TALKING ABOUT FOOD

‘The (Malay)Asian Friend’ I think this will be a series of essays, a disgruntled thread that may take a lifetime to untangle. The continued misunderstanding of a complex nation, where borders and boundaries come from flux, where the jungle makes lines in the earth an impossibility and yet politics, nationalism, colonial lens and the exotic touristic eye compete to limit and define a nation built on migration and the movement of people. (and I realise that this could refer to not just Malaysia!) My original gripe comes from the limitation of how Malaysia food, and therefore Malaysians, gets represented in London. I write in my book (out in a year’s time) that we are boiled down to a few dishes - “roti canai, beef rendang, nasi lemak, nasi goreng, maybe sambal, and now laksa.” The request for these dishes is like a checklist of if a restaurant is ‘authentically’ Malaysia, or someone is authentically Malaysian if they know/like/eat them.  You don’t crave nasi lemak, are you really Mal...

I feel like so much of my life is reaching out and trying to feel for the boundaries and borders of myself. My place in the world, the ‘where’ I am situated. Borders are things that exist only when being policed, they are violent because of this. Am I policing myself if I look for the edges? There is security in knowing what keeps me bound in, what binds me, but in all this seeking I keep finding myself without boundaries - what do I do , is a question my loved ones never know how to respond to, for example. At my sister’s birthday recently her and a few friends explained how they had described me recently and asked how I describe myself - we all had different answers, all of them the truth.  Can the borders of myself shift, and is the current world able to allow for this flexibility? This idea of borders and boundaries seems to be a physical pursuit, I am picturing my fingers wiggling into the darkness, searching for a soft surface to caress.  I never want to write a memoir, ...

  we come to the end of another year. I wrote a book this year; most of 2022 - and my whole life - was spent on the research, but pen to paper/ laptop to Word doc was done this year. I am now only 1/6 of the way through 2nd edits/3rd draft; publish date pushed back. I’m the brokest I’ve ever been in my adult life. I thought I had a handle on colonialism; its structures, its power dynamics, its many forms. but this war on Gaza was pushed me to learn more, read more, shifted perspectives, and sharpened lenses and outlook. I really want to solidify my articulation of (the shifting concept of) whiteness, and adjacency to whiteness, and those global power structures. I write about home, ask about reparations, but need to question what do these words mean, how do they get utilised, weaponised, co-opted and owned. My obsession with nostalgia and weaving past with a future is present in so much.  #ceasefirenow🇵🇸 I had two holidays this year that had nothing to do with work (although...

I am often thinking about the line between public and private, the way it wavers, blurs, disappears. In a world of social media it is a question for everyone, and not just for the stars, royalty, politicians. For me the question broadens into the realm of work. Where do I begin, and where do ‘I’ end. The ‘I’ must interrogate my place within power structures, within cultural narratives, within relatability.  My academic research was about a community I am part of, through my father. It was an ‘objective’ approach to examine storytelling, but because it was not a culture I participated in on a daily basis I was constantly negotiating my position in the work, my lens in the re-telling, my biases, my outside-ness and my inside-ness. The story of me became integral to the condition of the research. And, as my professional career has progressed, my approximation to this culture, one that is less known in the wider world, means I have become a tool to crack into these spheres - I have the...

When I first saw Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975) I remember feeling a deep hunger. My belly rumbled, my torso tightened and the muscles sucked into my belly button as my body concaved in on itself. I could feel my arms wanting to desperately reach out and seek things to fill me up, to bring close to me, to suck up and consume. I wanted to devour the world. I watched it the first year of my Performing Arts undergraduate, where I thought I would major in dance and movement. In the end I didn’t, switching in the final semester to acting, after struggling to feel fully comfortable with my body moving through space for people to watch. I decided I preferred to hide behind words. Dance has always been a space of thirst, for cravings, for desire – a way to seek out and pursue, a way to rampage through ideas. Moving to be sated. Finishing dance exams growing up I would always be hungry, never being able to eat when nervous. Navigating how to feel in leotards, in front of mirrors, o...