The Bible notes that many women were present at the crucifiction of Jesus. Thayil gives us a fictional account of who these women were, in process breathing life into who Jesus might have been too. A really powerful feminist retelling of the New Testament.
Homeseeking, Karissa Chen
This has been on my TBR for ages, and I had been avoiding it because I (surprise) thought it would make me sad. I finally started it on Chinese New Year, and it did make it sad, in fact, it broke me, not because it is objectively sad, but because of the place I’m in right now. It’s a love story like Heated Rivalry is a love story. A story about love that persists across decades. Suchi and Haiwen met as children in their Shanghai neighbourhood, but they were torn apart by the civil war. Decades later, they meet again in a grocery store in Los Angeles. It made emotionally tangible this arc of modern Chinese history to me, one that I had been familiar with at the factual level and only peripherally through the lived experiences of the families of my friends and acquaintances in Hong Kong. I gained an insight into the complexity of Taiwanese identity: how those who came over from the mainland were resented as occupiers, the stratification of Taiwanese society, the longing of those occupiers to “go home” (more resonant as the Chinese government today beats the drumbeat of “reunification”). Suchi’s ex-husband Lam Sai Keung reminded me of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing. Overall, this novel was devastating to me on two levels: on the romantic level, because it reignited in me the fantasy of the soulmate, and at the level of someone who feels exiled from the place that was home for nearly 20 years.
Game Changers, Rachel Reid
This is the first book in the series that includes Heated Rivalry. It features Scott Hunter, the captain of the New York Guardians, a closetted gay ice hockey star, and Kip Grady, a charming smoothie store clerk. If you’ve watched the Heated Rivalry series, the very moving episode 3 is dedicated to them. I enjoyed this story of two people falling absolutely in love but also the camaraderie between Kip and his friends.
Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid
Loved it. The series is actually very close to the book, but there are some extra bits to drool over.
Tough Guy, Rachel Reid
Ryan Price makes a cameo appearance in Heated Rivalry as enforcer – a player essentially employed to protect the star and fight on his behalf – who is afraid of flying. A gentle giant character, Price is chronically anxious and low-key depressed (thanks to a job that has sucked away his love of hockey). He runs into indie musician Fabian Salah, a crush from his past and the two realise they’ve always had a thing for each other. Reading about Ryan’s mental health struggles is no pleasant, but I loved how the trope of the big, strong jock is inverted with Fabian being the flamboyantly confident one. Shout out to Fabian’s wonderful bohemian friends circle who just absorb Ryan.
Common Goal, Rachel Reid
We’re back in Scott-Kip (adjacent) territory. Eric Bennett, the goaltender for the Guardians, is recently divorced and contemplating retirement. At the Kingfisher, where Kip works, he encounters Kyle, the flirty bartender, and feels a flash of attraction. The obstacle (apart from the fact that Eric has kept his attraction to men carefully tucked away) is the age difference between them. Kyle offers to introduce Eric to the wonderful world of gay dating and sex (purely from an educational standpoint) and the rest is history.
Role Model, Rachel Reid
Troy Barrett was one of those who made Ryan Price’s life a misery in Toronto. And then he finds himself out of his depth and transferred to Ottawa, Ilya Rozanov’s team, where he encounters one very sunny social media manager, Harris. I liked his novel much more on second reading (because yes I read all of these twice). It contains the most Ilya bits which helps.
Currently in the fog of unit tests combined with illness combined with boss being away and a lot of work to do, I’m struggling to remember what transpired last month.
If I have to recall anything about the short month that was, I pushed myself to reach out to and meet people. I met V’s cousin for dosa at Airlines and a walk in Cubbon Park. This cousin lives at the other end of town and V tends to catch up with him at Airlines every few weeks. The last time he messaged and said it would be nice to see me too. So when I had a midweek day off, we contacted him.
I had a nice long chat with friend who was down from Hong Kong.
Chinese New Year came and I was really missing Hong Kong. I had a four day break but leading up to Mimi’s unit tests and my boss being way so beyond watching all the lion dance videos I could, ordering in Chinese food and reading the predictions for our zodiac animal, I can’t remember exactly what we did.
I used the weekday off for CNY to finally catch up with a friend of MinCat’s who had been saying we should hang. We were almost thwarted by Uber drivers cancelling every ride from my in laws place to MinCat’s where the friend was. However, we persisted and finally had our hang.
Book club was postponed by a week because of a possible Uber strike. There was less attendance but a really nice discussion where we all shared how we navigated choosing the surnames of our children. One woman had done a combination of her and her husband’s first names for their son and I so regret not pushing for this, even though getting it done was a complete saga. Interesting when I recounted this to V and reminded him of how he refused to consider my last name, he said it was impossible to get my last time on birth certificate in Hong Kong. I am sure he flat out dismissed this during our epic fight while he was at the birth registry and on the phone to me, he has a different narrative.
