ouch! click for larger view in flickrI stepped out of the lift, slipped, fell and hit my head this morning! Thank God the doctor says it should be just a bruise. If I was 70, perhaps something would have broken. What an odd coincidence that I had just finished this Kidnap Bob drawing two nights ago. a sad oldie I had just finished a cartoony drawing of J while he was attempting to draw me sitting across from him. We were both enjoying a post-dinner kopi 10pm last night. I asked if he would like any text under this quick portrait. He shot me this immediate reply, "growing old makes me sad". I said, "you're so depressing!". He said, "that's how a feel." I said, "..." He said, "..."Well folks, I don't know about you but it's been a dreary week at work so far and next week promises to be hectic. But there's nothing like reviving an old project to distract. J's portrait has therefore acquired the comforting figure of Kidnap Bob and his depressing line works surprisingly well for Kidnap News 2 so far. Enjoy... the wise and the foolish ...the same fate overtakes them both.One evening on bus 145, I overheard this conversation. Well, there was no need to strain the ears because the conversation between the two strangers was louder than the bus engine. It was like a performance, and everyone else quickly quietened down to watch -[The conversation in Mandarin. Old Man in a blue short-sleeved shirt sat near the front door of the bus. Old woman, also bespectacled, was standing beside Old Man's seat. Never once in the conversation did she look at him. They both wore smiles throughout. ]Old Man: The next time you vote, I hope you vote the opposition party.Old Woman: I don't need to vote.Old Man: Why not? Everyone must.Old Woman: Aiyah, I don't need to. Where I live, always don't need to vote.Old Man: But next time, if you vote, must vote opposition party.Old Woman: The next time? I'll be dead by then! Old Man: You can't say that. The opposition is good. Vote for them.Old Woman: Aiyah, whatever. Man must work. Man must eat.Old Man: Yes, that's why you work so hard, you should enjoy -Old Woman: Man must eat... Old Man: You listen to me, I tell you -Old Woman: Man must shit.Old Man:[...] You work so hard, why must you give the Government all your money? That's why the opposition party -Old Woman: Aiyah, I don't care what about this party, that party. I only want the Money Party.Old Man: The opposition party won't take your money. Everything will be free. Like in Canada, Europe...Old Woman: Why do you bother so much? There's no difference.Old Man: You can, you can be like me. Next time you see anyone, just tell them to vote the opposition party.Old Woman: Aiyah. Whatever will be will be. I tell you. It's like this heavy rain. It wants to rain, it rains. Well friends, that's the latest report on political discussion in Singapore. Most of the time, the stifling humidity feels somewhat oppressive. And once in a while, it pours - though sometimes, the rain simply raises an equally unbearable heat from the ground. hitch a ride or take a hike! In movies terrible things happen to hitchhikers. And sometimes, even more terrible things happen to folks who pick them up.The only time I attempted to hitch a ride was in the summer of 1995. Both just a few months shy from turning 21, a Malaysian friend from university and I decided to spend four weeks in Europe bumming around with a rail pass and 400 pounds, but no planned itinerary. Yes, in the tradition of the grand tour.One evening over Czech beer in a small town, we spotted Liechtenstein on the map and joked about how it would be cool to walk from the border of Austria, right across Liechtenstein, until we got to Switzerland. We could boast that we've walked, literally, cross-country. It couldn't have been the beer because two days later, after a healthy Austrian breakfast, we set off on our walk.I think we had imagined it would be a leisurely kind of walk surrounded by alpine forests where we may stumble upon quaint small towns. But it wasn't. There were trees alright. But it was mostly asphalt and fancy continental cars zooming by. For the first hour or so, the diverse roadkill amused us (I still have the photos as proof). Then the summer sun and our backpacks made their presence felt. At some point, we attempted to hitch a ride. Of course, that was about as naive as deciding to walk across Liechtenstein. Which Audi salon and BMW convertible would pick up two scruffy looking (and possibly illegal) Asians? Well, we did eventually get to Switzerland in the afternoon, and best of all, on our own dependable feet.Anyway, all this is just a preamble to... the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Exhibition. Curated by mojoko (aka Steve Lawler), the show features 42 Singapore-based artists and designers who show their intergalactic visions in a series of artworks inspired by Douglas Adam's famous novel. We couldn't refuse the invitation to participate. So we made this. It works as a lamp. And maybe more. Switch it on and you might just get the ultimate answer to the ultimate question...The exhibition opens on 15 April 2010 and is on until 21 April at BLOODGROUP+ space at 32 Aliwal St. Friends, go visit! You can take a bus.