Getai Blues

The bald guy is supposed to be the getai big boss.
Photos by J on his nokia

Once perhaps every month, the Taoist temple next to J's HDB block stages a religious ceremony or show - it could be some elaborate ritual with costumed mediums, a simple opera or, as in this case, the rather secular getai.

So instead of fighting its noise with our own, J and I abandoned our DVD movie plans and joined the Toa Payoh uncles and aunties for a good ol' rendition of 要拼才会嬴 (classic Hokkien songYou Gotta Fight to Win) and 无言的結局 (#1 Karaoke 80s weepy The Wordless/Silent End). We were surprised by how genuinely funny the main host/singer was (see photo above of a rather plump lady in tights, a gold ultra mini-skirt secured with multi-coloured sashes, and a hot pink top). She was so good and did her job with so much pride she could have stood up to host a TV talk show with Taiwanese 菲哥. At one point, a group of Indians among the audience asked her to sing a Hindi song - something she gamely did, rolling up her top to reveal her midriff, and teasing all the ah peks (i.e. old men) sitting in the front row about getting a free view of such generous flesh.

When the Hungry Ghost Festival comes round in the next couple of weeks, and we enter into getai season proper, I am sure the novelty of all this loud festivity will wear off. By then, you won't find J and I applauding anymore when the fat lady sings.

Viva Cinema

In Singapore, censorship by the film & publications department (now under the Media Development Authority) is something most of us have given up singing/shouting/making a movie about. But two evenings ago, I was reminded that censors are not the only ones in charge of what we should or should not see.


"Audiences, use your brain please!" - Tsai at the talk, with a cleaned-up version of the poster for Singapore.

Though half asleep, I had dragged myself to listen to a Taiwanese director Tsai Ming Liang supposedly speak on "The Body, Love and Metropolis: An Affair with the Cinema of Tsai Ming Liang" at the Singapore History Museum on Thursday. It ended up that Tsai spoke instead on what cinema means to him and how audiences should learn to think.

Despite his ignoring the topic, I was duly rewarded (no lah, there were no freebies, not even a sneak preview of his latest film The Wayward Cloud) with this anecdote about his early movie Viva L'Amour. Viva is (in)famous for its concluding scene where a character sits in a park and wails, cries - stops - then begins to sob for some 7 minutes. All this while, the camera watches from a distance, still. In another more recent movie, the camera turns to watch the rows of empty seats in a soon-to-be demolished cinema (a grand dame like our Majestic or Capitol) for 5 mins -a long goodbye indeed. But back to Viva. Tsai said that when Viva was screened in Singapore, the last scene was cut by the cinema operators themselves from 7 to 2 mins.

I remember watching the movie in the very dodgy Yangtze cinema (frequently by the old men at Chinatown) and after 1 full minute of sobbing, some of the ah peks had started to laugh and walk out. One of them said loudly, "aiyah, yi shu pian (i.e. Art film)!" Maybe after several of such screenings, the cinema folks decided that there was not really any point shopwing all 7mins of a woman crying - fully-clothed and puffy-eyed (unattractive, even from a distance) after any promise of sex is long over in the film. Ah, so it is not the state's scissors we should fear.

But I was left wondering after Tsai's long gripe about unthinking audiences and his frustrated attempts answering the many silly questions my fellow islanders asked (most of the questions, I simplfy, are in the vein of "why should I think? why do you want to make audiences think?"), that watching a film - or experiencing any other art, aiyah, life itself - is not merely a cerebral activity. So when all you see for 7mins on the cinema screen is the image of rows of empty cinema seats or a woman sobbing uncontrollably for the longest time possible, there really is no big riddle or puzzle to crack. And in all our human-ness, we may doze off during those 7mins, our minds may start to wander, some of us may learn to see for the first time the colours around us, and some of us may begin to feel a nostalgia for a time past, a love lost, a life that could have been. And all that is a bit of cinema.

bondfree

J made me this clay "cake" with an old biscuit tin and a metal chain to commemorate the end of my 8-year government scholarship bond yesterday. Inside the clay-covered tin is the rest of the chain, and the words on the side say "Bond Breaker" - the alphabets O-N-D have fallen off (but hey, that's because I'm no bond breaker). Thanks J!


