it should. /dream Did I mean anything to you? becomes a cry in the dark, though it’s no longer clear now from whom.

Down Monivong on a motorbike with you we went around in circles, lost. Moving onto Sihanouk Blvd it was the same, everything here was the same, looked the same, in this strange place. In the Trasak Pham of memories we were happily washing away the day’s thoughts — of Tuol Sleng, of genocide, of despots who died untried, of the white trash along Sisowath and starving children they literally kick away over chianti and foie gras — the lights went off. The whole street of Trasak Pham liked stealing electricity from this house, as our host had so graciously warned. The water stopped too. At least the soap suds were off, and there was always the prospect of sleep. With the air conditioning gone too, between stale air and mosquitoes, we chose the former. You tossed about, sleepless, bothered, while I fell flat and slept. I remember sleepless nights with you well by now. That night you stayed up to wait for Guy’s bike to pull into the porch. Many months, nights, later (we have no luck with electricity) we braved mosquitoes, escaping to the veranda at four a.m., telling each other jokes to stay awake until sunrise. We set out thus far without a purpose, returning with some. From Changi to Klong Prao, Arab Street to Trasak Pham, riverside to Thansadet, they say the woman in whose sides you seek refuge and who makes you laugh at four in the morning, is the one to want. In the right time and place when longing is never wrong, and we’re not getting any younger. Where the streets are never nameless, even if a little obscured. (I keep wishing I could write a little better about you, but as you know by now, happiness does not lend itself well to engaging literature.)