“Where are you from?” The universal question for a traveler. For me, it’s a question I received at home long before I knew how to answer. My dad is Korean, but didn’t raise me. So my blonde, blue-eyed single mom, carrying little me with slanted brown eyes and a tuft of black hair, often prompted the question, “Where did you adopt her from?” She would affirm, “She was born here, she is Canadian.”

So when I went to Korea for the first time at 19, there was a small part of me hoping to find some connection to my Korean roots. Fifteen years later, I went with more realistic expectations. I spent six weeks making my way along the coast from Busan to Seoul this spring. The coast is magnificent—rugged cliffs overlook the turquoise sea dotted with islands, port cities boast all kinds of fresh seafood, and inland, dramatic peaks loom over tranquil temples that line the mountainside.

I found solace on the hiking trails, not so much because of the views but because I struggled in my interactions with locals. Being Korean raised outside the motherland, I don’t speak the language or know all the cultural etiquette, so I was often met with anger and frustration.

The tension played out most in restaurants, where dishes on menus almost always have a two-person minimum. I begged to order the two-person menu items, insisting I’d pay extra, but the answer was, at best, a no; at worst, being physically pushed out of the restaurant. While dining, I was ridiculed by servers in front of other Korean guests for not knowing the eating etiquette for every dish. I eventually found success filling my belly, but at the expense of my ego.

What struck me most was Korean tourists traveling within their own country. Walking through recreated streetscapes spanning the 1940s through 1980s on a K-drama film set in Suncheon, I witnessed Koreans dressing up in vintage school uniforms and awkwardly inhabiting eras they weren’t alive for.

Similarly, in Naganeupseong, the last remaining walled Joseon era village in Korea, I saw parents encouraging their children to beat garments on stones so they could experience how laundry was done in the 14^th century. Throngs of modern tourists in this time capsule of a village with its thatched-roof huts and water mill, illuminated how Koreans, like me, are tourists of their own history.

During evening prayer at my Buddhist temple stay, the fellow guests and I awkwardly copied the bowing ritual of the monks, highlighting religion’s performative nature. The Koreans beside me were performing this facet of Korean culture as much as me.

Several hours into my temple stay, no one had realized I wasn’t a local Korean yet. Until our “teatime with a monk” session, when everyone sat in a circle on floor cushions and introduced themselves. When I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Korean,” the monk’s zen expression broke into surprise. The young woman next to me, who had smiled at me during evening prayer, spoke some English and attempted to translate.

Once she relayed that my dad didn’t raise me, the monk began making jokes. But as his light-hearted quips turned more heated, the expressions around the circle shifted from laughter to discomfort. “What is he saying?” I whispered to the young woman next to me. She said she didn’t want to hurt my feelings and translated but one message: he would make me regret never learning Korean.

What does it mean to embody our culture? Is it possible to find true belonging? Read the full story on Lonely Planet to find out.

Best,

Anna

Reading 📖

The best book I’ve read lately is the short story collection Where Are You Really From? by Elaine Hsieh Chou. The stories revolve around the themes alluded to by the book’s title—how it feels to be a person of color—from an American au pair who moves to Paris and encounters her French doppelgänger to a Taiwanese mail-order bride sent to California. My favorite story follows an affair between an unpublished Korean Chinese writer and an adopted Korean American artist married to a white writer.

Articles

🇰🇷 Korea is everywhere, where am I?

🔥 The end of the European summer.

🪞 The year a woman stopped trying to fix herself.

📚 A short story by Min Jin Lee (author of Pachinko).

🥘 When eating out is political.

🧘 You can do leisure better, seriously.

Watching 📺

While I was traveling in Korea, I devoured When Life Gives You Tangerines (Netflix), a lifelong romance between two childhood sweethearts on Jeju Island spanning from the 1950s to present day. The female protagonist Ae-sun loses her mother young and faces hardship after hardship, yet remains fiercely determined to carve her own path. Beautifully shot and beautifully acted, its a grand sweeping tale that will tug at heartstrings.

