goodbye bye, youth and imaginationIt's been a while since I last took a day off work to spend with J. It's either age or the lack of imagination (or both) such that when we had a chance to spend the day together last Friday, we were both somewhat at a loss as to where next to explore.After brunch at our favourite Killiney Road kopitiam, for want of somewhere to go, we started to wander along Killiney Road. J was in no mood to test the gurkha guard at Dublin road, hence we just continued walking - place one foot ahead of the other, feel the ground.bye, Xiao KangAfter the row of shop houses, there were the gates of the condominiums - and a quiet driveway soon appeared, lined with cars parked illegally under the wise, dense shade of banyan trees. Of course, the legendary Mitre Hotel! (flickr photos here) There was graffiti all along the wall of the driveway, at the end of which the two-storey building stood, now truly abandoned. In February this year, the courts had ruled that the hotel should be sold. I've heard so much about the hotel: its bar, the Australian boarder who had lived there for 30 years, its ghost stories, a short documentary about the hotel The Mitre Spell had played at the 2007 Singapore Film Festival...I was too spooked out. Only J dared to venture to the porch.145 Killiney Road would be an address to boast about. In its place a few years later would no doubt be another block or two of private apartments for wealthy young Singaporeans and more expatriates. Another remote world on our small island.bye, Nan QiaoSomewhat saddened, we continued walking till we hit River Valley Road. From there, we went towards Mohamed Sultan Road. The doors to the pubs were closed, and even though their names have all changed - ah, the memories. Off Mohamed Sultan Road is the quiet Kim Yan Road. The low conserved shop houses there have been converted into homes and fancy offices. What did not survive was the original campus of the Nan Chiau Secondary School. All that remained were two gate posts.Please, boys and girls, we did not build this island on sappy sentimentalism! Straighten your backs, dry your eyes, quit sighing and just move on. makers, keepers On my morning commute the past week I've been reading the Tangent's latest issue of its journal on "The Makers and Keepers of History". The short essays by historians and researchers describing their experiences of trying to access documents, archives and memories are humbling. Some are fairly straightforward accounts of the difficulties of getting government agencies to allow access to their files and archives. Most of these experiences have been negative. The descriptions are matter-a-fact, but the reader can sense the frustration or is invited to wonder at the suspicion and the impenetrability of a "no". Others are more personal accounts of interviews, chance encounters and the politics of documenting. These are stories of relationships forged, grown.Who are the "makers" of history? The larger-than-life politician or the many individuals who collectively lend power or privately shape lives; the government archivist or the historian? And are the makers of history themselves "keepers", a repository or a self-appointed/state-authorised gatekeeper? Where is history indeed situated?These questions distracted me from the marching feet, anxious glances at the time and bodies trying to stake their space in the cabins of the morning train. Besides, there have other makers and keepers I encountered the past week - Another kind of makers J and I have always lamented the lack of appreciation on this island for craft, for the ability to make things, for work and jobs that cannot be done behind a desk or in a boardroom. In this month's issue of I.D., sociologist Richard Sennett makes a more eloquent advocacy for connecting the head and hand. A stranger kind of keepersIn Pa J's house are several canaries, "putehs", a pair of parakeets, a grey parrot, and a fish tank that used to be home to 9 red fishes with fat lips. The birds are still caged up, but after Ma J passed away, the fishes were given away. Instead, the fish tank now houses a 10-inch arowana. One of J's many brothers, the keeper of the birds, had bought the fish to improve Pa J's luck at 4D. Bro J: How, what do you think of the fish? Can you spot the difference after so many weeks?Y: er ... yah, it seems to have grown.Bro J: What else?Y: Er... it's scales are getting less red now. This kind of fish not supposed to be red, right?Brok J: [looking slightly worried] Is it? No lah, actually this kind of fish can be red also. You can't see the difference ah?Y: ... [attempts to look more closely at the trapped creature]Bro J: Eh, eh, I tell you? [lowers his voice to a whisper] But I tell you, here. Come, don't stand there...Y: Huh, why?Bro J: [continues to whisper] the fish is very sensitive one, it is very pan tang (trans: superstitious), so better don't let it hear what we are saying...J's side of the family never ceases to amaze. all for love loving lines. photo by J, improvisation by YAh, the school holidays have just ended for the young ones, but it's obvious they've been getting all inspired, declaring their love on the walls with limited rhyme and very neat handwriting. For me, there's been no drawings, no daydreams, no stories. Most of the time outside of the office (save for the reading on the morning commute), I've been just feeling strangely tired. Friends, if you are also contemplating a change from corporate serfdom, tym tempts and educates you on being freelance, footloose. signs of midnight images by JTwice a week, J and I take a walk from our 15th storey flat to the midnight world of ground-level HDB void-decks and post-upgrading inter-block "connectors". For our cluster of flats, we have a tarred 700m jogging track lined with bushes and the occasional family of benches.Midnight or past midnight, the mini-casino of geriatric chup zhe kee players at the void deck have disbursed back to their bedrooms. A majority of windows are dark. From one particular 2nd storey flat with flourescent tube lights there is always the sound of mahjong (yes, good combat against senility). Except for the occasional chap who is on his way home from a long day at work, the domestic help whispering her love and troubles into a pay phone, or teenage gropers scrunged on the benches, there's not much public human activity on our safe island past midnight.We are accompanied on our walks instead by other creatures. Cockroaches scurry across our path. On the wall outside the "East Zone 1 Senior Citizens Corner" the lizards like to congregate - but we have not figured out why. If it had rained earlier, half the snails that had tried to escape the rain-soaked earth would lie crushed on the jogging track. The luckier half decorate the tar with their slimy lines. Every 100m or so, a cat or two would sit or lie with their usual awake-but-pensive stare. They don't bother scattering when we walk by. At one spot, J has spotted a dark, ominous toad. Twice. Our destination is a yellow recycling bin that is part of our nation's half-hearted recycling attempt.Half-hearted because there is no deep education on what should or can be recycled. The bin does not quite tell users what should be recycled. The bin (which is actually just a metal cover for 4 green plastic trash cans) does not encourage users to separate their trask. Of the 4 flap openings, only 2 are accessible. It is always overflowing - and sometimes with stuff that already smells like it has moved on to another state.Every week, we ask each other - "do you think the company that collects this actually sorts and recycles the stuff?"Sceptical J thinks not. I am more naive. More recently, J pointed out this really interesting article in "Greening the Grocery Store" in Design Observer. And all this while, I had thought that the triangular symbol formed by 3 arrows meant that the material could be recycled! Ah. The Resin Identification Code, friends. The Society of the Plastics Industry will tell you what it symbolises. no vultures here! One of these things is not like the other... A colleague at a meeting termed some of us sitting around the table "the culture people". I hope he means it positively... If you are in doubt whether you are a "cultured people" or somehow still a stewing mess of incoherent DNA, amps give you here a simple "culture, you're no vulture!" test in 2 parts. Part 1:What do you do when you encounter something you don't normally see/hear/experience or understand?Matthew Ngui's "seeing may be believing but not always understanding"Last Thursday I found myself with complimentary tickets for The Architecture of Silence at the Esplanade.Behind me were 2 young women in their office attire who probably also held complimentary tickets. After some 20 minutes into the performance, they started whispering and giggling, mocking the dance and music - or rather the juxtaposition of the two. Another 15 minutes later, one of them exclaimed louder than usual - "this is so weird" - and they left.Beside me, a mother with complimentary tickets had brought her 12 year-old daughter. After the performance, the girl quietly asked, "what was it about?" Someone offered an opinion. She nodded, mouthed an "oh", and whispered something to her mother. Part 2: Just how many different points of view can you take? Sunday afternoon, J and I decided to brave the crowds at the museums for the International Museum Day to visit Matthew Ngui's "Points of View" exhibition. Ngui's works do not threaten with their abstract propositions, but beckon the viewer with seemingly basic questions of what is home, what is real, what do you see, how do you see, who are you, what is this space... heck, what constitutes a good lap in freestyle? Of course, these questions are deceptively simple because there is no one answer, since perspective and context are factors which form variants. Of course, Ngui does not settles for the easy and trite "it all depends on how you look at it" line. Instead, his works (my favourite is still the interactive wall installation at the National Museum the building remembers/remembering