A wellness retreat was not originally part of my birthday plans. It was a milestone birthday and at first I thought I should celebrate it by doing something big and completely unfamiliar. I imagined myself boarding a plane alone, flying somewhere distant, and proving myself that I was finally ready
Singapore only existed on my screen. I work for Singaporean clients and so it is constantly in the articles I write, in the photos I scroll past, and even sometimes, in other people’s memories. While it occurred to me to visit the place one day, someday, horrors of immigration failures
I used to write about you… Every poem, every story Were all about you and me Every pain and disillusionment Was a letter for you unsent Until one day… I wrote about the sunset And the moonrise that it never met About the mountains that stood in their quiet glory
This version of me learned how to choose herself without asking for permission. She left tables when respect was no longer served. Walked away from rooms that echoed with exhaustion instead of care. She responded in silence to people who didn’t deserve her reasons, and because sometimes, quiet was the
I discovered the wonders of a massage when I was 21. Too young to be tired but I was working a graveyard shift talking to strangers who’d brutalize me with words asking why their phone bills were skyrocketing. Massages were what I looked forward to on weekends, along with the
I didn’t realize how much I needed to leave until I started packing for the mountains. Again. Neil recommended Camp Awol when we were still deciding where to go, two weeks before the set date. After that steak and Sierra Madre view, we thought it was a good idea to
If you are given the chance to go back in time, which timeline are you gonna go to? No, this is not Before The Coffee Gets Cold or any book in that series. It’s The Memory Bookshop by Song Yu-jeong. This book is on the list of books I look
I used to dislike Thursdays. For me, it’s like the word almost. Almost the weekend. Almost rest. Almost… everything I was waiting for. But maybe it’s a bit unfair to Thursday because, hey, it’s not its fault it sits right after midweek and just before Friday the party day. Also,
What I went through since 2013 is no joke. When I was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, it felt like my body suddenly became a stranger. “MG” wasn’t just a medical term anymore—it was the weakness in my legs, fatigue that didn’t make sense, stairs that felt like mountains, and prayers
There’s something deeply humbling about standing in front of the mountains and realizing that none of it was made for me. Yet all of it was there for me. Seeing the Sierra Madre stretch endlessly in front of me felt so unreal. Because there she is, Mother Earth, in