Hey, I am Suf! Welcome to my first actual micro-blog. I am a postdoc bioinformatician working in cancer research during the day, and I geek out over books, s...
Last Tuesday, someone I know was lamenting casually over the fact the she struggled to explain a biomedical concept to her parents in Malay, our shared native language. Our conversation morphed from the diglossic difficulty of talking about our highly specialized academic subfields in our own mother tongue – a hurdle born from Mahathir's long-term (and Malaysian government's vacillating) policy in…
I woke up one fine morning in a pool of tears you shed last night A lazy wood duck floated beside me making noises in German — oh fuck All I heard was “Entschuldigung, Entschuldigung!” like pinprick in my ears and it rained in my room– –flooded, bathing me in uterine fluid but whatever, I guessed I could finally go back to sleep and be born again, pure, ain’t putrid no more (NB: Entschuldigung is…
If the day gets sad come to me and tug on my second heart. I'll treat you a firm, ripe banana maybe if you behave well you'll get to taste my banana shakes. Please, build a cave for my desire then for you I'll brave the horrid weather of bloodied tampons. Let me kiss your troubles fondle your pride then we'll play life as doubles. I'll give you a carton of milk so that you can wash your silk on…
It is Chinese New Year's eve at the time of my writing this. The park where I am currently taking my daily reflection walk is deserted; the next two days are public holidays, and the way they fall this week means that not only is the Chinese Malaysian population at home celebrating, but the Malay and Indian Malaysians are likely on leave for the whole week as well. I am ethnically Malay, so I…
A brown cat rapped on my door three nights ago. His little paws were drenched– in the rain with little, desperate knocks. He asked me if I could take a boarder not for a night but for life. I told him I’m sorry mister cat but my heart is boarded up– it’s paused for good, it’s closed for you, and it’s barred, for life.
I see him beaming to no one from across the hall, the pages of To Kill A Mockingbird, fluttered under my fingers– You know how ghosts move? ––Yeah, me neither. But that boy, he moved like ghost, not the scary one, the sad one. He called out— ‘Hi, anyone there?’ I replied, in jest— ‘There’s nobody here. I’m a ghost.’ It’s ironic you see, because he was the ghost, not me. ––‘I heard there are double…
You spilled your problems on my favourite shirt today. I left you a hug at your doorsteps in case of emergency. But you left a ring of coffee stain on my table and I had to wipe it, alone.
You sparked a time bomb in me which has no other way to be rid of other than to be let implode into shattering wishes of what if s. You coming into my life as unforeseen as abrupt evening downpour falling down while the sun still hangs low on the sky catching me by surprise out of my stupor. But that was five years ago when the sky was violet and we were green under the envy tree–– ––now we are…
I see seagulls staring at me in jealousy, do they think I care enough? — a man on the train station bench sees a guy nervously fidgeting with the velcro on the inner side of his sling bag; washed olive green, seagulls eyeing the guy for the breadcrumbs stuck on his shoes; washed navy blue.
Echoing the title: I need to learn how to put small victories in my life on a pedestal. I was reading a random blog post about the author's personal pride after having walked 10k steps every day for the entire month of January (of the year 2026, at the time of this writing of course), and a small voice in me yelped 'yay' in glee, and that surprised me, because I don't really remember internally…