the building) work to bring you to across several vantage points until from wherever you are, you can - if you want - still reconcile a view. At one of the works, an old woman sat beside her daughter watching the video capture of exhibition visitors criss-crossing the forest of pipes and the title text. She watches for a long time and remarks about the work to her daughter, then gets up to walk deliberately into the video camera's line of sight on the other side. But it's not always "weird" and sometimes, there's only really 1 unerring reality. Saturday night, we listened to J's nephew play some listenable tunes in his school concert band and enjoyed the expressive, dance-like conducting, together with a whole theatre of parents and teenagers. That same evening, argentum opened her show "The last adornment". In the gallery is an instantmatic photo booth with a noose woven from all kinds of chains, necklaces, trinklets from her past works - whatever it is you are adorned with in this sort-of momento mori, death - now a photograph, a thought, an idea, an installation, a joke, a morbidity, a romance, a word - is certain. choreographer of a bandLast week, J had a chance to spend 2 days with a group of students for an art workshop. I asked him when in the workshop did he feel happiest. He said it was towards the end of a workshop when one of the students, after finishing painting her part of the artwork, voluntarily picked up a pair of the scissors to help on another part of the artwork. OK, I'll get to it. My point in this meandering account of the week is simply that it's really not that hard or too far a stretch to think of art as yet another thing a human being makes to communicate, enjoy, trade, learn, live, show-off, contemplate - and of culture partly as a sum of these practices over time.==========p/s. If you have an hour to spare on a weekend: > Argentum's The Last Adornment is on until June 15th at the Substation (Armenian Street, off Stamford Rd).> Matthew Ngui's retrospective is on at the basement gallery of the National Museum until late June. bibliophilia it really is - design by J ampsIt's that time of the year for Read Singapore again - but hey, why wait for some government agency to tell you to read (in caps and with an exclamation, no less) before you do so? This year, amps bring you another poster on why reading is what it is. But I wonder if there can be folks who love books but don't read, bibliographers who judge the book by its cover, weight, smell, texture, size, font, layout...and love everything but its content. Ah, surely it would be a fleeting, superficial love. Or lust.So it was with some skepticism that I read this article in the Design observer about attempts to arrange books by colour. "For one, books he's purchased or received as gifts are books he knows and often loves, and the color of these books is a major part of the experience of interacting with them [...] Another of Luke's reasons is this: organizing his books by color allows him to discover new and unexpected relationships between books he knows well already. When two unrelated books are forced to occupy the same shelf simply because of their spine color, the shelver is asked to think about whether they have ideas to share between them." (extract from the article by Rob Giampietro) I guess as an experiment to place style over meaning (and whether new meaning emerges) may yield random interesting results, but poor Dewey will have such a fit! Yet there is also no one way of arranging your bookshelf - how you do so reflects your experiences, biases, priorities. For me, poetry deserves its own shelves. As do graphic novels and their gradual melding into a long series of art, illustration, design and photography books (the greyness of these borders mirror too the disciplines' own inter-mingling) before transiting via Maurice Sendak to 2 other shelves of children's books. American writing stands distinct from everything else in chronological fashion - reflecting, aiyah, America's cultural imperialism and my own bias! The English too, stand apart - an island onto themselves. Chinese writing (I've unfortunately not made a distinction with Taiwanese text, against my belief that Taiwan should remain its own green island) spills into the rest of Asia, as is the case today with everything else made-in-China, leaving only Japan and those translated Japanese texts providing a balance of power. The Italians, talented as they are, share the space with the Latin Americans and Central Europeans. And exiled to the pitiable depths of the floor-height shelves are books I don't wish to have any claim over - management texts and advertising books. And there's still the reading to do.============p/s Feel free to download the posters from 2006 and 2005. family life an old illustrationWith a new nephew joining us on this disastrous world, J and I were faced again with the usual question whether us amps would feel terribly lonely if we get real old or if one of us has to hang around longer. Not to add, kids do say the strangest things. Just this weekend, we I got my answer when 75 year-old Pa J gave us a scare and had to be warded for observation after a marathon bout of vomiting.J : I still can't get the image out of my mind.Y: What?J: My father shitting. Having to stand beside him, making sure he's ok, passing him toilet paper...Y: What kind of son are you? He's your father! How many times do you think he had to see your poop when you were a baby!J: I know - but - Y: Why do you keep repeating this? Why are you so obsessed?J: Well, it's not everyday you have to - it's like not everyday you see 2 flamingos mating! Y: ...J:...Y:"2 flamingos mating".what the flamingo brought when I was a child ...I thought like a child - new painting after months!At the beginning of the film Taxidermia by Hungarian Gyorgi Palfi, a narrator drawls on that "it is only towards the end that the beginning becomes important" (or something like this). In a film that is really 3 short short films on 3 generations of men and their accidental fathering of the next, you are invited to witness a grotesque parade of physical (and sexual) deprivation, followed by excess made into sport and ultimately greed, then the slow paring away as skin sheds flesh and all other semblance of life. Of course, running parallel to the men's stories are post-war Hungary (a land-locked state trapped still in its feudal society), Communist Hungary and, I guess, today's republic. Their lives reflective of, yet strangely displaced in these 3 transformations of their society. This is a rather dull summary of a visually rich and entertaining film! I assure you the cinema laughing, cringing, squirming and fairly nauseated. [I think it is still screening, though probably at odd times, at the PictureHouse.] The film aside, it was the narrator's initial statement that stuck because it reminded me of critic Edward Said's memoir Out of Place I was reading.Said died in 2003, having struggled with leukemia for several years. In the preface, he wrote of how his illness and the closeness of death set him the writing of a memoir - revisiting his childhood in Cairo and Palestine, and all the associated ambiguities in the inexplicable genesis of his seemingly English name, his Christian family, his long period away from Palestine, his adopted American home and the contradictions or ironies these seem to pose with his criticism and works on Orientalism, the Palestinian state, American imperialism etc. It is towards the end that the beginning becomes important.It is a quietly reflective and sometimes difficult book. It is difficult in its honesty about Said's feelings towards his parents, family, homes. Reading Said's memoir somehow also brings out just how difficult growing up can be! For all the romanticism surrounding childhood, being a child is perhaps not easy. The uncertainties and insecurities. The need to de-code the adults' insinuations and whispers with what little you are given to know. One of the words I learnt from reading Edward Said years ago while I was in university that I will always remember is palimpsestpalimpsest \PAL-imp-sest\, noun:1. A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.2. An object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent beneath its surface. 2 lives weekend aliens- photo by J here, de-faced by meFor various reasons, it was much harder to empty my mind of work this weekend. The thoughts lingered and festered stewed. The air laid its humid weight on the skin. And it was no surprise that the newspapers brought ill news of far larger scale.So if, like me, you too need a powerful dose of distraction to empty and clear the mind before the start of a new week, I would recommend:(1) A swim in a public pool, where the colliding bodies of old men/women doing the backstroke in circles and the schools of children at stage-1 buoyancy, will certainly chase out all other voices in your head. But there is something else very therapeutic, even hypnotic, about doing front-crawl/freestyle laps. The need to focus on each stroke and stretch, the thrill of overcoming resistance and those dancing lines of light on the tiled bottom of the pool, that play of light, medium and motion. (2) A visit to the newly-opened Peranakan Museum by the Asian Civilisations Museum. . The materiality of the Peranakan culture makes it a perfect for a museum presentation, where there is little need for complex digital devices. Instead, the object that exists in time and space alone - its beauty, its physical witness - suffices.birds and the bees on a Peranakan table clothThe Peranakan Museum is the old Tao Nan School on Armenian Street off Stamford Rd, located right beside the Substation and across from the Singapore Management University. Take the train to Dhoby Gaut or City Hall. It's a 5-10minute walk from either station. flowers' city bubble city - image by JThere is nothing correct - politically speaking - about Saint Jack, the 1979 film by Peter Bogdanovich based on Paul Theroux's novel of the same name. A Chinese shopkeeper repeatedly refers to the American pimp Jack Flowers (Peter