Columns & Writing
A fortnightly column in The Star, on the Opinion page. Filed on Fridays for Saturday. Titles below link out to the paper; the standfirsts are mine, written quickly, never edited by the desk.
- The Star2026 · 03 · 14Opinion
A Mother’s Desk
On the small court that convenes between the brief and the dinner table.Between a draft pleading and a half-cooked dinner, the writing desk becomes another courtroom — one that only ever tries the self. The verdict is usually that I should have begun an hour earlier.
Read on The Star ↗ - The Star2026 · 02 · 28Opinion
The Law Is More Than Its Text
Twelve years in, a quiet reminder of what statute books leave out.After a decade of writing this column, I have come round, slowly, to a plain conviction: beneath every section number sits a person whose Tuesday morning the provision will rearrange. The text matters. So does the Tuesday.
Read on The Star ↗ - The Star2026 · 02 · 14Opinion
A Quiet Authority
Why I have stopped trying to write louder than the times.Our public square is not short of volume. What it lacks, I think, is the kind of voice that says one clear thing and then waits — not for applause, but for the reader to finish the sentence in their own head.
Read on The Star ↗ - The Star2026 · 01 · 31Opinion
Between Two Mother Tongues
On writing in English about a law that is heard, mostly, in Bahasa and at home in Hokkien.The English in which I draft a pleading is not the English in which a client describes her marriage. Most of my working week is spent in the slow, careful traffic between the two. The column, I have decided, belongs to that traffic.
Read on The Star ↗