I keep wondering why I self-inflicted this, why my first article had to be this one. I have agonised over writing it, adamant all along that it needed to come first, the introduction to what I hope will be many more, and that it will only get easier from here. Self-imposed limitations are a thing, at least in the moment. It is also a topic that has sat with me for a long time, so here is my best attempt to pass it on.

I was a teenager when someone read my diary without permission. The message that followed was delivered without malice, but it landed like a verdict: if you don’t want people to know your secrets, don’t write them down. And so I stopped.

My life has taken me from the shores of Algeria, via the Swiss Alps and the streets of Paris, to Singapore, where I’ve made my home for the past twenty years, with a pit stop in Shanghai along the way, where my daughter was born. Made in China!

My career began the way the best ones often do, by accident.