Rewriting Personal History

12 March 2026

Although I didn’t experience war, I grew up tense.

Medicine Buddha sitting steady on a drift wood.

Although there were no missiles to take cover from, verbal abuse hardened my heart.

Although there were no bullets to dodge, taunts bore holes in my head.

As a kid I learnt to read tones, facial expressions and listen for the unspoken to keep the peace among warring adults. I became too sharp for my age which took a psychological toll on me.

After I passed 40, I became more determined to not bleed my anxieties & frustrations onto others through harsh words.

Recently the driver who took my booking was at the wrong pick up point. It had arrived and I would be charged extra if I didn’t board on time. Losing $! Unfair! Panic!

When the driver picked up the call, I was tempted to unleash my 2 weeks’ worth of anxiety & worry over medical & domestic issues on him.

But I didn’t.

“This is the moment you’ve been practising for. Don’t crack now. Don’t vent your frustrations on others like how it happened when you were kid.”

So I looked at the tree opposite me and calmly redirected the driver to the correct pick up point.

After I got into his car, the driver complimented me on my voice & thanked me for not getting upset. He said speech carried energy & there was kindness in my voice.

When we arrived at my destination, he told me I was his first passenger for the day & that my voice gave him hope.

His feedback assured me I don’t need to let habitual tensions from childhood dictate my adult behaviour.

Although I can’t stop wars, practising non-violent speech may liberate me from inherited patterns of destructions & that could be a my small contribution to Peace. 🙏🪷

Holding Sweetness

9 March 2026

We were in our 20s when we met. But we’ve always lived on opposite ends of the island. We meet at most twice a year. Some years we don’t meet at all.

But when we do meet, we relax into the comforting presence of people who have known us and accepted us for a long time.

And today after so many years, we discovered our shared delight in coconut candy squares!

In that moment we were children again – pure simplicity & delight in a square of compressed coconut flakes held together by condensed milk.

And for a few minutes, we dropped our adulting amour as we held Sweetness close to our heart. 🙏

Freedom Flowering

26-1-26

There’s a little shop in Chinatown that sells fashion accessories of all sorts – brooches, ear studs, chokers, belts etc.

The elderly proprietress in her traditional blouse & pants is ever ready to offer one of her accessories to add chutzpah to one’s outfit.

I’ve been buying fabric flower brooches from this shop since my mid-30s.

I’ve been buying fabric flower brooches from her since I was in my 30s. She has a way of handing you a $10 flower brooch as if it’s worth a million dollars. I always left her shop feeling I’ve found treaure!

This kitschy brown brooch is one of my favourites!

Over the years, her flower brooches have accompanied me to lessons, functions, celebrations and even overseas. Young female students had borrowed them from me as well. A friend even wore one of my flower brooches to a Harry Stiles’ concert.

Yesterday I dropped by the little shop to say hello. I thanked her for all the happy memories that her products had brought me.

At 85 years old, she was very alert & delighted to see me. Wasting no time, she held my hand affectionately, & told me to watch the slight slope at the threshold as she guided me into her shop. And just like that I bought 2 chokers from her obediently without even bargaining! 😆

When I praised her for her alacrity in service & speed in calculating prices, she laughed heartily & wished me a long life like hers. (She’s planning to close the business next year as the long hours are no longer suitable for her.)

A red flower adds chutzpah to my blue & white dress.
(9 Feb 2026)

As I age, visiting places of my youth allows me to relive certain emotions, so that I may give thanks for happy encounters & feel free to put to rest the distressing ones. 🙏🪔

For some of us, an emotional spring cleaning is as relevant as a spatial one.

Buildings of my childhood are spruced up for the Chinese New Year of the Horse. (Jan 2026)

Allow & Accept

16 Dec 2025

November & December are pensive times for me. This is because the big move from one place to another & settling in with my cats & dog happened during these times.

Accepting what’s given in the Bowl of Life with the help of Wisdom.

I had lots of anxieties over my animals’ safety because of high floor living and worries over neighbours’ reactions if they made noise. Thankfully, my fears were unfounded.

My dog passed in 2014. The last of my cats passed in 2023.

It took me a few years to discard my dog’s health supplements because his name was on the label. I had to finally accept that he was never coming back.

Only last month, I decided to let my cats’ pain meds & insulin go. Their names were also on the labels.

Oliver, the last of 12 cats to leave me.

Only last month I decided to allow the tattered sofa which had hosted many human celebrations & animal passings to leave. Its base was disintegrating.

As soon as my mind stopped clinging to what couldn’t be fixed, it became open to new possibilities. A set of furniture with dimensions suited to my needs & with aesthetics far beyond my imagination was gifted to me. 🙏

In the blessed corner where my animals sat, played & passed on is now this beautiful antique chair & red cherries.

And last night, the TV that had refused to work since 2023, was finally replaced.

Ganesha mantra to consecrate the new tv.