I also took a cab 1.5 hours across town to watch a play at Ranga Shankara (finally! my last two attempts at watching a play didn’t work out as the plays themselves were cancelled). The play wasn’t the best, but it still provoked thought, and I got to catch up with another person who I’ve been saying I should catch up with for ages so that’s a win. We had a nice chat on the looong cab ride back.
I obsessively followed the figure skating during the Winter Olympics, and to a lesser extent some other sports. It feels good to lean into something and obsess. I tried watching ice hockey but couldn’t follow the puck. So I switched to watching Heated Rivalry and then took Zorhan Mamdani’s advice and started the series of novels by Rachel Reid and my god, I am so into them. More on that later.
I needed them for my mental health when the US and Israel started bombing Iran. Like seriously? Another war? I don’t know why this one has upset me so much. It’s not like I’m in love with Iran’s government, which killed up to 30,000 of their own people during the protests. But bombing a country to liberate them doesn’t have a good track record. The only positive example of this in recent memory that I can think of is the US’ intervention in Afghanistan, which I could only acknowledge as possibly justified after the Taliban took over again. At least Afghan women had a 20 year intergennum of more freedom between the periods of Taliban rule. But Iran is a different ball game, and this is not going to end easily. Can’t believe it’s been only two months into 2026, the damage the orange menace in the White House has wreaked.
Mikhail Shaidorov’s trademark performance in a panda suit, including executing a triple jump.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates’ performance with a white cloth. It was (much) better than it sounds.
Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier-Beaudry’s performance. The gala tends to have fun performances but these two did a serious one and honestly had me spellbound.
Ilia Malinin and Adam Siao Him Fa’s coordinated backflip.
Now that it’s all over, I’m a bit bereft but I have found Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series (on which the Heated Rivalry television series is based) a nice comfort.
After the tumult in the men’s programme and the tension in the pairs, we needed this.
The favourites going into the competition were the US’ “Blade Angels” – Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito – and the Japanese trio – my personal favourite Kaori Sakamoto and two young skaters Ami Nakai and Mone Chiba.
But there was a wild card – Russia’s Adeliia Petrosian competing as an individual athlete. Because Russia has been banned by the International Skating Union, Russian athelets are not seen in most international competitions. Adeliia trains with Eteri Tutberidze, the same coach behind the Russian women skaters in the 2022 Olympics, one of whom 15-year-old Kamila Valieva was banned on a doping violation.* Petrosian was said to be planning two quad jumps in her programme, and because she had not been seen in international competition – except at the Olympics qualifying event – there was curiosity about her. This does not justify terming her a “mysterious Russian teen” as the Wall Street Journal did in a video. Seriously, the Western obsession with making everything from any country with a communist background seem sinister is too boring.
Adeliia was the second person to skate in the short programme – because she is practically unranked – and I loved her crisp performance to Michael Jackson’s music.
My other favourites were the two Koreans, Shin Jia and Lee Haein. Like with their compatriot Cha Junhwan, they have a really elegant and graceful skating style.
Alysa Liu was also great, although Amber Glenn bombed and found herself in 13th place.
Kaori – who has been like the elder sister of the sport – gave a solid performance to “Time to Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. This is Kaori’s final Olympics; she had a bronze in Beijing and said she was aiming to better that.
Surprisingly, Ami Nakai finished at the top.
And then came the free skate.
Memorable moments:
Italy’s Lara Naki Gutman’s shark presentation from Jaws
China’s Zhang Ruiyang: I enjoyed both her short programme and her free skate
Julia Sauter of Romania who earned her season’s best, having crowdfunded to get to the Olympics, working a couple of jobs and doing her own choreography.
Amber did a wonderful redemption skate, with only a small error. She found herself sitting in the top score chair for ages, and used her time to hype up the other skaters, including encouraging the crowd to give Kazakhstan’s Sofia Samodelkina a standing ovation and standing up and applauding Isabeau who didn’t have the best skate. Amber ended the competition in fifth place, an amazing jump from 13th in the short programme. She has been vocal about LGBTQ rights, having come out as queer, and has been criticised for airing her political views. In the Kiss and Cry she said “I’m going to keep saying what I need to say.”
I have wondered after the Ilia debacle whether US athletes are better off shunning the cameras and just focusing on their sport, but Alysa has got a great deal of media coverage before the Olympics too and she seemed unfazed. Alysa though is in a different mindspace than anyone else at the competition.
Take Adeliia. She had catapulted herself from second last performer into the final group. Unfortunately, she had a really bad skate. She popped her first quad jump, and didn’t seem to recover after that. She seemed really pissed and disappointed. It almost seemed like she was Russia’s way to make a point and that’s a lot to hang on one kid.
