Never mind the ancient routes that fed, blended and bumped you and I together - I know that you want nothing more than to fit me into your size 9 1/2 shoe box, and tell me about the great Lebanese place that serves tabbouli...
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I can’t fly on this damn plane because, at age 27, I have lost two wonderful people in my life. Two people who had come to define my experience of being free of boundaries, and my freedom to live fearlessly. I feel my mortality more than I ever did before...
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"Hi. Where are you going?," a man asked me as he sat across from me at the bus station in Alabama.
We just got off the same bus from Atlanta to some city in Alabama, Birmingham, maybe? I don't know the geography of Alabama at all. I still can't look at maps of Alabama without crying...
My passport tells an improbable tale of birth, country of origin and address of emergency contact….
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I’m quite certain that was the moment I realised that it wasn’t just the language I had absorbed…
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Almost everyone only thought about Turkey as depicted in the movie ‘Midnight Express’, although I have never seen it…
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I became the ‘Pakistani Australian’ or the ‘Australian Pakistani’ depending on whether I was meeting Sam or Sameet…
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From old theatres to laneway bars, I walk the Yarra with boys and cars.
With double tongues, I watch bright lights, as I explore and devour the night…
I am Dutch, grew up in Germany and went to an American international school. My husband is Japanese, grew up in Ecuador and went to both Japanese and American international schools there. We often joke that our family is like the UN with all its different cultures and languages…
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Time is a very culture-centric topic that my father taught me well across the countries we lived in. On Guam, people were usually an hour late on an island that was 20 minutes wide to drive…
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So what happens when one day you wake up on the other side of the world and the place you come from no longer exists?
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When I am asked this question, I immediately think of my parents. My mother was born on the island of Coron, a mere freckle nestled within the larger island province of Palawan off the west coast of the Philippines...
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My grandmother spoke in Javanese a lot, especially to my grandfather. This was usually when she was talking about me or my sister, assuming that my attendance at an English and Indonesian speaking school meant I would not understand her...
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I think of a mental curse to send telepathically to the man as the dust settles. “May the sharks of this city devour you,” something along those lines, but much less poetic and much more livid. I feel like I am a character in a film, complete with a story unfolding in front of me...
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I revelled in the power of my many homes. I sit in my room for hours and listen to that Thai singer.
and muse about the camels from my Arab home...
This guy really is just passing the time, I deduce from his gestures, intonation, and eye contact. He has bigger fish to fry, women to (attempt to, at the least) seduce, beers to guzzle, joints to roll, greasy kebabs to inhale at ungodly hours, and throbbing Sunday morning headaches to nurse. He would rather talk about prostates and pension funds than hear what I’ve got to say...
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I imagine if you're not a third culture kid, the second of hesitation after the question "Where are you from?" must look a little misplaced.
I usually size up the person who's asking...
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I'd like life to be a big, red, round, spinning Chinese table - take what you want now and keep the rest for later. Unfortunately, it is more like walking through a patch of cold sword-grass on the way out from...
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Before we go down the rabbit hole together, let’s find a commonality. How about chocolate?...
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My sense of belonging fluctuates like an erratic pulse and my nationalistic pride skyrockets when faced with a belligerent non-Pakistani who questions the mess my country has become...
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