Sunday, April 30, 2006

elections fever

Poster Boys at Potong Pasir
potong pasir poster boys watching us over breakfast - image by J

Over dinner, Pa Y told us that his factory was broken in last friday. But all the burglar took were a stack of old and worthless printing plates... among them were 2 plates used to print some material for Singapore Democratic Alliance's Chiam See Tong.

[This conversation took place in mandarin]
Pa Y: It's not so simple.
Y: Huh? What's so not simple about it?
Pa Y: Why? Why did this person break in to take all these old plates? At most they can be recycled for a hundred dollars. So I ask you why? Why when they are so many more precious things in the factory?
Bro Y: It was too dark. The burglars didn't dare switch on the lights lah. So they just took what they saw immediately.
Pa Y: No, I tell you, don't be naive! I tell you, there's something fishy! [responding to the laughter from around the table] Hey, don't laugh, I was a civil servant once when I was very young.I tell you, last time (ed: by this, he means the late 60s, early 70s) during elections I saw all kinds of things happen... and you know, there's the Printing Press Act back then...
Y: But what could 2 missing plates do to harm anyone? It's so inconsequential, please. [trying to laugh, eat and talk]
Pa Y: But I ask you, the printing plates are so heavy, the burglars will need a van - this is no ordinary burglar. And why didn't they use the trolley in the factory or take it with them? There's something fishy, I tell you.
J: Yes, father, hmmm I agree with you. In fact, you are right to notice that they didn't take the trolley to move the plates. I think, in fact, that they used a crane instead! This must be why. They drove a crane to the factory and used it to lift all the printing plates away!


Ah, I take it that this is what happens when a person burns with fever - he may get delirious. Pa Y to insinuate such conspiracy, and J for mocking the father-in-law.

workers party

housework - colour
I finished painting this picture this afternoon when I could have cleaned the week-old floor. Ah, the dirt can stay.

I wish all workers, labourers, salaried slaves Happy May Day!

Thursday, April 27, 2006

housework

This picture is still work in progress, but I wanted to post it here on Nomination Day.

This post is dedicated to Mr Chiam S. T.

housework

Mrs C did not think at the age of 45, she would still need to be doing homework, but she is. Homework, housework - same thing - both give her the same headache she had from as young as 9 solving "problem sums". The only difference was that homework was what she did when she did not own the house she lived in, and housework what she did when she has to pay to keep the roof over her head. Of course, Mrs C has been reminded by her husband that they do not actually own their HDB flat since, technically, all HDB flats are on a 99-year lease from the state. Mr C's rule of thumb is that whatever his grandchildren will not inherit is not really his to own. "Not my house. Not my motorcycle. Not my job." He would occasionally lament. "Only my gene that will them diabetes is mine."

It is very likely that Mr C would be repeating these words this evening. Mrs C peeped at the newspaper the man beside her was reading - "PAP not returned to power. With only 7 walkovers, the PAP is facing a challenge in..." Yes, for the next two weeks, Mrs C has no doubts now her husband would be giving imaginary election speeches before the television.

"You talk so much you go and join the opposition lah." Mrs C had ventured to challenge the short but solidly-built man once.

"You siao ah! Then we will surely lose this house, not in future, but now!"

"It's not ours anyway, you always say, so what's the big deal? Now or 99 years later?"

Mrs C cannot remember what was the reply to that, but it was a long and hard to follow treatise about the defamation charges, undeclared income, mortgage, interest payments, something about upgrading and IKEA furniture.

But tonight, Mrs C had her own plans than sit around and listen to the man fight his imaginary campaign. She would need to mop the floor, put the laundry into the washing machine, take the fan apart and see why it is making that rattling noise, and maybe check on their son's revision schedule - the only son, Mini-C - whose mid-year examinations start right after May Day. Ah, May Day. The union had sent her an invitation for a pre-May Day dinner tonight. As with previous years, she did not attend. What was the union for anyway? Free but cheap dinners and discounts at the cooperative supermarket - cheaper if she bought the things from the market nearby, at least the stallkeepers there will tell her if something isn't fresh and let her bargain. She cannot remember why she had joined the union...oh, maybe it was a colleague who had asked her many years ago, saying something about the danger of losing her job when she hit 40. Well, she is 45 this year and she's still got her job. It's not anything that excites her, but it will do. It pays the utilities bill, it pays for her slimming pills (it's just an experiment, just to try and see if the advertisements work, she is that conscious about her looks), it pays for the flat, still.

