Selection of truly meainingful, useful proverbs from childhood days in Chinatown
Those were the days in Chinatown
Small sweet world Taipei’s mini-food alley
Suppose there exists another Earth and you have a chance to go there and change things
In Malayan jungle Go feed the leeches
Run for your life If you’re middle-aged and pregnant, start running for your life
Run for your life but don’t get overrun
King Solomon tells how, in a dangerous world
The Man of Life Upright Integer Vitae
China Dreams Long thoughts on a slow train
More thoughts, Shanghai to Hangzhou
Reflection on washing dishes
Wife’s undying love
and the Devil created McDonalds
Hakkas and the Great Taiping Revolution
Guanyin Bodhisattva 觀音菩薩
Protection for a sickly child
Masturbation prevents cancer
Naked ladies Oggle for art’s sake
Buddhist meditation The only workable approach to deal with old age, suffering, death
All that we are is what we’ve thought
Girls, don’t feel paiseh asking for date on Feb 29
Moon at Mid-Autumn but who’s there to see?
A little gossip, a little chat Man of La Mancha
Saudade: Longing for lost days, lost love
When is the next tsunami? Experts know nothing of the future
The bucket list Have you written yours?
Life on the sideline
Here are essays, brief remarks, poems and reviews, diary jottings, and photographs I have produced for local newspapers and magazines since October 1978 when I graduated from a three-month course on reporting and subbing, and called myself a “journalist”. Instead of leaving them as yellowed cuttings, I've updated some of my published stuff for the Web so they can be accessible to friends and sympathetic readers. I've also added the occasional contributions by others.
In three decades of journalism, I have written about practically everything under the moon (I write best at night), except fashion, golf, crime and movie stars. On this site are those writings I enjoyed reading back to myself (if you don't enjoy reading what you’ve written, trash ’em). My subjects are mainly on loafing and leisure pursuits, pretty girls and dreams, life and the next life, and, always, Buddha’s exhortations to make the most of this human span before death hits us unexpectedly and inconveniently.
Except for the Latin quotes and maxims, and tidbits from Chinese classics and the King James Bible (God save me from modern-day insipid translations!), there’s nothing pretentious or preachy. here The last thing I want to do is pontificate pious prattle (pardon the alliterations).
If you’ve got anything to share, write in the Guest Book (bottom of this page).
– Francis Chin, January 2005
Above painting of an Indian beauty was given to me by Chris Lim at NCS in 2008; according to Ankita Choudhari, a lucent-eyed university student from Hyderabad, the instrument depicted is a sitar
Picturebook of people & places www.picturebook.homestead.com
Favourite book excerpts www.reader.homestead.com
Wild Geese You do not have to be good
The Don’t-do List when you're going broke
Art of Failure A more forgiving lifestyle
Why nobody reads your blog
Father of Internet on future world
Great places for adventure
Review of Ting Shao Kuang's art
Life was tough and a squeeze 50 years ago
Robust Latin maxims to stiffen your conduct
Devils and angels at my death
Credit card, chicks and other Cs that
Singapore males die for
Adopt a godfather, always credit your boss &
other proven strategies
Lorenzo the Magnificent & Michelangelo
Re-reading Dream of the Red Chamber
Tang Poems
Fun with Tang poetry
Translating Li Bai
Song of the Pipa 琵琶行
Much-loved Chinese poem
Recalling a night with his beloved
Song of sunset on the river 暮江吟
Unexpected encounters
長恨歌
One day at a time for one plucky girl
Because I could not stop for death Meditation on Emily Dickinson
Won the Rat Race, but still a rat
Life is more than a video-recording Keep memories in vignettes, not videos
The unexamined life is not worth living,
really
Imagine what you can do with $100 million
Celebrating life at a Chinese funeral
Once is not enough Pleasure of re-reading
Tagore, Genji, Ah Q Books of the last millennium that have changed Asia
The root of misery is the lack of ready cash
He’s actually Tua Pekkong
Middle Age Not any richer but better
Surviving the terror of the Bardo
About the Bystander All about me
Google mentor couldn’t swim, drowns in pool
Not what people say are “nice”
May all your prayers be not answered
One star aglow in a vast nocturnal sky
the poems of Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Su Shih remembers his dead wife
无可奈何花落去,
似曾相识燕归来
小园香径独徘徊
Anna Karenina Best-loved fiction