I was the last on the delivery man’s route and the rain had caused further delays.

Despite his fatigue, the TV installation worker asked me to relax, while he checked if the old bracket could hold the new TV. It turned out everything had to be new.

He helped me get started on google tv, and assured me that I could follow the prompts.

After taking a sip of the drinking water I offered him, the deliverer of television added, “Don’t worry. Just Allow and Accept.”

Looking back, had I allowed & accepted my limp & its ensuing struggles earlier in my youth, I might have been more articulate about them and be less anxious in my adult life.

So by the power of my unnecessary suffering, may I wish all sentient beings the discernment & trust to allow & accept when needed, so that we don’t have to live in fear & sadness. 🙏🪷😊

Swinging with Time

1 Dec 2025

Swinging gently under a beautiful tree on Penang Lane. (20 Nov 2025)

Being somewhat ritualistic about the passage of Time, I try to do something different to mark the start or beginning of a month, and other significant days.

In my working days, I used to mark the beginning of each school holiday by visiting the Kwan Imm Temple in Middle Rd with my mom, followed by shopping.

My Mom making water offering to Lord Ganesha in one of our outings.

On each payday, the first item I bought would be meatballs for my dog, Shoya.

My dog, Shoya in our old place. I used to be able to take him for long walks. He passed on in 2014 at age 15. He loved meatballs & dimsum.

For a number of Decembers past, I would ride Bus 143 with my mom from Jurong East all the way to Toa Payoh & back, just to see the Christmas Lights! 😄

Over the years I find myself becoming less critical of the designs of our festive lightings.

When I stopped benchmarking our Christmas lightings against that of other countries’ I started to notice the smiling locals, migrant workers & tourists posing under them.

Wefie below Christmas Lights along 313 Somerset Rd this year.

Towards the eves of New Year & Christmas, I would catch up with feeders of street animals I had befriended. It was my way of thanking them for doing on a daily basis what I couldn’t.

As I age & our city gets more crowded, some of the activities mentioned above require more effort & planning.

And because I no longer have the stamina to walk under the Christmas Lights from Tanglin Mall to Plaza Singapura, any corner that shines now gives me immense joy. 🙏🙂

Any corner that shines gives me immense joy.

As we welcome the final month of 2025, may we swing along with Time & accept what cannot be changed, to make way for the guidance ahead. ♥️

Blessed Rain

13-11-25

Yesterday the drizzle turned into a downpour as I stood below the awning of OG Albert Complex to wait for my brother.

He had gone to Fu Lu Shou Complex to pick up my favourite incense. To reach any of the shops in it, there were a number of steps to climb.

By the time we were ready to head home, the cab fare had spiked.

While waiting for the fare to drop we decided to have our evening meal at Albert Food Centre.

My brother spoke enthusiastically of the stalls he had patronised. After hearing his heartfelt praise of the 嘛坡卤面 (Muar braised noodle) I lost all interest in the other food options. 😊

He found us a table & scurried off for the dish which by now had reached legendary status in my imagination.

A while later and under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the bustling food centre, an aged younger brother carried a bowl of noodles & walked carefully towards his crippled older sister, just like he used to when they were kids.

The Rain might have caused delays & fare hikes, but it has quenched the thirst of animals & plants, and given 2 siblings an uninterrupted catchup.

On our way home, we even stopped by a makeshift shrine outside Bencoolen Centre to give Ganesha a bath!

Facing our Mountain

10-11-25

“You were not born to be perfect.

You were not born to be happy all of the time.

But if you commit yourself each day to doing the work of being fully human and feeling even when you are afraid, you can transcend in a way that is truly beautiful.” – “The Mountain is You,” by Brianna Wiest.

I think when we allow ourselves to be sad over the inevitables, and give thanks for what used to be, we can find some sort of peace with the present.

Thankful Thursday: To Blend or To Trend?

14-8-25

Putting my best foot forward for my first ever black & white photograph in my adult life by Mr Do Huu Phuoc.

To wish for what one cannot change or become is suffering indeed.

In my youth, I admired my peers for being able to prance about in their heels and slingbacks, and spin gracefully on their ankles to express joy.

In my youth I often placed my legs one against the other hoping they would look more normal. (June 2000, Beijing, China)

These were devices of discomfort and shame for a young girl who badly wanted to look and walk like normal people.

So instead of being grateful for the grounding support of my metal brace & laced up boots, I resented them for being constant reminders of my physical impairment.

As soon as I stopped fighting the brace at 60, the burden of hiding my deformity since I was 7 lifted .

Thankfully in the past couple of years, a series of pain episodes have shown me “resistance is futile,” especially at my age.

So early this year at the physiotherapist’s office, I cuddled & prayed over the plaster mold of my leg she made before sending it out to the brace maker.

Blessing my mold before it was sent to the brace maker in USA.

I even apologised to the likes of the boots I rejected in my youth. In my desperate attempts to blend, I was blind to the possibility of starting what could have been a trend.

