Asthaghfirullah! I can’t believe Arab Muslims would have said that to my hosts, librarians who spent some time in Arabia. My hosts are amazing! They won’t even let me lug my presentation case up the stairs! She insists on carrying it for me. We were having a conversation this afternoon, and the inconsistency of Muslims […]

That was the first question a spunky grade two kid asked me this afternoon when she and her classmates marched in to see my presentation Picture the Story. Talk about RANDOM! Reminds me of that famous youtube video that went viral about that kid who was being interviewed by a reporter who asked him some […]

I didn’t expect to experience anything different this time round in Singapore.. I mean it’s my third time. I thought I saw it all. But apparently not. The hotel I’m staying at is downtown. Highrises and more highrises, sterile, and kind of boring. And yet for the past two mornings I’m sure I heard some […]

I’m writing this from my hotel room a day after I arrived, my legs are still swolen like overstuffed sausages, but alhamdulillah, I had a good day! Visited a LOT of little primary kids! Oh they’re SO hard! Squirmy little things! And they’d just come back from a four day weekend! I’m so fortunate! I […]

Recently, there’s been a HUGE push in schools to address problems with bullying. There’ve been suicide videos, the most recent from a girl named Amanda Todd, and bullying and suicide seems to have really reached a peak in terms of social consciousness. Parents and educators are really feeling compelled to do something about the ‘epidemic’. […]

feels a bit like a waste of time. Sometimes the feeling of impotence in the face of global dilemmas is just excruciating. This is one of those times. It seems to crop up every so often. It’s like tensions build and build in Israel and Palestine, and they start fighting, and people start dying. And […]

by, of all people, a Russian! Theodore Dostoyevsky! Oh why, oh why, did I take so long to discover him??? It seems I’ve been hearing his name all my life and yet niggling prejudice tainted it. I thought to myself, “Why would I read a book by a guy named Dostoyevsky? It sounds so Russian! […]

Can you believe that’s actually a line of dialogue in the movie Love is a Many Splendored Thing??? I burst out laughing when I heard ‘third’ uncle, say that to his Eurasian niece. Okay, maybe I should give the movie a break. A love affair between a white guy and a half Chinese woman in Hong […]

I have to admit, over the last few weeks I’d been feeling such an overwhelming foreboding of disaster when it comes to American politics that I had basically resigned myself to a Mitt Romney victory. It started when Obama fared so poorly during that first debate. I actually thought he handled himself well. And watching […]