Gazzara) as ang moh, and eventually gets chided by the deadpan Jack "hey, you don't want me to call you chink" (or something like that). The British colonial castoffs in Singapore get drunk, prance around in their undies, mumble some cynicism and sleep with the prostitutes Flowers pimps. The Americans are horny Michael Fays off to Vietnam or men in cowboy hats and big cars. And of course, our favourite Asian men are either loutish gangsters with no style even when they swear, a dwarf, grouchy suspicious old men in a shophouse (or behind the bar counter), or a pimply teenage male prostitute along Tanglin Road. The first Indian woman the camera has any interest in is a Ceylonese "black" beauty who later unravels her sari and becomes Flowers' bedmate. And there are plenty of Chinese tarts with hearts - for Jack the saint, of course - even his Ah Mah loves Jack enough to nag him to eat everytime she appears - "if don't eat you will die." But despite or maybe because of all this, the film is not dishonest about its essentially white/caucasian, male view of this island in the 70s. And while the writer/director may intend for the island to be the other character in the film (in a pointed scene, Jack Flowers tells a British visitor the Sang Nila Utama story - and how he named the island Lion City after seeing Tigers - yeah), the truth is that this island, its people and its context, is but a backdrop for what is essentially a story about an American middle-aged drifter in the tropics who is both trapped and redeemed by his romance of being an American middle-aged drifter in the tropics. The title "Saint" and his surname Flowers is therefore both innocence and crude irony - all the "de-flowered" women and boys. When the island gangsters capture and tatoo cheap insults all over both his arms, he goes and tatoos flowers over them. Hearing one of his prostitutes lament about her boyfriend, he promptly removes his watch and gives it to her for her to appease her man. But he is, after all, her pimp. Paid handsomely to take photographs of an American senator in a tryst with a male prostitute, he in his final "redemptive" act, decides to destroy the photographs (and in doing, destroys his lucrative business contract providing "R&R" to visiting GIs) - but we also see him walking back into the squalid streets of this island to pimp some more. image by JEven if you live on this island and watch only action/thrillers/horror flicks, Saint Jack will be enjoyable simply for the scenes of the old Seletar airport, Bugis when hawkers would walk by and place dildos for sale on the table (or so the film portrays) and prostitutes (transverstite?) would sport big white afro wigs a la a Wong Kar Wai character, the relatively unchanged Raffles Hotel, a Shangri La hotel that is seemingly set in the wild... bum boats carrying goods in the Singapore River and a grotty Clarke Quay before it was disneyfied for tourists and yuppies. Heck, so what if all this only perpetuates the idea of the seedily "exotic" East and our own sad, distorted nostalgia! It's a surprisingly watchable film and Ben Gazzara's portrayal of Jack Flowers so effective attracts and repels.========p/s Saint Jack is available on DVD at HMV or your regular video store. hopeful SOTA student recital - phone camera picWhen you've been buried in your work for a while, take a step back.It's simple enough. Everyone knows. Step1 backThis afternoon, I took some time off work to be at the School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA) and caught 15mins of a short recital session by a few of their young music students. Watching the 13 and 14 year olds take their art seriously and interacting with teachers who, I think, are not only developing their students' skills, but in performing alongside their students, demonstrating the values of the arts - I came away hopeful about this island. The value of an arts education is not a career in the "creative industries" or even being a "well-rounded" individual. It's a whole bunch of other stuff - discipline and persistence, confidence, openness to new ideas and (contrary to all the stereotypes of self-centred artists), respecting others, whether the artist for your audience, or the audience for the artist. Q&A after keronchong for pak bakar at sinema - phone camera picStep 2 BackThe SIFF this year did not yield any real gems for J and I. But last Sunday, after watching this film, its simple lyricism was refreshing - as was a short chat we had with a friend on the grounds of "old school" about films and what seems, to me, possibilities. When you've been buried in your work for a while, take a step back. Even if that step brings you to places where it's, arguably, still about your work. It's simple enough. Everyone knows. The need to see alternatives, sense possibilities, realise that there's still space - around, ahead - behind. artist fantasy vol.1 J: Wah, you look damn sloppy. Time for a haircut.Y: ...another time.J: Sloppy.Y:...artist mah. [the next day]J: Aiyoh. Look at your nails. Gross.Y: What? oh... artist mah.[later that evening]J: Blur you. Always forget this and that.Y: ... artist mah ... wah, good to be an artist hor, heh.J: At this rate, you should start a project called "Artist fantasy volume 1."Y: ... Not a bad idea. homme riche sans l'argent Didn't manage to take any photo in Paris, so here's one instead of sweet J, man in a cardigan at the new Changi Terminal 3European cities are often written in a language I do not understand - an architecture from a past that is monumental and seemingly indestructible (those thick stone walls, wrought iron balconies, tall windows, cobbled roads, statues on building facades and the opulence of recycled palaces). This classicism is in turn juxtaposed against an increasingly fluid, diverse population of migrants from North Africa and Asia, as well as all the usual signages for globalisation on shop fronts. Admittedly, I saw very little of Paris in the last three days. Only their museums (I recommend the excellent museum of decorative arts near the Louvre, and the highly accessible Centre Pompidou built in the 70s) , the hotel and whatever view there was from the car of the arc de triomphe. But from what little I saw, it would appear that nowhere other than Japan do people take culture more personally and seriously as the French. And no doubt a kind of mutual admiration often takes place between both these peoples. At French museums, no matter what time of the day or what day of the week, queues can be found snaking the ticket counter and stretching outside the building (even when it rains!). Going to the museum is to the French what going to the shopping mall is to the Singaporean. Sad, but true!I had once asked an old Japanese gentleman I had met at a lunch why was it that Japanese companies(other than for tax breaks) invested so much in setting up their own museums and collections. As a response, he drew me a convex curve against a concave one on the napkin. He explained that one should aim to be a rich man, but after a certain amount of wealth has been acquired, there are 2 options open - to acquire more wealth, or to move on to another new plane altogether and become "a gentleman" (his term), a man of letters and learning, and a man who gives back to society. To many Japanese companies, the aspiration is to considered "a gentleman".A colleague once quoted something she had read that there were "rich men" and there were "poor men with money". Ah, us idealistic amps were just wondering about the possibility of that other species, "rich men with no money". coming of age At 21 years, the Singapore International Film Festival comes of age with a whole new section "Singapore Panorama" with 17 titles by Singaporean filmmakers! I'm glad the SIFF has persisted. Someone at work had observed that in 2015 it would be our island's 50th national day as a republic and the Padang and City Hall would need to be used for a really elaborate national day parade. 2015 that would make it the 28th Singapore International Film Festival. At that instant, I was thinking that the 28th SIFF would strangely make me far happier and "proud" to be a resident of this island.Anyway, such fuzzy "sense of belonging" aside, Us amps missed most of the films we bought tix for last year, but we are determined to make it for these screenings this year: Singaporean filmmakers Tan Siok Siok's documentary Boomtown Beijing, Abdul Nizam Hamid's documentary on P Ramlee's cinematographer Kerongchong for Pak Bakar and the collective effort of 7 Lucky 7.[photos from the SIFF website] And these documentary and ficition films about jazz musicians in Indonesia (Teak Leaves at the Temple), Bob Dylan (I'm not There), photographer Anna Leibovitz (Annie Leibovitz: Life Through the Lens by her sister Barbara), my nationalist hero Sun Yat Sen set in this city(Road to Dawn) and weirdos in Canada (Brand Upon the Brain).It's still not too late to get tickets online via the festival's website or at Sistic counters. Tokyo for various Ladies of Leisure J did not go along, so there aren't many pretty photos of Tokyo here this time round. Just some lazy shots with the Ricoh GR.For anyone thinking of having a short trip to Tokyo with your mom, here's a leisurely-paced itinerary that does not involve museums for non-Culture-Vulture mothers (otherwise, us amps definitely recommend visiting at least some museums if you are in Tokyo. Click here for our museum recommendations). DAY 1: For Ol' Skool GirlsStart the trip with Asakusa for a little of ol' skool Tokyo and the expected tourist traps. Asakusa is home to the oldest temple Kaminarimon in Tokyo, away from the fashion or financial intensity of the city. Walk around the temple grounds and wander into the little adjacent streets and old shopping arcades. While there, if your mom enjoys cooking, a 10min walk will bring you to Kappabashi Dogurai Dori, a street of shops that stock all kinds of kitchenware, utensils and furnishings for restaurants. Take the Ginza line from Asakusa to...well, Ginza. It's no longer the place to be, but it's still got that sense of luxury for rich Grandmas. Ginza's a good place for lunch, or if you managed to grab some food at Asakusa, there're enough fancy cafes along Chuo or Harumi Dori to satisfy the Anglo/Euro-phile in you. If you had wandered along Chuo Dori, try to make your way to the central Ginza crossing where the station is before 3.30pm. There, take the street perpendicular to Chuo Dori, i.e. to Harumi Dori, and walk towards Kabuki za - a re-created Kabuki theatre. Shows start at 4.30pm, but if you are keen only to catch 1 act (about 1 hour) from the 4th floor (about circle 3), ticket sales start at 3.30pm. By about 4pm, there would only be standing room, so try to get there earlier. 