So we're back to the flat, Mrs C thought.

And a good thing hers was at the next stop. Maybe there were too many people and it was too stuffy in the 6pm train, but Mrs C could already feel a headache coming.

Monday, April 24, 2006

once upon a time...

TOHA/J's annual company dinner event on Saturday was supposed to be themed "Fairy Tale" - but it was telling how Disneyfied we have been that even though many of the characters his colleagues were dressed as were first born into stories and books outside of that entertainment conglomerate, the costumes were decidedly modelled on how the characters have appeared in their Disney reincarnations. America's wealth, our visual culture's poverty.

Surprising even himself, J decided to attend and even donned his new black/white striped t-shirt in an attempt to create a costume.

Y: Er, maybe I am getting old, but which fairy tale features a convict???
J: I'm not a convict! I'm a pirate!
Y: Hmmm. [Still unconvinced that pirates are fairy-tale material]
J: I just need an eye patch.
Y: Where can you find one now?
J: The pharmacy.
Y: They only sell real eye patches, the white hospital ones. You'll look like a very inept pirate whose eye was taken out by your pet parrot instead of at some fierce and dirty fight.
J: Oh.
Y: I know, I'll make you an eye patch! [rummages the drawers for some black fabric, and failing to find any T-shirt to sacrifice... until] Hey, there's this black G-string my sister bought me. I've never worn it and won't ever...so you don't mind yah? wearing an eye patch made from a G-string?
J: Er...
Y: You have no choice anyway.

After 30 minutes of industrious sewing...

pirate
dangerous reptile being slaughtered by an even more dangerous one-eyed pirate

But in the end, despite the amazing transformation of the G-string into an eye patch and convincing demonstrations of how a pirate should behave, J decided he was a character in his own meta-fairy tale instead, with a paintbrush behind his ear. "I will tell them I am an illustrator, a Disney animator."

artist

Ah, Walt wins again and we all live happily ever after.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

frog soup for the working(wo)man's soul

wellness frog

ampulets have been working hard the past couple of nights to present you this picture - something light to end the week with!

Ah, of course, as you can tell, the work was done in the living room with our television in the background tuned to this strangely addictive Korean drama series.

One day, having just watched the theatrics stirred in the imperial kitchen just because the emperor has decided to go for a hunt, J remarked how like this fictional Korean imperial kitchen our workplaces - public or corporate - are on our island.

In our workplaces we scurry to please our bosses (that is, both clients or superiors) and fuss over each demand, whether frivolous or significant. In our homes, parents fuss over the tiniest detail of their precious children's lives. In our relationships, we scrutinise each gesture and word, prod at it with the predictions of stars and birthtimes. If we walk the countryside, it is to scour for herbs and other treasures to enrich the meal. If we raid the libraries, it is for secret recipes that will earn us the praise of the emperor. In the imperial kitchens there are unspoken rules, scheming old maids and endless protocol laid out by petty court servants and eunuchs. So, like the kitchen maids, we can only take comfort by pinching at the luxurious meals served, snatching at whatever indulgence we can find - each gastronomic adventure more delightful than the previous.

How nice it is to close one's eyes and in the unconscious lose sight of lines and form - and depart from appetite and taste. Or that final rest, a different kingdom.

But this being a Friday night after a 12hr workday and I, a mere clumsy and reckless kitchen maid (not to be trusted with clay jars of hundred-year-old sauces or secret recipes), has spent it indulging in 2 mudpies with J, a junior court jester and my partner in love and servitude!

Monday, April 17, 2006

the tiger and the trojan horse

Watching the television "conversation" between the Minister Mentor and a group of 20somethings (mostly journalists), I cannot help but pity the young people in that recording studio. All their years added together cannot match his. As they sought to ask what they had imagined were difficult, awkward questions about his arrogance, his political longevity, the PAP's obliteration of the opposition, did they seriously think that the MM would be trapped by their questions, that he would stumble in his answer, unwittingly reveal a weakness? Or did they imagine that they would be depicted and viewed as anything else but arrogant, disrespectful youths?

If they did, they would do well to read Dennis Bloodworth's The Tiger and the Trojan Horse. The late correspondent from The Observer (Bloodworth died last June) writes a prose as serpentine and faceted as the political drama he observes and records of Singapore's modern history. At times immediate, at times the distance feeds an appropriate irony.

