-
Miss, Ms., Mrs.
When I was in secondary school, majority of my classmates were born in either 1993, 1994, or 1995. When I thought about that a few days ago, I thought, “Would you look at that? The new class, if you may, of the third decade of life.” Now, I started thinking about all of these because of the video of a Chinese woman I watched on X on the precipice of saying goodbye to another year. In China, she said, if you’re a woman, single, and over 30, you are called a “left-over woman” in Mandarin. In Cantonese, they have a few choice phrases including, “orange at the bottom of the…
-
The Beginning
As a child, one of my favorite adults was Mummy Tolu. While growing up, she was a neighbor and what you could refer to as a ‘second mummy’. She asked all the important questions like “Is your mum back?” when my mum traveled and “have you eaten?’ when the answer was no. When I got into the boarding house as a student in Junior Secondary School 1, it became a thing that Mummy Tolu would give me rolls of milk, milo, and some detergents at the beginning of every term up until my last year in secondary school. If it didn’t happen, then resumption was incomplete. It always happened. I…
The Isle of Jade
