My 2022 Year in Reading

Today, Spotify Wrapped was released – not that I would know first-hand since I'm an Apple Music user (which unfortunately doesn't have its own annual summary) but it's all over my Instagram. I did have a quick look at my YouTube Recap but my biggest takeaway was that I watched a lot of K-pop. I'm…

My 2021 Cultural Highlights

Credit where credit is due: I was inspired by Theophilus Kwek's recent post about '2021’s favourite discoveries' – nonfiction, podcasts, newsletters, films, theatre, poetry – 'not so much to rank as to remember what an otherwise scattershot year has brought'. I posted my annual year in reading two weeks ago, but there were plenty of…

My 2021 Year in Reading

Here's my annual books-I-read-this-year post. I usually wait till closer to the end of the year so as to take into account any last-minute reads – and, in fact, I'm currently in the middle of Jonathan Franzen's CROSSROADS which is bound to make my top list, but whether I manage to finish it before the…

Shang-Chi and the New-Found Pride in My Chinese Roots

It's somewhat telling of our current sociopolitical climate in the west – fraught with heightened sensitivities – that my immediate reaction to hearing the first line of narration in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings spoken in Chinese was one of apprehension that someone in the cinema would yell out, 'Ching chang chong!'…

Navigating my East Asianness in the West (10 Book Recs)

In the immediate aftermath of the Atlanta spa shootings, and amid the plethora of tweets, one stood out that said something along the lines of: I can tell you that every one of your Asian friends is now reliving their own experiences with racism. When I read that, my first thought was, Oh, this is…

My 2020 Year in Reading

I read 172 books this year (so far). Compared to previous years, I deliberately took my time with each book in order to more deeply process and absorb what I was reading. It worked, I think. Scenes and characters and passages continue to live on in my mind (which is cool). I break down my…

Top 18 Song Covers

I first got a YouTube account on 29 June 2006. After 14 years of YouTube watching, I've amassed 1,440 favourite videos (also 1,168,965 views of my videos, but that's for a different post). As you can imagine, the majority of those are music-related videos. I trolled through my list to find my top 18 song…

An Homage to Toshimaen

Today it was announced that Toshimaen would permanently close its doors on 31 August 2020 after 94 years of running. (In its place will be built a Harry Potter theme park.) For many, including myself, this came as a blow. Not necessarily because I still frequent it, but because it acutely feels as if the…

No More Cookie-Cutter Christianity

Nothing has changed my perception of the Bible in recent years as much as Christos Tsiolkas' novel, Damascus. To call it 'Game of Thrones meets the Bible' is somewhat aphoristic; it's a creative manifestation of what us Christian kids used to utter to each other in hushed whispers – ensuring no adult was privy to…

My Army Days: Part 0

There are only two occasions when I've pulled an all-nighter: when I was in the army, and when I was in a karaoke booth. (Yes, not even for an essay.) The latter was fun, enjoyable, voluntary – replete with booze and hoarse singing well into the night and stumbling onto the empty streets of Tokyo…