Month: March 2026

보고 싶다

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(Photo: Terrible image quality of a high quality act – what can I say? It was a dark room and it was hard to get a picture).

“Yeah, they used to write deep songs about growing apart as friends and navigating that rocky ground of reconnecting when your life, circumstances, and sometimes even you have changed.”

“And now their songs are ‘everything is fire, everything is lit’.”

“Exactly.”

This past weekend, a group of my friends and I watched the highly anticipated return of BTS as they performed a free hour-long concert in Seoul. We did not, in fact, go to Seoul because the prospect of dealing with 269,000 fans was just a bit much. But we did watch it live on Netflix. 

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Pit, Potiphar, Prison, Praise

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(Photo: On the road to Sejong, South Korea)

I have been struggle-busing a lot lately. The time-consuming tasks at work, the day-in-day-out confrontations that drain my energy, the endless chores, the inability to get true rest, some personal matters that are weighing heavy on my heart – it’s all adding up to make a grumpy Ali who is finding it difficult to get up and get to work every day. 

Maybe it’s seasonal depression, maybe it’s because it’s eight months into the school year and we’re all sick of each other, maybe it’s Maybelline. 

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Lose All

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(Photo: Gongju Gongsanseong Fortress)

“Ms. O’Leary, we lose all!”

It’s one of my favorite memories of my students in Malaysia. My friend Shelby was leading a group of her students back to class after one of their basketball games and one of them saw me coming down the hallway across the courtyard. He had the biggest, happiest grin on his face as he announced his team’s failure.

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