Here's the other clay object J made. (Singaporeans can and do make things with our hands) Function-over-form me thinks that this object is an ashtray...but with that phallic smiley rising from the ashes, it is best that I leave you to your own conclusions.

Promised Rest

click for larger pic
Here's the drawing I promised for this post. I can't quite say why, but I think it's the right visual companion.

Obliging I am

J's shoe rack - much prettier and neater than mine!

My Primary 4 teacher wrote in the comments section of my Report/Result Book that I was an "obliging girl". I remember I had checked the dictionary then for the meaning of that adjective and was not sure whether to be described as "obliging" was a good or bad thing...I still am ambivalent about it. But since tym asked and my teacher had so concluded, I shall oblige with the shoe meme.

Total number of shoes you own = 22
> 9 Adidas (4 Mary Janes; 1 green/white Melbourne; 1 blue suede Titan; 1 Red&Silver; 1 classic red/white/blue; 1 something pumps-ish). J has a more fun selection of Adidas.
> 6 Pumas (2 Mostros; 1 high-cut Schattenboxen; 1 shaolin pumps; 2 mesh)
> 1 Asics Onitsuka Tiger Mexico
> 2 X:odus ballet flats
> 1 New Balance150
> 1 Grey Diesel
> 1 (still fairly) white high-cut Converse
> 1 White Birkenstock

Most expensive pair of shoes: S$220 black Puma mid Schattenboxen (they don't look it though)
Cheapest pair of shoes: S$29 X:odus pumps
The last shoe you bought: black/white Puma Shaolin pumps (how to resist, so gongfu!)
Shoe under my work desk: an emergency pair of strappy/heeled sandals - in case some one protests about my wearing sneakers & 'gongfu' shoes to work...that hasn't happened yet, and even if it does, I think I won't care.

People I pass this obligation to:
Aiya, I really don't know too many people who write a blog, so anyone else who would oblige with taking this on (monster ru? thirty pounces and CATch-up?), please do so and...er, maybe leave a comment as a link?

Drama(grand)mama

Today is my Grandma's birthday. I think 85 year-old Tan Poh Choo is the only bona fide artist in my family. For a long time, she was able to state on official forms that her occupation was "actress", or to be exact, "opera artiste".



Sold when she was a child to one of the oldest Teochew Opera Troupes (Lao Sai Toh) in Singapore, Grandma Amps was its star in the 50s and 60s. Her popularity was attested by a series of photographs (one above), commissioned by a wealthy fan to be taken on the grounds of his house. Once, looking through her chocolate boxes of photographs, I had also spotted one of her receiving a congratulatory banner from the now Minister Mentor himself!


L-Court of the Emperor (Centre: Grandma; 2nd from left: Grandpa)
R -The Rare Tear (Right damsel: Grandma)
Click for larger pic

Since her strong features were made even more striking by the mask-like opera makeup, it was seldom that she played the role of the damsel, whether in love or distress. Instead, in a twist of the gender-bending tradition(as on the Elizabethan stage and still so for the Noh stage, Chinese opera was traditionally practised by only male actors, including those who played only female roles - the "hua-dans"), she was more often the young scholar turned general; the general, first gravely misunderstood, then re-affirmed as the true hero; or the hero revealed to be the emperor in disguise.

Grandpa Amps must have been the envy of the troupe - married to the Emperor-girl! He, on the other hand, was only a bit-part actor. A skinny, monkey-like man, he would play the role of comic/servant/foot soldier or, at best, a nameless warrior. Off stage, they had seven children, the third my mother. (She was the only child whose features seemed made for opera: slim almond eyes, a slender chin and lips that pout to form a single rose petal). My mother told me once how sly Grandma Amps would have succeeded in taking her away at the age of ten to join the opera troupe, had she not ran through the village screaming her protests, leaving the embarrassed Grandma Amps to slink away.)

And when all six children had started school and the last female child was successfully placed in a wealthy family in Penang, Grandma Amps retired from the stage. Even then her theatre career did not come to an end. Rather, it continued with her reincarnation as a medium for the Sea Goddess. I suppose this was an upgrade - from Emperor to Goddess! From her new 14th storey HDB apartment, she entertained devotees before the altar with messages from the dead for the grieving, told the future to the curious, foolish and fearful, and gave advice (perhaps from a wisdom culled from opera scripts) to the troubled.