=====================p/s. Buses 7, 32, 51, 63, 80, 145, 175 and 197 stop at North Bridge Road. Aliwal St runs parallel to Jalan Sultan. If you are interested in the work, we'll be there at the opening on 15 April. folded verse See the actual Folded Verse T-shirts...and at least 400 more works at Pameran Poskad 2010! The Chinese text "所羅門的衣，不如百合花" is our Chinese couplet for Jesus' teaching to not worry - "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these" (Matthew, 6:28-29). We made 2 or 3 folds on the tee before each character was painted. Read more here.The show's on at "My Art Space" (Level 4, 21 Tanjong Pagar Road, beside the Maxwell Rd Food Centre) from 18 April to 1 May. There's an opening party on 17 April, 6-9pm; and a preview for eager beavers (well, they can try to spot those works by the established artists) on the same day at 3pm. p/s - Drop us a note at info@ampulets.com if you are interested in any of the 10 tees. They are soft 100% cotton. The 所,羅,門,的,衣 and 不 are on Muji Men L-sized T-shirts chest 38-40". The 如,百,合 and 花 are on TopShop XXSmall-sized T-shirts, chest 32-34" for women or very very skinny boys. Each tee comes packed with its own postcard-sized image. truth or dare I've shortlisted only 3 films from this year's Singapore Film Festival. A record low! The truth is, without a physical programme booklet and the website's tedious navigation, I gave up after two rounds of reviewing the programme online. But I guess my cautious approach is entirely in line with this year's rather flat (*yawn*) programming:- Yan Lei (Tears), directed by Cheng Wen-Tang- Dear Doctor, directed by Miwa Nishikawa- Jao Nok Krajok (Mundane History), directed by Anocha SuwichakornpongFriends, may you possess more daring in clicking on the "Buy Tix" button. culture coming out of your s/pores It's the "Arts and Culture" issue of online journal on historical and contemporary Singapore society! Guest edited by Tan Tarn How, Part 1 of this issue features:‘After’ Kuo Pao Kun › C. J. W.-L. WeeFor wolfnotes › Lee Tzu PhengThird Stage › Wong Souk Yee“But there is nothing here to shoot…” › Tay Kay ChinRaising the Subject › Jason WeeCensure and Censor › Loretta ChenNational Songs Revisited › Tan Shzr EeFirst-World Economy, Third-World Culture › Michelle LohReview: +65 Indie Underground › Joseph ThamClick here to read an issue that's really diverse which, given its theme, is apt. my own Malgudi Part of a drawing made with J for his client. This is one of my favourites from the train seriesThe little town council posse that usually goes ahead of the MP came by tonight. We were working in J's office. But damn. We left the lights and TV on in our living room (ah, the lesson to be learnt about saving energy)! The doorbell, thankfully, wasn't working. Then from J's office, we heard their voices and slightly impatient knocks on our door. Five minutes later, I looked through the peep hole - and the folks in white were still there... giggling and taking photographs of our painted door! Later we found the standard "Your MP was here" card tagged to the door, with the words "your door is very creative" scribbled across.The next time J asks me if I was ever tempted by the endless fancy condo launches, I would consider adding today's (thwarted) visit by the provincial party cadre to my list of the many charms of village-living romanticised: our friendly neighbourhood electric appliance salesman (who hangs out after dark watching a beat up 14-inch TV at the old skool hair saloon); the inquisitive housewives who ask sly questions to try and find out what we do for a living; the noisy Taoist temple; last week's 3day void deck wedding party; the world's best BBQ wings; the bi-annual exodus of dying cockroaches from the rubbish chute; the funerals that peak in the hot months of May-June and the wet months of November-December; street cats that are too well-fed to taunt the rats...And best of all, walking with J, our very own voyeuristic patrol, around the village and across closed - and if we are lucky - open doors. Worry Not Worry Wart click for larger view in flickrWorrywart: What am I going to do now?Optimist: Do? What about? Sounds exciting.Worrywart: All these jobs coming in and design briefs to crack. I'm really worried.Optimist: Wow! It's a good thing, sounds like perhaps it's time you thought about expanding.Worrywart:Expand? I'm not even sure what's going to happen 3 years from now.Optimist: Er, try it for a year first? Worrywart: I'm really worried.Optimist: Aiyah, you're always worried anyway, so it's nothing new that you're worried, so don't worry.Worrywart: But, I've been like this for so long, that's worrying.Optimist:... applause At 陈珊妮Sandee Chan's Esplanade performance (as a friend CT puts it, it's been a more than 10-year wait for fans on our island!), she used the words 認真 to describe how she had selected the songs lined up for last evening's fantastic concert. Most online dictionaries define 認真 as "serious", "earnest" and "to take seriously." The problem with Chinese-English translations is that the word often means all of this and more. 