I spent most of May in London and on a holiday in Scotland. I flew to the city earlier than my partner to tie together some loose ends in my research on S. Rajaratnam, hoping for new leads but not finding them. I lived in London only four years in the early 1980s, but I’ve returned there regularly over the years. I still know how to get around. In my
Making Porridge
May 1, 2026
During the last couple of months in Vancouver, as winter’s moved decisively, although not without some backtracking, into spring, I’ve been cooking oats most mornings. During my annual health check-up in Singapore my doctor announced that my cholesterol levels were on the border between healthy and unhealthy, and suggested that I start by modifying my diet. Oats are one easy change to make. There’s art to preparing them, I’ve learned,
Equinox
April 1, 2026
We’ve just passed the vernal equinox, and days in Vancouver are already longer than nights. In the morning, we are woken by birdsong. After several false starts, spring is now firmly with us. Cherry blossoms are blooming, especially the later varieties, the dazzling white Akebono with just a hint of pink, and then buds gathering on Kazans, green with deep pink tips. Ducks and geese are pairing up. Eagles, too,
Stories of Selves
March 1, 2026
The rhythm of writing a monthly blog post often means that I skip over important events in my life. Last month, I wrote my post before departing on my mini book tour to launch the second edition of my short story collection Heaven Has Eyes. I thought that I’d write about it this month, but as I begin now the trip already seems firmly in the past. We dodged a snowstorm
Fog In Winter
February 2, 2026
At some time each winter, fog descends on Vancouver. In the West End, you walk out to blue sky and only a wisp of cloud, only for the mist to catch up with you on the street before you reach English Bay. Burrard Inlet shimmers with a patch of sunlight. Kitsilano and Point Grey loom out of the mist, only their trees visible, the suburbs seeming to have shed their
Exhibitions and the Stories they Tell
January 1, 2026
I’m preparing for the last of the transitions that have marked this year for me. I’m beginning writing this post in the early morning in our Bukit Gombak HDB flat. It’s not yet light, and the housing estate is just beginning to stir into life. The MRT has started up, and lights are beginning to come on in the flats across the playground from us. By the time that I
Reading, Rewriting and Rediscovery
December 1, 2025
I’m back in Singapore again in this peripatetic year in which residency requirements have sent me back and forth across the Pacific. After a few weeks, as always, it seems as though I’ve never been away. Our HDB estate has gone through repainting, and our block has been transformed from a palette of greys, creams and browns to a bolder series of blues. Beyond that, little has changed: the hill
The Lives of Objects
November 1, 2025
In the last few years I’ve found myself reading biographies and memoirs, filling in lives of philosophers, activists, historians, theoreticians and literary scholars whose work I read early in my career. Part of this interest results from a certain weariness of complexity for complexity’s sake in academic writing — as my powers of concentration seem to decline, I’ve become much more interested in historical rather than theoretical work, and I
Climate Anxiety
October 1, 2025
Days are getting shorter now, and mornings colder. As I write this, the temperature is still warm in the afternoon, the air clear, with just the hint of Fall. The leaves on the trees in the West End are beginning to turn. The linden on Nelson Street outside our balcony always starts early, with the leaves of a few branches turning yellow and then gold, while the others still remain
Jet Lag and the Dreams that Follow
September 1, 2025
The challenges of maintaining Singapore permanent resident status have meant that I’ve made more intercontinental flights than usual in the last year. Travelling from Singapore to Vancouver or back, you spend fourteen to sixteen hours on the one direct flight, and longer if you change planes in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Japan. Adding the fifteen-hour time difference to this results in a strange anomaly. Fly from Vancouver to Singapore, and