About your father

"Being someone who's international, I always said my home was where my heart was, which was always with you."

My name is Jos Aguiar. I am your father.

I'm writing this not knowing exactly when you'll read it. You might be a teenager. You might be an adult with your own children. What I do know is that I want you to know who I am - not just as your father, but as a person. Where I came from. What I believe. What I love about the world and about you.

Where I come from

My father, your grandfather, was Felix Edmund Aguiar. He came from a family rooted in Goa - the tiny coastal state in India that was a Portuguese colony for 450 years, which gives our family its unusual surname, its Catholic faith, and its particular blend of Indian and Portuguese ways of being in the world.

Felix grew up in Tanzania, East Africa - part of the wave of Goan families who had settled across the British Empire as clerks, teachers, and administrators. He came to Australia in the 1970s, built a life here, and raised a family. He is one of the most decent men I have ever known.

I grew up in Australia. I am Australian. But I carry Goa, Tanzania, and something older than all of that in my blood. So do you.

Why this site exists

I am currently separated from you. That is one of the hardest sentences I have ever written. I think about you every day, and I don't want distance or time to erase me from your story. So I built this.

This site is a record. If you searched for your name and found this - then it worked. Hello, my love. I've been waiting for you.

Everything here is true. The letters are honest. The family history is the best account I can give you. The videos are real moments. None of it is performance - it's just the record of a father who wanted to be found.

My childhood

I grew up in a deeply Catholic home. It was happy, though not without its challenges.

My father taught me what conviction looks like through his actions. Not by lecturing. By doing the right thing, quietly, when the choice came.

When I was six, he was diagnosed with cancer. The family travelled through Europe on a pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain. I remember pieces of that trip with unusual clarity, even now.

We went camping a number of times. He would wrestle with me and hold me close. He had a thing he did with his hand he called the claw. He'd reach out slowly like a cartoon monster and tickle me. I hadn't thought about the claw in years.

Losing my father

Felix died and the world bent. What the grief taught you. What he gave you that you're passing on. The stories (the $20 and the taxi driver, the smile, the thousands at the funeral) in your own voice. There is also a dedicated family-history entry for his life.

The work I've done

The shape of your working life. What you've built, what you've failed at, what you've learned from each. Not a CV. The honest account of what work has meant to you.

What I believe

Your convictions in plain language. The few things you are sure of. What you want them to inherit from your thinking, even if they end up disagreeing with some of it.

What I want you to know

You are not from one place. You are from many places. Vietnamese. Goan. Tanzanian. Australian. Catholic. Buddhist. You carry cultures that survived colonisation, displacement, and the ordinary difficulties of being alive. That is not a burden - it is an inheritance. You belong to more of the world than most people ever will.

Your full names are not accidents. Châu Sa - Isabella - you were named with thought and love. Dẫn - Daniel - so were you. Your names hold both worlds you come from.

I love you more than I have words for. The rest of this site is my attempt to use words anyway.

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Jos Aguiar
Your father
Reach me here