認真 suggests a degree of genuine care that is less removed than seriousness and more calculated than just earnestness.I would like to think that the folks behind Friday night's play Invisibility/Breathing, also at the Esplanade under its HuaYi Festival, were equally 認真. There was a precision and detail in actor Oliver Chong's performance that warranted the adjective. And despite the work's weakness, the same professional dedication was apparent in the set design and construction, the sound and direction.All of this makes the weak applause - particularly at Invisibility/Breathing - rather depressing. Friends, the next time you attend a performance, be it a play, a dance or a concert, if you recognise that what happens on stage is taking place with the utmost of dedication, thought and craft of the performer sustained over an hour or even two, please do not be stingy with your applause. It won't cost you much. not much "There's too much love on this train" is about all I can come up with today. post-it J designed the event's logo this year. :>If large canvases are not your thing, you may want to check this out! In its 3rd edition, Pameran Poskad is, as its name reads, an exhibition of art that fits into postcard-sized plastic sleeves. It's been an interesting "egalitarian" platform so far, with work by really established artists placed next to amateurs from around the world. Started by fine art printmakers Keyakismos (Eitaro and Tamae), this year's exhibition already has close to 150 participants. Even if you don't fancy yourself an artist type, you can go spend some of your Ang Bao money at the show from 17 April to 1 May. Heh. a drifting line Click on each image for a larger viewJasN (B in the above sequence) suggested that we record our experience listening to and queuing for the inspiring Yoshihiro Tatsumi in a single panel drawing. Being less disciplined, we needed fifteen panels instead to mark the start and end of our groupie fanboy/girl days. And of course, the amazing 74 year-old artist wins our respect for his tireless dedication to signing/drawing for the line...Well friends, while we enjoyed our Sunday afternoon pondering the intricacies of whether one should order 10 packets of prawn mee if there was a long queue standing behind, we recommend that your afternoons are better spent reading his short, sharp and shock(ing) stories instead. They have been collected, translated and published by Drawn and Quarterly in three volumes thus far. The manga master's lengthier autobiographical tome A Drifting Life moves at a less punishing pace, but nonetheless leaves you wanting to read more. If so, there's Singaporean film maker Eric Khoo's animated adaptation of A Drifting LIfe (artist Brian Gothong Tan will also work on the project) to look forward to. the interim Picture Tennis: The first serve was the fat caterpillar.J and I played picture tennis just before I went back to work some 6 weeks ago. I've made no drawings and done no writing since. My body is adjusting - and forgetting. But I hope not to forget the lessons of the year out and the possibilities I imagined. Hmm, alright. There should be a proper blogpost soon...or perhaps installment 1.3 of My Life as a Magician's Rabbit. Right now, folks, it's pitch dark in the tophat! forever Don't believe your eyes. The theme this year is not "turtles" or "origami". J has captioned the photos "God is eternal". Well friends, may God's peace be with you this Christmas. But should you be interested to see more of "turtles+origami", check out ampulets design's latest project.And if you are really a fan of turtles, there's supposed to be "The Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum" at the Singapore Chinese Garden! Disclaimer: I've not been there myself so I can't vouch for it. The website claims it has over 50 different species of turtles and tortoises... HERE! THERE! Photo by JenThey are here! Or rather, they are there at the Post-Museum, all wrapped deliciously like roti prata. watch design Video from here. More from the Herb and Dorothy website.A librarian and postal clerk amass lots of art in their tiny New York apartment. Sounds like the premise for a short story? Well, it's one of many films you can watch at the Design Film Festival. I guess there are enough films about architects and designers (and the odd collector) - those folks who create so much of what we live in and live with - that they could constitute a genre of their own. Anyway, J and I are just glad two of our interests are coming together at this festival from 20-30 January at Sinema/Old School. Click here to find out more.Writing this, I am also reminded of designers Charles and Ray Eames and the short films they made as another way to record or communicate their ideas; including the still amazing Powers of 10. Enjoy.Video from this youtube link, but you can also view it from the official website that requires just a simple registration process. better late... than never. Click here for Part (1.2) of My Life as a Magician's Rabbit. t-shirts for a (good) cause Lost without you. This design takes as its starting point Post-Museum's location in busy Little India. One of the Post-Museum’s stated aims is to respond to its location. Wherever we may be, perhaps having a sense of place is part of our sense of community.This design is inspired by the spirit of collaboration behind two simple shop-house spaces, where people get together to create community and culture. 