I went to see a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner today… for my skin issues (some kind of eczema).

I expected an old man with bushy eyebrows and a long beard. Instead, the doctor looked like he could have been one of my classmates in uni.

We spoke in Malay, because my Chinese doesn’t go as far as to be able to talk about health issues.

I wonder how many other people experience this ie. an inability to speak one’s mother tongue.

There are days when I wonder what stories my grandmother could tell me, if only I knew enough of my dialect to speak to her.

Some days, it hits me that I will never really know my grandmother. I don’t even know how to express how sad that makes me feel.