Another year

Me, at the command centre in the newsroom.

AND so another year is coming to an end. We leave another chapter behind and continue to hope for a better one come January 1, 2013.
 The Christmas week is always a slow week for us in the newsroom. Most people are on leave and even if they're not, most would be occupied with the impending return of schooldays in about a week's time.
 All said and done, my 2012 was a good one. Indeed there were ups and downs but here I am, writing this now, still very much in one piece and not much different from the person I was at the end of last year.
 I guess as we grow older, it gets a bit more difficult to put our finger at the meaning of progress, except perhaps in the spiritual sense. It feels like we've seen and done it all and that there's not much else to achieve except to continue living a happy life.

A journalist's life

A Buddhist monk performing self-immolation during the war in Vietnam

GLAMOROUS is nowhere near a depiction of a journalist's life. When I joined, I didn't even have a desk of my own, let alone my own workstation.
 A fellow who joined a year after I did got it all wrong when he walked into the office with tie and all, and asked to be shown to his place. There was none, and he lasted a short month, perhaps realising it wasn't his cup of tea.
 There were always many people running about the newsroom but I must say that the best of times would be after that story was done and I'd find one corner of the building to sit and reflect for a while, just me and my pack of cigarettes.

Listen and thou shall know

In my office at the newsroom

ONE of the things I have learned to master over the years as a journalist is to listen more than I speak. Since I don't talk that much anyway, many-a-times, I just listened and hear people tell their stories. After several years of doing this, I also picked up the ability to read between the lines when people talk and also the skill of observing people's body language to figure out what they actually mean when they speak.

Into the newsroom

Me, at the town square, Vladivostok, Russia.

I STARTED reading newspapers when I was about seven. It was 1968 and America was getting increasingly involved in that senseless war in Indochina, trying to stave off a strong unification effort of the two Vietnams then (the Communist North and democratic South) by the frail but lion-hearted North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh
 Stories coming out from the war zone interests me at the time. In fact I am still intrigued by that 30-year war fought in that small arena, which spanned from the time Ho Chi Minh launched a campaign to drive the French out of the region to the time of America's humiliating defeat on April 30, 1975.

Strolling through the school system

Author's note: None of what's written here are to be taken as advice how one should approach the schooling years. While he had free-wheeling days in school, the author still believes that passing through with good grades is the easiest way to secure one's future. 

Roots

There is a Malay saying that no matter how high an egret flies, it will come down once in a while to rest on a buffalo's back. This is a story about my recent homecoming of sorts.

Mother's resting place