Relationship Update

Don’t call me the boy/girl who cried wolf but I just wanted to tell you that my boyfriend is going to nursery school!

On another note, just as I posted my Miss Independent post, The Cut published a wonderful piece called 25 Famous Women on Being Alone. You can check out the full article HERE or just read my favourites below:

(Illustrations by Mitsuie Yusaku)

People sometimes seem surprised when I say this, because I’m a pretty friendly person. This is one of the greatest misconceptions about introversion. We are not anti-social; we’re differently social. I can’t live without my family and close friends, but I also crave solitude. I feel incredibly lucky that my work as a writer affords me hours a day alone with my laptop. I also have a lot of other introvert characteristics, like thinking before I speak, disliking conflict, and concentrating easily … introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals — we are constantly exhorting people to ‘come out of their shells’ — but there’s a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go. (Susan Cain)

I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person … and also I feel like it builds a sense of self confidence and a sureness that you know that you can venture out into experiences without the crutch of other people. Like, you’re not doing it because you feel lonely or isolated, but because it generates a new kind of experience. (Carrie Brownstein)

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. (Cheryl Strayed)

I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel. (Audrey Hepburn)

The precious part of my day is when I’m alone. When everybody goes home and (son) Sean’s asleep and I’m just watching the night lights out of my window or something. I like silence, you see. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s all right to be alone. (Yoko Ono)

Miss Independent

Proof that compliments are so important: when it comes to past compliments, I have IMMACULATE memory. Do you remember Bebo? The social-media site before Facebook and Myspace came to town? Well, I can still clearly remember my first boyfriend posting the lyrics to Ne-yo’s She Got Her Own on his Bebo profile for me. Looking back, I think he only liked that I had a job because it meant he didn’t have to pay for his bubble tea, but regardless of his intentions that gesture stuck with me.

Ten years later, I don’t always enjoy being Miss Independent but when I do, I love celebrating me.

My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude. (Warsan Shire)

Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you’re pretty sexy and you’re taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with. (Sex and the City)

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself. (Anais Nin)

Discover why you’re important, then refuse to settle for anyone who doesn’t completely agree. (Fisher Amelie)
When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings. (Elizabeth Gilbert)

(Shout-out to Haifa, my beautiful 11 year old cousin for letting me read one of her many young-adult novels)

I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.
(Warsan Shire)

You Will Find Your Way It Is In The Same Place As Your Love.

I’ve been absolutely terrified of every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do. (Georgia O’keeffe)




If you get tired, learn to rest, not quit. (Banksy)

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. (Marie Curie)


Being tender and open is beautiful. As a woman, I feel continually shhh’ed. Too sensitive. Too mushy. Too wishy washy. Blah blah. Don’t let someone steal your tenderness. Don’t allow the coldness and fear of others to tarnish your perfectly vulnerable beating heart. Nothing is more powerful than allowing yourself to truly be affected by things. Whether it’s a song, a stranger, a mountain, a rain drop, a tea kettle, an article, a sentence, a footstep, feel it all – look around you. All of this is for you. Take it and have gratitude. Give it and feel love. (Zooey Deschanel)

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver)

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. (Mary Oliver)



Listen–are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? (Mary Oliver)

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.(Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)


You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. (Mary Oliver)


You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. (Mae West)

Homeless, Unemployed and On Holiday

“The journey itself is my home.”
― Matsuo Bashō








Yokohama Chinatown and Tokyo Shinjuku District featuring Tokyo-style soba with extra ginger to fight my throat cold.

Osaka Somewhere

Guys, I said I was gonna blog less, not not at all! I mean, I blogged every single freakin’ day for two entire years. So now, only 3-4 times a week, if that’s okay with you (hehe).

Japanese grapes are like no other. Really, some of them sell for thousands and thousands of dollars! The purple ones (similar to these) are usually peeled. I can still remember the first time I saw my colleague, a 50-something year old carefully peeling her bunch of grapes as if they were bananas or apples. My mind was, and still is, blown. Also peeled by Japanese: pears, apples, the inner skin of all citrus fruit and figs.

I volunteered as a security guard in Haifa, Israel once where we used the code 10-68 for inappropriate behaviour. Nowadays, even though 5 or 6 years have passed, every time I see something “inappropriate” I think 10-68! Funny how some details stay with you.

It’s not all green-smoothies and health-foods. You know it’s a bad day when you find yourself sitting inside a Mos Burger at 9.25 on a Saturday night alone. Biting into the flesh of a dead animal as a second dinner – after having already eaten a big plate of cold left-overs plus two cream buns. Which, is the reason you’re out at all, you know, to convince yourself you’ve killed some of em kilojoules. Listening to Adele through stepped-on-broken headphones while using the restaurant’s feedback pad to write ex-lovers depressing love notes.
“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” -John Burroughs
100 yen vending machines are popular because they only require 1 coin.

Singledom has a completely new meaning when you’re with the flu. These are freshly squeezed orange and carrot juice – my attempt at mothering myself with my real mama so far.

Would have been a completely vegan meal if not for the fish flakes atop the tofu. Of course, still delicious. I am really going to miss soba. Both soba and tofu are my favorite Japanese foods.

Often I have to remind myself that being single and living alone has its benefits too. I swear, except for the time I ate my feelings through a Mos Burger and fries combo, there hasn’t been a night where my dinner hasn’t been muesli and fruit.

PS I have had some recent fame, you can check it out HERE also, my latest Savvy article, HERE.

Mom Was Right

Dear Ones:

I’ve realised my mom was right. I have been blogging too much, working too much, exploring too much, thinking too much, exercising too much and plain pushing myself to exhaustion. When she first said it, of course I disagreed with her. “You don’t understand, I’m FINE,” I said. And we all know what that “fine” means. But a simple comment by Yuka today on how I’d mistakingly written “orange” in place of “apple” in a previous post,  finally touched the right nerve.

Believe me, I’ve had the best of intentions. I’ve blogged everyday because I enjoy doing it but also because I believe it will one day, some way or another, make me a real writer. For the past two years, I have not stopped. Even now, on holiday! I am walking, thinking, over-thinking, exploring, photographing, blogging, and freelancing. Then I write a post about holiday blues. I am so silly.

I don’t want to be like this anymore.

So, I have made a choice. The great Bahai leader, Abdu’l-Baha says:

“One cannot obtain the full force of the sunlight when it is cast on a flat mirror, but once the sun shineth upon a concave mirror, or on a lens that is convex, all its heat will be concentrated on a single point, and that one point will burn the hottest. Thus is it necessary to focus one’s thinking on a single point so that it will become an effective force.”

In short, I am finally going to take that overdue holiday. I am going to enjoy my upcoming travels to their fullest and I am going to live in the moment. This means photographing less, blogging less, hopefully thinking less and overall, chilling the F out. I guess my only concern is losing followers but I know that my health comes first and that this way, contrary to my previous thinking, I can become a better writer. Something to do with quality over quantity, I guess.

In the words of Anne Lamott:  “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you”.

Again, thank you for being there.

Occasionally Lonely

And occasionally
loneliness is
the muffled sounds
of a neighbor’s telly
and in ad breaks
his noisy raspberries
on his girlfriend’s belly.

Nature Is Not A Place To Visit It Is Home

To Make Living Itself An Art, That Is The Goal.

Trying.