More recently, I caught up on a much lighter K-drama also centered on a young Korean woman who lost her mom young—XO, Kitty (Netflix). The spin-off of the To All The Boys film series, the show follows the adventures of Kitty Song-Covey, the sister of To All The Boys protagonist Lara Jean Song-Covey, who moves to Korea to attend her late mom’s alma mater. The latest season follows her senior year of high school, as she navigates a new romance with her crush Moon Min-ho. It’s an easy, comforting watch, and I appreciated recognizing filming locations like Gwangalli Beach, where I stayed.

Listening 🎧

When I was in high school, people predicted I would become a doctor when I grew up. I wasn’t offended, I just thought it was funny because I wasn’t good at math or science. Eventually I realized they drew this prediction from likening me to Sandra Oh’s character, Christina, on Grey’s Anatomy, which was the medical drama to watch at the time. Now, I’d be flattered by such a comparison. I didn’t know it then but Sandra Oh, like me, is Korean Canadian. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve increasingly looked up to her as a beacon of confidence.

In this interview with The New York Times, she talks about growing up as the daughter of Korean immigrants in a suburb of Ottawa, the discrimination she faced as a young actress in her 20s, and navigating identity politics as a person of influence today. Excerpts from her diary could almost be mistaken for mine and I related to her reliance on writing as a outlet for difficult emotions. I also love what she says about aging and finding empowerment.

Sunday, the 3rd of October, 1982. Dear Diary — I hate myself. That’s all. Oh yeah, I also think I’ll commit suicide (spelled S-U-C-I-C-I-D-E). Nothing is worth living for. I’m no good at anything. I’m never happy anymore. I try so hard but I never succeed. (spelled S-U-C-C-I-D-E). Mom and Dad always laugh at me when I try, I do stupid mistakes, Mom always yells at me. I have no self confidence. I don’t believe in myself. I can’t do anything. Someday I’ll run real far, so far that no one will ever find me. I have a lot of thoughts but I can’t write them all down. I hate myself.

When you were revisiting this, were you surprised?

Sandra Oh: I just have so much compassion for that young person. I’m so pleased with myself that at 11, with so much feeling, I unconsciously found some place to regulate myself, which was writing. I remember my mom didn’t like it, because I would always be writing, and she knew it was about her. It was like, “What are you always writing?” That has just been a receptacle that started out as an unconscious place to feel safe but eventually helped me figure out who I am.

You’re now in your 50s. How are you settling into that?

It’s great. Don’t let anyone fool you. It’s tougher on my body. It’s tougher on my mind in certain ways. But it is great, because I feel balanced enough to really start digging into very important questions.

When you realize that it is not up to anyone else to free you, it’s up to yourself. So whether you have body issues, things about your past, how you grew up, your trauma — those are the things that now you have some space and are able to handle grappling with. But my joints hurt.

Snacking 🍌

I spent almost all my lunches this week trying to problem solve leftover Thai green curry I made last weekend. Turns out coconut milk curry congeals and thickens upon refrigeration, so it was hard to turn back into a sauce. I had paired the curry with soba noodles but didn’t want to eat the soba dry so I was determined to figure out a sauce solution.

Day one: I tried adding soy milk to the green curry (fail). Day two: I tried a premade tahini vinaigrette on the noodles (semi-fail). Day three: I made the marinade from this warm Korean soba noodle recipe and finally found success (third times a charm).

• 1/3 cup (80 ml) soy sauce

• 3 tbsp (45 ml) sesame oil

• 2 tbsp (30 ml) rice vinegar

• 1 tbsp (15 ml) brown sugar or honey

• 1 tsp (5 ml) ginger paste

• 1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) black pepper

• 10 oz (285 g) buckwheat (soba) noodles

• 1 tbsp (15 ml) oil

• 2 bunch green onion, finely chopped

• 2 tbsp (15 g) toasted sesame seeds

• 1 cup (25 g) crumbled roasted seaweed, optional

I paired it with my current seaweed snack obsession. The founder Annie Chun spent years working directly with Korean regenerative farmers not far from where I travelled along the southern coast to develop her organic seaweed snack recipe.

