Honesty and humour enrich journalist's unlikely life journey

During the 1990s, American journalist Alison Singh Gee spent several years working for the and . Outside work, she lived an "It" girl existence in Hong Kong. It was during this time that Gee (who still writes for this publication occasionally) met the love of her life, a fellow journalist named Ajay. The story of their courtship is worthy of a soap opera - spoiler alert: he's Indian landed gentry and his family owns a palace called Mokimpur. These events inspired Gee to write a memoir, , which was published earlier this year. She talks to .
 

Ajay, [my daughter] Anais and I live in northeast Los Angeles in a little urban "village" that used to boast its own neighbourhood killer. Really, the man - bald with bulbous eyes - was psychotic. Now our neighbourhood just has hipsters, designer dogs and expensive cafes. The former raucous billiards hall around the block has also been transformed into an Indian Sweets & Spices. We couldn't believe it when IS&S came to our hood - we felt we'd won the lottery.
 

Yes. It was something I always knew about myself. My mother wanted me to be either the new Connie Chung [a US TV anchor], a contestant on or a stewardess. Really. My father was a stifling patriarchal sort who never really gave us much of an audience. So I decided that if I couldn't talk freely, I could write my feelings and ideas out instead. I wrote my first "book" as a child, an illustrated book about dogs. I always kept journals full of tortured thoughts and so when I graduated from university and graduate school in London it seemed logical for me to pursue journalism.