The good life | Kamiel Choi

Bilingual child’s creative translation

Today, like most days, my four years old daughter Miru sang a song in kindergarten. When I asked her to sing it to me after I picked her up and she was enjoying an ice slushy that colored her tongue orange, she rendered a perfect translation in Dutch. Good, the song consisted of three distinct ...

On people who live on in our dreams

I dreamt that the late British American public intellectual Christopher Hitchens was walking next to me. He was bald, like in the last months of his life when he underwent chemotherapy, but appeared in excellent health and was obviously not aware of his impending death. The image was so vivid that I could see the ...

Learning by improv theatre

Dear Miru, You are four years old now. We have real conversations. When I pick you up from kindergarten and I ask you what have you done today (in Dutch) you tell me brief but wonderful stories about making a snowman, observing insects and hedgehogs, dancing or taking the bus together with all the other ...

Don't attempt to choreograph the dancing child in you

Traveler

In foreign places I become a mere observer of life, a smile suspended in between the heavens of my imagination and the flat earth of the toiling people. I look out of the window, squint my dry eyes and gaze in the wild distance. The people on the marketplace this morning, I was not part ...

Thank you for the kind birthday wishes!

To all who wished me a happy birthday on our beloved social media, and in particular to those well wishers I couldn't reply personally: Thank you very much for all your kind words, they inspire me to celebrate my 38th birthday with 365 days of inspiration. I am determined to keep up my writing in ...

Bubbles

During the last days of a year that was filled with the perceived horrors of the untimely death of several celebrity actors and popstars, as well as the real horror of the destruction of Aleppo, I want to sit back and reflect. A word that illustrates our quick march towards unadulterated cynicism that characterized the ...

Predictability

Dear Miru, When I walked you home from the kindergarten to your grandparent's house today, you made me very happy. The sky was grey and light rain drizzled on the pavement as I knelt down in front of you. Then you said exactly what I had imagined you would say: "Regent het! Naar binnen!" ("Does ...

Relabeling

Since it has become part of my daily life I would like to describe once again my thoughts about coping with bullshit labor. Bullshit jobs, to me, are characterized by a complete lack of meaning. No matter how hard you try, you can't discern a core of value in a bullshit job, and this is ...