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It’s Saturday night and downtown Kelowna is buzzing. Bubbly twang sounds from a country band on the community stage. Patios bristle with big smiles and splashing pints under a canopy of cowboy hats.

At the harbor, people congregate with their phones held high, capturing the setting sun over the sparkling water. The sunsets have been particularly stunning lately. Behind the thick haze of smoke, the hot pink sun glows like a ball of fire, mirroring the flames from the burning forests 40km north and south of us.

The next morning, a staff member in my mental health program tells me her friend who works at a pub downtown said it was one of the busiest nights she had ever seen. How easily we forget the real-life threats just around the corner.

After several times stuck indoors, we’re desperate to get outside so we find a pocket on the air quality map where the AQI is 250 instead of the 350 score for our neighborhood. The park trails are empty, sane people know better than to venture outside right now.

As we’re walking, my friend exclaims in a hushed tone, “Omg it’s a bear.” At first I don’t believe her. I whip my head around to the direction of her gaze. Sure enough, there is a plump black bear tromping through the bristly bushes.

“What are we supposed to do again? Slowly back away right?” I ask, revealing my East Coast, urban ignorance. My friend is from B.C., so I assume she’ll know. “I can’t remember, it’s been so long since I’ve seen one,” she says, to my surprise.

My heart races, the adrenaline pumps through my legs, which maintain pace but take on a heavier step. We walk with our heads turned backwards like owls, anticipating the big black bear to follow us.

“It’s a baby bear,” my friend says. “Oh, even better,” I say nervously. “Mama can’t be too far away,” she says.

The bear leaves our view. We keep walking. Our conversation returns to sharing our non-bear-related neuroses all the way back to the house, where the air quality is currently labelled “hazardous” at the far end of the AQI scale. On the way, the radio announcer interrupts Olivia Rodrigo’s Drop Dead with evacuation warnings for the areas north and south of us. The warnings are mirrored on my phone which buzzes with emergency alerts every few hours.

It takes some six hours, until I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep, for the bear to return to my consciousness. I was so mired in my self-manufactured threats I forgot about the visceral, life-threatening danger we encountered that afternoon.

The forests are burning outside, but for someone with a mental illness, the fire is coming from inside the house.

I first encountered the popular idiom in a racial context. The idea being that racism is not a rare external attack but rather generated and perpetuated by the culture within; inequality is predicated on the very foundations and structures of society.

But “the fire is coming from inside the house” actually has a much lighter origin—it evolved from the horror movie trope “the call is coming from inside the house.” You’ve seen the scene countless times—an innocent woman answers the phone to silence or heavy breathing. All hell breaks loose when she discovers the caller is inside the house.

Like a cliche horror movie, mental illness diverts the source of danger from the external to the internal. When the perceived threat is inside the house, real-life dangers are easily forgotten. A functioning nervous system would likely respond to a bear encounter with the urge to run as fast as possible. But a dysfunctional nervous system responds differently.

The fastest I’ve ever run was not from a menacing stranger or a bear, but from threats of my own making. I would sprint hard, until my heart pounded out of my chest and my legs pumped to the point of numbness. In those moments I felt free from the demons so familiar they felt less like intruders and more like unwelcome roommates.

Now, I approach my internal threats the same way one should respond to a bear encounter. I no longer run away as fast as I can. Rather than turn away, I keep the danger in view, and gently, slowly, I back away.

Best,

Anna

Reading 📖

When an enchanting Union Square Greenmarket volunteer goes missing, a magazine fact-checker for a prestigious New York magazine discovers a cryptic note from another volunteer suggesting the market is up to no good, so he becomes obsessed with finding her. This is the premise of The Fact Checker, written by Austin Kelley. I went in expecting the author’s background as a former New Yorker fact-checker to make this a juicy read but the plot left me wanting more. Instead, I was more into the book’s larger commentary on a changing Manhattan, the fragile state of urban intellectual masculinity, and the broken food chain.