The tiger in the title refers to the Communist United Front in that famous line from the now MM - "We were riding a tiger and we knew it." And the trojan horse refers to the PAP which, of course, denies such strategy - "...Our party does not intend to be the Trojan Horse of the Malayan Communist Party."

Ah, such poetry.

If the characters in the drama had indeed spoken the words Bloodworth accorded to them, then these were men and women who certainly knew their poetry - quite literally.
It was both a bond and a breaking point between coloniser and colonised. When Corridon came to arrest Devan Nair for the second time and was greeted with 'You f..king mercenary!' by the future President, the gap between cop and pre-communist closed as he retored, 'Mercenary? Yes, but don't forget they "saved the sum of things for pay".' For Nair knew his Housman too. One Chinese detainee asked Corridon for the works of W.H. Auden, adding contemptuosly, 'but you'll never have heard of him.' The ever-surprising Corridon promptly recited a few lines to put him in his place. 'You bloodly imperialist,' shouted the anti-colonial subversive, tears starting in his etes. 'How dare you quote from my favourite poem!'(p53)
And just in the page before, the now MM had successfully won an acquittal as legal adviser to the Socialist Club accused of sedition for their anti-colonial article that labelled Malaya a police state in 1954 -
An accompanying photograph shows the acquitted students and Lee Kuan Yew drinking a toast to Pritt and 'freedome of speech'. None saw the irony of celebrating a victory that had been won just because law and liberty had been upheld in a colonial court. For the values of the colonialists were the natural moral environment of these sworn enemies of colonialism - the measure, as Goh Keng Swee might have said, of what was decent.(p52)
So history, too, deals with a deft hand and a crooked smile - those who have dethroned the powerful succeed by the latter's own administration and machinery; so when those who were once the rebels themselves have assumed the throne, they will inherit the same means of exacting control as their retreating oppressors. There will always be tigers to be feared or tamed, and trojan horses to construct. But meanwhile, there are zoo-keepers.

Bloodworth also highlights to his readers the youthfulness of these anti-colonial and/or pro-communist lawyers, doctors, journalists, civil servants and unionists. They were 24, 28, 32... not any older or younger than the participants on last weekend's televised "conversation". But those young persons seemed to be constituted differently - or as the circumstances demanded. So it is clear that what we have today is not a time for political change, when a striped creature and a machine horse might emerge, much less to cross paths. The social democrats (though I think this is no longer the ideological banner under which the ruling party governs?...of course, ideology is dead) have done well to keep their span wide in the right, but ensuring that the social goods are always delivered, grounded in pragmatism and communitarianism. The violence, disorder, injustice and ineptitude of, variously, the Japanese occupiers, communist guerillas and British colonisers are absent. Of course, there are other forms of violence and disorder today - but that is not for this narrative.

As the MM reminded his fellow "conversationalists" on last weekend's television programme - the grand narrative has already been written, their job is only to try to understand it and its reasons for being. Me? I much prefer the enjoyable read Bloodworth produced - written in a style as one would fiction.

Friday, April 14, 2006

i gallop, do you?

iGallop too. Do you?
image by J

J and I didn't think anyone would believe any of its claims, and buy one of these.

Of course, my father proved us wrong.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

i love my city!

U & I - we miss you
what did you just say? - image of toys in our kitchen by J

During the Q&A session at a talk at the art museum this evening, I volunteered this public declaration: "I love this city!"

And immediately regretted it.

It was a talk by Charles Landry on city planning and the role museums play in shaping the social, cultural, intellectual and physical landscape of a city. During the Q&A session, there were 2 comments made about the lack of education or rather, an educational system that is rigid/counter-creative etc and the absence of art education "at the most elementary level". The second comment was made in the context of or suggestion that this city is not humane, lovable, livable.

At that point, something in my head went "that's not true"...and after a quick chat with a colleague on my left, this came from my lips - "I love this city. This city is lovable because..."

