Go going gone

2 eyes+2 hands=2 mobile phones - click for larger view

Friends, since it's that time of the year, ampulets present here a picture to cheer you on as you make your resolutions! Have a safe, joyous new year!

(I drew this lady this afternoon on my way back to the office after a trip to the dentist. That's what 2005 gave me - my first tooth cavity projected large on a TV screen.)

ring wraiths

Gimme that ring now or I'll stab you

OK, so I had griped about the hassle of having to go through a wedding here. But I admit that there are some definite up-sides to having a wedding.

One of them is having a reason to walk into all these fancy snazzy jewellers in our T-shirts and trucker caps, peer into the display cases (hands shielding our eyes of course), before we sigh and walk out of the shop in disappointment, "oh well, too bad, there's nothing we like".

I guess we knew, walking into these shops, that we would never find anything we like. But we did it anyway - a mix of curiosity, adventure and desperation.

There was Tiffany - dear me, it's so dull I wonder how Ms Golightly could finish breakfast without falling asleep! Then followed Larry, Flower, Cartier etc - places where we did not buy anything simply because it would be too crass for us to be showing our wealth. Of course. And finally, in a dark shop tucked away at the corner of the Paragon Shopping Mall, its entrance proudly displaying 3 security panels and a shop name neither of us could pronounce, we had this exchange -

Y: Hmmm... [looking at some diamonds meant actually for some pooch]
J: Hmmm... [looking at the white mod furniture in an otherwise velvety black room]

One of the salespersons exits a hidden doorway and almost walks into J. She gasps, partly from the shock of bumping into someone, and partly at finding a goateed man in T-shirt and jeans on their carpet. But composing herself quickly, she walked to the end of the room where her colleague was standing by a display case, bathed in the most precious of reflections.

Saleslady: [smiling slightly] How can I help you?
J: We're looking for rings.
SL: Oh, here we have our latest designs.
Y: Hmmm...[tiptoes to check out the rings - yes, us peasant stock are more Hobbit-like]
J: Er, not bad...but do you have other rings?
SL: Is there something in particular that's you are looking for?
J & Y: Men's rings!
SL: We have a few over here.
J: Oh. Do you have something more...elaborate?
SL: Oh no, that's all we have. Men's designs are usually more plain, like this.
J: That's the problem.

We thanked the sales assistant before sighing, "oh well, too bad, there's nothing we like."

But the other upside is not only finally finding the ring, but getting to make a new friend in the process!


a choker from argentum's spring/summer05 collection

Exasperated by our fruitless search, G recommended that we check out argentum by Singaporean designer Shing. We liked what we saw on her website so much we immediately arranged to meet her this evening at her workshop.

And we were charmed...especially J - by both the artist and her work. It was a fun 3-hour chat. She showed us her personal and commissioned work, and we got a pair of "stand-in" rings we could use for the solemnisation ceremony since it's likely she would only have the time to make us something later.

It's always good meeting folks who are not only talented, but so unassuming and open. With them, there's always something to learn, and stories to trade. And in this case, not just one, but possibly two pairs of rings to eventually come home with.

===============
About Argentum
Her new website is here. But you can see some of her earlier works at this blog, and at this site.

Rich Man Poor Man

Cover & title page - inside pages are below

J caught up with an old friend from his Secondary School over the Christmas break and was recommended by the well-meaning millionaire to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I may be wrong, but somehow I remember quite a few people seemed to have recommended this title to J too. Do we appear so financially unwise?!?.

I haven't read the book. Neither has J. I doubt we'll ever read it.

To compensate for our deliberate ignorance (and a Christmas present that I thought wouldn't arrive in time from Amazon), I quickly made a tiny accordian book over Christmas for J with its own fancy rich velvet cover and gold letters. Eh, expensive-looking. As such, it's most appropriately titled Rich Man Poor Man, a picture story very loosely adapted from that Stone Soup story you too must have read and loved when you were a kid.