Articles

🧘 The difference between curing and healing.

🍸 A die-hard drinker accidentally quits.

🪩 Partying through plagues.

🏔️ Did an experienced climber leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain?

🪞Ariana Grande and the disappointment of diagnosis.

Watching 📺

One morning in Manhattan, Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) wakes up to the reality he is no longer living with his wife of fifteen years, Rachel (Clare Danes). A wealthy doctor in his forties sharing parent duties to their preteen kids, he’s so obsessed with women on a dating app that it takes him a minute to realize his wife has disappeared. This is the premise of Fleishman Is In Trouble (Hulu, Disney+, CBC Gem), which flew totally under the radar when it came out in 2022.

We spend the first half of the series piecing together the clues of why Rachel left. As Toby struggles to single parent, with moral support from his equally-entertaining friends (played by Adam Brody, Lizzy Caplan and Josh Radnor), and flashbacks take us through the journey of their relationship, we start to feel bad for him. Until we learn Rachel’s side of the tale, one of accumulated trauma.

In the end, I’m not sure whose side of the story to sympathize with—the abandoned husband or the traumatized wife—and that’s the point. The show reveals how we can easily become biased through strategic storytelling. As a perpetually single person, the series doesn’t make a strong case for coupling up. But I couldn’t stop watching this witty portrayal of realistic characters with realistic relationships going through a midlife crisis.

Listening 🎧

Jose Gonzalez’ album released earlier this year is my go-to when I need to unwind before bed lately.

Snacking 🍌

Best eats out recently in Kelowna: the wasabi cream salmon at Gather, the buffalo fried cauliflower wrap at Frankie We Salute You!, and the gomae (sesame miso spinach) at Sushi Sai.

Best of eats at home: the tahini dressing for this Thai salad made by the friend I encountered the bear with this week.

The looming climate reality of the wildfires has me more anxious than usual lately. So this stress release essential oil roll-on and calm supplement have been getting me through the evenings, when my anxiety tends to flare up.

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Imagine yourself at age five, age sixteen, and now. What did you love about yourself and how did you shine at each age? If you could send a message of self-compassion to yourself then and now, what would you say?

We’re sitting in a circle in a silence, each of us struggling to answer these questions on the page. I can feel the heaviness in the room. The pain of reflection, the longing for what has been lost, measuring the distance from our former selves.

It’s funny—being a child caregiver and losing my mom at 22, I’ve always felt like an adult compared to other people my age. But turning 34 today, I feel more like an adult than ever before, because I feel so far from my inner child.

At five, I was goofy, dramatic, unapologetically selfish, and loved getting dressed up. At sixteen, I was flirty, outgoing, and still loved putting together an outfit. While I was overwhelmed with caregiving for my mom, sixteen was arguably the happiest age of my life—I had strong friendships, community, and healthy channels for self-expression through dance and photography.

The page for my current age is sparse. I glance around the room and notice I’m not the only one—blank pages are met with a mix of teary eyes and sunken expressions. As a recently laid-off, single, childless, 33-year-old in rehab, I don’t feel like I’m shining at much.

I know that little spark of a girl is in there, somewhere, but over the decades, the spark has quietly gone out. A part of it is just growing up—we assume we have to put the frilly princess dress in the closet to not command too much attention, we learn to quiet the large parts of our personalities to make room for others, we want to fit in.

But sometimes we put so much effort into fitting in, we forget who we really are. And then we wonder why we’re not happy, when the muted version of ourselves attracts people, jobs, circumstances that feel disconnected from our values and desires.

Rank how much you value each of the following categories on a scale of one to five: family, marriage/romantic relationships, parenting, friendships, career, spirituality, community, physical health, and leisure.