1 act tickets go for 600-1000Y. The sets are beautiful, there's always something happening on stage and the atmosphere in the theatre is enough to keep you awake. They also rent out headsets with English commentary.That should bring you to 5.30pm, just in time to make your way towards dinner. From Ginza, the Marunouchi line will bring you to Shinjuku, which is loud, neon-lit and packed with folk of all ages. Shinjuku is mainstream shopping, including the sleazy sex shops of Kabuki-cho and the fairly quaint (if you find little bars quaint) Golden Gai beside the lesbigay and gigolo areas. Even if your mom is not feeling adventurous, it's good to show her the crass, dirty side of Tokyo. By about 7pm, you should be hungry and tired of walking. Make your way to Lumine Est, a building right beside the station. On the 7th and 8th floor are over 10 restaurants specialising in modern Japanese interpretations of Italian, Thai, Chinese and, of course, Japanese cuisine. I can't remember the name of the place we went to, but for S$100, we had very good sashimi, yakitori, grilled whole fish, salad, sake and cocktails. Your mom probably will have no energy to party after that, so get back to your hotel. It's easy from Shinjuku.DAY 2: For Housewives and TaitaisYour mom should be familiar with this start to the day - the market. The Oedo line will bring you to the famous Tsujiki Fish Market. That needs no introduction. Even if you don't see the action at the wholesale side of the market, the consumer market with its streets of fresh sea food, dried food, kitchenware and sushi shops should be enough to make mom happy. If your mom is a foodie like mine, take an early sushi lunch at any of the little shops. We also found a store that BBQ-ed clams and gigantic scallops which you can eat standing in the streets. Although it's not very glamourous and Tokyo-esque to do so, we brought our bags of bonito/dried squid/green tea and marinated clams to Ronponggi's newest mega development - the MidTown. Like Mori's Roponggi Hills, which you should also visit to get a 54th storey view of Tokyo, it has apartments, fancy shops and restaurants and museums. Midtown is also home to 21-21 Design Sight, but hey, your mom might not like museums. If not, walk off that sushi in the park around it. After that, get to any dessert shop at Midtown or Roppongi Hills. We went for a Green tea place, where we had macha (thick verdant tea) and green tea-flavoured desserts. Stuffed, take the Hibiya line to Shibuya, where you can show your mom the famous Shibuya crossing (flanked by giant TV screens on the buildings on all corners), the Hachiko statue and the vainest boys/men possible on earth. When it's time for dinner, you'll be spoilt for choice at Shibuya. I brought my mom to a Tofu place Soranoniwa (4-17 Sakuragaoka-cho) right by the street running along the JR line. It has interesting, cozy interior with running water, wooden corridors, private rooms and pebbles. For S$70, we had sake, cocktails, fresh steamed tofu, tofu-tuna negitoro, grilled farm chicken with rock salt, salad and pumpkin-tofu creme caramel.DAY 3: For Country Bumpkins Take the 1.5hr morning train to Hakone, a mountainside town where you can supposedly view Mt Fuji (seldom, definitely not when there's 1 cloud in the sky). The Tokyo-ites like to troop to Hakone on a weekend, so try to make it on a weekday. Buy the 2-day 5000Y ticket from the Odakyu Romance Car counter at Shinjuku. This ticket gives you rides on all transport at Hakone. Once there, take the round-trip tour of Hakone which will include a bus ride to Lake Ashi, a boat ride (on a cheesy Captain Sparrow boat) across Lake Ashi to Togendai, a ropeway (i.e. what we know as a cablecar?) ride up to view the volcanic springs, down the ropeway to the cablecar (i.e. what we know as a funicular train?) to Gora, and from Gora transfer to the train back to the Hakone Yumoto station. The whole trip should take about 4-6 hours, depending on how long you linger at each stop and whether you detour to the little museums along the way. If you buy the 2-day ticket, it comes with an English guide/brochure. You won't go wrong following the route on that guide.We opted to stay over at a ryokan in Hakone. Hakone is full of these ryokans/hotels which double up as onsens (i.e. you should be able to have a bath, private or public, at these hotels). We stayed at the Kansuiro(photo above), which is supposedly some 15th century inn built when Hakone was developed to serve a route used by traders and samurais. Your mom will enjoy a stay, not just for the bath, but for the "Japan-hour" experience of being served a 10-course traditional Japanese meal in your tatami room. It was good fun, although the stay at the ryokan set us back by at least S$750. DAY 4: For (Window) Shopping QueensCatch the late morning train back to Tokyo after you've been served a traditional Japanese breakfast in your ryokan room and enjoyed another soak in the hot wooden tub. After checking in at the hotel and losing our overnight bag, set off with your mom to Yoyogi park. It will be a leisurely and relaxing walk on wide gravel paths lined with tall trees (an almost forest like atmosphere) to the Meiji Shinto shrine located in the park. Your mom will most likely be able to admire the Kimonos of brides and their guests at Tokyo's largest Meiji shrine. If it's a Sunday, your mom will also be able to tsk-tsk ("aiyoh, these teenagers, so weird") at the garb of the lolita girls and other strange Tokyo creatures right outside the park. If both of you are still feeling guilt about yesterday's dinner, skip lunch and go straight for tea! Right across the park is Comme Ca Mono where on level 2 is the Comme Ca Cafe. It serves delicious slices of fruit tarts with generous toppings of banana/strawberries etc over cheese, custard, fresh cream, chocolate cake fillings in a tarte base.Having spent close to 4 days in Japan, you and your mom might be feeling more fashionable. From Yoyogi, walk down Omote-sando, and make the necessary detours to the shops at Harujuku, Omote-sando Hills, and every other flagship store of the major fashion labels all the way till you hit Aoyama [if you have the time, amps recommend a detour to the Aoyama cemetary]. Even if you don't have the money to waste, walk into the shops or at least admire some of their architecture. Make sure to drop by the Japanese design labels - our favourites Issey Miyake and Comme des Garcons - which are clearly different from your usual Pradas (although the Herzog de Meuron building is worth a visit). Track back along Omote-sando and make a turn at Meiji-Dori (or Cat Street, which is a more interesting walk), where a 30min leisurely stroll will take you to Shibuya.We grabbed a simple ramen dinner at Shibuya with a ticket from a machine. Not because we had spent all our yens at Omote-sando, but because we wanted to sample the food from all the little stores at the Shibuya Tokyu basement "FoodShow". We hauled back to our hotel room a bottle of Asti, 2 salads and 3 cheese cakes! The perfect reward to end the trip and energise the packing of our bags. ==================Some Tips for Traveling with Mom- Try to stay in a comfortable hotel close to a subway station. The subway will be your main mode of transport. We stayed at Shinjuku, just because the train to Hakone leaves from there.- Try to also stay at a hotel where the airport limousine bus stops. Tokyo's subways are not very elderly/handicap friendly, so save your mom the trouble of dragging her luggage up and down stairs to get to and from Narita Airport.- Plan the trip/stops around meals. Unless your mom loves cities, the architecture, buzz and museums are not likely to thrill her as much. But Japan's good food will. The meals also allow her to rest her feet.- Tokyo-ites probably spend all their money eating out. So in order not to let mom wait in line for too long, either you get to the popular restaurants early (say by 6.30pm) or try to make a reservation. - Avoid the Red-Eye Flight. I didn't. But that's only because I couldn't afford another day of leave. But setting out on a day's walking without a good night's rest is probably not as easy for mom as it is for you.*I travelled with Time Out Tokyo this time, but had made reference to Lonely Planet (which has better maps and gives clearer directions, but is lousy for food) and a Taiwanese guidebook from our previous trips. time and distance all images by JI wished I could sit, stare and draw as intently as this girl J and I saw last Sunday at the National Museum of SIngapore's show of marble status of greek gods and assorted philosophers and other such artefacts from the Louvre's collection.Or if taking things slow was an art, it would not itself appear as laborious as this snail's drawing on the pavement.from her daddy's head, literallyBut I digress.If things could slow down, I wished it would be like Sunday's one and a half hour walk through the exhibition at the museum, led by an excellent guide who told us stories about amorous/jealous/vengeful (demi)gods, lofty philosophers, earthy dramatists and life in Athens more than 2500 years ago. Because of the stories, the bustle of the crowd and a smart-alecky kid were forgivable. Because of the stories, the distance of those Greek marbled figures from our time, culture and land was at once drawn out and also bridged. Drawn because they were indeed remote and fantastic. What a curiosity that a male god could, in a fit of jealousy, swallow his pregnant wife and "give birth" to their daughter as his head is cracked open to cure a headache! Yet who would not have felt such, er, consuming jealousy - even if for the briefest moment.It is the best of both worlds really. To be able to escape, yet not be in alien territory.In the museum, this may possible. Or in a book.Today is my second day in Tokyo with my mom. It has been a pretty fun, non-stop feast so far. But I am eager to be home.