I regret it because I knew that my protest was a mere reaction to the fact that both comments were made by caucasians, probably foreigners working or teaching in Singapore. Ah, it's that postcolonial defensiveness again. But it irritates me. It irritates me even if the condescension is only slight. It irritates me when judgements on this city - my city - are made possibly by folks (my assumption) who do not love it and frankly have no reason to - because they have not spent years walking along its streets, watching it change (for better or worse) from the window of a car or the public bus, wandering into its shops and kopitiams and damnit, its "soul-less" shopping malls, spending evenings and nights in pubs or sitting by the pavement, riding its trains, doing nothing, running errands, finding something or someone special, recognising faces, discovering a new graffiti, discovering a favourite graffiti removed - an old building ridiculed or "re-newed". It is not lovable because it is not the city you grew up in, not your city.

So herein my regret - this reactive prejudice against a speaker who is not Asian (in contrast, I had no issue with Taiwanese Li Ao's remarks that Singaporeans are "stupid"), and not the substance of what she said. And it is this sort of bigotry that clouded my judgement and my declaration of love. Of course I also regretted making such an impassioned defense at a forum of academics/architects/artists who demand a more intelligent discussion.

Top of the World...
Image by J - click for a larger view and check out the 2 chaps having an evening chat on the Esplanade rooftop!

A city is only as good as its people make of it. In spite of its buildings, its urban planning - even if these influence behaviour and culture. This is what makes a city "organic" in its growth - not the urban sprawl and the lack of planning, not the proliferation of "independent" projects versus "institutional" projects (arguably, the independent Substation founded by the late Kuo Pao Kun is every bit an institution as the government-sponsored Esplanade). It is people and the relationships we make (with others, with ideas, with the landscape, with our own memories) that shape this city.

OK, this has been a rambling confession. But I learnt my lesson today. This being my own virtual space, it is perhaps more appropriate and safe that I reserve future declarations of love for here instead...so let me say it again - I love my city!

Sunday, April 9, 2006

old 7 times over

more please

Old is when:
(1) you look at your brother's new born kid and imagine instead an 18 year-old teenager looking back at you.
(2) your parent(s) starts needing diapers
(3) your peer starts telling you about his retirement plans in australia ("ah, BBQ on a weekday night, and when you are free, go fishing.")
(4) someone from your schooldays and your other peers are announced in the papers as the new PAP candidates
(5) if just one more problem, one more demand on your time/money/attention/love crops up, you feel you have exhausted your resources
(6) you think of a "must-do-once-in-your-lifetime" list and wonder where did the past 4 months of the year go
(7) you feel more tired on a Sunday night than before the weekend started.

When I grow old I wanna be an old womanWhen I grow old I wanna be an old woman
An old-old-old-old-old-old-old-woman
When I was young - that is, teenager young - this was one of my favourite Michelle Shocked songs. I guess I liked how the inevitability of aging is made into a personal choice, somewhere between a reality and a dream. But that was when I was young. ;P

chinese riddles

Predestined
image by J, enthusiastically taken with a new camera

While cleaning the house this weekend, J and I found a brown packet that looked suspiciously like those envelopes they used in swordfighting TV serials to contain instructions on further adventures, coups or secret family histories ("Miss XXX, you cannot marry her, because she is actually your sister!"). But I digress. The truth about its content is... "It's my baby hair!" J exclaimed.

In the surprisingly well-preserved 33 year-old envelope we found a pink sheet with chinese calligraphy and instructions for living that read more like riddles. It also contained his 八字, the 8 "facts" of his birth- the hour, time of day, day, year and lunar cycle...I think - the 8 "determinants" of his life - 8 strings that are woven into his fate. It was just as well the words were phrased as riddles we didn't understand; since it was not answers we were looking for.

What we wanted was in another smaller gold packet it contained.

In this packet was a red piece of paper folded into a small square. We unfolded the red paper, and there, all 33 years and 6 months old worth of it - J's baby hair.

So folks, there was no genie released, no mystery revealed, no grand narrative to trace. I am afraid our only response, late Saturday morning with an afternoon of cleaning ahead of us, was this - "ah, so cute..."

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

a quiet life

[warning: very long post!]

We have finally found the artist on J's side of the family! And more...

As advocated by a senior politician to "take seriously the electoral process" (no jokes allowed please! Confucius says we cannot display the slightest sense of humour disrespect to political powers, or we will incur the wrath of the heavens!), Pa J sat us by the dining table last week and continued his tales of Singapore's more serious political past.

Last week's special was Uncle DS, Pa J's youngest brother.

family50s
Uncle DS is the guy with the glasses. Pa J is the guy with the biggest hair.

