November 2025 - A Month Etched in Both Celebration and Sorrow

November 2025 will be remembered as a month filled with extraordinary events. On 26.11.2025, my grandson Nathan, proudly shared by his mother, began shaving for the very first time. It may seem like a small, quiet act but it carries deep meaning. Shaving marks a boy’s gradual transition into adolescence and eventually adulthood. It symbolizes the shift from dependence toward autonomy, responsibility and individuality.

Just two days later, Nathan boarded a flight with his classmates, leaving his hometown for an 8D7N school trip to Sydney and Canberra. Watching him embark on this journey filled me with both pride and nostalgia.

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His trip also stirred memories of my own very first visit to Sydney many years ago. It was back in August 1993, when my wife and I brought our three children on a tour to Australia, with Sydney as one of our stops. Serene, Nathan’s mother was slightly younger than Nathan is now.

It’s incredible how swiftly time moves. One generation grows up, and another begins the same journeys in their own way. Moments like these remind me of the gentle, beautiful continuity of life, how our stories echo through our children, and how every new milestone carries a piece of the past forward.

At the Sydney Opera House.

At Sydney Harbour Bridge.

At the Three Sisters rock formation in Blue Mountains.

At the Wildlife Park in Sydney.

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On that very same day when Nathan shaved for the first time, news broke around the world of the deadliest fire in decades at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Tai Po District, Hong Kong. The tragedy claimed 146 lives and left 76 injured.

In the days that followed, heart-wrenching accounts from survivors emerged. One survivor expressed her anguish with words that deeply pierced the heart: “Forty years’ worth of memories have all been lost… All the old photos of my children are gone. It’s hard to recall what they looked like as kids, and that’s the most painful.”

Her grief was not only about the physical loss of possessions, but the irreplaceable disappearance of cherished memories, the moments captured in photographs that once preserved the faces, smiles and childhood of her children.

Hearing her words, I could almost feel the weight of her sorrow. To imagine living out the rest of one’s life without the comfort of those precious images is profoundly heartbreaking. It is a reminder of how fragile our keepsakes are, and how deeply they are tied to our sense of history, identity and family.

This incident serves as a powerful reminder to safeguard old photos not only in albums, but also through digital backups - in clouds, personal archives, blogs or other secure platforms.