My Composting Experience Thus Far

My gingers & spring onions growing out of soil and my first two batches of compost (as of 10 Nov 2019) For those who have been asking/are curious, this text summarises my experiences with composting here in Singapore from end Jul 2019 to date. Please note that the form of composting that I’m doing is …

Yorkshire, England vs. Galway, Ireland

So, time to blog after settling down from two weeks of travel... On the kind invitation of CH and DP, I made my way from Swansea to Richmond, Yorkshire on 3 August. At first, the journey did not go well. Until that day, my experience of railway travel in Britain had been fair. But on …

Summer’s Rolling Along…

It is now August 2017. In a few weeks, I will be celebrating the first anniversary of when I arrived in Swansea. Gee whizzzzz...  Time has really flown. I know, I know, I have not blogged since June. Has the novel progressed? Very hard to say, as again I modified my game plan in mid-June …

Making Personal History

My last blog was just after I had voted for the local elections here in Swansea. And now a month later, I am putting down my assorted thoughts after having my first, and probably my only, opportunity to vote in the UK General Elections. Like on 4 May, I got up early this morning, braved …

The Return

Greetings, one and all! I am back in Swansea after having been in Singapore between 12 Apr and 2 May. Those three weeks were bitter-sweet. Yes, it was good to see family and catch up with friends, plus eat favourite foods and savour those tastes that cannot be found in Swansea, after over five months …

From Swansea to Singapore

In a few hours, I’ll be boarding a plane back to Singapore, thereby ending one of the longest stretches that I’ve been away. I’ll be staying for three weeks, primarily to celebrate my mother’s 93rd birthday. Living in the UK from autumn to spring (Nov 2016 till now) was quite different from my stay in …

Springing

I know: it's been over a month since I last blogged from Swansea. Why the silence? Partly busy, trying to write/read/research. Partly inertia - just the ordinary of business of life (e.g. cleaning, shopping for groceries, preparing food, distractions from Facebook) takes up a lot of time. Partly there was nothing very new to write …

The Writerly Life

Salutations, one and all, for this first post of 2017! I don't know how auspicious/inauspicious, valid/invalid that I am writing and then posting this first blog of 2017 during the start of a post-Obama era, especially when hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world were marching in support of liberal values. …

Everyday Realities

After the drama of the previous post, this text, by comparison, will be very tame, for finally, I have achieved some sort of stability in my timetable to enable me to make my first serious attempts at discovering and shaping my novel that will constitute my Ph.D. Hence, this blog will ramble a little as …

Facing the Self: Let Us Count the Ways…

The quick trip back to Singapore between 2 and 14 November 2016 as well as the days following the return to Swansea have been wondrous and illuminating in different ways. First, the wondrous. How fantastic to see my family, be back in my own room, sleep in my own bed and catch up with some …