This is our second prompt and my value categories remain empty except for friendships, community, leisure, and career. Suddenly I see how, in devoting so much of my life to my career, I’ve sacrificed all my other values. Over the past three years I’ve made a concerted effort putting myself out there to make new friends, attending community workshops, and prioritizing leisure over work but I haven’t made much traction. Is it too late?

No, it’s never too late.

“Name three aspects of your body you’re grateful for.” I list the use of both sides of my body, since my mom struggled with having her dominant side paralyzed. Coincidentally that afternoon in an art session, we’re prompted to draw with our wrong hand for an hour. The whole time, my heart tugs with empathy for my mom, but it also swells with gratitude.

Birthdays force a reflection on where we’re at. But age is just a number. That being said, life is short. My mom had her first major brain aneurysm at 40, and the one that killed her at 56. Ever since her death, my life has maintained an air of urgency. I always fear I’m running out of time.

But it’s useful to pause amidst the rush and ground in my present reality. I might not like what I see of my life on paper, but I’m still here. My body and brain works. I have a roof over my head and food on the table. I can be whoever I want to be, so long as I get out of my own way.

What would my five and sixteen-year-old selves think of my life now? They would probably be sad. But they also would be relieved, that I’m still here, I’ve made it this far, and I still have so much life to live.

Best,

Anna

Reading 📖

💉 Our plastic surgery nightmare.

🤳 The influencer extras are tired.

🇮🇳 The cockroach revolution: how India’s students are rewriting the rules of protest.

📸 A celebrity photographer’s hidden stash of photographs.

🎈 A comic about the birthday blues.

Watching 📺

I finally got around to watching the latest season of Beef (Netflix), and I enjoyed it more than the critics. This season follows the entangled drama between two couples: a millennial country club general manager (Oscar Isaac) and his British wife (Carey Mulligan) and the Gen Z staff couple who blackmails them after catching a private physical argument on camera. It doesn’t maintain the high-octane, heart-racing energy of the first season, but I’m here for the dark intrigue.

The show’s greatest critique is that Lee Sung Jin has caught White Lotus Derangement Syndrome, which Guardian writer Lucy Mangan defines as a drama in which “poorer Americans are set alongside richer Americans in a location the latter choose to come to and the former can’t escape.” But as a fan of The White Lotus, I actually like the show’s eat-the-rich vibe and satirical play on wellness via signifiers like red light masks and psychedelic trips.

Listening 🎧

If you’re not already married, do you want to be? Of all the things I’m insecure about not being yet heading into my 34th year, ‘married’ is not one of them. I’m not the only one—in Canada, the number of marriages reached the lowest rate in 2020 since 1938, and the trajectory is the same in the United States. Marriage depictions in pop culture reflect this shift. I loved this discussion on how our growing dissatisfaction with matrimony is being represented on screen—from Beef to The Drama to Adult Braces.

Snacking 🍌

Ever since I was a little girl, when I was called ‘Anna Banana,’ I’ve loved bananas. After my mom died when I was 22, I began treating bananas as an homage to her and our relationship. I travel the world tasting banana dishes and collecting banana items in her memory. I also consider my birthday to be a day to honor my mom, as she is the one who brought me into existence. So naturally, every birthday I have to some kind of banana dessert. The irony is that I rarely bake. But this week, I tried making banana pudding for the first time. The recipe was beyond simple (no baking required). In the future, I think I’ll add more to jazz it up. I’ve been pairing it with Made Good’s banana chocolate chip muffins and it hits the spot.

Turns out I’m not the only one obsessed with bananas, You might have noticed bananas are everywhere lately—from your matcha at Starbucks to the skincare aisle to Anthropologie. I have so much to say on this topic I can’t not do a full write-up. Until then, and in honor of my birthday today, I’ll share the banana items I’ve been bananas for lately.

Lush Banoffee Pie Shower Gel - made with real bananas, a sweet caramel scent balanced with vanilla and tonka.

Sand + Fog Banana Cream Perfume Dropper - a smooth banana scent made tropical with coconut and jasmine, and warm sandalwood for depth.

