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

A couple of weeks ago, I met up with two students from the last batch of undergraduates I taught, in 2017. They were now both out in the world of work, one teaching at junior college and another, after a brief excursion into the private sector, now offering tuition. We met in a tiny café in an HDB block off Waterloo Street, and I got there first, leaving the MRT station

We’ve been here a month now, getting used to new rhythms of life. The time we spend outside in Singapore is much less than in Vancouver: we don’t cycle to the shops or walk downtown. Here it’s the MRT or the bus, journeys that often take an hour or more. There are signs of change in our lives, too. I have a little purple coloured senior citizen’s card for public

In early October, we’re back in Singapore. Arrival this time has felt different from returning last year, on our first trip after two years of absence caused by the COVID pandemic. There hasn’t been that strangeness of the first few days, when you see everything with a defamiliarized double sight. Everything is instantly very familiar, as if we have never left, or as if our HDB flat in Bukit Batok

On Not Standing Still We’re now heading into September, and summer’s officially over. In a month, we’ll be back in Singapore, away from the rhythm of the change of seasons that gives shape to our lives here. In July, the days begin to shorten, but imperceptibly, a minute or less each day. By the end of August the change is noticeable, darkness galloping forward, with the sun now setting before

In the last month I’ve been working my way back into academic writing. I’ve been blessed with time on the project on S. Rajaratnam I started a year ago now. Since I have no formal institutional affiliation, I can work at the pace I want to, and at times it’s been useful to let things sit and percolate, and then to read more. Yet the archive is infinite and at

It’s been a calm month here in Vancouver. We’ve been spared the smoke from the wildfires in the north, in Alberta, and further East. A few weeks ago, when I wrote my last post, we almost seemed to be heading into drought, the grass on English Bay and near Lost Lagoon burned the colour of straw. Then we had a week or two of cooler weather, with some rain, and

After almost a month back in Vancouver, I’m bedding in. It’s been a beautiful early summer, the catalpa leaves, always the last trees to leaf in the West End, now at full size, the horse chestnut blossoms fallen, turning from pink and white to brown, littering the pavements. A few years ago, I’d take unqualified delight in such weather. Now, with climate change, I always feel a hint of anxiety.

I’ve spent the last month in the England, first in London for research at the British Library and the National Archives, and then, when my partner joined me, making a trip with her and my sister to Boston, Lincolnshire. I was born there in 1962 and grew up in a council house in a small village a few miles outside Boston before we moved into a larger detached house in