===========p/s The exhibition ends this Saturday. The excellent guide whose tour we tagged along will be giving another tour this Sunday at 3pm. It ends about 4.30pm. She's patient, confident and very well-informed. Best of all, she told good stories - a very Homeric trait! To get to the museum, take the NEL or North-South line to Dhoby Ghaut. If you are feeling fairly rich, there's Chef Chan or Novus at the Museum for dinner after the tour. no country for old men (and women) no country for Chinese New Year cast-offs either - image by JI am not sure if the Media Development Authority's move to have more "co-productions" between Singapore and foreign film studios is a formula duplicated for TV, but there has been several really well-made mandarin documentaries and even travel programmes, typically featuring Singaporean, but also Japanese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Chinese stories in parallel. One of these was screened just last Sunday evening. It was an a well-shot documentary. But as if Sunday evenings were not depressing enough, the documentary was about growing old alone in Singapore. The point was not just growing old alone, but growing old and alone - and childless. The parallel story was set in Taichung, Taiwan. In the former, there was nothing to live for - except the volunteer who would drop by perfunctorily to check on the 87 year-old woman [if she had died] and to assure her that he would take care of her funeral. There were scenes of her cooking skimpy meals for herself, dozing off on her couch or walking along slowly the dark corridors of her block of 1-room HDB flats. Her 75 year-old male compatriot (yes, old, alone, poor and childless) was similarly shot in his 1-room flat, dozing off. He gives a line or two about rising food priceous. She lives on just over $100 a month. We see her pouring a bit of soy sauce into what looks like a pot of porridge. In the latter, the 71 year-old man trims his fruit trees. He does not live alone, but with a wife of 26 years who is mentally handicapped (he was "cheated" into the marriage). They at least had a kid, even though the boy had died young. The soundtrack for this segment is decidedly chirpier, as is the setting - we see sun through the leaves and a dark-skinned and still hale old man. He tells us his only worry is dying alone. But even so, he does not think much about it. It is nearing Chinese New Year and a whole troupe of volunteers had descended on his little house to clean it and give it a new coat of paint. There is almost a celebratory mood as the volunteers try to cut his wife's hair despite her protests. He is always smiling. At the end of the programme, we see trailers for next week's stories. Yes, similar stories of aging, alone, childless but in Hong Kong and Japan. And going just by the 30 second trailer, it would seem that no country except this island is so inhospitable to growing old.If there's some government propaganda underlying this documentary to get folks like us to have kids through the all-too-familiar technique of instilling fear, I'm not quite sure it will work. For some, fear motivates, but for others, it paralyzes. So while I confess that J and I have been wondering out loud if it would be all too sad if one of us dies first (an inevitable chronology of things) and the other is left entirely alone - a reality we witness every Friday since Ma J died - we're unlikely to ever go past the fear and wondering. dry season It hasn't rained at all since Chinese New Year on 7 Feb. But at the Esplanade's Huayi Festival, there was thunder and a chorus of falling rain during Sound seed, Taiwanese actor/musician-composer Lim Giong's collaborative performance with a sound engineer and 3 young Singaporean lighting designer, interactive designer and installation artist. As Lim Giong himself hinted at, this attempt to create an immersive aural, visual and spatial experience of positive energy could have worked better in a museum/gallery than as a 1 hour performance. [left: cover of Lim Giong's latest CD insects awaken] The next day, J and I watched renowned Taiwanese director Stan Lai's thoroughly enjoyable and admirable new production Like Shadows. Much has been written about it in the papers, so I won't go into any details about the play. Walking out of the theatre after one of the better post-performance discussions I've attended, the intellectual and emotional energies the play obviously inspired from the audience lingered. I asked J's opinion of what he thought were necessary to achieve a production as accomplished and almost faultless as Like Shadows, say, compared with many of the lesser works we have seen from our fellow-islanders. J's immediate response was this: "no shouting." [Our constant complaint after many Singapore plays we watch is the amount of shouting that goes on] Prompted to elaborate, he explained that it was not just literal, but a general sense that playwrights and directors were shouting their "messages" at audiences, pounding a singular perspective and vision across to an audience that somehow the playwright/director mistrusted - maybe even disdained. This is a generalisation, of course. Lai's work should also not be assumed to be representative of the state of Taiwanese theatre and arts scene. But thinking back on many of my experiences in our theatres, I could not help but agree with J. How I enjoyed the open-ness of Lai's play, the respect it had for its audience's ability to wander around its characters and ideas, to form connections. I enjoyed too the particularity of the play's context - Taiwan's Sun Moon Lake, the practice in Taiwanese cinemas 10-20 years ago of playing the national anthem before each screening, the superstitions and Taoist rites that China would have lost after the Cultural Revolution - and its ability to reach also beyond its particular context to communicate the universal doubts, questions about desire, violence, immortality, death, imagination.For me, the other reason is that every single aspect of the production was equally excellent - every actor in the ensemble cast; the set and lighting designers; the stylists; the music... For this, you need talented professionals working in every single aspect of the production - and not 1 sensitive playwright or 1 visionary director or 2-3 impressive actors. As in a dance, no 1 dancer could afford to be out of step. days of being young!Maybe it would only be a matter of time. We would only need to wait for our artist(e)s - literally - to age.And alongside this, Sound Seed reminded me that there should always be room for and a need for experiments, learning, growth and failure in the arts. For all the weakness of Sound Seed as a performance, I respected and also learned from Lim Giong's gracious acceptance of criticism at the post-performance discussion with his younger collaborators. It was an experiment, he pointed out, and we would work towards something better. in passing image by J of an altar of sorts for Ma J at Pa J's houseI've never been particularly drawn to Chua Ek Kay's paintings, but today I found myself compelled to pay my respects to the Singapore artist who died last Friday.Mr Chua was only 61 when he died and according to some, at a point of his career where he was set to make new breakthroughs. I find that remarkable. A couple of months ago, J was at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute where he saw some new works by Mr Chua. Mr Chua had started out working with Chinese ink, but in the later part of his career, moved on to work in oils and some 2 years ago, the print medium. What J saw were not only new print works, but paper-collage prints. What does it take for an artist in Singapore to have an artistic career, and more importantly, to develop artistically and remain open to new ideas, new techniques? How many of our artists today will, say 30 years later in their 60s, be able to boast of a similar career?At the wake, one of Mr Chua's relatives spoke precisely of his open-ness to criticism and how, not too long ago, he was speaking to his family of some new ideas he was about to explore. Some months ago, I would have accounted for such "creative longevity" as commitment and dedication. Now, I would add to that, artistic humility. *Last night, J and I watched Edward Yang's Yi Yi (aka A One and a Two) again. The taiwanese filmmaker died mid 2007 at the age of 59.In a way, death pervades the 2000 film Yi Yi. Death - and some sort of the filmmaker's manifesto. Yang has always been telling stories of Taipei urbanites and their contradictory, random, cruel, pathetic, loving, exploitative and entirely human relationships in a society that is both cutthroat-materialistic yet strangely idealistic. His previous film Terrorizers, Confucian Confusion, Mahjong (A Brighter Summer Day set in 50s Taiwan sets the stage for contemporary Taipei), through different lenses, tell of this. Yi Yi, with the somewhat dreamy Jian family pit against these harsher realities, almost sums up these relationships and situations in earlier films. The only person spared such grief is Grandma Jian who at the start of the film suffers a fall/stroke and throughout the film, remains in a coma at the Jian apartment. Death - or at least the living death of a coma - demands that each Jian family member should try to share their day's experiences out loud with Grandma Jian. Their brief monologues or their inability to speak manifest the characters' own inner struggles. 