Japan’s Mone Chiba did a great job, and then came Alysa. Oh Alysa.
Listen, this is a woman who competed in Beijing aged 16 and then decided she’d had enough. Fun fact: her father is a Chinese dissident and before Beijing 2022 the FBI found that they were being targeted by the Chinese government and so she was escorted everywhere during those Olympics. Anyway Alysa had been pushed as a skater since she was a child, and was done. She a took a year off and then one day when she went skiing she realised she missed the ice. And decided to come back – on her own terms. She would decided what she wanted to eat, wear, skate to and how much to train.
Her IDGAF energy was on display in her dazzling Olympic free skate. She had said before the final that she didn’t really care if she got a medal. This was criticised by some skating fans as being privileged, and it is. Not everyone has the choice of skating for fun. Be that as it may, Alysa 2.0’s sheer joy in the sport, or rather, her art is irresistible. The commentators said that every skater had a quote up for the audience in attendance to see and Alysa’s simply said “Please enjoy.” Because that’s all she wants to do now: share her art. So pleased with herself, she came of the ice and said to the camera, in true punk girl style, “Now that’s what I’m fucking talking about.”
Contrast Alysa grinning from ear to ear and ending with a cheeky seemingly spontaneous hair flick to how stressed Kaori looked when she took the ice. And don’t get me wrong, I am a Kaori worshipper. Kaori skated her heart out but she made a mistake that was fatal to her gold medal hopes, and she could just about hold back her tears till she got to arms of her coach. Kaori skated to “Je ne regrette rien” but it was clear that that wasn’t her sentiment as she came off the ice. This was not my favourite Kaori performance. That remains her bronze medal performance in Beijing.
And finally, Ami, whose presentation to What A Wonderful World I enjoyed the most. Possibly it was the music, but it was also Ami’s Alysa-adjacent joy in her skating, even if to some eyes it seemed somewhat junior. Ami also made a mistake and had a super cute expression when she ended.
She came off the ice and looked disappointed at her score because she placed ninth in the free skate (!) and then she suddenly saw the total score and turned to Alysa in the wings and put up three fingers and asked “three?” And Alysa confirmed she had won bronze, and the two of them jumping for joy was a thing to behold.
In the meantime, Kaori was crying in a corner – I was actually shocked at how badly she took getting silver – and Amber comforted her and told the cameraperson off for trying to film it. And she comforted Mone – who had been knocked off the podium to fourth – too. There was such awesome sportswomanship on display at this event.
All three women had composed themselves by the time get got to the podium and they made such a joyous picture. Kaori helped Alysa arrange her plushie on her medal and Alysa put her hand on her heart and belted out the last line of the national anthem.
There was so much hype around Ilia going into these games – and he will have his moment no doubt – but this figure skating competition has been defined by Alysa, by the radical notion of competing simply for a lark, for showcasing your art on your own terms results be damned, for rooting for your fellow competitors, for radiating joie. Alysa showed us more than how to win, she showed us how to be happy.
* The Beijing Olympics women’s final was drama and histrionics as Valieva caved under the pressure and Alexandra Trusova, the next favourite, found herself beaten by another member of the Russian team, Anna Shcherbakova, for gold.
Tutberidze has been accused of pushing very young skaters into jumps – quadruple jumps, usually performed in the men’s competition – that leave them with serious injuries for life. So much so that after the 2022 Olympics, the rules were raised the age limit for participating in senior skating to 16.
Russia has pushed back saying that they were training their skaters to push the limits of what’s possible for women in figure skating. They pointed out that when Simone Biles pushes the limits in sport or when American gymnastics focuses on strength rather than artistry, it’s applauded, but when Russia does the same, it is criticised. Trusova with five quad jumps in the free skate could be seen as taking women’s sport into the domain reserved for men.
Over time, I have come to see the merits of this point of view. Moreover, to hear Alysa Liu tell it, she too was pushed too hard, including being told not to drink water before competitions (as Tutberidze was accused of doing with her skaters), but somehow it becomes particularly terrible when the Russians do it. That’s not to say that there’s no merit in the criticism of Tutberidze. Skating professionals have said she doesn’t train her skaters to properly take off into rotations which increases the chance of injury. Not being an expert, I can’t comment.
Russia itself has been accused of running a state-sponsored doping programme, and Valieva’s suspension for a doping violation didn’t help. It was felt that Valieva being so young made her more vulnerable.
Pairs is arguably the hardest because synchronised jumps, lifts, not wanting to kill your partner for falling, not wanting to kill your partner by dropping them on their head.
2022 Olympic champions Sui Wenjing and Han Cong of China apparently came out of retirement to compete in these games because the country didn’t have anyone else of calibre. The commentators were at pains to mention this, and so were forgiving of their errors. I generally loved their performance to Harbaera although it wasn’t flawness.
