I hate filling forms. They always ask for my first name and last name. I always have to make those up as I don’t actually have a first name, forename, last name, surname, maiden name or middle name. Then there’s also the decision as to whether I should put down my Burmese name or my English name. Grrr … life shouldn’t be this complicated. It’s no good telling the forms that I don’t have a last...
As part of my job, I engage in small talk with a lot of people day in and day out. ‘How are you today?’ ‘I’m fine, thank you. And you?’ ‘I’m alright. Thank you.’ At this point, I or the other person either shut up or look to the weather to continue this intellectually stimulating conversation. Bad weather days are perfect for this purpose. That’s one of the reasons I don’t resent bad weather. The...
It was the evening of April the 1st, 2019. I was walking back home at a leisurely pace softly humming the song I hadn’t been able to get out of my head for the last two days. As I was approaching my house, the cluster of tall trees came into view. Underneath them were the thin bony trees with bare gnarled branches sticking out towards the street. In darkness, stiff and motionless, they assumed...
‘What a stink!’‘It smells like sewage.’‘It smells like dead rats.’ What opinions these people have of the fruit that I worship! I never thought that I would feel personally attacked because of a fruit. A fruit that doesn’t look attractive. A fruit that is not juicy. A fruit that is the size of a football, brown and grey and has angry spikes. A fruit that lets out a scent that can fill a whole O2...
One Saturday, I decided to walk around Chesterfield town centre on my own. Guess what happened? As I watched with amusement, I saw lots of cars on the road grind to a total standstill. Not only that, one little incident reminded me of how I was once mistaken for a life-size doll …
As I reached the top of the slope lined with trees rustling in the gale, a pack of about forty dogs suddenly came into view. I froze. While I tried to make sense of what I saw, there appeared a man riding a big shiny black horse. He was wearing a red jacket, cream trousers and black riding boots. His short blond hair ruffled gently in the wind and his handsome face assumed a reassuring look that...
I used to make deals with Buddha. It was simple. I prayed, donated things in front of Buddha statues and asked for things. I asked to pass my exam with distinctions, I asked for a better phone, I asked for things for my parents, I asked for so many things that I can’t remember. So, I can say proudly that I’m an experienced deal maker. It’s one of the most valuable skills if you are a Buddhist. My...
I was staring at this girl in the mirror who appeared to have dropped from a freak show somewhere in the City Market. The girl was me and I was in the beauty parlour of a then well-known make-up artist in Yangon. In a couple of hours, I was supposed to be leading the procession of the bride and groom in front of about a hundred people. It was my cousin’s wedding. I was to be the bridesmaid, so...
My parents have a big garden that houses varieties of plant and animal lifeforms including five coconut trees. These lofty trees tower over different corners of my parents’ property, as if standing guard over the premises. Their smooth slender trunks are completely free of leaves, right until the very top, where swishing branches of long needle leaves make them look like space creatures with...
It was the year 2005. I was sitting in a ground-floor internet café in downtown Yangon researching universities in the US, UK and Singapore, the three countries I’d shortlisted to go to. I was also applying for scholarships and collecting materials to practise for the IELTS language test. I used Google to research those things. Nothing surprising there. But under the iron grip of the dictatorial...