4th December 2024 Last evening, my wife told me something unusual had happened in South Korea. I’ve been battling a COVID infection since last week and wasn’t following the news much. Then I saw the headlines: the President of South Korea had declared martial law. My first reaction was...

A new date now goes down in the history of Sri Lanka: 21st September 2024 the day of the presidential election. This is the date that reset the country—especially its political system. My relative, who is a political analyst, used the word “tectonic” to describe the change. The momentum...

Suddenly, this week, the world learned about the Korean novelist Han Kang. I’ve noticed a surge of posts from my Korean friends on Facebook. Their posts are in Korean, and when Facebook translates them, her name is rendered as “Han River.” There is excitement in these posts. One friend...

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post....

Eymard, Thusitha and I have been chatting in the dark at the Gamini Hall bus station near my school for over an hour. We are talking about deep issues affecting our lives then, including love interests! We don’t see the time past. Forget about cell phones, we did not...

I am writing this at a time there are protests around the world, started with an incident that killed George Floyd by a policeman in the US. The protest is addressing racism in the society. However, there is a bigger issue relating to policing itself. Police violence is something...

After I returned to Hong Kong in October 1988, I was alone for a few weeks until Fr. Joe arrived and joined me. One of our first tasks was to prepare the Christmas Newsletter of the Asian Team. How thrilled I was then to use the Gestetner Photocopy machine...

I arrived in Bangkok without knowing nothing about Bangkok. I knew a few people though–Fr Chalerm, Rungtip Imrungruang or Jim as we called her who were members of YCS Thailand. Jim picked me up from the airport and took me to my place of stay, a place we called...

I think it was in December 1990 that Victor and I were again in Paris to attend a meeting called the RSM where all regional offices from different continents were meeting for a week or so. We were representing IYCS Asia.  One evening our older colleague and big sister,...

Canto Grande (or Great Song in Spanish) was (and unfortunately still is) a shanty town around Flores in the outskirts of Lima (Canto Grande, Distrito de Lima 15404, Peru) in around 1989. It’s in the greater district of  San Juan de Lurigancho (SJL), the most populated district in Lima,...