07 Tuesday Aug 2018
Posted in Petit Passages
At first it felt as though my old self would simply resume: that I was on pause, would start again should I tap the forward triangle floating above my head. I visited old haunts, striding knowingly, fingers trailing dry sandstone walls and withered vines, broken Roman pillars (it is winter within and without): Continue reading
27 Tuesday Feb 2018
06 Tuesday Feb 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
When I was younger I wrote a poem about tangerine dreams that filled the sky, and this one lemon tree atop a hill where lovers liked to meet. When I was younger still, but old enough to know, I filled several blank sheets back-to-back with an essay on the circle of life, having just watched The Lion King for the first time. When I was even younger, while walking in a mall with my family in Hong Kong, our humid stopover before reaching our new life Down Under, I lamented (rather melodramatically for a nine-year-old) Continue reading
06 Friday Jan 2017
Posted in Opinion
Tags
anxiety, career, happiness, happy new year, life, memoir, new year, new year's resolutions, personal, writer, writing
Every year, on the 31st of December, the old year and the new are separated by a flimsy second at 23:59:59. For me, not for as long as I remember but as the years piled on and forced me into the 25th anniversary of my existence with an unrelenting hand, that second is the loneliest, saddest, most hateful out of all the 31,536,000 seconds there are in a year. Continue reading
06 Wednesday Apr 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
The first part of my sexual awakening took the shape of Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Moon‘s resident overdressed douche who, while standing atop a crescent moon, would throw red roses with comic gusto to save the (usually crying) title character/heroine from her plight. Unaware of the now infamous damsel in distress gets saved by Prince Charming trope, of feminism and girlpower, my princess-obsessed, Lois Lane wannabe five or six-year-old self was smitten with him. ‘Oh, mother, look how handsome he is!’ I had gushed day in, day out, while brandishing shiny trading cards bearing his angelic image. Unsurprisingly, I wanted to be Sailor Moon, that immaculately beautiful yet adorably clumsy celestial princess whose fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes were, retrospectively, to blame for the onset of my inferiority complex: that rude shock whenever my mirror reflection revealed black hair, black eyes and yellowish skin instead of Little Miss Victoria’s Secret (ft. Bouncing Blonde Curls & Sea-Coloured Eyes). Things worsened when cruel, inevitable adolescence arrived and ushered in page after page of glossy models who looked nothing like me, but who looked good in everything…but this is a tale for another time post. So, I was five or so and I loved Tuxedo Mask and I was a girl and he was a boy and it was all easy-peasy.
Throughout high school, especially after my (re)discovery of boys at the age of 14 after a long, Barbie-fuelled hiatus, I continued to pine after good looking penis owners, be they effeminate Japanese idols or vampiric teen heartthrobs by the name of Edward Cullen (yes, I was a crazy Twilight fan, the type who had all the books, DVDs, T-shirts and merchandise). I had heard of gays and lesbians, I think, but not bisexuals. I had a very limited knowledge of the LGBTQ+ community, as it were. Straight was the norm, and I even had a crush on a string of cute male teachers (textbook daddy issues; pun intended) so I never even thought about my sexuality.
Then came university, and the second part of my sexual awakening. It took the form of one Ellen DeGeneres. Continue reading
07 Sunday Feb 2016
Posted in Petit Passages
Tags
beijing, childhood, memoir, memories, personal, place, poetry, prose, story, time, winter, writing
I remember wintertime in the city of my childhood in soft focus, a blur of red, grey, and white. White was the colour of fresh snow, pure and untrodden, all the way up to my little knees. Grey was the sky, the buildings, the exhaust gas and the thick coats of pedestrians, their heads bowed against the harsh icy wind and dancing snowflakes. And red was the colour of lanterns, of paper cut-outs meant to bring good fortune in the new year to the families behind the doors on which they were glued, of the fabric banners bearing slogans promoting environmental cleanliness and respect for the elderly. Red, grey, and white: a sombre palette for my reveries of simpler days, tinged with the bittersweet pain peculiar to fond memories of long ago. Now, a decade and a half later, everything has changed. But the memories stay. I am writing this now, on the eve of Chinese New Year, in a city far, far away from my childhood abode. Oceans away, I immortalise the winters of yesteryear in the hope that words never fade.
24 Sunday Jan 2016
Posted in Reviews
Gilles Bourdos’ 2012 biopic follows an ailing but strong-willed Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (Michel Bouquet) struggle to bring his artistic visions to life in spite of his deteriorating health. The painter draws inspiration—and much-needed spiritual rejuvenation—from Andrée Heuschling (Christa Théret), his last model. The film, set in 1915, also touches on Renoir’s struggle to make sense of his son Jean Renoir’s (Vincent Rottiers) perilous decision to rejoin the army.
On a broad scale, the film sheds light on universal themes of love, loss, pain in all its physical and emotional permutations, (be)longing, and individuals’ lifelong search for their raison d’être. It also poignantly juxtaposes Continue reading
the rose garden 