In the recent provincial election, I voted for the first time as a Canadian citizen. Then, a few days later, I was a ballot issuing officer at a polling station on election day, waking very early in the morning darkness. The first major storm of fall had arrived, what is now referred to as an atmospheric river, and it rained continuously for two days. When my partner drove me to

This month I’d planned to write about the place in Singapore in my life, yet it seems, on reflection, too big a topic to handle for now. Summer is fading early in Vancouver: it’s a little cooler, cloudy, with occasional rain. Squirrels are beginning to store nuts away, and the horse chestnuts are swelling in their sheaths. One or two vine maples in Stanley Park are already turning red. National

Something strange happened to me in late June. I was travelling with a friend, when an email arrived in my inbox. I first noticed it in the afternoon, after we returned from a hike in the Cheakamus River valley. I’d developed a blister on my foot, and I often think the little red notification bubbles on iPhone app icons on your home screen look like blisters: you want to scratch

In late May we flew to London, to touch base with family, both living — my sister — and passed on — our annual pilgrimage to my parents’ graves in Dorset. I spent a day in the BBC Written Archives in Reading, searching for traces of S. Rajaratnam’s broadcasts during the Second World War, and finding transcripts, correspondence, and more, leads which I’ll probably never follow fully, but are intriguing

We’re back in Vancouver, at that special time of the year. In our first and second week the last wave of cherry blossoms came, the kanzan cultivar, with its thick pom-poms of pink flowers. We had a period of cold, intensely sunlit days, and so the blossoms remained on the trees for a couple of weeks, only finally falling when the rain came at the end of the month. In

In the last month or so I’ve been considering, through thoughts and feelings, the place of writing in my life. In part, this interest has come from a series of conversations. I visited a former senior colleague, who is now approaching a time in life where health concerns become very real, who has been a creative writer in various genres all his life but, to his bitterness, now can no

It’s early February, and I’m caught up by a growing tug of time. In October and November, especially, there was a feeling that our time in Singapore was limitless, and that we had months ahead to explore. Now our return to Vancouver in early April is visible on the horizon, still very distant, but approaching, after Chinese New Year and the beginning of the Fasting Month. In the last month