The Canadian pair Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud skating to “Say You Love Me” were outstanding, and finsihed unexpectedly in third position.
The German couple Hocke and Kunkel who do this very cool swing at the end.
The Georgian team of Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava who opened with an amazing headstand. It’s obvious the commentators did not like them, they kept going on about Luka having scary footwork (which he probably does).
And then the favourites Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara from Japan who are such a cut above the rest. The synchronisation, the clean jumps. Their score during the team event was so huge that Riku fell off her chair when she saw it. And yet… they flunked their lift in the short programme. Ryuichi was devastated, and at the end, Riku just knelt next to him with her hand on his shoulder while he hung his head. He basically thought he had dashed his medals hopes at his fourth Olympics. His coach on the sidelines told him: “It’s not over.”
The other American team – Ellie Kam and Daniel O Shea – had a great score (Everybody Want to Rule the World/Sweet Dreams) and gorgeous costumes but she fell on almost every jump. In the Kiss and Cry, Danny told her: “Don’t worry, you’ve had a great Olympics.” I’m in awe of his generosity of spirit. It’s so hard to be positive and not blame your partner.
Sui and Han skating to music conveying a classical Chinese painting depicting mountains and rivers was poignant and I’m glad they got the respect they deserved from the commentators as one of the greats, even though they weren’t in the running for the podium.
And finally, Riku and Ryuichi again. Their speed of the ice is amazing. They brought it, and Ryuichi was unable to contain his emotion at the end. Their score was enormous enough to catapult them to gold, which set Ryuichi off again, while Riku started laughing at him saying, “He’s been crying all day.”
After the men’s event, this was the healing we needed.
Going into this Olympics, it was pretty much known that “quad god” Ilia Malinin (I know, I know Heated Rivalry hot flushes) had gold in the bag. Quads are a kind of jump that involve four rotations in the air. Ilia is the only person to have ever landed a quadruple axel in competition (and he has done so repeatedly). A triple axel is hard enough to do, a quad axel was thought to be impossible. It essentially involves 4.5 rotations in the air. The programme that has earned Ilia – age 21 – his place in the skating pantheon contains seven quads. He came into the Olympics unbeaten on the competition circuit.
Ilia skated for the US in the team event and while his short skate was not flawless and he stumbled in his free skate – in which he showcased four quads – he clinched the gold for his team. It was a close one because Japan’s Sato Shun had the skate of his life and almost won the thing for his country. Yuma Kagiyama, thought to be the main threat to Ilia’s single title, had had a brilliant short programme. I read a New Yorker piece – that now seems to have disappeared – breaking down how there was no way Ilia could lose.
Competitors skate a short programme that qualifies them – or not – for the final free skate. Ilia’s short programme was not flawless but enough to put him on top. Yuma was right behind him. Some skaters did an outstanding job: Adam Siao Him Fa of France and Daniel Grassl of Italy. Some like, Kazakhstan’s Michael Shaidorov, not so much (CBC commentator Carol Lane actually said that the score he skated to from Dune was not music and if you’re going to skate to noise, then you have to be perfect. Carol kind of lost me there. Yes, the score wasn’t your typical tra la la but it had vocal elements from Middle Eastern music, and it’s borderline racist to describe it as noise). We got to see the famous performance by the Spanish skater to the music from the Minion movie. Fun.
Then we had the free skate. I really tried to stay off Insta this time. But I was beginning to see inklings of an upset.
Taiwan’s (Chinese Taipei whatever) Li Yu-Hsiang did wonderfully. So did Switzerland’s Lukas Britschgi. I always love watching Mexico’s Donovan Carrillo because guys, a figure skater from Mexico!
Canada’s Stephen Gogolev did great work as did Russia’s Petr Gummenik (not skating under his country’s flag because Russia is banned from the Olympics … but not Israel or the US note… because of the Ukraine war) and his supporters feel he was robbed of a medal.
My personal favourite, Korea’s Cha Junhwan, was pretty good too though he had a nasty fall. He’s so graceful, he reminds of (skating fans don’t come for me), the great Yuzuru Hanyu. And I’m over Vogue going on about how he’s the best looking. He’s among the best skaters in the world ok? How many can get up from a fall like that and still look graceful? And some feel he should have been scored higher and been on the podium.
Mikhael Shaidorov put his heart into his skate and although there were some errors. His signature is a quad salchow at the end of three-jump combination that starts with a triple axel was perfectly done. He’s the only man in the world to that. People tend to forget he’s the world silver medallist. You can watch the whole programme here (German commentary, sorry). You can tell how he put everything into it by how he collapsed when he was done.
Shun Sato seemed to have a cold but pulled off his exciting programme to the music of Firebird well.