Today, the shrunkened and widowed Mrs Tan Poh Choo still keeps a healthy sense of drama, leaving her family guessing if she is somewhat senile or merely playing the part. Months ago at the crematorium, she stood before her husband's ashes and had an animated conversation with him. When he was alive, they had spent their days playing chup tzi ghee (a type of chinese card game, the cards slightly longer than a domino) in silence, speaking only to accuse the other of cheating or refusing to pay up. At the elderly care centre, she sang opera melodies for the other old folks and staff (this was quite contrary to her earlier refusals to sing or take part in any vaguely related opera activity). Now that she was alone and with the excuse of age, she generously kissed her grandchildren (whose names she could barely remember) on their cheeks - very modern.

Ah, xi4 meng4 ren2 shen1 (anyone has any idea how to get Chinese script?), literally, theatre dream life. Though theatre was clearly Grandma Amps' territory, I am glad dreams and life lie in public domain.

Arriving Home

The lesson I constantly learn growing older is that I am not invincible. Hmm, that sentence somehow didn't come out right. But you know what I mean. When you were 18 or so, the whole world lay before you for the taking. Just off to university (whether in Clementi or the ex-colonial master's hometown), anything you wanted was possible and also highly probable. You were invincible, invulnerable, needing no exercise routine, never having a hangover or fearing no healthcheck. When you sensed injustice, you got angry - fast, furious - because, well, since you were invincible, you must also be justified and no villain could deflect your righteous blows. You get the drift...

And the day you realise that you are not invulnerable is also the day you accept that you are no different from anyone else. No one and nothing is invulnerable. I suppose anger can still be your response to injustice or suffering. But more often than not, anger is overtaken or even replaced by fear, anxiety, despair, empathy, distrust and objectivity, or at least the privileging of "complexity" ("let us consider this issue from another angle instead", "they are not entirely to be blamed", "who do you mean by they?", "finger-pointing doesn't help", etc).

Arriving home from Arts Fission's Scarlet's Room (what a disappointing performance, but more of that some other time), I opened the door to see BBC on the TV. The tone of the newscaster's voice, that background crackle when a live video telecast is on...and I knew. Of course, more bombs had gone off in London. What else could it be?

Of course, navigating defeat and invulnerability are 2 different things, though the line existing between them is as fine as baby's hair. And where that leads you (ok, some of us anyway) is surely the question of "who is in charge of the Hope Department?".

drawing coming soon...

in my city

Is it a bird? a plane? It's a butterfly!
Another nabokov-inspired picture, another unsuspecting train passenger

The romantics held music as the most sublime of the arts. Music can be mathematical in construct - and even then, it is still abstract. It escapes the confines of the word and can rise to levels of plotting and scheming higher than mere narratives can imagine. Music is not tempted by the figurative impulse in drawing, and does not feel destined to find its twin in the physical world.

You musicians out there are lucky. What more, I am sure you will never get this sort of title or theme for conferences or festivals you attend.

By that I mean "Text in the city", which is the theme of this year's Singapore Writers Festival:

Built around the theme Text In The City, the festival programme is derived from the notion of the use of text in the city and various urban spaces/centres. The city is the context against which our contemporary interactions and concerns are played out. Text In The City explores the many unconventional ways text is used in the modern city with the emergence of new technology, as well as the rise of non-traditional media. - SWF Website

It's a cheesy title. And the city has too many lovers armed with their magnifying glass in other disciplines already. Surely a Writers Festival can do better than this, I thought. The explanatory note in the website only made things worse, using all 74 words to say nothing beyond the obvious. What do they mean "various urban spaces/centres"? (as good as "etc") The next line "The city is the context...played out" is just as redundant. Is there a different setting for our "interactions" than the city in this city-state? Do we have a choice? And where have the organisers been all these years to still call the internet "new technology and non-traditional media"?

But it is too easy to criticise and gripe. If I was the organiser, with bosses breathing down and writers to please, I might come up with a similar theme. You know, the Festival speakers are probably going to be engaging and leave us with much to learn. This is, after all, a fairly unique opportunity to hear from a diversity of writers from Asia. So if you have an interest in writing (the organisers have tried to include everyone this year - blogging, graphic novels even), do drop by the events 26Aug-4Sep. After all, you taxpayers helped to finance part of the festival. You may even be up to the festival's 100 Word Epic Challenge.

