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Further down the pile Page 2 of the backlog

Older dispatches, same weather. Nothing back here has been tidied up for the occasion.
A young boy hunched at a glowing CRT monitor in a dark attic bedroom at four in the morning, playing an isometric strategy game, drawn in a flat-colour Sable art style with warm screen-light against teal and lavender shadow

Ghost In The Sound Card The Age of Empires soundtrack was built to be forgotten

The Age of Empires soundtrack was engineered to vanish under a strategy game - so how did it end up permanently stuck in my head?
EN· ·Published inMusic
A lone figure stands from behind at a battered doorway set into a broad ochre wall, and through the open door lies not a room but a vast tropical city stretching to the horizon

Desire, Memory, Belonging The shabby door

Attraction is biography, not biology - on desire with a map, orientalism, a war that isn't mine, and the shabby door into a life in Sài Gòn.
EN· ·Published inLove, Sex & Identity
A lone androgynous figure sits from behind on dark coastal rocks at dusk, facing an empty sea as if singing out over the water

Five Nights In Đà Nẵng The one who sang into the ocean

A Tinder match in Đà Nẵng became five unplanned nights - a hot, melancholic story about desire, connection, and wanting different lives.
EN· ·Published inLove, Sex & Identity
Two simplified figures lie close on a bed in a dark hotel room at night, each holding a softly glowing phone, with a small gap of duvet between them, in a flat ligne-claire style

A Sailor's Yarn Fourteen years of almost

A fourteen-year crush across Frankfurt, Munich and Bangkok that never quite landed - a queer love story told as a sailor's yarn, true where it counts.
EN· ·Published inLove, Sex & Identity
A three-storey red-painted adult shop in Sài Gòn at dusk, its facade covered in neon signage and a rainbow banner, seen from across a busy street with tangled power lines overhead

Desire, Legally Speaking Sex is everywhere in Sài Gòn, and officially nowhere

Sex toys sit legal but invisible in Vietnam and loud but dying in Germany - how two countries regulate the same desire in opposite directions.
EN· ·Published inLove, Sex & Identity

The Language Of Neither The neutral pronoun Vietnamese never had (so the community grew one)

Vietnamese forces a gender into every sentence - so how do non-binary and trans people get addressed? A look at the grammar, the slang, and the gaps.
EN· ·Published inLove, Sex & Identity
A rendering of Lara Croft running away from a T-Rex toward the camera, pistols in hand.

Thirty Years Late I finally raided the first tomb – and I did it ugly on purpose

Tomb Raider 1 turns 30 - a personal review of finally finishing the original in its rough classic mode, where mechanics and atmosphere beat graphics.
EN· ·Published inNerdom & Games
A golden, craggy apple rice casserole baked in a black rectangular pan on a sunlit wooden table, yellow branches and pink petals nearby, drawn in a Mœbius-style ligne claire illustration

Mom's Reisauflauf, Remixed The rice casserole my sister kept stealing from the fridge

Reisauflauf, remixed lighter and fluffier - a baked rice casserole with apples that even the pickiest eaters keep sneaking cold from the fridge.
EN· ·Published inLife & Leisure
A childhood at the end of the water

Where the Roads Don't Reach A childhood at the end of the water

Cà Mau childhood by lamplight - a wooden house at the roadless edge of the Mekong Delta, where boats wear eyes and the dead wait in the water.
EN· ·Published inPersonal Lore
Thôi nôi, and the paint on the wall

A Prophecy In Paint Thôi nôi, and the paint on the wall

Thôi nôi is Vietnam's first-birthday rite - a baby grabs a tray to read her future. One grab in 2000 came true, in paint, on a wall.
EN· ·Published inLife & Leisure