When Pa J got off the boat from China, he was already too old to get back to school. There were also, of course, more pressing needs of the stomach. So being the youngest, Uncle DS was the one in the family who stood the highest chance of getting a decent education. And in the traditional sense of the scholar, a renaissance man, Uncle DS was also an artist. When he was a student in the 50s at Chung Cheng High School - hotbed of student left-wing activism, he was also a member of the Zhong Zheng Art Society, taking part time classes at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in western and modern art.

In a general mood of participatory politics throughout the 50s and into the 60s, both Pa J and Uncle DS were looking for avenues to contribute to their community. Pa J joined the activities of PAP and had urged Uncle DS to do the same.

With the slightest of sighs, Pa J said, "if only he had listened to me."

That same week Pa J extended the invitation to Uncle DS to be part of the lightning rod party, but Uncle DS, with that Zhong Zheng blood running in him, had already joined his friends of the red star at Barisan Sosialis (社会主义阵线) instead.

I am not sure what was the exact context. Perhaps it was when there was clamp-down on the activities of the Barsan Sosialis and a query into their leftist leanings during Operation Coldstore. But according to Pa J, Uncle DS was arrested and detained for his associations to the Barisan Sosialis.

Pa J described to us his brief visit to see Uncle DS in that underground, windowless detention centre (in our Hollywood-washed minds, J and I imagined V's prison setting). During his detention, Uncle DS, according to Pa J, completed a whole stack of drawings. However, after Uncle DS was released, he stopped drawing and painting for a long time and lived, generally, a quiet life. He got a job, a wife and that was that. It was a life so quiet he hardly talked.

Last night, Uncle DS was at Pa & Ma J's home for a visit.

Uncle DS is a small, dark squirrel-like man with bright eyes, bushy eyebrows instead of a tail. In an old photograph that Ma J had brought with her to China to be touched-up/re-coloured, the young Uncle DS wore large black-rimmed glasses and looked every bit the serious, malnourished Chinese-school student.

Today he wears your regular gold-rimmed frames, a striped Chinatown polo tee tucked into grey tailored trousers that are held up by a cheap gold-buckled belt, and a pair of sports shoes from Bata. He carries with him a faded canvas sports bag, the kind travel agencies give out for free. He is your nondescript uncle. The man who sits beside you, unsmiliingly, on the bus. Or the man who wolfs down a bowl of meepok, alone, beside you at the hawker centre. Or the uncle sitting by a bench outside a Chinatown shopping complex, a copy of Xin Min Wan Bao sticking out of his bag, watching as a skimpily-dressed woman of the night walks by.

caught up in lines

With an introduction from Pa J last night ("She also draws, draws comics" - yes, how I wish I could or did, Pa J!), Uncle DS and I slowly started our chat.

Just me and him. We didn't talk about anything serious, no, we talked about art. Simple, painfully mundane things like how...

1) the grasp of timing is different for oil painting versus Chinese ink painting
2) ink paintings with more colours sell better
3) abstraction is not a western concept
4) he taught himself chinese ink painting some years ago, and he seldom paints now though maybe, just maybe, he should find himself a chinese art master to learn from
5) he still keeps in touch with this Zhong Zheng art society friends
6) it would be nice to have a room or just a small space where all the necessary art materials are laid out, so that anytime you do want to paint, action catches up quickly with inspiration
7) I use a computer now and that is also acceptable as a medium
8) it is so good and enjoyable, to be able to draw and paint

But the conversation ended abruptly. Brother J interrupted with a joke about how he is the real master of paints (he being in the car paint business) and J followed up by asking Uncle DS to demonstrate his art next week. Then Uncle DS stood up, smiled and apologised that he had to be going.

On our way home in the cab, J said that perhaps Uncle DS was suddenly inspired and was rushing home "to paint gold fishes and peonies". Never before has Uncle DS talk so much and in so animated a fashion, perhaps next week he would bring his brushes and ink and paint us all something. Perhaps. After all, it is so good and enjoyable, to be able to draw and paint - whether in our darkest or quietest of moments.

Monday, April 3, 2006

good day

Yesterday J/TOHA received a phone call he's been hoping for. I was reminded not to say too much for fear that I jinx tomorrow's test. So instead, to mark a good day, I dug out an image of a happy and somewhat slimmer (?) J, taken a couple of years ago at the Art Museum.

