Family and Relationships
- A Story Gege Told: The Little Stone and ABSea
On the shuttle bus, Gege told me a story about a very ordinary little stone, and on the way home, a pirate joke.
- The Tutoring Floor
On a mall floor full of classes and workshops, Gege and I looked at the same shops and saw quite different things.
- Let's Not Waste Our Time Together
Two mornings on the way to school with Gege, from a noisy child on the bus and a woman who became emperor to staircases and the consequences of what we do, ending with a promise not to waste our time together.
- Which Matters More: Going to School, or Reading?
Gege asked whether school or reading matters more; three different answers, and a row of numbered billboards on a BTS platform, led me to think about how we encode and decode words.
- A Playground Afternoon with Gege's Japanese Classmate
Watching two six-year-olds play together while reading a news story about a shrine visit, I thought about labels, encoding, and how I will one day explain history to my son.
- Learning Boundaries: From Children and the Elderly to Humanity's Shared Perception
A tearful morning over wet shoes and a crowded priority lift on the BTS lead me to think about boundaries as the condition for people coming closer to one another.
- Gege Says, "Water Hides, and It Also Comes Back to Find You"
Watching Meimei play with the water from our delivered water bottles, I asked what children are, and are not, being taught about where water comes from in a city like Bangkok.
- The Taste Inside the Letters: Gege's Handwriting Book and His Secrets
On a quiet long-weekend afternoon, Gege handed me his old handwriting book from Vancouver, and I found a teacher's little hearts and drawings whose secret meanings even he has forgotten.
- The Story of a Mid-Autumn Mooncake: More Than a Sunset Seen from the Balcony
On a Mid-Autumn morning, a single leftover mooncake led to a story about sharing from my childhood in China, and to a durian-flavoured surprise.