8 year old grandson Yang Yang (perhaps Edward Yang's alter-ego) refuses to speak. His reason being that there is nothing that Grandma Jian, having lived the longest, would not know. And since she knew everything, it was pointless for him to share his day's experiences. The idea of life as a journey about coming to some knowledge - about oneself, others, the past - is nothing new. In Yi Yi, this single idea provides for satire, comedy, tragedy and the film's elegiac tone. The knowledge itself is not necessarily redemptive, nor is it necessarily complete, but it is nonetheless important for the living to continue living. At the end of the film, at Grandma Jian's funeral, Yang Yang finally speaks to her. He reads an apology, then declares that he wants to be able to show others what they cannot see and do not know. This follows from a scene where Mr Jian discovers that his son has been taking photographs of the back of people's heads with the camera he gave Yang Yang. The reason for photographing the back of people's heads - to show them what they cannot themselves see.There is no arrogance in such a declaration. By giving these words to a child, Edward Yang positions the filmmaker as someone who tries to show us what we cannot otherwise see - but not because of any superior vantage point, just a different vantage point - sometimes with the child's open-ness, the grandma's patience, the daughter's kindness, the mother's introspection, the father's honesty or the artist's craft.[images above from the film are from framing device.org] particular realities "it's not meant to sound/look depressing, really."A quick sketch during a train ride to work.It has been a long time since I've a reason to walk around the Mohamed Sultan area. Last Saturday, on our way to the Singapore Tyler Print Institute by the Robertson Quay to see the new print works of Indian artist Anju Dodiya, we walked past another expensive condominium/service apartment development that has mushroomed in the area, together with dozens of new Japanese and European restaurants, delis, pubs and fancy watering holes. A Japanese woman walked toward us holding the hand of her beautiful 8-year old daughter with brown hair and green eyes.Y: J, are we in Singapore?J: ...Y: Strange huh. Same country, yet we lead such different lives. This - and Toa Payoh. J: You don't say. Aiyah, the truth is that even in Toa Payoh, if you take the 2 of us and a family living in the next block [of one-room flats], there's already a big difference. Y: You are right. And on this small island 3 degrees north of the equator, we can spend an hour looking at the recent works of an Indian artist who has incorporated - among other references - the text of a dead American poet writing in the late 50s-60s. The title of the exhibition All night I shall gallop is from Plath's poem Elm. The line, in full, reads - "All night I shall gallop, impetuously/". Impetuously is left out from the exhibition title. But I like Plath's insertion of "impetuously" in the context of the poem, the comma introduces a pause, emphasising that it is a deliberate, pointed assertion. But in the context of the exhibition, perhaps "impetuously" would be too specific, dictating too particular a stance and limiting the viewer's interpretation of Dodiya's layered prints. At a conference last week that looked at the various scenarios for Singapore in 2030, this growing income divide* was one of the issues discussed. At the same conference, the keynote speaker used this phrase to deflect a participant's rather general moral question - that he preferred to look at "particular realities" instead of "abstract principles". The phrase stuck in my mind. Of course it is all about context - political, social, economic. Of course it is about individual and particular experience and perception. In art - poems, images, stories - that is also what we are confronted with. But abstract principles matter. And it would be sad if we discount and dismiss such seeming abstractions as justice, fairness, peace...Ah, but friends, the reality for me is that I'm now running a little late for Chinese New Year dinner at my mom's. So leaving aside all depressing thoughts about income divides and whether you are in the $2 or $200 angbao percentile (aiyah, we are no longer eligible to receive angbaos this year even!), us amps and our "latchkey kids" wish that you'll have a good, relaxing time with your family this long weekend.*10th percentile monthly income is $900 vs $5625 at the 90th percentile. At the 50th percentile, it's $2058. joining the dots The stories about the Singapore River never seem to end. Last Saturday, J and I went on a tour of the Singapore River organised by The Tangent and led by Mr Han San Yuan, the journalist featured in this film. Mr Han had an endless stream of stories about Singapore's past against the backdrop of the river. There was the story about a drawbridge that refused to draw; the story about that white statue of Sir Stamford Raffles; the story of Indian convicts shipped by the British Indian Company to build their post on this island (the prison quarters supposedly where the Singapore Management University now stands); the story of Chinese reformist Kang Youwei's supposed temporary abode where the UOB bank now is (and a poem Kang had written from the 3rd storey room overlooking the Singapore River); the story of the Yuan dynasty porcelain found by the river and the foot of Fort Canning which was, more importantly, the location of the keramat of the last Malay king in Singapore... "Singapore's history", Mr Han thundered, "did not just begin in 1819. [Or if one may add, 1965] Who is it who keeps saying that this country is young?" the white manMy favourite story was Mr Han's description of the Teochew storytellers. Perhaps because he had personally experienced and enjoyed their stories, his own telling of 說書 (literal trans: speak book. What a great term!) was simple, direct yet animated. He spoke of how the story tellers would intersperse their stories with "news breaks", reporting snippets from the newspapers, and how the length of each episode or segment was measured by the time it took for one stick of incense to burn. The story teller would, in between lighting each incense, collect a fee from his listeners. Like television, someone observed, minus the ads.Of course, Mr Han with his running commentary of the river, was not unlike these story tellers. We had nothing to hold on to except his voice, his description, his expressions. Occasionally he would hold up an old photograph or a photocopied newspaper clipping to illustrate his point - but it was not the sight of the river and rows of gaudily conserved shophouses and godowns, certainly not the smell of the still-jungle green water (the campaign in the 80s to clean up the river made sure of this) that held my attention. It was Mr Han's voice - his storytelling. all images by JI will always remember one evening, in the Substation's Garden (now the bistro Timbre) under a tree, a fairly elderly actor - I can only remember his surname was Bai - sat and told 2 completely entrancing stories. No visual aids, no sound effects, no dramatic movements, no supporting cast. Not even a mic. It was just his voice. I remember only 1 of the 2 stories. About a glutton gourmand who lived and ate through reformist China, the Japanese war and Communist China. That experience I would never forget.under a tree at the speakers' corner where no one really speaks anymoreThat Saturday, it was also food which concluded our tour. Mr Han led us to the Ee Hoe Hean Club (aka the "Millionaire's Club"), the birthplace of the Singapore Chinese's support towards the revolutionary movement led by Sun Yat Sen and, later, anti-Japanese movement. It counts among its founders famous folks like Gan Eng Seng, Lim Boon Keng and Tan Kah Kee.At the club, the members were gathered for their usual Saturday lunch - and for some, a post-lunch game of three-person mahjong. The club Chairman had very kindly offered to host the Tangent members over for lunch, so us tag-alongs also enjoyed the free food and company.no post-lunch mahjong for this bunch!Over some introductory pleasantries, one of the club's committee members expressed his joy at being able to interact with the today's young "bilingual intellectuals" (he said this in mandarin 雙語知識份子). "Ah", someone at our table quickly corrected, "you mean the Tangent folks at the other table." On our table of tag-alongs were 2 filmmakers, 2 historians/teachers, 1 bureaucrat and 1 designer ﹣half of whom were not effectively bilingual and only the filmmakers/historians/teachers could conceivably be termed "intellectuals". But that remark sent me to look for my copy of the latest Tangent journal. It's been a surprisingly enjoyable read with not much of the angst I had expected, but many questions asked (you can find the journal at the Ngee Ann City Kinokuniya bookstore). Among the questions is "Singaporean, you scared what?", the topic of a forum held at the Tangent's 5th anniversary.The journal lists 60 replies given by listeners of radio station UFM100.3 via SMS: [I've just pulled out the first 24, but there are some real interesting ones in the next 36]:1. I am afraid of the government's ever changing policies2. I am scared of the government3, I am scared of death4. I am afraid of being penniless5. I am afraid of being jobless, hungry, having no money to pay for my children's school fees and of being lonely in my old age.6. Frighten 2 pay n pay. Job security. Medical n education expense.7. I am afraid that I am not capable and intelligent enough and will lose out in my old age. The need to constantly learn soft and hard skills is very, very exhausting.8. The Singapore government is afraid that Singapore will lag behind one day.9. I fear that I will be abandoned when I am old.10. I am afraid that my children unable to cope with our education system.11. I am scared of trouble, death, having no money, being unemployed, ghosts...there are too many!12. I'm a Singaporean. I think I'm scare of having no money n sick. Medical fee n medicine very high.