We were living in Australia with our young daughter when my husband told me he was looking at a job opportunity in Bahrain. I was really excited…
Read MoreAs a third culture kid, she looked for a partner from an Indian background to avoid having to explain her cultural specificities on an everyday basis. And look where it landed her…
Read MoreDaydreams also hit roadblocks. Living across cultures as a travel writer is all well and good if you only have yourself to look after. It is harder if you are trying to raise kids and need a 9 to 5 to provide for them...
Read MoreI sit there. Sweaty. Hungry. Flushed. Embarrassed, but humoured. This was the first time I had ever used chopsticks, been to a Vietnamese restaurant, or laid eyes on tea ornaments (flasks)...
Read MoreSid, my Aussie partner, sputtered over his coffee. Then he looked straight into my eyes and said decisively, “No, it doesn’t. Nothing looks like your damn Mumbai”...
Read MorePeople will say one nation or region is more friendly than another. I honestly can say I think that people are pretty much the same all over the world. So if you are an asshole in Baltimore, moving to another country won’t magically transform you into everyone’s hero...
Read MoreI can choose how Japanese I am: I never leave my chopsticks standing up in a bowl of rice because that is a funeral practice here and I avoid the number 4 like the plague in food service...
Read MoreMy passports have always been issued from abroad. In the 1980s my passports were changed to blue "Z" instead of the standard blue. I was treated like a second class citizen each time I “returned” to the US and travelling in my 20's through Europe with it in the Cold War was sheer hell on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain...
Read More