With J's permission, since it's technically still his prezzie (yes, the Amazon package was faithfully delivered in the drizzle!), I'll scan the pages from the little book later tonight and put it up here.

p/s - Here it is! But I cut off some of the text in the scanning...well, it's not a complex story. Click on the image for a larger view in flickr.

Present

I told you money grows on trees!

This is J's Christmas present to me.

Grim image huh? (I like it - of course! especially in its thick gold frame._

Click on the image for a larger pic...and to read melancholic J's explanation.

it's about the 2 of you, really

lazy psychedelia

Yah, rrright.

There are 2s alright, but note the plural, the collective in that. 2 families, their desires and assumptions. 2 extended sets of relatives, colleagues and friends. And 2 objectives, namely yours and your family's. Yours (if like J and I, you are also very lazy and have a general dislike for rituals) will be to just get this whole thing over and done with, with everyone having as relaxing and enjoyable a time as possible. While your folks' concerns, despite all good intentions and well wishes, will be to tread successfully the minefield of relatives and their sensitivities. This, the Chinese call, maintaining "face".

In such a situation, lazy us will typically opt for the path of least resistance - i.e. give the folks what they want. But we stand firm on these things which are way too personal for compromises.
1. No expensive diamond rings - why does a girl/boy need diamonds?
2. No wedding costumes, white or ivory - it's not halloween, we'll come as ourselves, thank you. And ditto for guests (although if costumes are your thing, please feel free to come in whatever pleases you). Oh yes, this means there'll be no multiple costume changes throughout the day.
3. No bouquets. Sorry, if you are waiting to catch one.
4. No pre-wedding photographs with dewy-eyed poses or sepia-tinged romance. Hey, we're hobbyist-illustrators, we can do our own portraits anytime.
5. No transportation decked out as national day floats.
6. No marching down aisles or whatever. But we'll be there!

We've only just started thinking about it, and it already seems like too much work!

So friends, sorry if these t-shirts and stuff we had earlier promised for Christmas are a little late in production.

Stressed?

Reading the newsadvertisement papers

I was reading about stress in the Sunday Papers, and this bit caught my eye. Commenting on how folks who are poor suffer higher levels of stress, a doctor then qualified his remarks by saying that in a fairly affluent Singapore, poverty is not so much an absolute but a relative concept. In order words, it's those who feel themselves poor when compared to their peers who are likely to feel most stress.

How warped can it be, this materialistic, competitive, consumerist, absolutely silly island life.

J: All the handphones I've ever owned are always the most in-between models.
Y: What do you mean?
j: You know, neither the top of the range nor the cheapest.
Y: Oh, I see. So?
J: Like my camera. My laptop. My toys. Everything.
Y: Everything? Like your life? Like me?
J: .... you wouldn't understand.
Y: Yes, because I only get the best? Like you?

OK, in reality the conversation didn't go this far (artistic licence la. Heh, sweet J's not so silly). But you get the idea. Friends, don't look around and start to believe those mad mad lies!

Kids and their Books

That's what took up our weekend.


Kids made up to be adults, from Ah Zheng

J spent the Saturday making a video for a friend's childcare centre. The kids were performing for their graduation show. And I was at a junior college class reunion where there were as many kids as adults. We don't have any complaints because, I guess you may know by now, J and I are pretty fond of kids and enjoy teasing them.

Maybe we both have romantic notions of kids = innocence...or whatever misconception people with no kids obviously have. And for this reason, making children's books is one of those things I really enjoy.