2 is better than 1.The folks at Post-Museum have been raising funds for the work they do. Some time ago they asked if we could design a t-shirt for their fundraising efforts. So we did!Friends, if you must buy presents for Christmas, can't resist another t-shirt (or two), and/or just want to contribute to Post-Museum's work, here's what you can do:(1) Get 2 is better than 1 in XS, S, M, L or XL* for $30 each.(2) Get Lost Without You in XS, S, M, L or XL* for $35 each. This is a limited edition t-shirt...50 I think.(3) Get a set of both T-shirts for a discounted $60 only!The t-shirts come with a tag that tells you a little about the design, Post-Museum and ampulets. All proceeds from the sale of these t-shirts go towards Post-Museum's work. To pre-order the t-shirts, email admin@post-museum.org. Hurry hurry! They will also be available for sale at the Post-Museum's Food #03 cafe from mid-December onwards.(For updates and getting your friends onboard, check out the facebook page.)===========*About the Sizes: XS is 36 inches circumference round the chest. S is 38 inches, M is 40 inches, L is 44 inches and XL is 46 inches for men who gym.Close-ups of the designs: to be continued... The week running up to my returning to work, I have:(1) Fallen sick. A friend cleverly suggested the symptoms were all psychosomatic...(2) Met up with friends every night for conversation and a drink (or two).(3) Bought a new TV to numb the brain after work.(4) Downloaded the super addictive Bejewelled on my iPhone, as suggested by J, for the daily commute.(5) Finally started working proper on My Life as a Magician's Rabbit.My Life as a Magician's Rabbit is a 4-part story (for now) that's been in my head for years. To start with, there are no drawings yet and I'm not sure if the text will inspire images eventually. But if you are interested to follow the story, I'm determined (ah, all gung-ho before reporting for work) to post a new installment once a week at this site for the coming months.Otherwise, life goes on. There'll still be random posts on this blog about art, cinema, design and any domestic tourism we indulge in. J will continue bossing it out at ampulets design where he does corporate and commissioned work. In fact, check back here for news about a new T-shirt and possibly an exhibition project that ampulets design will be collaborating with some arty folks on! why not? Ai WeiWei at the Mori Museum, Tokyo - all images by JThree conversations (or rants) about "Why Not?" (1) The "Why Nots" of OldOver a cup of coffee in Katong, a good friend was recalling his years growing up in Toa Payoh. He said, or as I recall him recalling, "everyday I would hear this: don't bother, this is not for you; yes others can do it, but you must understand what you are capable of; you don't have to try so hard, just focus on...When I was much older, I suddenly realise, f*** it, I can do whatever it is I set my mind to do." It's never too late, friends.The devil at the door(2) Art and "Why Not?"After a discussion with some folks about the arts in Singapore and what they want or see in the future, I felt a little depressed but did not know why. Everything I heard was linked, in one way or other, about what we could "realistically hope for". They were not entirely wrong. With limited resources in an absolute sense - finances, talent, physical space, lived heritage - it seems the wise thing to set our sights more "strategically". Tonight, after some sake, I suddenly realised why that conversation was so depressing. Isn't there something about the spirit behind artistic discipline that is about what others would not "realistically hope for", but nonetheless worth believing in and pursuing.Perhaps this is why the artist and the manager will always be at odds. In the best of situations, the tensions and relationship between the two can bring about great work. Of course, I think this is a statement of the hopeful realist. Nature, design by God(3) "Why Not" is not just whimsyJ was telling me about the publicity material for this year's Singapore Design Festival that he had noticed on the MRT trains. The tagline for its campaign was" Why Not?" He remembered one of the train advertisements - "Edible Buildings. Why not?" His complaint: why must art or design always be promoted as a kind of cute, whimsical proposition when it has all the power