A few years back, while I was working in a tea and tech-based startup, I went for a Japanese food fair. There, I heard about Sayama tea for the first time, and as someone who was already interested in Japanese tea, I took the chance to talk to Kajishima-san, the lady who was running the… Read More My Visit to Sayama ‘Teas’neyland
Hello friends! As you know, I’ve been tired lately, and I even talked about how I think I’ve piled too much on my plate. This is a bit of a recurrent topic for me, so I’ve been doing some reading on what I can do about it, and today I want to share five book… Read More Five Books That are Helping Me Slow Down and Refocus
Hello friends! I have not dared to check when was the last time I talked about podcast but… it was definitely a long time ago. And I do have some podcasts that I would like to share, and also to help myself record what went on in the podcast app this year. So without further… Read More A 2024 Podcast Update
I loved Hanna Alkaf’s debut novel, The Weight of Our Sky, and really liked her other novel The Girl and the Ghost, so I was definitely interested in reading more from her. Queen of the Tiles is different from her previous historical novels as it’s a contemporary YA story about grief, disguised as a murder… Read More Book Review: Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf
After reading River Town, I decided to move on to another book about China – this one about the “return of religion after Mao” (according to the book’s subtitle). One thing I noticed in River Town was that while people didn’t like to criticise Mao Zedong overtly, they were rather willing to admit that he… Read More Book Review: The Souls of China by Ian Johnson
I had a business trip to Suzhou and Shanghai and was too ambitious about how much reading time I had, which is why I started River Town in China but finished it in Singapore. River Town is a memoir of Hessler’s two years in Fuling, a small town on the Yangtze river. Hessler was there… Read More Book Review: River Town by Peter Hessler
I posted earlier about the tea I had at Giverny cafe in Nagasaki. Well, as I was leaving, I realised that they were selling Mlesna Tea so… I bought three (which already shows a lot of self-control on my end). These three teas were technically already in the previous post, but I’ve been sharing them… Read More 3 Mlesna Tea Reviews
Since I have been reading more Japanese literature (and since my memory of struggling through “人間失格/No Longer Human” in the original Japanese is fading), I decided to reread Natsume Soseki’s classic, “I Am a Cat”. I’ve read it years ago and my main takeaway back then was that the first chapter was lots of fun… Read More Rereading: I Am A Cat by Natsume Soseki
I can’t remember where I heard about this book but I’m always up for some fun Singlit so I actually made a trip to the library (instead of looking on Libby) to borrow this! The Formidable Miss Cassidy is a historical fantasy novel set in end-19th Century Singapore. Leda Cassidy has arrived in Singapore to… Read More Book Review: The Formidable Miss Cassidy by Meihan Boey
I was looking for things to do in my half-a-day (more or less) in Nagasaki when I came across the Giverny cafe! It’s part of the Mihara gardens (link to site), which are two small gardens, a cafe, a bar, and a few shops all clustered together in a small neighbourhood in Nagasaki which overlooks… Read More “Tea Free” Experience at Giverny Cafe in Nagasaki
