Marsha Maung: I write. I love. I live

There's a saying that goes something like this - when nothing is happening, nothing happens. And when it does, it hits the fan all at the same time . Nah, there's no saying like that BUT it sure feels like it right now. When Time Stood Still by Seth Macey on Unsplash First off, we're going through some major shifts in this small, humble little family of ours. I try my best to keep my head above the water but sometimes, I learn how to survive choking on salt water. Second of all, I want to tell all you parents of young children this: you don't know what's in front of you, you really don't. If you think teething is the worst thing EVER, you're in for some surprises. Third, I am a Buddhist. And you know how they tell you the worst thing you can do in life is to attach to earthly stuff and beings and whatnots? Yeah, turns out, it takes a plane ticket to Tibet/Bali/Thailand/Myanmar (take your pick), a month in a monastery and weeks of meditation. If ...

Apart from Mills & Boons (don't deny it all you 1980s teenage girls out there!!! 😁) and boxfuls of second-hand books I have no idea where my dad got from, if I had enough money on me, I would spend it on a Reader's Digest magazine. Filled to the brim with everything from wound-salving stories of rescue missions to life-changing scientific discoveries, the packed magazine presented me with a world outside of my young life. It was a reservoir of both joy and knowledge for a young, curious mind! Challenging myself to discover new English words, laughing out loud at rib-tickling anecdotes and jokes, and gawking at mind-blowing pictures of bucolic landscapes of faraway lands was what Reader's Digest was to me. I kept and re-read them which didn't make sense to some of my friends. The magazine has scaled down a fair bit over the years, no thanks to the Internet and the fact that very few people actually read these days. I often feel a sense of camaraderie when I se...

You know how you start off with one cup of coffee in the morning. But then something happens mid-way, you’re distracted, and the cup of formerly-hot cup of coffee gets left on the table only to be discovered hours later colder than Canada. The hours that follow, you’ve also made yourself a hot cup of chocolate when a guest whisks you away and the cup joins the formerly-hot cup of coffee on the table. Image Source: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash At the end of the day, you might end up with five cups of half-full, empty, stained, or full cups left unceremoniously on the table. What’s this got to with working from home, writing or doing anything official? What if we all stuck to the one-cup rule for one day ? Don’t make another cup of anything until you’re done with what you’ve made before? What if when you feel like drinking something warm, you down the earlier cup-of-something and THEN fix the new cup-of-something-new? What I am trying to suggest is for us stick to...