and ability to change the world for better? His alternatives: "A world without petrol. Why not?" "Cycling lanes in Singapore. Why not?" I can understand his frustration. The whimsical is valuable, but art and design can often be limited by popular perception and even marketing to this one realm.However, don't let this little advertising blip discourage you from checking out the many varied events being organised as part of this year's Singapore Design Festival. Keep an open mind, listen, observe, and there'll always be lots to learn - and question. off I have three two more weeks till the end of my "sabbatical". I place that word in quotation marks because after listening to Stefan Sagmeister (on TED.com, video embedded above) speaking about his year out in Bali, I think I need to use a far more modest term. city of books all images by JNotwithstanding this, J and I do try to explore at least one district that we've never been to each time we visit Tokyo. This year, it was Jimbocho. It's a name I almost feel should be an exclamation. Like "Jimbocho!" or "J-I-M-B-O-C-H-O!" Especially if you love books.The first thing you'll notice is that there's nothing fancy about Jimbocho's bookstores. Its dedication is singular - books. And the folks who trawl Jimbocho's shelves do not need any encouragement from cute merchandise or interiors. They are - as I point out to J - true in their love for books. posters on the wall of a bookstoreNext, you'll find that most of the stores have focused collections. Depending on the store's genre, every possible space is packed with books, magazines or manga. To add, the shelves are meticulously categorised and labelled, and if not, the organisation makes itself obvious, as if in the shopkeeper's own language of association. We had first walked up to a small bookstore on the second-floor focused on the Beat Generation, before stumbling upon a street of shops collecting all printed material related to the cinema and popular culture. According to the entry by Yoshita Haba in Claska's Tokyo by Tokyo, "the stock on the shelves changes depending on the time of the year, so it's best to make regular visits - bookshelves are like living, constantly changing creatures."After all this, you'd walk around wishing you understood some of the Japanese language so that you could access more of these creatures.But with no Japanese, the book that accompanied J and I (we took turns reading/re-reading) throughout our stay instead was Narayan's novel Waiting for the Mahatma. Probably one of the few Narayan stories that dealt with an overtly political context, Waiting for the Mahatma takes Siriam, a characteristically carefree Malguldi resident, and puts him through a coming-of-age experience that is not so much political awakening as an extended schoolboy crush. Guided only by love for Bharati, Siriam finds himself a participant in Gandhi's spiritual reconciliation of India and Chandra Bose's militant independence movement, while the rather benign colonial representatives look on and the Hindu-Muslim conflicts place questions on the nature of India's independence. Waiting is a somewhat atypical of Narayan's Malgudi novels in the tragic undercurrents of its comedy. As if once outside Malgudi, Narayan's fictional paradise, the realities of India cannot but unsettle Narayan. With its last chapter set in New Delhi, Waiting as a love story cannot find its consummation. The title's anticipation therefore gestures at this always-tentative (political) romance.It is a strange novel to read during a vacation in consumerist 21st century Tokyo. But returning to this wonderful novel and discovering a new district in Tokyo has been two of my best experiences in the last week. villagers/creatures of habit The Aosando art fair pairs up artists with shops in the backlanes of Aoyama. A great way to get traffic to the quieter shops, and to get people to notice new artists.On each of our visits to Tokyo, J and I have always ended up going to the same restaurants, museums and retail stores. Today, for instance, we chatted with one of the chefs and walked down our favourite street to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. But just as we note how Tokyo has changed (or not) each annual or biennial interval, I think we notice how we, too, have changed (or aged!!!) each time. J: I now understand what you mean when you say you sometimes prefer Taipei to Tokyo.Y: You do?J: Yah. It's the language thing. Y: Yes, and with it, the whole thing about accessibility... and alienation (ooh, big word) of cities.J: Yah, for the first time, I can imagine what it is like to be alone and living in Tokyo - the loneliness and the possibilities.Y: No kidding. It's a great place to run away or escape to. But in the same way, cities don't give a shit about you, so if you can't fit in or feel alone, it really hits you. Maybe that's why we always go to the same places in Tokyo, just to connect to this place.J: In comparison, that's why Singapore is so attractive to expatriates, no?Y: Uh-huh. J: