The Momoach

17/08/2026

17/08/2026

11/08/2026

Rabbits of Bogor, Indonesia.

23/05/2026

Another box.

23/05/2026

Painted a box with my girl

04/05/2026

'Orqa' went on strike. She bailed out of classes and I rewarded her.

On Saturday she skipped her roller blade class claiming "mama wanted me to do it." I was at work. Her Dad said nothing could be done.

Sunday, she again tries to skip her Chinese class. 3.30pm class and at 3pm she is relaxing in the study room chair, in pajyamas. Her Dad is going "nothing can be done."

I tell her I want to see her changed, and start cointing, "ONE. TWO..." She knows very well that at TEN, her sweet mummy will become a fire dragon. Almost all the time, she would start moving by TWO. But now, at FIVE, she remains seated.

SIX.

SEVEN.

EIGHT.

She bursts out with anger: "I'm changing!"

Good.

On the way to the class I walk next to a bomb waiting to be detonated any moment. I keep walking.

"I want to give you a prize."

I detect a little surprise and a little happiness in that deadpan face.

"A prize so that you will keep skipping class. Woah. Do you think... So?"

"Yes." Still deadpan face but the sky is clearing up.

"Of course not. The prize is to reward you for showing up although you sooo didn't feel like it.

No matter how we like something, we sometimes just don't feel like it. You do enjoy your Chinese speech and drama class. But still it feels too much a hassle, some time, like today. Yet you chose to show up. And that's wonderful."

The rest of the journey, our conversation focuses on what prize it will be - a miniature house for her miniature pets.

30/04/2026

5 minutes later, Thailand dropped 4 bombs in a nearby village.
Bamboo train. 24th Dec 2025. Cambodia.

Our tuktuk driver delivered the news with a BIG smile, "BAD news. We cannot go there. We must turn back to the city." He gestured, "Bom bom."

This looked like a joke. I looked at his sleepy big-cat face. This was a man who went through the Khmer war. Nothing shocks him in life any more, he said.

Before I could shoot my many questions at him, he has suddenly turned into a leopard, jump started his tuktuk. In no time, we were speeding back to town. The tuktuk was machine powered - but I had an illusion - that he was pedaling it hard like a rickshaw. His back was still. Maybe it was his anxiety - an unusual silence - getting to me.

Or maybe that anxiety was mine. I turned to Google. The little village on our itinerary, is on news headlines all over the world. A village in Battambang. It was called. And we were heading to Battambang city. Traffic looked normal. But when we got to the city, most restaurants were closed or starting to close.

Many were evacuating. Some were staying. Fortunately, we could get the earliest bus back to Phnom Penh, much further away from the frontier and Battambang.

While we waited, my then 6yo finally cried, "mama, I'm scared." We tried to comfort her by explaining that we are most likely safe here, and even more so in Phnom, but it didn't work for her.

Then I suddenly understood that it's not about removing the fear but about accepting it.

So I said, "It's only natural that you feel the fear. Because fear is here to protect you. Without fear, we would have gone to that village. Without fear, we would not leave for Phnom Penh. And if we had more fear, we wouldn't have even come to Cambodia at this time."

I indeed had a lot of debates with her daddy about this trip beforehand. The tickets were booked. The war broke out after. Though more apprehensive, I didn't push back further. I maintained that "We" made the decision. And "We" were both responsible for it.

Who would know that a nameless village had a military base that the Thais would target?

Then it's good we fear now. She nodded.

23/04/2026

Iran, 2019. Baby was 7 month old.

I cannot tell you how sad I am about this beautiful country coming under bombardment. I hope peace arrive soon - and one day we can visit again, with a kid, or in the worst case, a teenager.

Babies have magical powers in Iran. Even mothers with kids drop their own cuties to come over to her, awestruck. I felt rather ashamed of my self-indulgent parenthood - honestly, I got too obsessed with my own kid to appreciate other people's.

Baby was still high maintenance. Her body clung to mine. My mind clung to her: diaper change, breastfeeding, sleep, comfort, heat, cold... I changed diapers at a mosque security station, a bus stop prayer room, and on the teacher's desk in a classroom. I breastfed in a plane, a cave museum, a few mosques, a university canteen with long curtains flowing in the wind, and under the scorching sun while trekking colourful mountains.

Still, a man-made disaster happened - her dad cut the tip of her pinky with a nail cutter. Till then it was his job because I dared not to put anything sharp near her tiny fingers.

So when blood gulped out of the little finger nonstop, I learned a few things:
1. For babies, bleeding don't stop easily because the blood don't yet have something that helps the wound to close. It is common for them to keep bleeding despite compression techniques.
2. Finger tips especially so.
3. 5 minutes is way too long for any parent to watch their baby bleed and cry.
4. Half an hour is a life time.

We decided to take her to a doctor. With broken Farsi language, hubby asked a man at the road-side shop for direction.

The kind soul immediately dropped his shop to take us. As he went along, other kind people came to check on this unlikely combo of a purposeful Iranian man, a wailing baby, and her pale parents.

By the time we got to a clinic we were like the sticky goose in a fairytale: we must have had 5 or 6 warm hearted people following us, each contributing to the direction-finding, and now, ceremonially lining up in the clinic. They listened to baby's loud cry, a result of doctor treatment. In silence, they smiled with a sense of achievement.

Meet Humanity.

16/04/2026

And this is my all-time favorite!