I grew up in Singapore, but never felt like I fit in well - my family was never quite like the usual, but not unusual enough to be different. While other families spoke in their dialect or mother tongue, we just had English - its not because my parents couldn’t speak any other language, but that English was the only one in common. So it is no surprise that I’d do badly in anything other than English. So I went to college in Australia and I learnt that I was ‘diaspora’. I fit in with everyone else who didn’t. It felt almost like home… I grew really used to being a little different from everyone and yet at home in knowing we were all that different. For work, I moved to Japan and when I got to know the expatriate community, everyone was different in big ways, the colour of the skin, the place they grew up, the language they spoke. I realized outside of monoculturalistic Singapore, there were a whole lot of people who were born in one place, grew up in another, spoke a completely different language and would end up marrying someone who probably did the same. We are all similarly different.