Undeterred by my failed attempt at the GoldenPoint competition, I decided on Friday - the closing date - to submit this book I made many years ago for the "First Time Writers and Illustrators Initiative" organised by the Media Development Authority. I thought hard about the category it should go under...and decided on "Fiction for Young Adults/Teens (aged 12-18)". Someone younger would certainly understand the story, but I think someone older would better appreciate the ambivalences in the book towards growing up, the city, youth and experience.


my first woodblock print was for the Cover of the book

Titled The Adventures of Ah Zhang (A Poor Boy), the book's made up of 4 short stories, each illustrated in a slightly different style. Ah Zheng is a boy the narrator finds one day seated beside an old man on a park bench in a HDB estate. From the start, I guess we never quite know if Ah Zheng's age or if he really exists - or is the narrator's own imagined, romantic image of the "poor boy" (ooh, yes, I'm the narrator!). So the 4 stories are explorations of Ah Zheng's entry into the real world that the narrator has imagined him into. And also Ah Zheng's slow descent.


The last image of the 3rd story

I like the last 2 stories best (aiyoh, I am so not modest, but this is the favourite of all the books I've made). The 3rd is about the narrator's dream, in which Ah Zheng (or a boy like him) appears in school. It's a little story about education and knowledge - and, of course, dreams. The last one is about those horrible children's karaoke competitions they have on television! Ah Zheng is lured into taking part in one by a talent scout, who had thought Ah Zheng would make a good news story. But I shan't give away the ending here.


An image from the last story, which had all kinds of "fake" woodcuts derivative of either the Japanese woodblock and the modern Chinese woodblock style that was also popular with Singapore artists in the 30s-50s

If I don't get the $8000 from this "First Time Writers & Illustrators Initiative" to publish Ah Zheng, which is most likely the case, I just might join the world of vanity publishing (see Straits Times' Saturday Special on vanity publishing. Some lady actually forked out $23k to publish her own children's book about squirrels! wah, must be very rich.). And when that happens, friends, please play along with my shameless peddling of the The Adventures of Ah Zheng (A Poor Boy).

Little Dragon Girl, we meet again!

I was 18 when I first met her, and have not seen her since. It was right after I finished my A-levels and while waiting to leave for the UK, I indulged in one of my secret aspirations - to be a salesgirl.

Then, my classmate G and I found a job that paid $40 a day. We were to sell fake flowers at a temporary bazaar at Orchard Road.

Every morning for a month, we would set up stall outside Orchard Emerald mall. We had to drag at least 30 one metre tall ceramic vases from a storeroom, and displayed the stock of plastic or cloth orchids, roses, tulips, lilies, peonies and other flowers we didn't know the names of. And for the rest of the day, G and I would stand by the cash register or assist customers with choosing and packing their fleurs en plastique. But between the lunch hour and the busy evenings, we were mostly free. So G and I would read, take turns to wander into the shopping malls, and best of all, chit chat with the other folks running the makeshift stalls around ours.

There was a gentle couple who sold their own pottery works. They made me a set of 4 tea cups which went with me to the UK, 2 of which have survived the perils of the university student's room.

And then there was the Auntie, who was also referred to jokingly as the Xiao Long Nu, literally Little Dragon Girl (aka Huang Rong, a character from Louis Cha or JinYong's famous martial arts novel 射雕英雄传, Legend of the Condor Heroes. She was the pretty, talented, rebellious and mischievous daughter of Dong Xie - Evil East - who fell in love with the highly-skilled but straight-as-an-arrow hero, Guo Jing).

Barbara Yung, who played the Huang Rong character in the 1985 Hong Kong TVB dramatisation of the book. Hers was one of the most well-loved portrayal of Huang Rong. When she killed herself soon after the series was aired, I was 11 or 12 and I remember my then best friend cried upon hearing the news.

True to her nickname, she sold Dragon Beard Candy at her stall. (I'm having to do lots of cultural translation here! Basically this is a malt sugar chunk that is "pulled" - as in the process of making noodles - so many times it ends up as feathery fine strands. These strands are then used to wrap crushed peanuts, and end up looking like bite-sized silk cocoons. Yum.). Her cart was painted red with a mock jade-green Chinese tiled roof. Her "uniform, a red, chinese-collar blouse matched the cart and her lipstick. A petite woman, she wore her hair in a bun with those long sideburns plastered down the side of her face, Chinese-opera style. I think her eyebrows are tatooed ones.