[sic]13. Worry jobless, no income all other problems would raise. [sic]14. I am afraid of inflation.15. Afraid old and frail but can't have a quick exit from this world.16. I am scared of snakes.17. I am scared the government will not take care of us.18. I fear being out of job.19. I am scared of fines.20. I fear being penniless and bald. Unfortunately, both apply to me.21. I fear riots.22. Kiasu.23. I am afraid of falling ill.24. I fear costly educational costs and job insecurity which will lead to late marriage and low birth rate.Friends, what are you afraid of on our small island? sim city the new city hall all decked outNay Pyi TawMyanmar's new capital is built on the flattened hills north of Mandalay. The land is stripped bare, a highway cuts across the city, and the semblance of a city is systematically planted - a mega parliamentary complex echoing the ambition of pharoahs, a gaudily lit city hall, a hotel zone of resorts, a city golf course and various housing types for government officials pegged to rank (walk up apartments for the rank and file, semi-detached houses for senior managers, bungalows for directors and palaces for the ministers). These developments sit in isolation. Immediately around them is usually an expanse of naked earth or stretches of scanty vegetation, while beyond, small dusty huts with woven walls sometimes dot the fields. Against this background, Nay Pyi Taw the capital was an unreal flaunting of concrete and ambition. small talkOn my way to Myanmar, I was seated beside a Singaporean businessman. After asking what business it was that brought me to Myanmar, he added that he could speak endlessly about that country - a mystery and an administration that defied reason. I shan't attempt to repeat his explanation of the foreign currency exchange and import-export systems. Even though I had "ah-ed and hmm-ed" at his description, I must confess my tidy Singaporean mind cannot quite grasp how there could concurrently exist some 3-4 exchange rates offering values 20 times apart for 1USD. Internet and mobile networks in Yangon, he said to add to my sense of amazement, could be shut down for days or weeks under the instructions of 1 man. Petrol prices (and hence bus fares) have gone up 5 fold, so some folks in the city opt to walk to work instead. The average income is 30USD even though this is a country with an abundance of natural gas, precious stones and fertile land. At Nay Pyi Taw, I had a brief conversation with some ladies from Thailand. Non-controversial remarks about the difficulty of government - democratic or otherwise - in a region where the third, second and first worlds often co-exist in each country. But one word I remember had stood out in the conversation: injustice. Not a word that would appear in most day to day breakfast-table small talk! How archaic the word seem now , as if lifted from some ancient pledge. But that morning, it did not allow itself to be taken for granted. The governmentspeak on our island is often dictated by management-book language and other forms of technocrat-ese that it is easy to forget how important is justice, fairness and a perennial watch against corruption to the liberties of a city.horizons and such Dust, concrete and goverments aside, my only other recollection of Nay Pyi Taw is the abundance of nature - its stars, skies and fields. The urbanite that I am, I have never comprehended why folks paint trees, mountains and lakes. Is it not too trite, to represent nature, its beauty too contrived? But there is something undeniably beautiful and enduring, and it is the smallness of our city visions if we should deny this. quiet click for flickr viewJ getting all pensive at the start of the new year wrote this: "I have been thinking if it is wrong to not really think about new year resolutions at all. I guess, broadly, there are a couple of things I really want to do - more design work, take better portraits, invest/spend money wisely, make more friends, spend more great quality time with the wifey and my dad... Actually, if I did not pen all this down, or even thought much about it, would the year be still very much the same?"Me? I started out more gungho about this whole resolution business. Right after Christmas, I decided on painting a kind of visual resolution. It ended up being a painting (photo above) of J sitting on a gold step with giant peace lilies. But once the new year at work started, I've not had a stretch of quiet to paint, so my painting-resolution remains unfinished until now (so much for resolve!).Well, stretches of quiet are what I am sure my evenings will be over the next 4 days in a country where - I've been told - there is no auto-roaming for mobile phones ("you can rent a satellite phone for USD50"), possibly no or restricted internet access, and entertainment is... hmm, I probably should not be making any jokes about entertainment and men in uniforms. In a strange way, if not for the fact that I will be away from J, I am looking forward to the quiet.Friends, amps wish you a quiet new year. balik kampung Juraissic age HDB playground at Kim Keat - all images by JMy parents were born on this tropical island. But my father's father was from that most southern of southern China - the godforsaken island of Hainan; and my mother's was probably from Swatow. Pa J on the other hand was actually born in the Hokchia stronghold of Zhang Jian, and had travelled to the Nanyang by boat when he was a boy.On our tiny city-state, the idea of a hometown may have little meaning. Ask a Singaporean "where were you born?", and the answer would probably just be "XYZ Hospital" instead of "XYZ Village/Town/City/Country". This would, of course, change with more new migrants.Still, since we were both on leave from work, this morning J and I decided to put on our domestic tourist tags and go visit what comes closest to being our hometown - the neighbourhood of Bendemeer! The walk from Toa Payoh to Bendemeer brought us through the flats of Kim Keat guarded by 2 dinosaurs (what was going through the minds of those Town Council folks who commissioned this?!), through the Shuang Lin Temple, across the Pan Island Expressway to the butterfly-filled fields beside Whampoa Estate, and across the Central Tunnel Expressway to the Towner Estate which is right beside the 4 decade old HDB estate of Bendemeer.J's corridor playground + Sticker-style graffiti by disgruntled Bendemeer inhabitantThere's nothing romantic about this, just a fact of the smallness of our island that both J and I had actually lived in adjacent blocks of flats in Bendemeer when we were kids.But I would be dishonest if I said I did not like being able to share with J memories of the same kindergarten, the playground just at the foot of our flats, the same market and food centre, the same provision shop, the same stationer's with its glass cabinets of colourful erasers and pencil sharpeners we would gaze at, the same Lao Fuzi comics by the barber/hairdresser, the same beautiful mosaic-tiled wall of the adults' United Overseas Bank... surviving the timesBut taking away these particular memories, our experiences were vastly different. I with my Grandma, and J with his family of 7 siblings. Admittedly, J seemed to have more varied and colourful relationships with the neighbourhood and its inhabitants and merchants. It is also a fact of this island's life that the neighbourhood of your childhood memories will not stay unchanged through time. And perhaps a particular aesthetic of memory would evolve given all this. I don't mean a hazy, warm-fuzzy-feeling sort of nostalgia-influenced aesthetic. But a kind of aesthetic where materiality and time will lock arms, tightly. ===========p/s Domestic Tourism food tipsIf you are in Bendemeer, visit its market and food centre for yummy fried carrot cake (the black sauce kind) at stall 01-35 and the famously ungrammatical "Eat-May-Know" rojak. To get to Bendemeer, take the North-East line and drop off at Boon Keng Station. white click for flickr viewAbout Christmas and gifts, I just overheard this on a news interview tonight - "帶一個感恩的心". Friends, hope you have a good Christmas and New Year holiday. the walking man image by JThe joys of walking are seldom fully experienced on this island. The reasons are many: it's the weather - that debilitating heat or the indecisive raining that is not quite a steady drizzle or a thunderstorm; the fast pace of life; the design of our pavements and streets; "there's nothing to see"... Or maybe, as in many cities, we reserve our walking for indoor, air-conditioned environments designed to visually entice and seduce at every step (no, not museums, but shopping malls). But the nature-lover's trek, the scholarly stroll, the solitary romantic's ramble, the lovers' meander, or just a destination-driven march are all possible (and enjoyable) on our small, car-mad island. When I was a student, I had spent my holidays walking around the city alone. Now, since we don't drive, J and I walk a fair bit everyday whenever we can give the bus or train a miss. 2 Saturdays ago, with J at the gym and the December morning air agreeing, I walked around half of Toa Payoh alone. It was a lovely walk. I thought about this book. When I had first read the graphic novel The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi, I did not know what to make of it. Used to either manga's futuristic apocalyptic visions (Jiro Taniguchi had drawn one of these, Icaro with Moebius) or strangely moralistic fantasies, I was expecting with each frame or page of The Walking Man that there would be an odd twist in the tale. Perhaps this nameless man was a serial murderer or rapist. Perhaps he had just moved into a town with a dark past. Or perhaps he will have an affair with that woman he has just met in the park.But as the book progressed in its slow, desultory pace, all there was was as the title promised - a man (middle-age, seemingly well-off and nerdy) and his random walks in a town he and his wife had just moved into,a slightly old town. He gets caught in the rain. His glasses are smashed when he passes a group of boys playing in a field. He has a chance encounter with a woman in an autumnal park. He meets a bird watcher. He spots a local bird in the next chapter. He finds a lipstick left behind by a group of giggly schoolgirls. So used is the typical reader to our own cityscape and TV dramas that we