1. Surrender to fun. My English tuition classes are coming to an end, and I couldn’t bear to spend the last few classes going through syllabus material when my students are done with their exams for the year. Instead, we had mini-muffins, kept a poem in our back pockets, and had a masterclass in speed paraphrasing with Taboo. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and these kids found more confidence in the language via this game than through weeks of direct practice. Best class ever.
2. A full day date. Our dating life often makes me think of the poem above. I’d have to stop and think if you asked me what we did on our 6th anniversary (which was just last week), but I remember flashes of the everyday moments vividly. I remember him waving hello after an econs tutorial from four storeys up, before we started going out. I remember us having cokes after long days of walking up mountains and temples and crawling through caves.
And I’ll always remember what we did on Tuesday. Tea for him and coffee for me, time and space to sit, scheme and dream. A trawl through favourite textile and tailor shops, and a text from him the day after filled with exclamation marks and encouragement when I told him I might have just got my first writing assignment for a print magazine. That was the day I realised two things: first, that some little moments are just big ones in disguise; and second, that his support gives me more strength than I ever thought possible.
3. Making do when you’re sick. Caught the flu bug and couldn’t think through the giant excel database I’m tasked with completing this week. Instead of feeling rotten and sleeping, sometimes you just need to put your granny specs on and channel the fuzzy energy elsewhere. Today’s target of choice: making the hems on my DIY silk scarves as tiny as I could get them. Switched over to a special blue thread with a beautiful sheen, and it makes the little stitches photograph like dots! Swoon.
retrospectif: a notebook 