She was maybe 30, or 40. Then again, she could have been much older than that. Maybe her indeterminate age came from being so closely associated with those celestial fire-breathing creatures.

G and I would chat with her during our tea break. The content of our exchanges I no longer remember. But I remember that we were always cheerful. Those happy days of youth and invincibility!

So you can imagine my joy when I spotted her at the new Food Republic (the new 50s-themed foodcourt at Wisma Atria)! She laughed because I flattered her by saying how she has not changed (technically not flattery, since it is true). In fact, she was wearing the same red chinese-coloured blouse, the same red lipstick, and fluffy red rubber-band thing that held her hair up.


Lovely spymaster J stood at a distance and snapped a rapid series of photographs of our brief exchange that evening. J made the photographs into a short clip for your viewing pleasure! Click here if you can't view it in this window.

You can't see her clearly in the video - but oh memory, it is best you are hazy! I'm finishing up a drawing of her from what i do remember and will maybe post that later too.

can I transfer my home to you?

(warning: a long post...but if you persevere, there's a video at the end!)

The chinese word for "home" is 家 (jia1), and the chinese word for "house" is 屋 (wu1). They are clearly different, and folks who confuse the one with the other are heading for trouble! For example, while you may end up trading houses, I should hope you are not into trading homes.



Someone should point out this difference to HDB(Housing Development Board, the agency that develops public housing for over 80% of Singaporeans). On their website, its customers are classified as "home-owners" and "home-seekers".

This "mistake" is intentional.

It's no secret that Singapore's public housing policy is closely tied with our social policy. So for instance, folks who are single and under 35 are not eligible to purchase a HDB flat...lest you get complacent in the search for a mate. Of course, those who are single and over 35 are probably hopelessly unattractive any therefore deserve the consolation of a 100sqm house. For those who do find a mate but somehow come to the difficult and painful decision that a divorce is inevitable, please do so only after 5 years of marriage, otherwise the HDB will come knocking on your door to demand a rapid re-sale of your flat! If you can't keep a home, you certainly don't deserve a house. (*ampulets hope no one ever needs to go through a divorce, but given this fallen world, it happens)


view from J's bedroom window at night - photo by J

The government's reasoning, I guess, is that if all citizens own a piece of property on this island, they would be feel a greater sense of both security and belonging, hence subscribemore readily to national imperatives. Plus, it is important to get citizens to mate and reproduce. So it is beneficial for "the family" to be seen as the social equivalent of a physical property or house, since the latter is so desirable. And once citizens get into house-ownership, they will no doubt have to work the rest of their lives for the mortgage and the many furniture shoppng trips at Ikea.

But contrary to HDB's intent, mixing up "house-ownership" with "home-ownership" cheapens the idea of "home" instead. Because ultimately, a socio-political strategy is not the same as building a home. Without getting too metaphorical, I guess a majority of homes are started by 2 people who are committed to it - over time, they may welcome others to enjoy what they have built, and use it to build up other families, friends, and even strangers who miss and need whatever a home provides. Obviously, building a home is independent and a vastly different process from building and owning a house. The latter is a commodity, and I sure hope the former is not.

All this angst about HDB is because J and I have been trying to navigate the HDB bureacracy for a "home-ownership transfer". This is since J is under 35 and his co-owner had wanted out some 4 years ago, and since J and I plan to live in that flat when we do get married next year (?). So though J and I will eventually meet HDB's home=house equation, our atypical situation means that the application process is a tedious one.

But ok, end of gripe. And as promised...the video!

Remember this post about the flyers/junk mail left by house agents or folks wanting to buy a house that I collected from J's mailbox? I knew then that I would eventually find a use for this happy collection, and sure enough -

Ampulets give you here "My Home" or 买家. It's a 1min video we made one afternoon in Toa Payoh during our August break. The voiceover, for those who don't understand Mandarin, is the text from a few of the flyers I've collected. Hope you'll enjoy it!