Long-winded and verbose me won't ever qualify. I like too much the sinuous sentence and the ungrammatical meandering line. The more parentheses the better! Round brackets, square brackets, dashes, semi-colons... these detours, sidetrips and the occasional falling off cliffs! In my island-city-state, I like best the train ride (preferably including a walk to another platform for another train line) that precedes a bus ride, that leads to a short break in our many kopitiams where a conversation or two can be eavesdropped on, before sidetripping for a mandatory toilet & aircon break in a shopping centre, followed by a browse at the bookstore - there, an un-planned meeting with a friend awaits - and tired, another train ride in the direction of dinner or home where, upon reaching the train station, another detour tempts.

My sis will be as big as...

Her.

Maybe.

Maybe not now or tomorrow. OK, and maybe not quite this famous. But the 17 year-old (yes, my sis is that young) may be getting somewhere. Last Sunday, I had accompanied her to a recording studio on the 3rd floor of a dodgy-looking building in the Lavendar area to meet with 2 producers, one of whom had supposedly produced the latest album of this Singaporean. The future of the music industry in Singapore - buoyed by the larger East Asian market - is perhaps only one shade brighter than that of the publishing business, but I am ever hopeful. And on this hopeful note, the producers rang her today to ask for a second meeting to discuss a possible contract for her songs. I guess they must be serious because they asked that her "guardian" - er, that's me I guess - to be there again (I told them I was working for the gahmen in the arts, so perhaps they wouldn't try to pull a fast one on her).


A soon-to-be famous pair of legs!
Photo by J as part of the CD booklet and packaging we designed/made for her home-recorded album "Don't Run Away" last Christmas

Perhaps this will encourage her to be more optimistic about a career in music, instead of wondering if she should be studying law or economics at university. When I was a teacher, this was also something which irked me most - talented kids who only wanted what everyone else already knew or wanted - to study law, economics, PPE or something "marketable" at university; 17 and 18 year olds who parrot their parents and our public policies with a pragmatism that is just so unbecoming for a teenager.

Don't get me wrong. Even in my daydreaming I do not wish to quarrel with the practical and the real. But if from a young age you already demonstrate a talent and have an interest, then I say the most practical and realistic thing to do is to pursue it, and to pursue it relentlessly. Because in most cases, it will be far more impractical, if not impossible, to do so after 30 (though terz after his mid-life reincarnation may disagree).

One day, when my kid sis does become a music producer/composer/writer/singer, maybe she will remember her older sister: the one who was never quite as talented as her, but had smiled so sweetly to her first music producer.

Maybe.

Detainees and Boys in Blue

What am I doing here?- Photo by J

I've always wondered about the Police Academy at Thomson Road. I remember sitting in my parents' car (back in those days when I still sat in my parents' car), driving by the Police Academy, and seeing these tanned boys with their shaven heads and dark blue shorts running two by two. OK, so I was wondering more about the Policeboys (ooh, policeboys sound like something naughty) than the Academy itself.

But you must admit that the Police Academy does seem like a mysterious sort of place, situated beside that windy, ghostly Mount Pleasant road and the uppety Polo club. Someone once told me that ISD had previously occupied some buildings in the Police Academy where detainees were also "questioned" (my only picture of such "questioning" is from Edward Yang's excellent A Brighter Summer Day, of a man made to sit naked on a block of ice - yicks).

Just over this weekend, I finally got my chance to enter the Police Academy grounds at Thomson Road.

It was the Boys Brigade's annual funfair, and J and I had volunteered to help some boys bring a group of old folks from the Villa Francis around. I was paired with tall, dark Dinesh (14 years old only lah!) to bring Auntie H around. I was the designated driver and the Hokkien-speaker for chatty Auntie H, who is diabetic and wheelchair-bound but game enough to try every single ping-pong game there was at the fair until she got a satisfactory bag of prizes and her ice-cream (gu gu jiak jih bai, bui heiao ghin la Trans=oi girl, it really wouldn't kill me to have an ice cream once in a while la). There was also Auntie R, who would bring back to the hospice her prize of 2 mollies and 1 guppy. Uncle D (his wife had died in the same car accident that left him mute and with a permanent limp) only had the standard goodie bag containing 2 miniature tins of tiger balm and...a post-it pad.He was not too keen on walking around.