It has all the pretences of a big city, but in reality, in essence, it is a -Y: - village.J:Yah, like a village. Everyone more or less speaks some English. The aunties - if you stay in HDB - will talk to you and ask you questions. In no time, you will quickly find friends, know someone who is friends who someone who is also friends with someone...Y: Yah. All the good stuff but also the trappings of a village. Which sometimes makes you want to run away to a real city...hah!Well friends, if you ever feel like running away to Tokyo, there are two places we will not hesitate to recommend in Tokyo:(1) Have a meal at Chopsticks Cafe or the Sora no niwa tofu restaurant. Both are at Shibuya, and for 4000 yen each, you can afford 5 courses of good food and at least 3 rounds of beer/sake/cocktails. Not to mention the great service and ambience.Seasonal tofu starter at Sora No Niwa.(2) Visit Issey Miyake's workThis includse 21-21 Design Sight, a design museum adjacent to the Midtown complex at Roppongi, and his Pleats Please store at Aoyama. The former always has intelligently curated shows while the latter never fails to have pretty (for J's sake) and friendly retail staff who are ever ready to talk about design, no matter how difficult it may be for them in English. Night view of 21-21, architecture by Tadao Ando. J testing his new camera at 3000 ISO tunnel-visioned tokyo Tokyo - that's all we'll be seeing this coming week! And that is plenty because it is going to be the week of the Tokyo Designers Week, 100% Design Tokyo, Design Tide at Midtown, the Emerging Directors' Art Fair, the Aosando Art Fair... But of course, J and I are just looking forward to walking in another city. We'll try and load up the photos here as we go along! Meanwhile design critic J is appalled and depressed by changi airport. finally! J decided to ditch flash and started all over again with plain ol' homemade vanilla html instead. So finally! watching 'em grow My brother E, good citizen him, has three kids. E1 is three, E2 is one and M3 is a month old. Each is their own person.It's been interesting just watching them grow and express their personality. E1 is gentle and agreeable ("You try. It's good. Try.") E2 is observant and a quick storm. M3 is a small parcel that sleeps and poops. So far. And it is easy to imagine the joy associated with parenthood. Brother E's is obvious. A typical conversation in the car as Brother E drives us home after dinner on Sundays goes like this:Bro E: I gotta think using about a different strategy with E2.J&Y: Yah, they are so different!Bro E: With E1, once I smacked him on the backside a little harder. I just wanted to test how far to go. Experiment, haha. And he immediately knows he has done something that has made me more angry than usual.J&Y: Aiyah, he's a softie.Bro E: But with E2, it's different. If I just slap his hand when he does something wrong, he hits me back! It's like monkey see monkey do still.J&Y: Hmm, he's a fierce one. Bro E: ... I must think about it some more, use a different strategy. J&Y:...Bro E: You know, it's nice seeing how E1 has changed in the last 3 weeks. He used to just ignore his little brother. But yesterday, while we we out on a walk, he suddenly just kissed E2 on the head! It's nice, seeing him learn to relate to his little brother and show his love.Awww. But no, we have not changed our minds about not having our own. That's three negatives in one sentence. gone to meet the bookmaker click to view in flickrThe description of Tuas on streetdirectory.com begins "Tuas is Singapore's version of Chernobyl."Comparing Tuas to Chernobyl is way too flippant, but to most of us islanders who don't work in a shipyard or any of the heavy, manufacturing or chemical industries, Tuas will seem somewhat surreal. There is really no distinctive architecture - just these monotone blocks, some of them windowless or clad in metal. There are no high rise buildings. Even the trees are low and overwhelmed by the concrete and steel. The streets are wide. Or perhaps they feel especially wide because the traffic is sparse, save for that roaring truck. There aren't many people hanging or walking about as you drive by. But although the place seems deserted, there is the knowledge that inside those concrete and metal blocks, there is almost non-stop activity. Man operating machines operating the economy operating man.Why were we in Tuas? To visit a bookbinder for one of J's projects. It was fifteen minutes to one o'clock when we arrived. A dog stood by the wide entrance. A group of men were resting by the side. The place was dark - and lazy. Of course, it was their lunch break. We were directed to the back of the cavernous space that was filled with pellets of print and quiet machines which resembled abandoned amusement park train rides. The office was a florescent glow behind a clear curtain of thick plastic. We peeped. On the walls hung portraits of leaders, politicians, gods and celebrities. There was (I think) Osama, Ganesh, Obama, Thaksin, Abdullah