Columns

As a cuisine influenced by the culture of neighboring nations, Malaysian food largely consists of a blend of Southeast Asian spices and coconut products. Sold mainly on the humid streets of Malaysia are Indian mee goreng, roti prata, laksa and ais kacang — some of my favorite Malaysian foods. Although Malaysia holds beautiful coastal lines, […]

Since the first time I got my hands on an iPad in 2010 (no I wasn’t an iPad kid), I’ve downloaded hundreds of mobile games — ranging from Sunnyville Baby Pet Salon to Call of Duty: Mobile — but throughout my iPad’s lifetime, only one has remained: Hay Day. Hay Day is a simulation app […]

You know the fuzzy, fond, warm, pick-your-adjective, circa 2014 memories everyone has of the 5-hour drives up to Incline Village? The ones where you and your friends all struggled for screen time to level up on Candy Crush on one fingerprint-covered, greasy iPad in the back, before spending the next two weeks in bliss snowboarding […]

I sit in the back corner of the student center after school with earbuds in and physics homework sprawled out in front of me. Writing hunched over — I’m the only person at my table — one probably would have expected me to be listening to LoFi, white noise or possibly even nothing.  Instead, Playboi […]

Your hair? No, meh-hair. My hair? No no no, it’s pronounced meh-hair. When your first name is Meher, the jokes keep rolling in and, trust me, you are not the first person to think of them. And they’re not very funny. Growing up, I found my name was always among those to be badly butchered […]

“Emma, you should be a lawyer when you grow up. You get to help people in court, and everybody respects you. Or you should be a plastic surgeon. They make a lot of money.”  When I was younger, my parents reiterated these words to me countless times. In a typical Asian household, often the only […]

Laying your head on your pillow and finally closing your eyes might be the best feeling in the world if all your dreadful worries are washed away by the bliss of sleep. At least, in an ideal world. Some lucky people might experience this bliss often, but I am not one of them.  Instead, I […]

As I gaze across the long wooden table in my family’s dining room, my parents can’t help but smile, seeing my entire family gathered together in one location. When my grandparents on my father’s side fly in from New Jersey for their annual visit, we celebrate with large quantities of food. My Nana’s scrumptious breaded […]

I want to shoot my shot like I am Devin Booker, dunk on people like Ja Morant or cross people up like Kyrie Irving. But I am a 5-foot-9 kid who can barely touch the net, I have a jumper uglier than Lonzo Ball’s, and I can barely make a wide open layup while warming […]

“Hi, Catherine.” Believe it or not — even though my name is not Catherine, I often surprise myself by how readily I react to that misnomer. As someone who has a common name that sounds similar to even more common names, I live in the best and worst of both worlds. On one hand, I’m […]