Latest posts
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The Day Diari Maryam Finally Became Real
For six months, Diari Maryam existed mostly inside my head. Well, technically inside several places. My Notes app. Google Docs. Random screenshots. Voice notes. Late-night conversations. And an embarrassing number of tabs I kept promising myself I would organise later. For the longest time, it didn’t feel like a book. It felt like an idea…
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My Children Are Growing Up In A Different Internet
Sometimes I watch my children use the internet and feel like I’m looking at a completely different world. Not because technology has changed. Because the internet itself has changed. I grew up in an internet that felt slower. Smaller. Messier. You had to sit in front of a family computer. Wait for the dial-up connection.…
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The Friendship I Never Got to Bury
Once a year, I see a woman who used to know so much about me. We smile at each other. We say hi. Sometimes there is a brief exchange about the children, because that is the reason we are in the same place to begin with. Then we go our separate ways, and if you…
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Love Looks Different At Thirty
When I was younger, I thought love was something you eventually figured out. You meet the right person. You get married. You learn each other’s likes and dislikes. And then somehow, everything settles into place. A decade into marriage, I’ve learnt that’s not how it works at all. The funny thing about marriage is that…
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The Adults Were Tired Too
Growing up, I thought adults had everything figured out. They were the decision-makers. The rule-makers. The people who always seemed to know what was right and what was wrong. As a child, it never occurred to me that they might be struggling too. I spent much of my childhood being raised by my grandparents. My…
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The Joy Of Being Bad At Something Again
If you had told sixteen-year-old me that I would spend my thirties learning Korean, I probably would have laughed. Like many millennials who grew up during the second-generation K-pop era, Korean music was simply part of the background of my teenage years. There was Super Junior. BigBang. Wonder Girls. SHINee. Girls’ Generation. Then 2NE1 debuted.…
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I Was Just Clearing My Weverse Notifications.
I wasn’t looking for life advice. In fact, I was doing the complete opposite. It was late at night, and I was simply trying to clear the mountain of Weverse notifications that had quietly accumulated over the past few days. I thought I would open a replay, watch a few minutes, smile at the members’…
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The Lessons June Left Behind
If May was the month I forgot to rest, then June became the month that reminded me I’m still learning. It felt like a quiet but persistent nudge, urging me to slow down and pay attention again. I’ve been a mother for more than a decade, and that time has shaped so much of who…
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Learning New Languages As An Adult
If you had told me ten years ago that I would spend my thirties learning Korean, I probably would have laughed. Not because I disliked languages. Because by then, I thought life would already be decided. Adults don’t learn new things for fun, right? Adults work. Pay bills. Raise children. Repeat. At least that’s what…
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Mothering Without A Village
Growing up, I never thought much about the phrase “it takes a village.” Because I had one. On my father’s side alone, there were eleven siblings. Aunties. Uncles. Cousins. Half-cousins. More people than I could keep track of. Almost every month, someone would be visiting or sleeping over. Mattresses would be pulled out and laid…