"The world is too big," she said, "but that doesn't mean we stop searching."
I wish the palms of my hand were big enough to create shelters for those who have no home to call their own. I wish my voice were loud enough to speak for those whose voices have been silenced, whose rights trampled, whose dreams crushed. I wish I had pockets deep enough to assist… Continue reading Ordinary miracles
To the Filipino hiker, Mt. Kinabalu isn't as hard the way conventional Filipino mountains are hard. Where Filipino mountains rely on natural trails (a root becomes a step, a branch, your foothold), Mt. Kinabalu is 80% stairs. This means the best way to train for Kota is not exactly to run hills, or to climb… Continue reading Kota: Tips and Tricks (and Stuff I Wish I’d Known)
It’s been more than a week since the Kota Kinabalu experience, otherwise known as that time I stuck with a booking I made one month into the semester because I was already tired of the academic workload. And really, every time I close my eyes, it’s still the chilly air I feel, and the gentle… Continue reading Kota Kinabalu
The end of every year shows Twitter in a flurry of activities: people tweeting about the things they're grateful for; about things they wish they had done, or done better; about lessons they learned or lessons they wish they were taught. On my part, I decided to go on a sharing spree about the good… Continue reading Great Balancing Act
Dear Jesus, Two thousand years ago, in a tiny town called Bethlehem, you graced the world with your presence. Born in the humblest of ways, with only stacked hay for a bed and a stable for a roof, the world told you, "You are here. This is home for now." I wonder what Mary… Continue reading A Christmas letter
Moana, the new Disney protagonist, is the curly-haired, dark-skinned daughter of the chieftain of one of the islands in the middle of the Pacific. And over the course of the past two weeks, I've had people approach me and tell me I remind them so much of the character. To which I reply with a… Continue reading Off to save the world
I write this sitting next to 3 other people poring over their journals, scribbling furiously to translate into writing the words playing around in their head, some resorting to doodles only they can understand: an attempt to remember things -- trips and falls, bumps and scratches, summits and jump offs. I write this slumped… Continue reading Of family
Sometimes I feel too big for this world, too gangly and spindly, with arms too long it knocks furnitures over, legs too wide it blocks passageways. Sometimes I feel too big, too big in fact, that everyone else appears too small, so small I can flick them away if I wish so, like ants stuck… Continue reading Goldilocks conundrum
You found me Where will we go from here I swear I belong This is where I belong Where do we go from here? Keep me It was the second night of the usual vacation festivities -- intoxicated bodies in swimwear, hair tousled by the breeze, the smell of salt clinging to our… Continue reading The world is our playground and we will always be home
The thing I like best about science is the fact of its humility. Sometimes it tells you things: big things, small things, medium things, and then, when pressed for explanation, it says, "But no one knows why this is so." My favourite manifestation of this is that trivia about ducks. Apparently, according to that magazine… Continue reading Subterranean
Of perpetual finds 