I’m glad I moved to Toronto. Just three weeks ago, in fact. By accident, I flipped through a local events paper while lunching at a fusion fast food restaurant, and got wind of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) 2013. I could easily have missed it as I had been busy with other matters — and sorely regretted it if I did. This turned out to be my first North American comic convention and in fact, my first comic convention in...

As some of you might remember, the past year has been a life-changing time for me. I moved across the ocean to Kingston, Canada to read a Master’s at Queen’s University. One crazy year later, I am done. Hunkering up to read a tough, advanced qualification is one thing, but the overwhelming personal, existential journey of being in a new land of new people is life-changing. After all’s said and done, I am oddly left with a lingering...

A) Why Canadians talk about the weather so much. Because the weather is all-powerful and all-encompassing. This is a country that can have peak temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius in summer and negative 40 in the troughs of winter. Even on a normal Autumn day, the sun’s presence can make a difference of 10 degree Celsius, and the winds will decide if you really need a coat outdoors. The weather can be both a benevolent and harsh...

It surprises many of my new friends that multiculturalism is a ‘hot potato’ issue in Singapore, just as it is in leading immigration destinations such as Canada, the USA and the UK. In fact, I’m inclined to say that multiculturalism is even more fiercely debated in Singapore. If you Google the term ‘multiculturalism’, nearly half of the articles on the first page have something to do with Singapore at the time of this writing. The...

Well I did it. I have hauled myself and a considerable portion of my life’s belongings, stuffed into three luggage bags, and traversed 16,000 kilometres across the globe to Canada, my new home for the time being. Those hectic weeks leading up to the journey, shuffling through paperwork and carry-on lists were just the beginning of the tumultuous trip. Equally unforgettable were the longest flight in my life (25 hours) into a continent I...