Last month at Red Wing, as the lace of my boots tightened, and the leather sides aligned to meet my ankle, I felt a shift from dread to peace.

It was like coming home to myself. No more wishing to be someone else, no more apologising for my limp & no more fear of rejection.

As I thought about how wonderful it would be if someone could capture my moment of acceptance, a photographer happened to drop by.

I wish for someone to document my acceptance moment & a photographer decided to drop by the shoe shop I was in. 🙏

Even though he felt the lighting was not ideal for the photograph he had in mind, he would still like to take some pictures to help me remember.

Mr Do Huu Phuoc did not ask me to lose my cane or stand in a particular way. He photographed me when I was feeling my best.

I gladly accepted his offer. And this time for my first black & white shot of my adult life & for the first time in my whole life, I made zero effort to hide my leg, but happily put my best foot forward. 😄

远方的乡愁 (Homesickness)

13 March 2025

How could you miss a place you hadn’t visited? I could. Through my grandmother.

My cat, Oliver, on map of Kinmen Island.

My grandmother was born in city of Houpu on Kinmen Island in 1914. It was 3 years after the fall of the Ching Dynasty and the start of World War 1.

When she was 7 years old, turbulent times forced her to leave Kinmen for Singapore. She never set foot on her birth place nor saw her parents ever again.

This yearning for Kinmen would manifest in the constant repetition of her family name, her language group, her city of birth, and in her cooking & aesthetics.

In 2019, when I arrived in Kinmen for the first time and saw her family name written in gold characters, I felt a surge of awe! So this is the character that my grandma was so concerned about throughout her whole life!

An ancestral shrine bearing the family name of my grandmother.

She taught me how her family name, 翁 “ongg” should be pronounced using the first tone in Kinmen language. It was not to be mistaken for 王 “ong” which was using the second tone.

My grandmother was the only person I know who had nostalgic feelings for words.

When I walked the lanes of her birth place, I felt a sense of homecoming & reunion on her behalf. The red lanterns hanging about bearing the city’s name “后浦” may appear ordinary to the locals & tourists. But for me who had heard my grandmother speak it for years, I finally understood 后浦 is real, and not a figment of an old woman’s imagination.

Houpu, my grandmother’s beloved city of birth.

My grandma could have passed by & even touched this ancient tree in her birth city.

Outside a temple where an ancient banyan tree of more than a 100 years old stood, I touched its trunk reverently. My grandmother could have touched the same tree too.

Apart from words, my grandmother also kept Kinmen alive through her cooking. Her spring rolls, longevity noodles面线, glutinous rice油饭, leek 大蒜& yam dishes were quintessentially Kinmenese.

Strands of noodles swaying in the Kinmen breeze & sun taught me why my grandmother was ever so joyful when she cooked bowls of “mee sua” for us. The ever delicate longevity noodles was probably one of her few tangible links to memories of her Kinmen home.

My grandma always cooked “Mee Sua” or longevity noodles with joy.

In the news the narratives surrounding Kinmen Island tend to focus on geopolitical issues & what Kinmen can offer in terms of enjoyment & entertainment. But for folks like me, this little island has done more than its share of giving, sheltering & loving. It now deserves to be revered, cherished & protected.

I’m honoured to have visited this magical island that my grandmother pined for till her demise. I wish Kinmen everlasting peace & prosperity for the benefit of everyone, regardless of their beliefs.

Christmas Eve Question

24-12-24

Presenting Christmas log cake to Asher, the shelter cat at Metta Cats & Dogs Sanctuary. (22-12-24)

About 20 Christmas Eves ago, I passed by 4 dogs sheltering under a vacated apartment block. There had been an on off drizzle much like today.

Grateful that I didn’t hesitate to help animals & share my interest with students when I was able to move without a walking aid. (Nanyang Girls’ High School, 2004)

I went home, put down my stuff & went out again to the supermarket to get dog food and aluminium trays in preparation to feed them.

My old flat at Blk 3 Teban Gardens Road (1999-2012)

By the time I got to the abandoned block, I couldn’t find the dogs.

A sense of disappointment mixed with deepening unease crept up on me as I surveyed the deserted neighbourhood in the failing light.

At that moment of uncertainty, a voice called out to me,”Miss Ong, what are you doing here?”

I turned around. Two boys had seemed to materialise from nowhere. They introduced themselves as students from one of the schools I had worked in.

The boys who helped me complete my dog feeding mission told me they came from St Joseph’s Institution.

When I told them about my failed feeding attempt, they took over the trays of dog food and completed my mission.

8 years after that Christmas Eve encounter, I would be relocated to a new flat that sits on the land where I fed the homeless dogs.

View from my current flat. (Sunrise on 10-12-24)

And each Christmas Eve especially on a cool evening like this, I will hear the Angels loud & clear: “Miss Ong, what are you doing here?” 🙏