I’m not sure how I have come to be so deeply connected to Asia. Yesterday, as I sat in the back of a taxi on my way to Manila airport, I saw the taxi’s reflection on the side of a mirrored building. In the background were a Bank of the Philippine Islands and a couple of scrawny palm trees. Wow, that’s ME in that car, I thought. How on earth did I end up in MANILA, of all places? How bizarre! When I was a kid growing up in Canada, never did I dream of traveling to Manila, let alone living on an island in the Philippines. Nor did I fantasize about working in Tokyo, where I spent four years in the early 1990’s.

And now the connection deepens further: I will be doing a two-year Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at a Hong Kong university.

I spent this afternoon with the head of the program and am thoroughly inspired by the prospect of becoming a better writer. It’s the perfect situation for me. I’ll only need to travel to Hong Kong three times a year for short-term residencies — the rest of the time I’ll be working from home or during my travels. Sure, it’ll be intense at times, but by the end of the two years, I’m hoping that I will finally have created that full length manuscript that has been patiently waiting to come to life for such a long time.

And I will have come to be friends with Hong Kong. And who knows where else this path will lead. I’m ready for a new adventure…

India