My evolving Asian and Oz Christmas traditions
Christmas in West Malaysia 1970s Christmas is a public holiday. I don’t have to go to school. The street is quiet. I wonder how I might celebrate. It is suggested that I...
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Adelaide
Hosting New Migrants: on the capacity to welcome
When we first arrived in Adelaide, we stayed in a two-bedroom unit off Goodwood Road. My sister’s old school friend had arranged for us to live there while the...
Setbacks and breakthroughs
About a year ago, I began interviewing Za Dim, a lady from the minority Chin tribe of Myanmar. After describing her experience of torture in an Indian jail, she said that each...
Iced coffee instead of bush tea
My friend Merrilyn remembers a wonderful Afghan family and has a visual picture of where she parked when she visited them twelve years ago. On hearing that I would like to...
Hello and Goodbye
I sit in my study in Adelaide, thinking of the journey that my paternal grandfather took from China to Malaya somewhere between 1900 and 1930. It’s an imprecise...
Emerging Artists Mentorship
I am deeply grateful to be the recipient of an Arts SA Independent Makers and Presenters Grant, in the Emerging Artists Mentorship category. As a result of this grant, I will...
Anger management
Gardening is good for my soul because I usually reap what I sow. Sometimes I don’t reap at all, because of the weather, which I cannot control, or the weeds, which I can...
Teleporting
I raided my local library and met Australian reporter Lynne O’Donnell. That is, I read her book. ‘High Tea in Mosul’ is the result of O’Donnell’s...
From the hard earth
In my garden, there is a patch of brown dirt that is unremarkable. My irrigation line doesn’t extend here so the earth starts to dry out in summer. By February fissures...