But many had disaster nights. Matteo Rizzo who clinched the team bronze for Italy literally carried by the roaring of the crowd did the same programme for the individual event but worse. Grassl’s programme to music from Conclave was so compelling on paper, but he didn’t pull it off. Turns out he had food poisoning and almost pulled out of the event. Maxim Naumov of the US didn’t do great either but the crowd (rightly) was on its feet for him because he lost his both parents in the Washington plane crash that took the lives of a number of people associated with skating.
Adam Siao blew his medal chances by falling. Yuma also had a very messy programme.
And then Ilia. OMG Ilia. The first element was fine – a quad flip. The world was waiting for Ilia to land his quad axel – which he had no obligation to perform because he could have won without it – and he popped it by landing… a single! What would have got him a gigantic score barely got him a point. He did one more perfect jump. It seemed to go downhill from there. He fell, he faltered, his programme was bleeding points and he was desperately trying to save it. It was terrible, painful to watch. This is how people in ancient Greece must have felt when they watched Icarus falling out of the sky.
He still went ahead – defiantly – and did a back flip (in the team event, he became the first person to legally land a back flip on one skate on Olympic ice). The move had banned from March 1976 (American Terry Kubicka was the first person to perform it at the Olympics and it was banned that year as it was considered dangerous and ahem unslightly) until 2024 when it was finally reinstated. Let us all remember that two decades after its ban, French skater Surya Bonaly – a rare black person on the ice who had faced racism throughout her career – performed the back flip (landing on one skate unlike Kubicka) as a defiant gesture against what she considered unfair scoring at the Olympics. Twenty-six years later, Adam Siao brought it back as a tribute to Surya, taking the deduction that came with it (awarded weirdly by Terry Kubicka, now a judge). You can read all about it here.
Anyway, Ilia’s back flip came across to me as a very – dangerous given how off he was on the ice – FU to whichever gods had cursed him. Let’s remember it was Friday the 13th. On the Reddit live discussion thread on the men’s event, the dominant comment through his programme was: what is happening?
This is Ilia’s seven quad programme that every human who can should watch because he has near defied the laws of physics and lived to tell the tale… more than once. He is among those who can say they have reached the pinnacle of human achievement and that continues to be true, despite this Olympic debacle. It is what makes this Olympic disaster so tragic.
It has been compared to Nathan Chen’s meltdown in the 2018 Olympics. And more recently to Kamila Valieva’s painful performance at the last Olympics (but she was 15 and had a doping allegation hanging over her head). The thing that comes to most to mind is Simone Biles’ 2020 Olympics. Biles was in the audience and gave Ilia a standing ovation as he was struggling. She and Chen have both said they will reach out to him.
This is Misha’s face as he realises he may win bronze, no silver, no…
This is Ilia walking out of the kiss and cry to congratulate the stunned winner. This is grace in the face of a terrible loss: he had just learnt that not only he was not winning gold, he was not even on the podium, but he found it in him to say a few words to the man who did win.
This is Shun crying into possibly Yuma’s towel while Yuma laughs merrily and tells him to smile. They took bronze and silver respectively.
The skating world’s consensus is joy for Misha and happy for the Japanese pair, heartbreak for Ilia. Even his haters didn’t wish this on him. And there have been encouraging messages from skating fans across the world – from China to Russia. Ilia was spotted watching the pairs’ event and has said he will skate in the final gala and the world championships.
There has been comment that there was a problem with the ice by the time the final skaters came on. There may be something to it, but Ilia’s problems went beyond that. There has also been comment that the individual events should come before the team event because athletes might tire or be injured. There’s something to this as well. Ilia skated both short and long programmes in the team event, Yuma only did the short programme for the team event. Kazakhstan didn’t qualify for the final so Misha was rested. It has also been remarked upon that skaters like Misha who started their career training on mall rinks (with less than stellar ice surface) did better here, and that might be a factor too.
Ilia has lashed out at not being chosen for the Beijing Olympics team – my all time favourite Jason Brown (his programme to Hallelujah gave me goosebumps) was chosen instead although Ilia had placed second in the US championships – which might have given him the experience to cope with the Olympic pressure. I don’t know. I think Ilia has proved again and again over these four years that he had it in him to win Olympic gold with relative ease.
Yes, the Olympics hits different. What also hits different is how the American media builds up these athletes in the run-up making them seeing invincible. That New Yorker piece was a case in point. Every major newspaper had pieces on Ilia proclaiming him the god of skating, infallible, playing up his (admittedly) impossible feats on ice. The same was done for Simone.
It’s now standard for athletes to have to have the camera trained on them while they wait for their results. To have to a mike shoved in their face right after they learn their results, devastating as that can be. To sit on the sidelines waiting to see if they are on the podium or not, and cede when they are not (hopefully gracefully). To have a mike shoved in their face even after their worst defeat as NBC did to Ilia. Naomi Osaka has talked about the mental toll of having to relive a bad match in the press conference after and has refused to attend such press cons, earning penalties from the French Open organisers and criticism from the likes of Piers Morgan (who knows what it is like to be a professional athlete. not).
