My brother would have been born on the 29th of February, but the Japanese doctor delayed his birth one day fearing a leap day would be considered too ‘odd’. (The number 9 is also associated with suffering).
My father couldn’t believe the news (he was walking Mexico then), for why miss such a unique opportunity?
My […]

Pictures of the Guatemalan sink hole reminded me of a story I once heard.
………………
There was a large hole in a park. A boy dropped his soccer ball. He looked inside and found no bottom. Rumours spread about the bottomless hole and people started to throw things inside.
Two people chucked away a broken fridge. A student […]

Running 5k with sniffles at a rainy Chinese New Year marathon was not a good idea. Babysitting afterwards with wet hair further set my cold. Now I feel ten feet under, as if I lost all my senses in the Guatemalan sink hole.
A study suggests that happy people are less likely to catch colds. But […]

A 330 feet deep hole (130 feet in diameter) caused by a burst sewer pipe swallowed 2 people and a dozen homes in Guatemala City. The pictures are astonishing.
In an aerial picture, a large, dark circle makes a shocking mark.

5 toe slippers.
Apparently, rebellious middle-school-girls wear them to school to show how “Nothing is going to get in the way of my comfort!”

After a long sky-ride, we are back to our reality of unread emails, un-opened bills in an exciting but un-furnished new home.
My heart is filled with good memories. My mind is busy with things to do. My body is ready to collapse. I will brush my teeth, stare at stereograms and go to sleep.
Stereograms […]

A Japanese astrologist once wrote, “revere your ancestor (in another words, god)”. 
We visited my grandparent’s grave stone. We washed it, presented it with flowers and insence, and gave prayers. 

There is something cosmic about death, I feel. It’s beyond our understanding, awesome and serene. Every time, I am humiliated by my efforts of trying to understand death, the cosmos or how my life relates to this vast […]

My friend Ayumi and I met in Kindergarten under a hot summer sun. She was wearing oversized white knickers, having forgotten her swim-suit. I didn’t think I’d be attending her wedding 22 years later, this half naked girl with the same name.
The wedding was joyous, teary, charming, heartfelt, everything that the couple and their families deserved. I sang a song. Ayumi cried. […]

Home sweet home. Air is crisp, food is good, times are ripe.
Our first day in pictures:

My mother at her pottery factory.

To renew a driver’s license (every 3 to 5 years), one has to attend a 2 hour ‘memory refreshment class’. After being updated with new rules of the road, we watched a chilling video about people whose lives were changed due to […]

We are going to Japan tomorrow to attend my friend’s wedding. An 11-hour flight. 5303 miles west.
We have a world map shower-curtain.

I traced a route with my finger from San Francisco to Nagoya, moving water molecules in the steam. The world felt a lot smaller.