Farm Rio x Anthropologie Reversible Swimsuit - designed by Brazilian brand Farm Rio, this hot one-piece feels like it has to be worn with Rio de Granado Yes, Nós Temos Banana! Perfume (smells like a Brazilian rainforest contrasting the green freshness of bananas with iris and cedar).

Glow Recipe Banana Moisturizing Cream & Lip Treatment Duo - I love the classic Korean banana milk that serves as the inspiration for this moisturizer-balm duo.

Anthropologie Banana Purse - The perfect purse for summer dinner dates, it screams for a banana cocktail.

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When you spend too much time alone, your ears get subjected to a lot of unsolicited sounds. Whether I’m at home or traveling, I spend the majority of my time when I’m out in public listening.

Ocean Vuong once said writers are really just observers, and I think there’s some truth to that. The more I observe, the more I learn—about people, myself, humanity.

For years, I’ve been keeping a note in my phone where I jot down anything I overhear from passing strangers in New York that particularly strikes me.

Disturbing, hilarious, illustrative of the times—together, the miscellaneous quotes I’ve been accumulating read like a portrait of a city that is always changing but forever unpredictable.

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Being a travel writer looks pretty desirable from the outside. Five-star slumbers in silky Egyptian cotton sheets; helicopter rides to a mountaintop for a picnic breakfast; never-ending tasting menus filled with smoke, flames, live fish—to readers of my travel articles and viewers on social media, these trips carry currency. Economic, yes, but social too.

So I wasn’t surprised when I heard a fellow travel writer was scammed. Someone posed as the travel journalist and took a free trip under their name. It was only after they’d been flown, wined and dined, and caught up on their beauty sleep, that the PR funders of the trip realized they’d been duped. After the trip they started following up with the woman they thought was a travel journalist, asking when and where they could expect to see stories from their expensive investment, but she ghosted them. They finally got a hold of the real journalist but she swore it wasn’t her who went on the trip.…

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I miss the early years of grief.

When I could still hear her voice, recall her smell, feel the aged softness of her freckled skin.

Now, the memory of her is as hazy as the cigarette smoke that blanketed the kitchen table of my childhood.

I miss when her death was just a story, rather than a truth.

When I thought running away could make the reality of death go away. A time before I realized avoidance is a circle that always returns us to the start.

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I’ve been going through it lately, so I don’t feel sturdy enough to write anything wise or interesting. Instead, I’ll share some ideas I heard this week that I can’t stop thinking about.

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A baby is lightest in the womb. The amniotic fluid holds 90% of their weight, making a seven pound baby feel lighter than a single pound. Cradled by the protective fluid and the shell of the mother’s womb, the baby is safe. It’s only once the tether is cut that they finally feel the weight of their own body. They crawl until they can stand; trip over their own feet until they can put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, they learn how to manage the gravity of life.

Lately I’ve been practicing visualization to regulate my nervous system. This week, the visual I keep returning to is of an adult cradled by everyone and everything that has ever loved them. Together, they form the shape and protective shell of a mother’s womb. The love of many lessens the load.

“All you need is love,” I hear on the radio in a gift shop the other day. I think of mom. She loved The Beatles, and all things UK.

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Keeping it to recommendations, but I’ll share something I learned this week that I can’t stop thinking about—the lower back is a center of creativity but also survival. This resonated—I increasingly feel like working on this book is killing me but also keeping me alive. Could this explain why my lower back, which rarely bothers me, has been aching lately? Creativity helps us survive, but it’s also periods of survival that produce some of the most moving art. What a fascinating tension.

Best,

Anna

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I’m always looking outside myself for answers. But the body is a treasure trove of lessons. It just needs a catalyst to unlock its secrets.

The key to the box for me is most often restorative yoga. Increasingly it’s when I slow down that I make the most inner progress; it’s in prolonged intentional rest where I begin to see most clearly.