At the end of the day, though J and I did not get to tour the buildings and verify the ISD-related rumours, there were definitely many boys in blue running around...as well as detainees. Kind of detainees.

Because for all the fun that day, a good quarter of the crowd at the fair probably were there whether they liked it or not -- bus-ed and wheeled to the funfair, they had to eat the packet beehoon provided, they had to entertain us volunteers by sportingly trying out all the games, before they were bus-ed back to their homes and hospices at the appointed time. Another quarter of the crowd were there for a fun fair but did not know why they had to stand around the "creepy" old folks who either spoke funny (if they even speak at all) or didn't seem to care if ice cream was dripping all over their prosthetic leg.

If a society is best judged by how it treats its children and its aged, I wonder how we would all fare.

J and I certainly won't get very far with our irritating teasing of the former and our sporadic, guilty concern for the latter.

Prophecy

Hello hello?
Click to see larger pic

I posted Bishop's poem on the art of losing Saturday, and promptly lost my handphone on an SBS bus that very evening. How prophetic. Perhaps the lesson of poetry is best lived?

My only consolation is that it motivated me to complete this picture of a man who, on his way home from a fishing trip, was desperately trying to connect while on the train. But to no avail. I hope, however, there is no prophecy contained in this picture; so that when the phone does ring in the coming week, you and I may get the reply we are waiting for.

Never far away from you

Last night, I walked by our neighbourhood faraway tree - and it was gone!

OK, the tree is still there. But it is not the same tree anymore, not really.

In a fit of upgrading fervour, HDB has finally found out this spot of un-touched, un-upgraded ground with its independent installation, and decided to impose their own idea of a hardland. So with their foreign workers in tow, they lay the base of the tree with cement. Hence the inhabitants of this sculpture garden - mr giraffe, frogman, mini-barbie, buddha himself!, the ubiquitous fisherman, orange bambi, those life-like birds etc - have been forced to re-locate. So it seems that even the faraway tree is never far away enough from HDB (which uses cement the way a student uses correction fluid).

The only angel remaining on the original tree

You can imagine, the artist of this magic kingdom was not too pleased. Shirtless, hairless and almost toothless, but not fireless, he saw J and I approaching from a distance, shock on our faces, and he waved both hands, signaling "no more", "tak ada", "gone", "bo liao","habis", "kaput".

Tree God: Bo liao lah. (=it's gone.)
J: Huh, yi lang zo si mi? (=what are they - over zealous HDB - doing?)
TG: Yi lang "fan xing"[ok, this is too tiring, i shall stop this Hokkien transcript]. See, the cement all over.
J: Aiyoh.
TG: I think they are going to fill up the rest of the place with soil and plant grass.
J: Oh... [Still unable to get over what he is seeing]
TG: Aiya, too many cats here. They shit here, piss here, damn smelly. Cement up, they cannot come. 50 or 60 around this block ah!
J: Like this ah...so you cannot put the things at the tree anymore.
TG: They plant the grass, then cannot put.
J: [Pointing at where the figurines, toys and statues now live] Haha, yi lang "yi ming" (=they have to migrate).
TG: Ha ha, yes, no choice. Migrate.
Y: Hey, there's a new tree.
TG: Yah yah, new tree. My Ba Xian Shu (=8 Fairies Tree)
Y&J: Oh yes, ba xian shu! Yay!

The new 8 Fairies (plus 1 songstress) Tree

Well folks, perhaps because life is more like a weed than an arrangement of flowers, it persists.

how not to be kiasu

Since wheyface mentioned it, here is Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle, "One Art" for a Friday night's digestion -

ONE ART
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Egg-Hatching

As a country, I feel we have a general disdain for any work or trade that is "manual". Maybe our predominantly Chinese population has laid on us that mandarin preference for all things scholarly. Labour is reserved for the buffalos, which you'll be reincarnated as if you had been way too lazy in your past life. Add to this the colonial inhertiancei.e. the British civil service. Plus probably some "founding father's" enthusiastic reading of Plato's Republic. And voila! We have all the ingredients for the birth of the public service scholarship (go read Tym's excellent/personal take on this).

But what this disdain sometimes translates into is the lack of pride and passion in the things we do, make and create with our hands. Why create when you can just sit behind the desk and manage?