Badawi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Old Man himself, Ella from Taiwanese girl-band S.H.E., the Harvard-educated Japanese princess...M finally emerged. After a ten-minute discussion between J and M in the office, we turned around and saw, to our amazement, the entire factory floor transformed! The factory floor was lit, the machines grew noisy one-by-one, and a group of some twenty men and women seemed to have appeared from nowhere and were now industriously carting books, folding covers, pushing buttons and supervising machines. M smiled at our undisguised curiosity. "Come," she offered, "I show you. You never see before, right?"Our tour, however, was interrupted before it really started by our introduction to Mr S, the boss-man, master bookmaker and lunchtime portrait artist."Good good, you must see all the machines, then you designers can understand how it works!" And so began a personal tour of Mr S's $4 million-worth of secondhand German binding machines ("except this machine, this one is from China. The Chinese they copy everything, exactly the same as the German one."). They fold, glue, stitch, cut, separate, make hardback and cloth covers, apply the little ribboned ends to the spines... all the mechanised hands, wheels, presses and rollers."Nowadays, I see the design, aiyah, immediately I can tell: over-designed. They design, don't think about how it can be made. I tell them, this cannot be bound this way. Sometimes simplicity is better." Mr S offered his design advice to J. About Mr S's portrait painting, he credited it to this - "For one year I studied art and book binding in France, in the 70s. Every day the French, they grill you about binding. So many different things to learn, I tell you. There are so many different ways to bind a book. I also study art, art and book binding.""One day I saw this exit sign, then I hang these portraits here because they are, haha, *you know*..." We ended the tour almost an hour later, with Mr S inviting J to organise a study visit for designers to his factory."I am preparing some slides about binding. You can go and organise a small group to come lah. But make it informal, we can walk around then discuss. Good that you designers come and see. Make our job easier also!" He laughs.At two thirty, we walked back out into Tuas' empty streets, thinking about the books that we could possibly make with Mr S's German (and sometimes Chinese) machines. the wake-up bird Several weeks ago, I blogged about the calls of the wake-up bird. It has plagued me since. Not the calls per se, which I enjoy for the way they enter the HDB soundscape of bus stops, chittering mynas, chattering children and the incessant varied noises from the nearby taoist temple. But rather just identifying the bird itself.Not satisfied with mystery, I've since been searching online recordings of bird calls. But with no real clues, it got as desperate as googling "whoo-ooo bird call". At one point, we even thought it could be the frantic call of the monkey that has wandered from the pierce reservoir and spotted hanging around our street.But a monkey it is not. Last afternoon, J finally spotted the creature perched on the top of a tall tree, issuing its loud "woo-ooo" uncharacteristically at noon. Ah, it was a large black bird with a distinctive tail and a beak that did not look like that of a crow's . That helped narrow down the options. From descriptions and photographs in the "Guide to the Common Birds of Singapore", it could either be a house crow, possibly the nightjar or a bulbul, or the greater coucal. The greater coucal is from the cuckoo family. And it seemed to make sense that it was some kind of a cuckoo bird. Unfortunately, after 2 hours of online searching, none of it sounded like our wake-up bird.Just when I was about to abandon the search, one of the random references from "greater coucal" on youtube read "Asian Koel". It was something about the sound of that word "Koel". I clicked - and heard that familiar call. Ah. The wake-up bird. Video by Diana57 in Singapore of a male koel calling out for a mate.Sound of a female koel, by tankavideoAvianweb.com's page on the Asian koel identifies it as a bird in the cuckoo family. It is also known as the "Rainbird" in Australia, while its name "koel" means "nightingale" in India. In Toa Payoh, I think the koel shall remain known as the wake-up bird.======p/s. Here's a video of a mating dance between two koels. The male is black and the female is the brown and white-spotted. island biography Check out this book by tym and Mark Frost about the lives that made our favourite island in the tropics! From the previews so far, the book promises to be a great read. There are 4 things amps recommend that you do:(1) Read the previews/snippets from the book and the writers' posts here.(2) Buy your copy from the bookstores, or pre-order one. Of course, proceed to read it! (3) Attend one or all four of these events where the writers will talk and gamely sign your copy of the book.(4) Buy another copy for a friend.