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Thirty days from today, I will celebrate my birthday. It also feels like I am standing at a crossroads. One path leads toward my own Mount Everest. It is a difficult climb, driven by the hope that one day my work will outlive me. If I reach the summit, perhaps
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The three-room HDB flat housed a large family. For years, I slept on a mattress in the living room. In my twenties, I decided to move out. I wanted a bed of my own. I wanted freedom. I wanted to do as I pleased without my mother always checking
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I generally don't like dealing with people, including myself. Human nature is flawed. People can be irritating. Some can even be cruel. I was fortunate for much of my career. I spent 12 years as a researcher, curating information. I hardly had to talk to anyone. Then I
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The nurse called me at 3:17 a.m. I still remember the exact time because my phone was silent, my room was dark, and my heart knew before my mind did. “Can you come to the hospital? Your mother’s condition has worsened.” I didn’t ask what happened.
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In 2008, I walked away from a job without knowing how I was going to survive. At that time, I was working in an organisation as the IT representative for my division. I took care of the computers and technical problems of about one hundred employees. Part of my work
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The first time my son visited me in prison, I almost didn’t recognize him. He had grown taller. His face looked sharper. Even the way he stood felt different. Less like a child. More like someone who had already learned disappointment too early. There was a thick glass panel
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Every morning at 6:45 AM, I would sit on the concrete ledge just outside the kopitiam. Five minutes. That was all the time I had left. I’d stare at my phone, pretending to scroll, but my eyes couldn’t focus. Inside my chest, my heart would start to
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“I learned how to cook pork adobo from YouTube,” Ma’am once told her friends proudly during a dinner party. I was standing behind them holding a plate of sliced oranges. I almost laughed. For nine years, I was the one cooking it. My name is Teresa. I came to
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Some dreams don’t fail. They just stay hidden in drawers for too long. Yesterday at my Book Writing & Self-Publishing Clinic, a student shared something that stayed in my mind long after the session ended. Years ago, after speaking to ex-prisoners in the Philippines, she was deeply
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I knew my marriage was over when the dog started eating better than I did. His name was Tofu. Tiny. White. Anxious. The kind of dog that looked permanently disappointed in you. I never wanted a dog. My wife called him an “emotional investment.” In hindsight, that was the warning:
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I still remember how the idea first took root. When I was young, my mother would often say that the best place to work was in a bank. She did not explain it in complex terms. She simply pointed to the skyline. Some of the tallest, most impressive buildings in
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I did not walk a straight path. Over the past 35 years, I changed jobs eight times. Not out of restlessness, but because life kept shifting under my feet. Just when I thought I had found stable ground, something would move. There were seasons of progress. Some seasons took things