I read (and more importantly, tracked or reviewed) at least 50 proper books between 2020 and 2021, which for me is a lot! It comes to a book every two weeks on average, which feels like a lot when there is an entire internet that could be trawled instead. I…

The Question: Who is the bad art friend? The one who takes inspiration from your life and finds personal gain in it without informing you openly what they are doing? …

Food is just food until it isn’t. — When was the last time you ate something that you love? Where were you the first time you ate it? …

Yes, we know India is burning. Stop poverty/disaster porn, find a way to help instead. — (TLDR;) Dear World, This is a call to stop poverty porn in the face of crisis. India is suffering from a Covid-19 situation of unspeakable proportions, but that’s not a reason for you to blindly share sensationalist videos about it to assuage your own guilt. Instead of exploiting POC pain…

On zooming in and zooming out in your practice — I grew up learning to experience my thoughts with distance, being taught that it was not me feeling the thought, it was my monkey mind. I mistook distance for numbness. If I could cultivate distance from my thoughts, I didn’t really have to feel them, process them. I could just…

Farmers in India are protesting new laws that will have a serious impact on global supply chains — and on your turmeric lattes. — In recent months, Indian farmers have walked hundreds of kilometres to the border of the capital in the middle of a pandemic, set up temporary shelters that have ballooned into cities, and huddled over scrap fires to survive the worst of a biting winter, just to quietly protest against new…

As a third culture WOC, I grew up thinking diversity was the default — I’ve been battling with sharing something on the echo chamber of social media for a long time. I’ve been thinking about my privilege for even longer, the opportunities I’ve had that I could just as easily not have had if I had been born differently. But I want to share…

Achieving given wants with minimal resources Before I say anything else, I would like to clarify that this is not an essay about religion, but about economics (though I understand why one might confuse the two). It is about the first question they asked you in an economics class if…

On a drippy Manila weekend, my fellow dayahun*, James, and I ventured out to see a cockfight. We managed to find a ‘stadium’ not too far from our shoebox condos, and when the sun peeked out for a bit, rode there in a jingle-jangle jeepney, got off at an unmarked…