SAMchair-james
background from yet another of my unfinished illustration projects "Turtle Time" - this composite image is by J

Saturday, April 1, 2006

Better dead than...

chuasoobin
amps attempt a sketch of Soo Bin...ehem, so did renowned artists Chen Wen Hsi and Ye Qian Yu, albeit without photoshop. heh.

...be alive without art - or more accurately "要艺术不要命".

Those were the words Teo Han Wue (executive director of private museum Art Retreat) used to describe Chua Soo Bin who, in the 80s, spent several years, money and over 200 rolls of film photographing 14 renowned Chinese ink masters, despite the intervention of a major illness.

I admit both J and I had little knowledge of thse 14 artists, but Soo Bin has always intrigued us. So we made time this afternoon to be at the Singapore Art Museum where there was a forum and exhibition on Soo Bin's portraits of the renowned Chinese artists, and the launch of the 2nd edition of his book.

But first, who is this Chua Soo Bin? And why did he so intrigue us both?

I know him to be the owner of Soobin Art Gallery, a gallery that has consistently showcased leading contemporary art from China. But according to L&G, Soo Bin has always been a strong supporter of young Singapore artists as well - offering them his warehouse space for storage, and more often than not, collecting their works. More recently, we learnt that Soo Bin is actually an accomplished photographer himself. In 1988, he received the Cultural Medallion for his contrbutions to photography. And last, but certainly not least, superficial amps are most impressed by how cool the elderly Soo Bin looks (on the cover of his catalogue, he wears a really amazing pair of spectacles) - stylish in an understted, even somewhat untidy fashion.

I love your shirt...
fan girl Y getting an autograph (the words are in the images below)

After the talk, I think our admiration for the man was deepened. He did not spout any grand theories about art, nor did he exclaim the difficulty of the shoot, the complexity of techniques employed. He merely described each artist and his approach in photographing them - not as they painted, but in the context of their loves, idiosyncracies and daily lives. He impressed us with his modesty, his quiet dedication. He impressed me most with his understanding of what was valuable about art itself - not the art, but the life lived. His portraits of these ink masters showed that these were indeed masters, not only because their art was accomplished, but because that accomplishment grew out from the way they conducted their lives - their conversations and relationships, their indulgences and discipline.

His Legends... To my little sister...
composite images of signing, autographed book, forum and Soo Bin by J

The title of the book and exhibition <留真> is therefore apt (the literal translation of "留真" would be something like "the real/honest truth that is left behind"). To Soo Bin's credit, these portraits of the artists, all now dead, are indeed instances of a certain truth or even innocence they have left behind. There is a portrait of an utterly disciplined Chen Wen Hsi before a small fire, where each day he would burn up paintings he was not satisfied with. There is a moving portrait of fiery, passionate Ye Qian Yu (known for his love of dance and his paintings of traditional dancers), composing his last calligraphic work on his decision to 封笔 (literally to "seal the brush/pen", i.e. stop painting). In this portrait, his gaze is distant and still.

Perhaps Mr Teo was not quite accurate after all in pronouncing Soo Bin to be "要艺术不要命". These portraits show instead how inextricably the two are bound - the man/his life and his art.

Thus inspired, we went next to the Utterly Art gallery in Chinatown to see Wong Shih Yaw's latest and 5th show Out of the Grey. Wong is a "veteran" from Tang Da Wu's Artists' Village, and though it was only in the last 2 years that we've noticed his works, we've come to enjoy his classic illustrative style, and the refreshingly unfashionable and unapologetic moral and religious direction of his later works (ah, so tempted were we to purchase a painting today, having missed the show last year!). And there, we again saw the works of an artist whose life and art serve something or someone beyond themselves.

J and I have had a couple of conversations wondering how art figures in God's plans, or vice versa. I guess one answer I got from that exhibition was "none - art does not need to figure." In a twist of Mr Teo's words abuot Soo Bin, this is a case of "Better be without art than be without God." Yet Wong's works also demonstrate that it can - that art can be a powerful illustration of the struggles man face - Christian or not - on this earth, as well as equally powerful expressions of God's saving grace.

Seeing that all this does seem a little heavy for April fool's day, I think I'll just get myself to bed now. If you have survived reading this far, you may want to check out Wong Shi Yaw's blog "Sealed Man".

Good night.