If you'll lay the egg, I'll hatch it

Of course I am generalising. So does GR, a friend and hairstylist (his place is called Frontiers). He has seen too many apprentices come and go - and fail. For their lack of patience, dedication and - for want of a better word - fastidiousness. The ambition we have reserved in the area of wealth and comfort, we have taken away from the pursuit of a craft until it is an art. GR told of how, years ago, he had learnt how to use a pair of "double-headed" scissors (a scissors with 2 pairs of blades, simaese-twins scissors) from an 18 year-old Japanese hairstylist who had invented the scissors. If not for his family here, I think GR would have moved to Shanghai by now, where he set up Shanghai's first Toni & Guy ("the italian hair mafia" - that's what GR calls it) last year. There, he thinks he will have better luck finding colleagues/staff who will venture to imagine that what they do is an art.

But we place our values on our own misunderstood ideas of education and literacy, where the word and the craft, and the knowing and the learning, do not always meet. It is no wonder that in Singapore we give our artists an education divorced from scholarship, and our scholars an education divorced from all notions of art.

This way, we will continue to breed a nation of civil servants (like me) and managers. Though I fear we will soon run out of anything meaningful to manage.

Mischief

Even if I have wings, I still need to rest #2: Riding the Jam

A school principal I was having coffee with today was telling me about school gangs. Well, they are not quite gangs until they do something "criminal", she clarified. Until then, they are just "mischievous". I asked her what exactly would constitute something criminal, as opposed to plain mischief. Waving a parang around and chopping off someone's arm off with it would be, she said as she recounted an incident involving students at a park near her school. And though it was not exactly criminal, getting caught smoking four times in a row will actually warrant a stay in boy's remand! But ripping a leg off a chair in class and throwing it at a teacher, for no apparent reason, while she is writing on the board is just crazy - even if the psychiatric test results are ambivalent.

OK, my schools days are way dull compared to all this.

Being in an all-girls school then, I suppose we had a penchant for the theatrical instead. So in place of a real fight, I remember that our class had choreographed a fight between a dyke-ish girl and someone she hated. We even had blood pellets made with a drinking straw and food dye, which the girl bit into as she was "punched". It was after the school examinations and in that brief lazy lull before the O-levels, we thought up this drama to scare an especially timid history teacher. The teacher cried (something about having been traumatised by a street fight she had once witnessed. Rrright).

Once, the entire school brought alarm clocks and synchronised them to all ring at 11am. Another time, I think it was April Fool's, all the classes in my year brought umbrellas to morning assembly and opened them simulataneously after the national anthemn and pledge. With all that energy, I say we could have orchestrated the entire National Day Parade. And just as well, girl gangs weren't all the rage way back then.

My very own Superhero

A superhero who moves more silently than the bat Bruce Wayne, Mr Perseverance comes to your aid at your most dire and helpless moments, often without you noticing that it is he who has pulled you out from that pit of despair. I think he has planted a sensor in some of our brains and hearts (whichever organ you philosophically subscribe to as "you").

I must not forget to mention that Mr Perseverance usually partners other happier superheroes like the HopeGirl (though he no longer speaks with that sad granduncle of his, Myth Sisyphus.) However, when I was introduced to Mr Perseverance this evening, he did not have any of his other superfriends with him.

It was J who introduced us. Mr Perseverance appeared to J at 9pm at the Junction8 Coffeebean, where we have our usual Sunday coffee. I was completing yet another sketch of a train passenger, and J was busy working on his own doodles. There was no conversation between us. But unlike the girlfriend, Mr Perseverance needs not the spoken word. He appeared just as soon as the sensor in J's brain was about to reach the "hopeless" spectrum. Maybe it was all the sugar and caffeine J had consumed, because no matter how stealthily Mr Perseverance moved, J immediately sensed his presence.

Here's the quick portrait of Mr Perseverance by J:

Mr Perseverance Fights My Enemies - sketch by J
click to view larger pic

As you can see from this picture, Mr Perseverance is an old man - his teeth have all fallen out, leaving his closed mouth looking like a wrinkled prune or a zip. An admirer of the Masked Rider, Mr Perseverance has a similar getup and pose; his feelers are used to detect those "help me" signals from our sensors and his victorious outstretched arm is a quiet encouragement to us. "Power, buddy, power," his arm says. His eyebrows are knit in determination. Despite his age, Mr Perseverance has been working out (eh, persevering) at the gym. He keeps his muscles, though already shrinking and tired, in their little well-defined pockets. Behind him is the "exit", but the door he is really looking for says "enter". As for his battlefield, go figure or ask J.