expect these chance encounters to each lead on to something sordid, dangerous - well, exciting. Yes, now that's reality, or rather, life! So for its stubbornly idyllic and nostalgic ways, I guess this story is not unlike a fantasy. Yet The Walking Man is oddly about "real" life. Not just for its realistic renderings in each frame, but how Jiro Taniguchi manages to evoke the very sensory experiences (and more) - the sight, smell, thrill, touch, humour, wonder, curiosity, taste, even possibly temptation - of that nameless walking man through his story and images. These walks translate into every positive sense of being alive. I was also reminded of another book Designing Design by Japanese graphic designer (Muji's CD) Kenya Hara that J had recently bought. Kenya Hara, in writing about the disorientation of too much media/information today, describes it as too little information. Our brain has too little, not too much stimulation. He compares our experiences today to having a multitude of post-it notes on the brain, but none stimulating our human brain in all its sensory possibilities of knowing and living. There's a diagram in his book where, to an outline of the human body, he sketches a diagram of the brain not just in the head, but brains located all over our bodies - in our hands, shoulders, feet, chest...not at this pace lah! - image by JDuring one of our many walks around the city on a hot, sticky weekend, J and I were determined to get to our next destination in the shortest time possible. But I thought perhaps all the speed walking is generating more heat. So I deliberately slowed my pace, and made sure that I felt my feet - from heel to toes - touch and lift off the pavement each and every step. I don't know about J, but I felt immediately calmer and cooler - anchored not to to heat from the cement, but a kind of solid ground...metaphysically speaking!Alone, you get to tune in to your body/senses in the context of the world around you; with someone, there's another kind of living. Either way, walking is good. Yes, despite the punishing sun, the irritating indeterminate half-rain-half-drizzle, the rush for the next errand, our often unattractive patchwork cement sidewalks, and the lure of those comfortable, shopping mall corridors... remains afterlife of a moldy towel by JAs part of the admission process for a study programme I've applied to, I was required to submit a sample of my undergraduate and postgraduate writing. As such, I spent an hour in my old room going through all 10 thick ring folders of notes and essays on literature that, 10 years ago, was still so precious I actually put it on a 3-month sea voyage from a northern island to our tropical one. The folders are accompanied by 2 boxes of index cards, neatly documenting every article and book I had referred to and made notes from, the highlights now a sickly candy floss pink. Having found the 2 essays I needed, for a moment I contemplated trashing the whole lot. But only for a moment. Then I stashed the 2 boxes of index cards and 10 stacks of mildewed paper back into the cupboards, unsure if they would ever see light of day. Ah, sentimentalism - that's what remains of an education! in the quiet of the night This was meant to be a post about Michel Faber's extremely well-written and pleasurable novel The Crimson Petal and the White, but the Singapore Writers Festival, a biennial event sponsored by the National Arts Council hijacked the review. I've never been entirely convinced of the need of a writers festival. People who write getting together to listen to other people who write talk instead - and talk among themselves. All this had seemed unnecessary. As if writing itself was not vanity enough, there should be voices declaring. But I looked forward to this year's Writers Festival. Not for anything but the names of 3 writers I recognised and admire. There was Goh Poh Seng who would be coming back to Singapore from Canada after so many years away, now ill, to give the opening address. Chinese poet Bei Dao, whose poems I enjoy (despite the appalling translations). And Arthur Yap. Last evening, wheyface and I attended the Arthur Yap reading. It took place in a room of some 6-7 of his paintings. And since he had passed away last year, there was the sense of a belated eulogy about the event. Folks who knew him personally or was related to him in the 3rd or 4th degree read his poems, or their own which were inspired by or dedicated to the man. The event was interesting for the people who attended as audience or who read - poets (the dignified, the excitable, the mediocre) and wannabe poets, academics (always fun to watch, Nabokov's Pnins), students, old girls, young boys... Ah, you could mine the evening for stories (invented, inspired or observed) and emerge terribly rich, these barely concealed gems for the eternally kaypoh. And of course, the poetry itself. Read aloud, they speak as much of the reader as the poet. Writer Christine SuChen LIm read sensitively and musically - making you wonder if her prose would be equally nuanced. Lee Tzu Pheng, Arthur's fellow academic and poet, read steadily, assuredly - but conscious too of Arthur Yap's often playful ironic turns. in the quiet of the nightin the quiet of the nightwhen alert ears pulsei can hear again the words,the poet i was earlier reading:he is the one person i understand fully.i understand he is a poet& i understand his poetry.i even understand my own knowledgeof this privacy which is public literary study.the words will move on more swiftlythan tomorrow will be now. & i willknow, in reading again,i do not know himor any other, or myself, or that any poetryis the public transaction that it must be.& it must be private ultimately.(from Man Snake Apple - 1986)an old drawing, recycled hereAll of his 4 collections of poems were dedicated to someone. His parents, his partner(?) Keith Watson, his brother Anthony and a Japanese friend Miyuki Nagaoka. Maybe the strength of his poems and his craft lie in this - their humanity - the relational, which extends easily to the relationship of poet-poem-reader in words.in memory of) anthonyyour coffin had no nails.years i have lived with this nailed feeling,every moment forgotten. & other moments,larger remembrances, are also of you.when all is said & not forgotten,may it be known to me& leave behind, not necessarilyeven a need to understandwhat you all along would know,this long, long trail of quick, sharp sorrow. =========P/S Arthur Yap published 2 of his more recent poems in QLRS (click to read). in for the long run maki squarepatch's child's room - images by JTuesday evening J and I trooped to a nighttime preview of the Singapore Design Festival"hub" at the City Hall and former Supreme Court building. I'm really not going to comment on the Festival, except to say that it's worth going to take a look at the exhibitions there because:(1) they made these -J and I found installations by...not 1...but (at least) 4 female Singapore designers at a show called "Utterrubbish" (hmm, yes, I'm also not a fan of this title). There's a child's room by maki squarepatch, a living room of recycled fashion by Hansel, a small showcase of poetic works by our favourite argentum in one of the judge's rest chambers, and in Court Room 21 is an installation by a new friend, the inimitable kwodrent. Hey, I know it's not about gender, BUT. works by argentumwork those legs in the city hall(2) you get to wander around these buildingsNot many folks used to get to wander freely the corridors and court rooms of the City Hall and former Supreme Court building (or maybe not many folks wanted to). If you had missed taking a look at the insides of the buildings during last year's Singapore Biennale, you should do so. The Singapore Institute of Architect's show "ArchiFest" is held in, for instance, the historic chambers where the Japanese signed the surrender papers in 1945.doors of the city hallThat evening the President's Design Awards were also given out at the Esplanade. Among the 7 folks who won prizes this year, these 2 stood out for me. Mr Mok Wei Wei (of W Architects) and Mr Eng Siak Loy (currently a designer with the National Parks Board, but the unsung designer behind many of our stamps and our dollar notes!), not for being trendy or enterprising, but for being committed to good design as a career. They have a lifetime of work to speak silently for their art, intelligence and commitment.Walking home that night, I was thinking if a stronger case needs to be made for commitment and dedication. Often, the arts and design are marketed as sudden flashes of inspiration. Of course there are these moments, and (ah, as Ms Zhang Ai Ling had once declared) what is fame if it is cannot be enjoyed when you are young. But I wonder if we often forget the sheer hard work, the patience and the stamina a designer and artist need. So to all those folks who feel a little discouraged and getting tired after a trying sprint, the consistency of vision is not only a matter of space, but also time. And Ms Zhang, though not wrong, may not be the only one right.================P/S There are several other events/exhibitions taking place at other venues, such as an exhibition on Alvar Aalto at the NUS Cultural Centre, swiss architecture at Vivocity, Japanese graphic artists groovisions at the National Museum etc. Take a look at the more complete programme here. 3 < 1 I drew and painted this today. The last drawing was 3 months ago. This year I made 16 illustrations. Last year, at least 60. This year I wrote 0 stories. Last year, there was, at least, 1. This year, I spent an average of 12 hours at the office, and maybe 1 hour outside the office thinking about work each day. For that, my bank account and paycheck boast of slightly bigger figures. Last year, I spent more time walking and talking with J and our family - and maybe even with friends. I'm not sure if these past 2 years were placed side by side, both sides of the equation would add up just right. But the truth - even if excuses are easy to find - is that whatever the numbers stand for and however they are valued, they reflect our choices.