Unfortunately, this hype is needed for athletes to make money. This is what we the public demand in order to support them. But they are only very young humans. In such a terrible way, this was brought home to us in Ilia’s free skate.
I thought I’d write this at the end of the Olympics but so much has gone down, I can’t wait.
Let’s start with ice dance. This is the part of figure skating I’m least into usually.
Figure skating has roughly four sections: men’s individual, women’s individual, pairs and ice dance. Ice dance doesn’t have the jumping passes that tend to wow viewers. As a result it’s the most artistic, which you’d think would be straight up my lane but the spotlight tends to be on the stars in the other categories. I would watch the ice dance mostly as a supplement and I don’t follow ice dancers year round.
(Not that I follow figure skating in general year round. Mainly because it’s not easy to access the events, though things are better now with stuff being posted on YouTube and Insta).
That changed after I watched the Netflix series Glitter and Gold in the run up to these Olympics. It focused on three couples with a good chance of gold in Milan.
The first and obvious choice: the favourites Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates. They have been skating together for about 15 years and are a real-life couple. They are known for their stunning costumes – designed by Madi – and choreography. I still remember their performance from Beijing 2022 around an alien being romanced by an astronaut. This year they had a stunning matador-bull theme, with Madi sporting a somewhat-controversial longish black skirt with red lining (controversial because there’s every danger of Evan stepping on it during the performance, or it flapping over his face in a lift).
The next couple: Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier. They have also been skating together since 2011. Piper was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2023 but was able to get back on the circuit after surgery. They are known for their somewhat quirky choices. And in the run-up to the Olympics they seemed to have been scored unusually low by some judges.
And finally: Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry. Guillaume won gold in ice dance in Beijing with his former partner Gabriella Papadakis. After the Olympics, they announced their retirement. Gabriella has since written a book So As Not To Disappear in which she alleges that Guillaume was a very controlling partner. (NBC, for whom she was to be a commentator for the Olympics, fired her on the grounds that she may not be able to be neutral). Laurence, meanwhile, could not skate with her former partner/current boyfriend Nikolaj Sørensen because he had been suspended after a complaint of sexual assault (that was only overturned on jurisdictional grounds last year). Laurence has stood by Nokolaj. Guillaume and Laurence have only been skating together since March 2025 and yet they very quickly began winning competitions on the circuit and became real contenders for gold. Nevertheless, because of the backstory, it seemed like this was not a couple most of the skating world could get behind.
These couples took to competitive Olympic ice this year during the team competition that happens before the individual contest. All three competed in the shorter Rhythm dance competition and Madi and Evan won by a sliver. Guillaume and Laurence were second and Piper and Paul fourth. British couple Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, whose routine to the Spice Girls’ Wannabe I also love, came third.
In the ice dance segment of the team competition, only Madi and Evan among the three pairs performed. France didn’t qualify for the team final and Canada chose to save Piper and Paul for the individual final. Madi and Evan were stunning in their matador routine and won, helping the US win the team event overall.
And then we came to the individual ice dance event. This time, Guillaume and Laurence won the rhythm dance segment and I have to say I love their skate to Madonna’s Vogue. They specially learnt from a vogue specialist how to move their arms.
You can watch them perform this routine at the Grand Prix final here.
But Madi and Evan were still the favourites. Honestly, there were so many great performances, it was really hard to choose between them. Czechia’s team that performed to the Matrix, complete with dodging of bullets. There was a gorgeous performance to music from Dune (with costumes designed by Madison Chock) by a Spanish team.
Piper and Paul killed it with their programme to the music of Govardo’s version of Don Mclean’s “Vincent”. Honestly, many thought they should have won the whole thing. Just look at their last rotation here.
Lilah and Lewis were real contenders for bronze with their lively performance to bagpipe music (that had me dowloading a bagpipe album on spotify) but they made a small mistake that put them out of the running.
And then it was between the final two. Madi and Evan’s skate was flawless. If I have to quibble, I would say that Madi’s skirt may not have performed entirely as it should have, bunching in the wrong direction sometimes. One of the commentators said her skirt was the third performer and he was right. But skate-wise they were on point.
And finally, Guillaume and Laurence skating to The Whale. I had not seen this routine before and it was gorgeous. Guillaume is a stunning performer – it is clear why he is the Olympic champion. In the Madi-Evan team, it’s widely acknowledged that Madi is the star and Evan is the vehicle. One of my favourite skaters Adam Rippon said that Evan knows this and is ok with it (I wonder – but Evan is clearly besotted with Madi). With Guillaume and Laurence, Guillaume is the star, but Laurence more than keeps up.
