The following is sourced from a conversation with Alex Yu (TD ’25). Quotes are edited for clarity and length.
“Just make up a story for me. Say that I fought a bear, or something. Just run it by me, you can text it to me.
What’s even interesting? I like traveling, I guess. I’ve been to many places in Asia—Japan, Mongolia, China (obviously), Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia. I went to Mongolia with friends, so that was really fun. I’ve been to a few places in Europe: Spain, France, Belgium, England, Italy. And I’ve been to Australia.
My mom has Australian citizenship, and my brother lives there now. He studies in Sydney. My mom lived there for a while to study. And my dad’s Canadian, he lived in Canada. They’re both from Hong Kong, and they both moved abroad. It was very common for Hong Kongers to leave after the 1997 handover back to China. My parents were of the age where they were going to university anyways, so they left to get an education abroad and they stayed long enough to get their citizenships. Then they came back to Hong Kong, which is where they met.
They’re retired now. They used to do some sort of job that I didn’t understand. My dad used to work in logistics, my mom mostly looked after us for a while.
Both my parents express love in different ways. I communicate with my mom more, but my dad demonstrates affection in a very non-verbal way. He would pick me up anywhere, anytime. I would call him at 3 a.m., and he would drive to come get me at 3 a.m. My friends would have to call Ubers, or wait like an hour, and I’d just be like ‘Well, bye!’ I should’ve called my dad today, I missed his call. I call them every day.”
