Mar 06, 2026
Israeli Whatsapp Goodfellas and the Chinese Mafia
Examining the social dynamics of Israeli backpackers in Indochina and Chinos in medieval fortresses.
A collection of essays exploring literature, philosophy, and contemporary culture.
Feb 23, 2026
Short Socialist Primer on the Lao People's Democratic Republic
Of the socialist countries existing today, the Lao PDR is talked about the least. The PRC, DPRK, Vietnam and Cuba often come up in both Western and Global South news, so why is the Lao PDR never mentiioned?
Feb 19, 2026
Zweig's Chess Story and the Modern
Two gentleman face each other across a chessboard. One is a world champion, leaning back in his chair. The other, an amateur player, beads of sweat running down his temples. It is the late 1930s, they...
Feb 15, 2026
Schengen Crossings and Foot Fetishes
There is a buried homoeroticism in the immigration procedure of white countries. Perhaps it is the sight of a sweet young succulent exotic Asian boy, or the intoxicating power of the State, but every ...
Feb 14, 2026
Muriel Spark Not to Disturb
I didn't know this was a postmodern novel until I was halfway in. So I only started to understand what the novel was about after I'd read half of it. Spark's novel is about a bunch of Swiss servants s...
Jan 16, 2026
Liberal Hedging, Remember Renee and the Power of True Names
I was having my morning coffee last Wednesday when I saw a disturbing news video. An unarmed woman had been shot and killed by a state officer while reversing away. Apparently she was stopped. This al...
Jan 05, 2026
Juan Villoro Mexican Maestro of Short Stories
Juan Villoro is one of the best living writers today. Reading Juan Villoro is like cycling out of the city to the mountains and gulping down 200ml of dewy spring air. Reading Juan Villoro is like work...
Jan 1, 2026
Literatura en Exilio: The Savage Detectives
"We were stupid and generous, as young people are, giving everything and asking for nothing in return, and now those young people are gone, because those who didn't die in Bolivia died in Argentina or...
Dec 24, 2025
Story about nothing, or I’m back in Hong Kong
The male voice calls out from behind me, “What are you looking at, boy?” Overtaking on my right, a balding man in his fourties, wearing a work jacket with white dust on the right shoulder. I make eye ...
Dec 23, 2025
Suffering, Sobornost and a Wasted Wedding Guest: What a 3pm Drunken Dostoevsky Debate Taught Me About Crime and Punishment
I met an old schoolmate at my friend’s wedding last week. He was drunk out of his mind, rattling off facts about Baudrillard and Balinese poetry to me (it was the only wedding out of three he had to a...
Nov 23, 2025
The Translator is Invisible, The Translator is Artist
A translation is never a word-for-word reproduction of the original. Neither is it a technical process like programming or solving an equation. Like a thief, the translator must steal the words of the author, smash the original and rearrange them to form a kettle from the hull of a battleship.
Oct 29, 2025
Notes on Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad
How the US Empire conquered Latin America.
October 24, 2025
Notes on How to Hide An Empire
This book is often recommended as a historical primer of US imperialism. A lot of it is history, which I’ve condensed into a couple of important sections here. There are not many annotations as it’s ...
October 11, 2025
Notes on The State and Revolution
A few weeks ago I finished reading Comrade Lenin’s analysis on the State. What is the State, why does it wither away, what should the State look like after the revolution. He answers everything here and puts it into practice in the 1917 Revolution.
September 20, 2025
The 8 Hour German Layover: A Museum Taught Me Not To Touch Hot Pans
On a beige cream wall: Five cast iron pans stuck to the wall like pizzas on a wood-fired oven flipped ninety degrees. The middle pan had a black cable connected to it, desperate to be noticed, running into a mundane power socket near the floor. Near the pan was an inscription in German and English: Achtung! Hot, do not touch.
September 16, 2025
Notes on Edward Said's The Question of Palestine
"To speak of the Palestinians rationally is, I think, to stop speaking about war or genocide and to start to deal seriously with political reality. There is a Palestinian people, there is an Israeli occupation o f Palestinian lands, there are Palestinians under Israeli military occupation, there are Palestinians— 650,000 of them— who are Israeli citizens and who constitute 15 percent of the population of Israel, there is a large Palestinian population in exile: these are actualities which the United States and most of the world have directly or indirectly acknowledged, which Israel too has acknowledged, if only in the forms of denial, rejection, threats of war, and- punishment."
August 29, 2025
Long Live The Projector, Art is Dead, Viva Aoba, Thoughts on the Nakba
I remember when I first went to the Projector. I was with my friends walking along down Geylang Road after eating Vietnamese food at Grandlink Square. I was 17. The sun was baking me with a constant l...
August 9, 2025
I Made My First Book Purchase in 6 Years, Or: How Rentier Capitalism Made Me Spend $100 on Dead Trees
Yesterday I dropped by the Peninsular Mall basement to drop off my guitar for servicing. The place has remained largely unchanged for the last 10 years. Same shops with gundam and doraemon electric gu...
July 26, 2025
Notes & Summary, Parenti’s Blackshirts & Reds
This is not an academic review or analysis. I am not trained in polsci. I’m writing this summary to internalise and ask myself questions about this book. I am publishing this online because I believe ...
November 8, 2019
Private: Poetry
at 11.33pm
March 19, 2024
Juzo Itami’s European Boredom Diary: Foreigners Speaking Their Foreign Languages
The following is an excerpt from European Boredom Diary by Juzo Itami, translated by me. Juzo Itami was a pioneering Japanese filmmaker who blended biting social commentary with humour. He is best kno...
July 7, 2019
Taxi Driver and the POV shot
Four decades past its release, Taxi Driver’s gun-toting, Mohawk-sporting, aviator-wearing protagonist Travis Bickle is as iconic as ever. The opening scene introduces Travis as a war veteran. He tells...
July 30, 2019
On Writing Fiction
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
January 17, 2017
The Soul of Souseki
The beauty of Kokoro isn’t in what Souseki writes, it’s what he leaves out.
January 16, 2019
Roma (2019)
Roma was the first movie in a long time to make me sob uncontrollably! It’s one of those times I’m glad I’m not a film critic. I’m just a fan of movies. Which gives me the license to gush about this m...
January 14, 2019
Battle Royale (2000)
Battle Royale. Even if you haven’t watched it, you’ve definitely heard of it. If not because of The Hunger Games, maybe from the game series Danganronpa? Or the entire genre of video games named after...
January 12, 2019
House (1977)
“That’s ridiculous!”
February 8, 2020
Gardner’s Art of Fiction Summary Ch 1-3
“John Gardner was almost as famous as a teacher of creative writing as he was for his own works. In this practical, instructive handbook, based on the courses and seminars that he gave, he explains, s...