I hate to rely on Mr Perseverance, but when you are past 30 and not quite sure what your next move should be, there is little choice but to strike the pose, whisper "pow-were, pow-were"...and just keep going.

[p/s sorry if this post is too obscure or depressing to welcome a Monday with. But I found J's sketch strangely funny and sad at the same time to not pin it up, or empathise with.]

The Family Business

I have always wanted to run a publishing business. Nothing grand. Just a few books each year by good Singapore writers and artists. But publishing's a sure-fail business in Singapore:

1. The only publishing companies which survive do so with management books (which I guess I should read if I want to start a business), assessment books (those sinful instruments of torture) and cook books.

2. There are only, really, 2 bookstores in Singapore. Both won't deal with small publishers, only distributors.

3. There are only about 2-3 real distributors here.

4. Any book published in Singapore which sells above 1000 copies is considered a bestseller.

5. Who reads "local"? (that pernicious adjective synonymous with 2nd-rate) Except works which fall under #1.

So what is on my side? So far, there seems to be only 1 happy factor. My dad runs a printing company. Ah, so you see, I can always just join the family business!

One of the tools of the family trade

With that in mind, J and I trooped to the print factory today with our notebook and camera. My mom and my brother (the more enterprising child who has started his own marketing company in the same factory) gave me a tour. We saw big presses, small ones, aluminium printing plates, tins of ink, folding machines, cutter machines (murder movie props!), binding machines, sorting machines, glue machines...

Every other step we took, we had friendly uncles and aunties ooh-and-aah as my brother and mother introduced us. "Wah, first time here ah?" "Oh, why you never come here before meh?" "Huh? So many years then you come here!"

We came away from the visit pretty inspired. But ever skeptical, I repeated reasons #1-5 why a publishing business would fail. Then J chided me and said - "haven't you heard about going guerilla?"

Guerilla?

Hmm, I like that. If I was already going to join the mafia, why not employ guerilla strategies?

I only have to figure out now what that means.

We'll be home for August

The last time J and I took a holiday away from our island was October 2003, Tokyo. In travel-mad Singapore, that must seem like a century ago.

So having talking about a much-needed break for the past year, we finally decided on the fortnight after National Day. Of course, that would be just about the worst possible time to go to either of the two cities we've been planning to visit.

1. Taipei, Taiwan
All those late night Jacky Wu variety shows did it. Of course, scores of talented Taiwanese directors and singers (pop, indie, boyband whatever) have fuelled the Taipei daydream for the past few years: a cheaper version of Tokyo that is equally mad, good food, fantastic bookstores...and that cafe where Sandee Chen supposedly still plays at. Plus friendly people we could at least strike up conversations with.

Earlier this year, what stopped us from going were those Chinese missiles, poised to discipline that defiant Farmosa of fast talking Jacky-Wus. But what about August? August is when Taiwan is terrorised by a different power - the nagging humidity and the assault of typhoons. No wonder the Taiwanese are a toughened, chair-throwing, fist-raising lot.

2. Japan - mostly Tokyo
A more expensive option, but we had such a great time wandering all around Tokyo two years ago, we thought we should go again. But in August, Typhoon Xian Sheng would also be testing the resilience and preparedness of the Japanese. What more, that August fortnight coincided with the o-bon festival - a little like our hungry ghost festival - when Japan would be just as crazy with domestic travellers as the "golden week" in Spring.

So friends, if you have any good holiday alternatives, please let us know. Otherwise, remember to call us for drinks or a meal - we'll be home for August, and like the rest of our country(wo)men, sheltered from the storms and winds of this world.

Work to Eat

Even if I had wings, I would still need to rest #1
click for larger view .

Mondays, as always, demand an extra dose of wisdom. And since the politicians are unlikely to provide any, the kind pastor had offered this wise reminder yesterday that work disguised as careers would never satisfy. His words were "Work to eat."

Alright, taken out of context, this might seem reductive. But for me it was a liberating wisdom. And thus relieved of all work-related angst, I settled down this evening to colour this sketch of a woman at rest. To everyone no longer eligible for today's Youth Day festivities, this picture is for you.