Relationships

Porn, Power, and the Badge

New Zealand has always liked to think of itself as a country where clean institutions and public trust go hand in hand. But the...

Love on the Office Clock

In the buzzing open-plan offices of modern India, love sometimes sneaks in by the elevator shaft and takes the quick-coffee route. Imagine two colleagues...

Soul-searching in a Blind Box

In the breezy evening of a Shanghai weekend, a 21-year-old college student named Jin Ling stepped into a sleek Korean barbecue restaurant and paid...

Love Child, Lost Fortune

A Singapore man’s divorce deal has collapsed with the same inevitability of a well-constructed detective plot: after years of apparent calm, one truth has...

The Anti-Valentine’s Day

When the date 11/11 lights up the skyline of Shanghai — a sea of LED-advertisements, live-stream shopping hosts, and parcels flying from warehouses —...

Divorce Is No Longer a Dirty Word

The hoopla around “cerai” (divorce) in Indonesia is no longer whisper-small—it’s clinking like dropped teaspoons in a cafĂ© full of chatter. Recent reports suggest...

One Village, One Temple, Two Brides

In the salt-stung air of the Sundarbans, where mangroves whisper of tides and centuries of tradition, a quiet ceremony took place that rippled far...

Where Single Mothers Make a Village

In a high-rise flat somewhere in Nanjing, two divorced women and their three daughters have quietly rewritten the script of what â€œćź¶â€ (jiā –...
Auntie Spices It Out
Commentary

Cartoon Censorship Strikes Again

November 20, 2025

Auntie needs to have a stern word, again, with the self-appointed moral police who seem to think they’re the new headmasters of Asia’s playgrounds. You’d think, with everything going on in the world—economic troubles, political scandals, floods, real social issues—they’d have better things to do than policing cartoons. But no. A mermaid gives a peck on the cheek and suddenly the guardians of “public morality” come marching in like we’re on the brink of societal collapse. Please. Spare me the drama. Let’s get something straight, sweethearts: children are not fragile...
Commentary

Equal Boots on the Ground

November 20, 2025

Let Auntie adjust her dupatta and sip her ginger tea before diving into this one — because yes, I am a proud, card-carrying pacifist. I would rather see armies turned into libraries, barracks transformed into community gardens, and all those defence budgets redirected to health, education, and childcare. But reality has a funny way of marching on, boots thumping, uniforms pressed, and flags flying. And if the world insists on keeping its militaries, then by all that is sacred and sensible, women must have every right to step into those...
Commentary

Porn, Power, and the Badge

November 20, 2025

Oh, New Zealand. Sweet, quiet, well-behaved New Zealand — land of hobbits, good manners, and public agencies that supposedly sparkle with integrity. And yet here we are. Your almost-Commissioner of Police, Jevon “I-Swear-I’m-Innocent” McSkimming, has been caught with more inappropriate material than a bored teenager with unlimited Wi-Fi. Except this was not a bored teenager. This was the man sitting one step below the most powerful policing role in the country. Using work devices. During office hours. Darling, even Southeast Asian politicians caught in karaoke bars are shaking their heads....
Commentary

The Sex–Abstinence Paradox

November 20, 2025

Darlings, gather around. Auntie needs to sip her peppermint tea before she screams. Because once again, the guardians of 1950s morality—the same ones who still believe Elvis’ hips were the beginning of humanity’s downfall—are back to save us from that terrifying, scandalous concept called reality. Yes, the abstinence crusaders, pearl-clutchers, and self-appointed guardians of public virtue are marching proudly into the 2025 debate on sex education like they’re storming Normandy, armed with nothing but outdated pamphlets and fear of their own bodies. Honestly, I almost admire the confidence. Imagine waking...
Commentary

‘I’m Quitting Motherhood’

November 19, 2025

Sisters, allow Auntie to tell you something she has learned after decades of wandering through Asia’s kitchens, cramped apartments, community halls, PTA meetings, feminist circles, and yes — the occasional smoky karaoke bar where exhausted mothers sip a secret highball behind the neon. When have women in this region ever been truly free to choose their roles? When have mothers been allowed to breathe, to shape motherhood the way they want, rather than the way society scripts it? In Japan especially — and Auntie speaks as someone who has listened...
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