I’ve always wanted to live on an island. It seems my whole adult life has been a series of trips trying to find that most perfect of beaches accompanied by a carefree existence perennially lived in flip flops and a faded t-shirt. And coconuts. In my dreams,...
“Mung bean”, I whisper to the boy in square hipster glasses dressed all in black and hugging an iPad. “This way”, he says as he checks me off the guest list and leads me to the elevator and an upstairs apartment in a non-descript corporate-looking building in...
Not long ago, I wrote a post about how I felt caught between two worlds – the Western world I was brought up in, and the Eastern one I was born to and now call home. If that weren’t enough, I’m a product of bilocation in my...
There’s something about that first whiff of salty sea air that gets me all giddy. Then come the maddening slivers of blue and green that you can barely make out through the trees, like a harbinger of pleasure. Just being near the beach, I can practically feel...
I love my parents. Despite growing up in a lower-middle class family when we immigrated from Vietnam in the 70’s, they indulged my every extracurricular whim. I remember walking to the nearby strip mall in my shiny new black tap shoes, hearing the clickety-clack of the taps...
I have a confession. I’m a bit fancy. There. I said it. I just spent $100 on a water cooler just so that I don’t have to drink water from a jug in the fridge like a plebe. People who come over always remark on how many...
Ever since buying a brand new pressure cooker from a friend for the princely sum of US$40, I’ve been doing slightly more cooking lately. By slightly more, I mean once a week. And by cooking, I mean throwing hastily chopped ingredients into the pressure cooker. The one-pot...
As a kid, my favorite TV snack wasn’t popcorn, peanut butter and apples, fruit roll-ups or any of the other typical “white people” snacks. It was a big bowl of canned lychees over ice. Anytime I had a whole bowl to myself meant I had done something...
A few weeks ago, I had my first taste… and I was hooked. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The cravings were powerful. Almost daily, I’d find myself going back for more. But alas, the supply had run out. I asked everyone I met if they knew...
The Vietnamese call this generation the “Instant Noodle Generation”, speaking to the tendency of people today wanting everything now and fast. This applies to everything from economics (Been eyeing that 64” TV? Go on and take it home! We’ll bill you later!) to family relations, ie. youths...