Month: May 2023

On the road to Suzhou, finally! Months of silence in my journal. History will take its turns but the core will not be lost. From February this year, China has been locked down, with the rest of the world following in its wake. This is all due to the outbreak of nCoV-19, a coronavirus that…

Eyes closed. Eyes open. My daughter sits bent over in the snow, she just got a carrot from grandpa and grandma. The nose. Her posture is recognizable and timeless. Exactly the way she squats right now, she was squatting on Hokkaido on Lake Shikotsu. On the beach in Xiamen, on the riverside in Worcester. And…

I’m re-reading my own WeChat post, posted with a photo from a bridge where I cross a water channel every day on my way to the lab. “Riding the train in the crisp morning to Suzhou clears the mind. A fisherman probably catches more tranquility than fish, even though it’s the steamed lunch in sight…

Recurring theme: propagating ideals. In a conflict between the world and the universe (“peace in space!”) and the world between 6 walls, a door and a window (“dreams can only come true at home!”). In times where bad, shocking and filtered news is reported at the speed of light, my brain sometimes seems to imagine…

A first real autumn day. Suddenly I feel the cold through my coat, my doorstep is covered with crackling leaves, drizzle falls from a gray sky at regular intervals. From the subway station where I get off in Suzhou, I walk briskly to the university, gasping for oxygen through my stuffy nose, occasionally emptying my…

Just a flashback. Will this orange notebook now become a diary for and about my daughter Emme, just like the gray notebook in my office at home? Or, I just write whatever comes to mind and most of it is a memory of, an inspiration from, a story about, my daughter. Which also plays a…