After a few days of rising temperatures in New York this week, the heat finally broke with a severe thunderstorm. As the wind thrashed and thunder boomed outside, I lay on my yoga mat in restorative. The teacher instructed us to take ‘constructive rest pose’ with our knees buckled in together, feet apart—my go-to pose to release tension in the lower back.

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What if you’re not the problem, you’re just in the wrong place with the wrong people?

Somewhere between the blissfully ignorant self-acceptance of childhood and crippling anxious self-awareness as a preteen, I learned that being different meant I was flawed. At thirteen, conformity implied safety, so anyone who stood out from the crowd was either made invisible and outcasted—excluded from a circle of friends chatting at lunch—or worse, ridiculed—bullied all the way from their school locker to their doorstep.

Some things that made me different were easier to keep secret, namely, my disabled mom, who I stopped inviting to school performances after several classmates referred to her as my grandma.

But there was no hiding my physical appearance. Every day I would walk to school wishing I had an invisible cloak in which I could cocoon myself.

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It’s a scene we all know: the young female magazine journalist jog-walking across the street to a boppy female pop track. Carrie Bradshaw is trotting in a flowy tutu and heels to work on her column at the coffee shop; Andy Sachs is running errands for the Anna Wintour-inspired editor-in-chief of Runway while effortlessly eating a New York bagel; Jenna Rink is rushing to the Poise magazine office in a Versace minidress, confused why she woke up that morning as a 30-year-old. In the early aughts, the magazine writer was the cool girl career. As I watched these rom-coms at preteen sleepovers on my pull-out couch, countless other girls were simultaneously watching them too. They would dream of one day moving to New York and becoming a magazine writer.

That girl was not me. I didn’t believe such a glamorous life was possible for me. And I didn’t want it—I wanted to do something more “meaningful.” I liked to write and tell stories, and I wanted to use these skills to…

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The window of my childhood bedroom looks out to my neighbors’ windows and the wall of my apartment building. But there is a small opening in the sky where my building meets the roof of the building next door. Through that gap, the light enters.

I’ve been looking for the light this week, literally. Ironic, perhaps, after five weeks in a country where the sun is avoided at all costs. Giant city umbrellas stand at stop lights for pedestrians to wait under. On particularly sunny days, a personal umbrella is necessary too. Everyone wears a hat, the wider the brim the better, but also a mask, so that the eyes are the only facial feature exposed to the sun. After a couple weeks, I adopt the same uniform. But I become extra diligent with it after facial treatments and a severe water burn on my neck and chest.

Korea is 13 hours ahead, so my body’s expectation of when it’s supposed to be light, and when it’s supposed to be dark, is reve…

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One of the downsides of being a travel writer is that the concept of a “dream/bucket list destination” loses its allure. Like anything, do a lot of it and the novelty wears off. But there is one place I’m always fantasizing about—South Korea. When I can’t sleep, I scroll through flights, hoping I might stumble on a deal (it’s annoyingly one of the few destinations where the flight prices are consistent year-round). I went back in the fall of 2024, and before that, for the first time on my own at age 19.

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This year’s movie awards season got me through the brutal winter. Over the holidays, I’d slog through sleet and snow to my local theatre, one of the oldest in the city, and escape into whatever was playing that night. After seeing a handful of the award buzz films, I noticed a theme—fathers. Perhaps it was my own bias, I happened to be thinking more about fatherhood lately, as I was meeting some of my dad’s side for the first time. But beyond the individual, film does tend to reflect the current cultural moment. So what do all the fathers on film say about where we’re at?

No Other Choice opens with a powerful image. After having dinner with his family on a warm day in their sunlit backyard, the father, Man-su, embraces his wife and two children in a hug. He remarks feeling complete contentment in that moment. His family, united as one, is everything, he says.

