Interesting Times

There’s a Chinese curse, which everyone knows as “May you live in interesting times!” Apparently, my parents and, later I, have interesting stories, just gathered up from living. These are anecdotes, written as best as I can remember, or as my mother remembers, of some of those ‘interesting times’.

Some will be of my mother’s childhood, and stories she was told by a gleeful father-in-law about the man she married, or stories he told her of his days at work. Some will be later, when I was a child, or when we children were older. I’ll try to put them in rough chronological order, here in an index, but they won’t have been posted that way.

I am keeping these stories separate from Stories of the Strange because of the different focus of storytelling.

Take these stories ‘as is’, as personal snapshots into the past, meant to entertain; and not so much as historian strict telling.

 

Tales from Naguilian and Romblon  – Stories from my parents’ childhoods

 

 

Martial Law Era – Anecdotes from my parents’ early adulthood and my early childhood, relating to the time under Marcos’ martial law.

Pretend you don’t know me – a small memory, triggered by a documentary, recounted by my Mom over Skype call.

Nazi Isn’t A Term You Throw Around Lightly – An essay, with a story about my father.

 

Interesting Times – My childhood; growing up the children of a journalist who later became a diplomat, living abroad and in the Philippines. Also early adulthood.

Socialist Bananas and Limited Ice Cream – An early lesson in how socialism = very limited supply of nice things, not just the everything, and not everyone might get that nice thing.

Our First Real Tree – The day I decided to get a proper Tannenbaum, in East Berlin.

Nazi Is Not A Term You Throw Around Lightly – The stories in this span at least a couple of decades.

Surprising Responses – Has an anecdote about how I found out they don’t teach about WW2 in East Berlin.

 

 

From the Wired to Down UnderLittle tales from a life lived half online, and in the place I now call home, with Rhys, our children and the people who choose to share our lives.

Spaces – A little story of me, my son and the comfort of a closed closet…

 

A Visit to the Mother Country – a lot has changed in just a scant 6 years…