Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  It was supposed to be a routine check-up. After hearing about the recent falls, however, the family physician strongly recommended that my beloved send his mother for x-rays, blood tests, the works, and so we found ourselves in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati two days before Christmas. Then we found out that if she went directly from the hospital into physical therapy, Medicare would pay for it, but if she went home from the hospital to celebrate Christmas with her family in her own home, and to attend her grandson's wedding reception, Medicare would not pay. Money is an unavoidable issue for many families at this time of the year. The costs to families who have loved ones incarcerated in the USA rise during the holiday season as they make more visits, send more care packages, and make more phone calls. Even emails come at a price. A set of 30 digital stamps, required by correctional facilitie...

Hijinks in high style. There's even a pilgrim born in Singapore, Tim Canon-Yeo, who obtained a Medieval English degree from Oxford and taught TEFL for several years in Colombia, before becoming a personal trainer and bodyguard to paranoid pop stars. Tim resides in Kent and writes a poem a day. Thanks, Larry Breiner, for the recommendation after hearing I'm writing a book of poems based on The Canterbury Tales .

Ian Chung kindly accepted two poems "The Muslim" and "The Scenic Designer" for Eunoia Review , publishing one immediately after the one, as is apt for these double portraits of a married couple. Thank you, Zizi Majid and Izmir Ickbal, for sharing your stories with me. The stories illuminate the experience of Singaporeans living in America.

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . I was going to write about the neighborhood petition I saw in the East Village on Sunday. A public park is to be renovated and, as part of its renovation, its twelve-foot fence will be lowered to four feet. Residents of the gentrified village are petitioning for the fence to remain twelve-foot high to keep "the park safe for children." I never thought I would see Trump's wall at the heart of supposedly liberal New York. I was going to write about an on-line petition posted by the homophobic Facebook group Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family. A school has adopted Mark Haddon's award-winning novel A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time for supplementary reading. The haters want the book banned for its "foul and blasphemous language." Unable to appreciate the book's sensitive depiction of a 15-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome, the book burners are the tr...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . This Thanksgiving I'm giving thanks for the Hong Kong protesters who struggled bravely for democracy and human rights, and for the brave Hong Kong people, who voted in record numbers and handed authoritarianism a stinging defeat. There is mourning amidst the thanksgiving, for the protesters who died or were badly injured in the struggle. For injured members of the Hong Kong police too, who are someone's father, brother, and son. It is unbridled authoritarianism that pitted one side against the other. There should be a commission of inquiry into excessive police violence and the higher-ups who gave the orders, not those who had to carry them out, have to be held responsible, but the commission should include not only the goal of truth, but also that of reconciliation. The Hong Kong protests will, I hope, inspire those of us in the USA to take part in the mass movement to impeach Trump, if any inspirat...