This fleeting moment of fulfillment will become the motivating force through the rest of the film, driving him to murde…

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Every Sunday night, I perform my nostalgia ritual of popping a 90s/early aughts album into my pastel purple CD player. I let the familiar melodies of Christina Aguilera, Jewel, and Sheryl Crow soothe me like a lullaby. But last Sunday, I tried something new—I streamed Hilary Duff’s new album, luck… or something. I had high hopes. My Instagram feed has been filled with clips of her latest tour, and for once I actually watch an entire series of barely discernible concert stories. I let myself slip into an algorithmic time machine, back to being 13 and rejoicing over the Laguna Beach intro.

But two tracks in, I was cringing. Grown-up Lizzie McGuire singing about giving blowjobs in the bathroom feels performative. Witnessing the desperation of a millennial mom clinging onto her youth elicits a tinge of shame, maybe because the very act of listening to her music means I’m also clinging onto my youth. Listening to luck… or something, feels like watching a 50-year-old mom belt their adol…

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“It’s in the most precarious moments when you find out what you can do,” my yoga instructor tells us. She begins class explaining how, as a queer, gender non-conforming person taking in the latest news of attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, it’s been a difficult week. “People often think of a slow, grounding class as just deep breathing and relaxation. But the practice of grounding actually makes us stronger, more capable when challenges do arise.”

Throughout the class, I find myself struggling to balance more than usual. I’ve been off-kilter this week, largely due to congestion causing a blocked ear. I think of my mom whose dominant side was paralyzed, how she stood and walked despite only one leg in use. I can still hear her cane clicking against the ground, the sound of the supplemental foundational support she needed. Returning to the present moment on my mat, I find balance by visualizing my one standing leg rooting into the floor. I picture …

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I’m writing this the day before another snowstorm. It’s been a long winter. (I don’t know if it’s just that New York has made me a weak winter-bearing Canadian or it’s having gone a year without an international trip, but I’m finding this winter particularly arduous). Winter is an interesting case study in enduring difficulty. Humans are resilient, we inevitably face challenges in life, and once we do, we can use these past experiences of survival as evidence of our ability to endure future obstacles.

Of all the periods of discomfort we face, winter is arguably the most consistent and predictable, for those living in seasonal climates. A whole quarter of our year (or longer, if you’re further north) is spent surviving winter. And yet, every year, by the end of February, we start to feel a little listless, like a kid in the backseat with the nagging urge to ask our parents, “are we there yet?” as we grow desperate for the blooms of spring.

Every time the temperature d…

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“Your body feels different,” he tells me, tracing his hands across my back before beginning our intuitive massage, a two-hour session of body energy healing-meets-psychic reading. “Most bodies feel familiar, a landscape I’ve traversed before—your body feels like a foreign planet.”

My body as a foreign planet. A landscape even I don’t understand.

The body, divorced from the living being held within, becomes an inanimate object. One after another, bodies with alien proportions strut the runway assembly line in ethereal gowns, the trains of each dress, the only connection between them. Their hips, waist, boobs, cheekbones, brow bones—everything is lifted. Elongated limbs affixed to long heels stretch their bodies taller and thinner, as if they could dissipate into thin air. The lack of shape in the body is made up for in the dress, where curves are manufactured with volume, layers, and angles. More alien than the protruding ribs, shoulder blades, and clavicles are the eyes…

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Every night, the upstairs window of a house behind mine is illuminated. Inside the window sits a man, his face aglow in the blue light of a screen. He is the mirror image of me, as I sit on my laptop framed by my window. Our windows are directly across from each other, separated by the backyards of each of our houses. There is nothing obscuring my face, his is barricaded by his computer monitor, surrounded by trailing plants hung from his curtain rod. Every few minutes, he looks up and out the window, his face pointed right at mine. But he is just a little too far for me to see the details of his face: the shape of his lips, the shadow of his nose, the pupils of his eyes, and most importantly, whether they are looking at me. I think of the common rule-of-thumb, “if I can see you, you can see me.”

I go to bed later than him. Most nights, his apartment goes dark at midnight. Sometimes, usually weekends or occasionally for a week straight, he stays up later. Is he working or scrolling or …

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