To view it here, click on the play/pause button at the bottom left of the screen. If it does not work, click here to view it on www.youtube.com

learning to swim from Deng Xiao Ping

cover art for a non-existent book, layout is by J.

I saw some footage of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping swimming in the sea on tv some nights ago.

It seemed that swimming in the sea was among Deng's many interests, which included watching the sports channel and playing billiards. The footage I saw was of Deng's last dip in 1992. At the age of 88, his doctors had disallowed Deng from swimming in the cold waters of Beihaide. But perhaps knowing that it would be his last, he kept up his questions such that in the end the doctors relented. They made him a special safety vest for this last swim.

In a country (Singapore, that is) on an endless push for progress and "relevance", so obsessed with "Change is the Only Constant" that it becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy, growing old can be pretty depressing.


Filial piety. "Mommy mommy, I want milk!" " You silly boy, everyone's starving, let grandma drink first!" Photo by J, tiled pic on the wall of a house at the backstreet of Little India

Going by the folk tales on aging that this guy has collated on his website, all cultures throughout history have their stories to warn against mistreating or disregarding the old. I remember this Japanese folk tale I read when I was very young, about some chap who had to piggyback his grandma up the mountain and to leave her there, because it was the practice in his village to abandon their old folks. But he couldn't bear it in the end and hid his grandma at home. I can't quite remember what happened, but grandma saved the village in the end and this practice was abolished.

All I know is that if I get to live till 88, like Deng, I would like to still be able to take a swim.
_______
p/s Jing is planning a photography project on old folks in Singapore, and is calling for ideas and collaboration. If you are a writer, artist or have superb planning/organisation skills, get in touch with him.

writing from the other side

It is a pity how two of our best writers (writing in English) are living overseas. There is novelist Goh Poh Seng and my favourite Singapore poet Arthur Yap.

A few days ago, I was forwarded this article that Mr Devan Nair (Singapore's third president) wrote in 1999 - "A Requiem for an Unbending Singaporean". It was about the "political death" of JBJ and possibly the Workers Party, though no doubt, Nair had a healthy sense of irony about his own political "requiem" then. A few days ago was also when Mr Nair died in Canada, where he has lived since he stepped down from the presidency. So the title of his article seems even more fitting now.

____________
P/S: Here are previous posts about Singapore's other past president and a wannabe president!

more or less

same train, different page - click for larger view

On the train home this evening, I stood between a man with a unicycle, and a man in a wheelchair. Not once did they make any eye contact. In fact, they stood with their backs to each other throughout the whole journey.

Wheelchair-Man: [clearing his throat loudly] Interesting ah, your bicycle.
Unicycle-Man: Oh, yah. It's a unicycle. [looks away]
WM: Must be hard to balance.
UM: Not too bad. Must practise. After a while, it's quite easy.
WM: Can go fast?
UM: OK, quite fast. Still slower than a bicycle. Haha, one wheel less so also slower than you!
WM: Ha.

There is a long silence. The train stops. The Unicycle Man steps aside for a lady to get to the door, steps back, takes off his cap and runs his hand across his head of short grey hair before putting on his cap again. He adjusts the strap of his backpack - a gigantic bright blue mail bag - takes out a comic, its pages browned with age.

The Wheelchair Man closes his eyes and keeps one hand hooked around the pole in the train cabin. The back of his neck is all liver-spotted. Like the Unicycle Man, he is tanned. They both wear waist pouches and are in their 50s. But those are about the only similarities between them. And of course, there are the wheels.

WM: It must be very hard to cycle that thing. What's the most difficult part?
UM: [takes his cap off, smooths his hair, and puts it back on ] Er, no lah, really, it's easy, quite easy...Well, I guess the only part I think that is difficult is getting on up the unicycle.
WM: Ah, yes yes, I see...getting on that thing must be very difficult.

