Skip to content

A series · Sporadic thoughts

Sporadic thoughts on my country

Not one neat essay, but a pile of scattered notes — the tea shop at any hour, the rain that falls twice, the names we cannot fit on a form. A small book you can read in any order.

Reflection Memory 12 notes

Yangon at dusk, the country these notes keep returning to

Why this book

A notebook, not an essay.

These came as fits and starts — a thought at a tea shop, a memory in the middle of monsoon season, a confusion about names that only ever fit on some forms. None of them was meant to be a full argument about what it means to leave a country.

Together they are something closer to a notebook you keep coming back to. Not every note is tidy. Some contradict each other. That is the point. This is one person's scattered view of the place they came from, told in the order the thoughts arrived, and meant to be read the same way.

A good place to start Back to all stories

Peninsula Plaza, a place these notes keep circling back to — Some of these notes end up in Singapore; some keep going back.

The notes

Contents

Read them in order, or jump around. Every note stands on its own.

Home, remembered

The tea shop, at any hour

A cup of milk tea, a long conversation, and the corner of everyday Burmese life that travels with you.

Lunch, every Sunday

Every Burmese family I know has a Sunday lunch. This one happens to be mine.

Rain, both monsoons

There is rain in Yangon and rain in Singapore, and they are not the same rain.

Letters, voice notes, and staying close

How families keep in touch across an ocean, from handwritten letters to three-minute voice notes.

Language and names

The three languages in my head

What it means to live between Burmese, English, and the other language your family actually speaks.

What do I call you?

The honorifics and kinship titles Burmese people use for each other, and what happens to them abroad.

A name without a surname

Most Burmese names have no surname. A note on borrowing a name, losing one, and paperwork that never fits.

Money and movement

The money that goes home

A note on remittances: the sums sent home, and the awkward, tender love they stand for.

What we pack, what we leave

The suitcases, spices, and small objects migrants carry across the border — and what they leave behind.

The children who adapt quietly

Children who move countries do a lot of adjusting that nobody claps for.

Occasions

A wedding in two places

Diaspora weddings happen twice: once for everyone present, once for everyone watching through a small screen.

Thingyan, year by year

The water festival, remembered from a child in 2015 to a teenager in 2023 — and how it changed as I did.