And yet, in the most crucial Olympic moment, Guillaume made a mistake. And yet, to the shock of almost everyone, they were given a score that put them on top. They won gold.
All three – or four if you count Lilah and Lewis – in the running for the podium are amazing. I really struggled to choose a pair to root for. Piper and Paul are underdogs and I liked them the best. They deserved their spot in the sun, and they were thrilled with bronze.
Guillaume and Laurence have amazing talent – to come together so late and leap right to the highest level. And their Vogue short programme is going to stay with me for a long time. I normally don’t like rooting for the favourite but watching Madi and Evan’s madator free dance at the team event, I felt it was a work of art that deserved gold.
I woke up the morning after the ice dance final and unfortunately looked at the results. It put me in an off mood for the rest of the day. I watched the replay with Mimi later in the day. I felt Madi and Evan deserved gold, or even Piper and Paul. Guillaume and Laurence would have had they skated flawlessly. They didn’t. Guillaume did a good save, but it was a save. Mimi felt that Piper and Paul or Guillaume and Laurence deserved gold.
You can watch all three programmes here and judge for yourself.
There has been an outcry over the judging, once it was realised that the French judge had scored Madi and Evan really low. There was talk of an appeal but it has now been dropped. Guillaume and Laurence are officially our Olympic ice dance champions, off putting backstory or not, slipup on ice or not, and unofficially for many Madi and Chock won the day.
This novel – a Pride and Prejudice retelling from the perspective of Caroline Bingley – had such potential. However, by the end of it, it read like badly executed amateur fanfic to me. The problem, I feel, is that instead of leaning into the Caroline perspective, it kept alternating with the Elizabeth-Darcy story, which should have been strictly peripheral. Caroline’s motivations too did not seem entirely convincing. A pity.
This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Tabitha Carvan
The subtitle says it all: the joy of loving something – anything – like your life depends on it. Or rather, it’s about leaning into fangirling and discovering joy. And about how the things women obsess over are seen as silly unlike the things men obsess over (e.g. sports). The author becomes obsessed with Cumberbatch (who isn’t? it’s just a question of degree) and turns it into a sort of sociological study. Interviewing fellow Cumberbitches, she discovers the psychological underpinnings of the obsession. A bit that resonated with me was how she and another Cumberbitch lived their lives – like most women, to a greater or lesser degree – in fear (of being judged by other people). One of the things I’ve been struggling with is the amount of fear in my life – not so much of judgment from other people though there is that, but the sheer precariousness of life itself, more so in India. Carvan’s thesis is that throwing oneself into love of something – aka fangirling – can help one rediscover joie de vivre. I have some concern that throwing onself into objectifying another person may not be entirely justifiabe even if that person is a male celebrity, with all the privilege that comes with that. Carvan tries to address this, but not entirely satisfactorily for me. The book is an apt counterpoint to the nonchalence epidemic we seem to be in.
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
As a child, I read a story in a textbook about Amelia Earhart, the pioneering female aviator who disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the world. I still vaguely remember the black-and-white sketch that accompanied the story, if not the story itself. Shipstead’s novel ties together two parallel stories: that of a (fictional) female aviator who disappears while attempting to circumnavigate the world from north to south pole, and the actress who plays her in a biopic. There are subtle parallels between both women’s lives separated though they are by decades. You’d think this is a book about aviation, and there are a number of historical nuggets, but it’s at heart a character-driven story, that I suspect will stay with me.
The Names, Florence Knapp
Heard a lot about this one and suggested it for the book club. The premise: a woman is heading to the birth registry to register the name of her newborn son. She has been instructed to put down Gordon, the name that is passed down to all first born sons in her abusive husband’s family. Then we are presented with three scenarios: she defies her husband and picks an unusual name that her young daughter suggests, she defies her husband and picks a name she likes herself, or she goes with her husband’s choice. Out of these three choices flow three trajectories for her and her children. Because I am obsessed (or used to be) with names and because I personally had a massive fight with V over the (last) name of our children involving him creating a ruckus at the Hong Kong birth registry the premise struck a chord with me. While the idea of naming a child the same name as his father and grandfather might strike many of us as odd and patriarchal, how many of us question and oppose the equally patriarchal tradition of children taking their father’s last name? That said, the premise of the book was more interesting to me than where it eventually went though it is well written, particularly as a treatise on the importance of women escaping abusive marriages and the consequences not only to themselves but also to their children if they don’t.
The kids and my sister and fam came back from Bombay and we had 3 days together. We: 1. Went to Mall of Asia – niece said she was overstimulated 2. A French restaurant in Yelahanka – our Uber had an accident on the way back (more on that later) 3. Got mehndi done at niece’s request. Was stunning.
We all got emo on the way back from the airport. I was surprised that even Nene was in tears. My nephew, seven years his junior, clings to him like a limpet and it can get super annoying but it seems it’s not only a chore.