Of course this conversation did not take place...except in my 5minute daydream as the North-South train wormed its way to Toa Payoh on a slow Tuesday evening, wondering what will be the chance of getting on a train with a man with a unicycle and a man in a wheelchair again!

Little India Rojak

go tell the world! - photo take in Little India by J, remixed by Y

Unlike J, I am not terribly fond of Rojak - a dish of deep-fried dough and dried tofu, boiled bean sprouts and pieces of cucumber, pineapple, turnip and green mango, mixed together with a gluey black prawn paste and topped with chopped peanuts.

But it was hard to refuse L&G and Tym's invite to this event, named after the dish. For one thing, it was held at a place along Starlight Road, somewhere in Little India...and how bad can someplace called Starlight Road be?. Of course, the event also promised to feature presentations by 10 artists, illustrators, designers and architects. Since J and I are always curious about seeing the stuff others do, we trooped down to Little India for the 3rd time this past week.

True to its name, the range of work spanned from the political to the personal; the prosaic to the elusive; the naive to the sophisticated. So what went into this rojak? There was Zixi's absolutely charming illustrated book, G's ingenious jewelery, the clever design of some public stands for the Merlion Park and several short films etc.

But the extremes are always the most memorable. For me, on one end of the works was Alfian Sa'at and Nicholas Li's performance piece on political videos - smart, knowing, incisive but, perhaps, unforgiving in its tone and spirit. This, I suppose, is because its subject - the use and intent of the Political Films Act - is equally unforgiving to those it censors and censures. His was a work the crowd clearly sympathised(?) with. On the other end, I found L's "Memory Units" - personal, liberating in both its form and spirit, but elliptical. I think it lost some of the crowd in its Alice-in-Wonderland pursuit [I've tried to describe the work in the postscript below! A recipe for making memory units.].


a staring match with tradition - photo taken in Little India by J, remixed by Y

I am thinking of the preface to a collection of Eileen Chang/Zhang Ailing's San Wen (short essays, 白or literally "scattered prose"), in which the editor described the early responses to this Chinese literary form. Giants like Lu Xun made the San Wen a powerful tool for societal and political change. And Lu Xun was also critical of writers who used the San Wen as a form of personal reflection and leisurely consumption. But the SanWen today is a highly diverse form - and no one prescription suffices, not even one by Lu Xun.

And in some ways, seeing all 10 10-minute presentations at Rojak is like reading 10 San wen by 10 different writers. So I thought to borrow the conclusion of that preface:

艺术是独立的,散文是个性的
(trans: art is always independent, the San Wen/Short essay is always unique/individual.)

The next Rojak is in March 2006. To find out how to take part in it, click here

____________
postscript
L's "Memory Units" to me is an experiment in uncovering memory and making what is intangible, ineffable into something material, discrete, literal and with form. And then freeing that physical form back into abstraction. (L, sorry if what I describe is far from what you intend!)
(1) Choose an object that means something special to you. For L, it was a music box.
(2) Each time you encounter the object (e.g. each time L opened the music box...), draw immediately what you are reminded of on a large piece of paper. Repeat this step until the entire sheet of paper is filled up.
(3) Imagine the cross section of each object you have drawn. Construct that cross-section in miniature. Insert in each cross-section the drawing of the object itself. Wrap each construct in paper and put it in a bag. Voila! Quite literally, you have memory you can uncover and carry with you.
(4) When you are happy with this whole project, take out each cross-section construct from the bag, and its paper wrapping.
(5) Piece all of them together to form one large object.
(6) Using an overhead-projector, cast the shadow of this object on the wall.
(7) Make drawings or take photographs of the shadow.
(8) Create a montage from these photographs or drawings

You know...this process can go on and on forever. But after this methodical and hectic madness, it left me conscious of something that stays incredibly still - the moment before memory gets locked into being an image in Step 1. Amidst all the busy-ness to capture, transform, understand, play and investigate memory, that was the one thing that mattered.