I can’t tell you how often I got an opportunity – or even the hint of an opportunity – and thought, this (could be) is my big break! It was meeting a director in Cambodia, or shooting a TV series in Pakistan (that never saw the light of day). It was a Creative Director job…
In July this year, I will have spent 10 years in Asia – from Cambodia to South Korea and then to Pakistan, where I currently live. People tell me all the time here in Pakistan: “Everyone here wants to go there, so why would you want to come here?” It drives me absolutely bonkers, because…
A couple weeks ago, my brain had a hiccup. It does that sometimes, it’s not unusual, but this one manifested differently. The best word I could use for it was content fatigue. I didn’t want to look at my discord, or twitter, or any social media, and my brain felt like a saturated sponge that…
Back in 2006, my dad and I started working on a thing called Not This Day. It was part of my dad’s reawakening, when he quit his law practice and tried to start a new life. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as successful as he planned, and a few years later he went bankrupt. He never…
On a recent trip to Islamabad, I was browsing around Saeed Book Bank in the F7 Markaz. A giant, three-story building packed to the gills with books, Saeed Book Bank is one of my favorite places in Islamabad. I’ve spent over an hour wandering around, browsing coffee table books on gems and architecture, academic texts…
There’s something I’ve noticed throughout the past couple years of the COVID pandemic. It’s not a researched or scholarly position, it’s an observation and an intuition. Really, it boils down to something very simple: colonized countries have a very different relationship with suffering than the colonizing countries. In case you’re new to my journey, I’ve…
How dare you speak to me of freedom, while yet I see the sky? The sky is bluer at altitude. Maybe it’s clearer as well. The air is sharper and thinner, and it makes you aware of how you breathe and when, and the effort it takes to walk. I’m aware of a lot of…
When I lived in Cambodia, I heard a lot about “fusion” pieces when international choreographers came and worked with Cambodian dancers. Fusion is an exciting word and promises something new and innovative. The Holy Grail of cross cultural choreography, one could say. But there are post-colonial approaches to this, and there are colonial approaches. The…
The body moves quickly, but the soul is slow, catching up only after time. There is obviously more to say about cultural shifts. Today, I’m just talking about the wormhole. In astronomy, a wormhole is a theoretical structure that connects different places of the universe through a shorter “tunnel” of spacetime. Most astrophysicists agree that…
No to being a Changemaker No to leading as Leader No to stigmatizing the normal No to being a Savior No to focusing on impact No to seeking followers and views No to drama No to questioning and analysis No to hope and expectations Yes to presence Yes to local Yes to intuition Yes to…