I kind of spiralled over the following weeks. I had seen the city and my life through an outsider’s eyes and it did not live up to my own expectations. As a child, I thought Bangalore was the most beautiful city in India (admittedly, I had seen very little of India) because of its flowering tree-lined streets. I am forced to admit, though, that my outskirty part of the city is not the most scenic (though there are patches of rural beauty) and in the past few months, as with the whitetopping of roads, is intolerably ugly. Driving back from the airport through Bagalur (not the toll road), the roads bordering the farm land were lined with rubbish. Pavements are non-existent, the dust makes every walk down the road an Operation Desert Storm experience and the potholes mean no one needs to do off-road driving for thrills because on-road driving is not very different. AQI is supposed to be better than Bombay or Delhi, but it doesn’t feel stellar. All that remains is the weather.
The minor accident that our Uber was involved in brought to the surface something that has characterised by sense of life in India: precarity and powerlessness. Our Uber vehicle touched another car. It may or may not have been our driver’s fault – I wasn’t paying attention. However, what ensued was classic India, with the slight difference being that the driver of the other vehicle was a woman. She rolled down her window and started screaming. Our driver – unwisely – tried to argue. She demanded he go to the police station. I tried to diffuse the situation by apologising but she turned on me and began to scream. I retreated. A cop got out of the other car and then I realised that this woman was politically connected. They insisted our driver get out of the car and kept yelling at him. Honestly, I couldn’t see where her car was scratched, it was that minor (though obviously upsetting for her). I was afraid for the driver and unsure what to do. One old farmer dude with a stick went and stood next to him, and the younger driver of a truck.
The driver came back to get his licence, and I asked him if we should leave, and he said no, we could go on. But then he was stuck being yelled at again. I tried to call Uber, but ended up getting the police. I was surprised that they picked up, asked me what was happening, and advised me to leave. Then Uber called me. They apparently couldn’t cancel the ride but said they were trying to reach the driver (I pointed out that was impossible given that the poor guy was involved in a heated argument).
Finally, the guy came back and drove us home. He must have been shaken up, but he put on a calm face. You’d think someone who had just been through what he had would drive super carefully but he made the turn-off to our building in not the safest way.
What I realised from this incident is that while I am not as powerless as the driver I am not privileged enough to have real power. Getting entangled with people like the woman in that car can crush me. India essentially functions under the law of the jungle, and I am not among the tigers. Which has always made me feel insecure living here. One has to close one’s eyes to so much danger just to function because there’s really not much one can do about it, but I’ve always been more aware than most of its lurking presence.
So I went into a bit of spiral, until I pulled myself up with the thought that this does not have to last forever. When my kids finish school, I can re-evalutate whether I really want to live here. If I am still very unhappy, I do have an option – moving back to Hong Kong – even though it’s an expensive one. In the meantime, I need to see the silver lining in my bank account.
The kids went off on our their school field trips to Kochi and Goa. V was unwell, so I ended up going to a concert by Sirat Trio (part of the Bangalore Hubba events) alone. It was lovely and made me resolve to push myself to keep doing stuff despite my general malaise. I also went to the Karigar Bazaar at Jaymahal Palace and (surprise!) bought a painting. It’s in the Kalighat style and nicely fills up one empty wall. Unfortunately, our framer messed up the framing slightly, but I’m still pleased with it.
Mimi celebrated a birthday. For once it fell on a Saturday and I thought she’d want to do a party given the success of last year’s but she kept hedging and finally settled on an escape room and dinner with her cousins. However, it turned out that was only a prelude to her idea of doing different stuff with different friends, which is well and good except it falls on me to facilitate all this. Frankly, would have preferred to get it all done on one day, but I gather that Mimi’s different friends don’t get along and it’s stressful for her to have them all under one roof. So we had a follow-up sleepover and day at the mall with two girls and she’s supposed to be doing something else with another friend, goodness knows when.
Our building finally reopened the swimming pool after two years of repairs. Unfortunately Bangalore weather means it’s often too chilly to use it.
I watched Heated Rivalry (thoughts on chick lit blog here) and my mood improved. I highly recommend it.
Show, Don’t Tell, Curtis Sittenfeld I don’t like short stories, but I love Sittenfeld and I devoured this like one of her novels.
Martyr, Kaveh Akbar A novel of ideas about a young man obsessed with the idea of martyrdom (aka ending one’s life with purpose). Right up my street right?
Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Rufi Thorpe A young woman gets pregnant, decides to keep the baby, realises it’s no joke raising a child with no money, turns to OnlyFans and yet, it is not grim at all, but still makes you think.
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, James Hollis I wrote that this book low-key changed my life, but now I can’t remember any of it. I guess surviving the death of a beloved cat kind of takes the meaningfulness out of one.
for whom the bell tolls 
