Globe spinning

When I was just seven years old, one of the games I played with my friends was “globe spinning”. We would spin a globe, stop it with our fingers and make up stories of the places where our fingers had landed on. It was a curious game that made me dream of going around the world…

My parents named me Jia Hong. Although that is the Mandarin pronunciation, my being Hokkien would mean that the Chinese characters of my name is pronounced “jiak hong”. Jiak Hong literally means “eat air”. In the Malaysian Hokkien community, jiak hong means travelling and is a direct translation of the Malay term “makan angin” which carries the same meaning.

So, I was born to go jiak hong!

For two years, my life was dedicated to…