Amy Tan was in town recently speaking at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and promoting her autobiography “Where the Past Begins” which had attracted favourable reviews even before it was published, such as “A profound work of endless fascination, discovery, and compassion” from Booklist, and “Wise and Profound” from Publishers Weekly. I flipped through…
I was on my treadmill when Christiane Amanpour of CNN fame reporting from London interviewed Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on their 18-hour epic documentary on the Vietnam War. Burns spent ten years making the documentary which began screening last month in ten parts, with interviews on war survivors and their descendants, both in America…
Su found my last upload somewhat disjointed if not fragmented. It probably was, because I did not write the piece in one go. Over the years, I had pieces written over long periods, sometimes over a span of six months. Even at the time I was writing on a weekly or monthly basis, I often…
It was an unusual week, with two general holidays sandwiched between two weekends, which makes planning and living rather challenging. I heard that some company entrepreneurs had simply asked their staff to close down for a week to save the overheads, knowing that no one would be geared up for any real work during the…
I can’t be sure who had it first – Su or I – but since Su said it was me, so it must be me. We have been nursing our cold for the third day now; and we expect to shake them off by weekend; for we have lined up some heavy stuff next week,…
It all began towards the end of June when we were required to relocate our personal effects in storage from five units to one big unit with the same combined gross floor area on the same level in the same building. Amongst the prized collection are scores of vinyl records mixed up with laser discs…
Have you ever asked yourself what a perfect day would be like? I have read about descriptions of such from the perspective of a man and a woman respectively, laced with such details that are best reserved for private consumption, which make it unfit for publication. I had asked myself the question at various stages…
As Su had predicted, the article I posted yesterday attracted only a handful of likes. Su had said one needs to put photos with everything one posted on Facebook to get more likes. But those of us using Facebook would know that the number of likes is at best an indication of how many people…
Bernadette Tsui sat on the front row at the Sam and Tam Concert last night, had a great time and had Part One of her Sam and Tam and Carrie article published this morning in her column in Economic Journal. She also sat on the front rows at Slava’s Snowshow last week at Hong Kong…
Su’s parents were second or third generation Indonesian Chinese. They were high school classmates in a famous school in Jakarta and both came from well to do families. In 1951, they responded to calls from the Motherland to return to China to build up the country. They were then 19. They went to universities in…
