My accent and me
Shi Min Xie When I was a kid, I read a lot of books that had American slang and watched a lot of Hollywood movies. I remembered that my first movie experience was…
Shi Min Xie
Cactus–A Valentine’s Day Poem
A while ago, I was inspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s Valentine and wrote this poem. I have a tricky relationship with poetry. It was all I used to write until…
On my favourite mug, and why objects are so important to us
I just spent the last hour combing my house for my favourite mug. It is a mug that shows my sense of humor–it is black in colour, has the words…
Please don’t pirate my book
When Dragonhearted came out, I was pretty sure that no one would want to pirate this book because it wasn’t from an international publisher or anything like that. But a…
My own nanowrimo pep talk
It is National Novel Writing Month, also known as Nanowrimo. I started doing this for two years as a teenager, coping with A levels and school during my first few…
The Joker — Movie Review
Everyone has been raving about Joker for various reasons so I plonked my butt down to watch it. I’ve always been a DC fan as opposed to Marvel, but most…
On being enough
Recently, one of my favourite artists Grant Snider posted this comic: This got me thinking about writing, and why I write. I write for various reasons now–to see my race…
My ideal library
A friend and I were talking about the kind of libraries we would like to have if we ever owned a house one day. This is something of a pipe…
Why “Good vibes only!” and “Be happy” is unhelpful.
I am taking a break from this regularly scheduled programming to talk about this phrase, which I keep seeing so often. I get it. People want to be happy. We…
There is a culture to keep churning out content, and it is no good
A few years ago, I was working for websites that were churning out viral content. I had worked for several companies, and all I did was this: I would get…