I did an email interview with the Sunday Times for its "Bookends" column, which should appear in the papers tomorrow. If you're curious about why and what I read, and how it influences my writing, go take a look. It's good timing because I've been on a reading spree lately. It started...
With reference to what I said yesterday about having the time now to catch up on online chatter, I thought I'd plug a good cheatsheet: The Round Down , a weekly email newsletter by my friend @sangsara and his friend @yjsoon . I know, I know --- a weekly newsletter, how old-school in i...
submitted the first draft of my novel to the National Arts Council on Tuesday (they're supporting me with a grant), I've been creeping slowly back into my social life: long catch-ups over meals with friends whom I've had to put off seeing for the last few months, a couple of work-rela...
When I was a kid, I always found it rather unbelievable --- but certainly convenient --- that Clark Kent could put on a pair of glasses and immediately no one would recognise him as Superman. I mean, come on . Since I started wearing glasses again , though, I've managed to take by sur...
I interviewed two nine-year-olds separately for a work assignment --- an experience which drove home the fact that interviewing children, even very intelligent, lively and articulate children, is not the same game as interviewing adults. Also, that kids relate to apps and games in a w...
About a week before Christmas, I did an on-camera interview with the producer for On the Red Dot , a local current affairs programme that was preparing an episode on Singapore culture and what makes one Singaporean. Because I'm a writer, we thought about doing the interview at a libra...
I went Christmas shopping today: after 2 p.m., on Christmas Eve, in the Bugis/Raffles City area, which didn't seem as bad as the main Orchard Road strip but was definitely more crowded than I like it. By the time I got home at 7-something, my phone battery was almost entirely drained ...
I wanted to see how many blog posts I've made this year, but I couldn't find a date-search function in Blogger. So I did it the old-fashioned way and paged through my archives and counted the posts. The grand total for this year: 27. The months with the lowest number of posts: March (...
2. Savouring a little Lagavulin single malt, courtesy of @alfpang . 3. Actually, a whole bunch of new-to-me liqueurs and wines, thanks to @alfpang. You had to be there. 4. Running into people in the Festival Pavilion and just outside --- friends, writers, readers, all. I've been rathe...
The rain, I mean. It feels like the monsoon season is full on already, even though the US elections are just over (woo, Obama!) and the school holidays in Singapore haven't officially begun yet, and there's still the Deepavali and American Thanksgiving holidays to go this month. In ot...
Before I forget, the Singapore Writers Festival kicks off later this week. I'm not speaking this year, but the organisers very kindly invited me to moderate two panels: Researching Singapore History Panellists: Danièle Weiler, Gretchen Liu, Kevin Tan, Maxime Pilon Date/Time: Saturday,...
The second half of October is going by in a flash. Without going into too many personal details, a family member had to be hospitalised and I've been running around to make care arrangements and figure out some of the nitty-gritty of Singapore's healthcare system. Thank you, extended ...
today, my friend Ai Lin shared the announcement from the National Archives, UK --- which she received via the president of the Singapore Heritage Society, Dahlia Shamsuddin --- that it had made available hundreds of photographs of Asia from the Colonial Office's Photographic Collectio...
After almost three years in hardback, the paperback edition of Singapore: A Biography is out. I haven't had the chance to take a nice picture of the paperback yet --- ergo the old picture of the hardback above --- but I can tell you that it's the same book size, same cover and picture...
last week, but thought I should plonk it here for posterity. Magazine publisher Burda Singapore decided to launch a new women's magazine, August Woman , and they hired my smart and funny friend Ci'en to be the editor. A month before I moved house, Ci'en contacted me and said hey, for ...
This afternoon, while I was ironing some clothes, I decided to turn on the radio for some white noise. (I know, who does that anymore, right?) In the 20 minutes or so it took me to iron a playsuit and three shirts, one of which was a pesky linen shirt that took a long time to get all ...
I was interviewed by David Ee, whom I got to know when we were both working at POSKOD.SG and who's now with the Straits Times, for his story today, "Buangkok villagers charge 'entrance fees'" (subscription required). We had a long phone conversation about tourism, heritage, cultural c...
Been at the new flat for over a week now and I'm still unpacking. First I did clothes and the kitchen (although the kitchen remains only half-unpacked while we try to deodorise some cupboards), then work and related items, and this week I'll finally start to excavate some boxes that h...
(Read addendum #1 and addendum #2 first, if you're curious about how this series of posts got started.) Another big question that was raised at "Write What" was: What about social networking? That's important too, right? To which I gave a fairly brief reply because it's such a broad t...
What I learned from Channel NewsAsia's report on prime minister Lee Hsien Loong's speech at the Singapore Symposium in New Delhi, "PM Lee highlights wild boars, graffiti on need to be 'messy selectively' " (the speech transcript isn't available yet at the government's SG Press Centre ...
1. Objecting to the mandatory death penalty or drug trafficking in Singapore, or to the death penalty for any offence at all, isn't a matter of being idealism. It's a matter of human decency, of what we allow ourselves as a society to do to each other, of the compact by which we agree...
reports today that the minister for national development, Khaw Boon Wan, said at an event last night that sizes of HDB flats are not shrinking and have been the same for the past 15 years (source: "HDB flat sizes have remained unchanged the past 15 years: Khaw Boon Wan "). I've been l...
reports today that the minister for national development, Khaw Boon Wan, said at an event last night that sizes of HDB flats are not shrinking and have been the same for the past 15 years (source: "HDB flat sizes have remained unchanged the past 15 years: Khaw Boon Wan "). I've been l...
Over the weekend I caught up with my young-punk friends* David and Lisa , and we were gushing over how much we enjoy Brain Pickings , and they were saying how chuffed they were when Brain Pickings shared Dave's short film thing , and I thought I knew what they were talking about and w...
There are two things that I've been doing these days when I work at home (in addition to, you know, the work). One is clocking time using Toggl ; the other is pacing myself using the Pomodoro technique . This may sound like I spend a lot of time clicking "start" and "stop" on either t...
I came across this news headline "MRT lines to see weekend closures for upgrading works: Lui " today (via @STcom on Twitter) and I couldn't help but think, ah, just like London, where I used to subscribe to Transport for London 's email updates on weekend Tube line closures for mainte...
I said something silly when I was speaking to a group of university students earlier this week. (I also spilled coffee on myself while their eyes were all trained on me, but that's another story.) These were university students nearing the end of a course on popular culture in Singapo...
It's my last working day of the year, which seems like a good time to mention what I'll be doing next year. In 2012, I have undertaken to: Write my first novel. Be the editor of POSKOD.SG , a fantastic and relatively young online publication about Singapore culture. Pull together the ...
And lo, on the night of the 25th of December 2011, I found myself cheering on a dear old friend as she entertained her nephews by concocting fake snow in her parents' living room in monsoonal Singapore. Of all the things I could've dreamed of us doing when we first met as doe-eyed 17-...
I had a pocket of time unexpectedly open up tonight, so I sat down with my laptop and no other distractions, and tried to work my way through a few scattered thoughts that I've promised to turn into an essay. I've been at it for over three hours now. I have a couple of pages of notes ...
