the singapore idyll

J: Hey, remember A? The girl we met at the exhibition opening who works for that ad agency?
Y: Oh yah. What's up with her?
J: Nothing. I bumped into her last night and found out that she lives in that fancy condo by the river -
Y: That's nice!
J: Yah, lucky thing.
Y: Yah. But I love living where we are. I like living in a HDB flat.
J: Oh, I remember, it's your proletariat dream.
Y: Exactly! Since the flat's really just a 99 year lease from the government, we don't actually own any property. Legitimate proletariat.
J:...

Living in a HDB flat, you learn the names of the neighbour's children, observe the coming-and-going of the folks in the opposite block, guess from the free-roaming aroma what yummy soup the lady 2 floors down is boiling, note the rumbling engines of the feeder bus every 10 minutes or so, make small talk with the hawkers at the market, wander past the lady who insists on growing the stray cat population with her generosity, lament the passing of the faraway tree, avoid the visitation of your insincere MP, tolerate the karaoke braying of the over-enthusiastic old lady downstairs, skirt around the funeral wakes at the void decks and common spaces, watch that no one is loitering around the lift lobby when you get home too late at night, laugh for the 26th time when you walk pass the sign of the retro hairdresser's that reads "Permanent Wave Salon"... Living in a HDB estate, you cannot be cloistered from the rhythms and patterns of life. Similarly, you can't help forming associations and relations with these patterns and rhythms of community. And it's true, love is not only choice but also habit.

the daily planet

sunset world - image by J

There's a scene in Superman Returns of Clark Kent channel surfing after he has returned from a 5-year space orbit. Of course, Superman doesn't need the news to tell him that the world is in a mess and needs his saving, but he watches anyway. In this one act, he is like us - and why he is Superman and not Superalien.

Cloistered in on our little island, the tsunamis and bombed out cities can seem far away dramas - the latter more crazy than the former, since we can pretend not to understand nature. As part of our island life, we can be thankful for small comedies instead, like the mr brown fiasco (enough, please!) and that rather unreal smiling for the IMF/WB folks. And still smaller, in our HDB flats, the little sadnesses, hurts and doubts in between meals and dreams - not entirely incomprehensible.



It's hard to write when the context in which you write appear uncertain. The global, the national, the domestic, the personal. And though the eternal is certain, tonight, I just want to find space in fiction - even if it is someone else's.

the very first time

The first novel is a curious thing. (I've never written one myself, sorry, so I am speaking here only as a curious reader.)

If I was an editor handed a first novel, would I edit out the rawness? The parts that appear over-written but, given the context and the rawness of emotion, those dramatically paused sentences that actually seem wrong in a right way? Would I suggest that the story arc be less obvious, less naive? Instead, suggest that it assumes a more deceptively meandering form so that when the pages towards the end literally thin out, the reader would not be so conscious that the story is reaching a point of conflict that will, no doubt, be resolved?

Oh lucky thing I'm also not an editor!

Still, it is equally hard to be a curious reader nowadays.

The reviews give out the whole deal. The hype that surrounds each book reaches you through the newspapers/blogs, word of mouth, bookcovers that try too hard, and fancy displays in bookstores - that now ubiquitous top 10 shelf. But I was curious when I picked up Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, mostly because it was about Afghanistan, and I know next to nothing about that country.

And like any good read, while a large part of the novel is set in and the characters are all from Afghanistan, its specific political turmoil is enhanced, not reduced, by the common stories of love, jealousy, shame and absolution. For me, where The Kite Runner rises above the pitfalls of a first novel is most clearly seen in its powerful yet sensitive telling of shame. The shame of betrayal. The shame of cowardice. The shame of un-love. This is no niggly guilty feeling, but the overwhelming, stricken fear that you are not who you appear to be, and that one day, what or who you truly are cannot be hidden, not even from your dream life.


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*If you prefer to read this in a group and talk about it with random folks and reading clubs, The Kite Runner is also a recommended book for the Read Singapore season.

hair-brained

In many ways, in spite of meritocracy, democracy or whathaveyou that we put on, it often feels like we are suffering from the weird lingerings-on of a primitive system...

But this is really about hair and hairdressing.


Before, During, After...hair art by J

A one-party landscape and a monarchy have these common types - an emperor, the crown prince, a select group of favourite princes/princesses, eunuchs, courtiers and generals...everyone else a tax-paying subject. On a small island, substitute the emperor with a feudal lord and his clan.

In such a world, that rigid, unquestioned hierarchy of occupations also prevail. The way to the top is either to commandeer troops or be a scholar, and rise to be a magistrate, first in the small town, and perhaps to the capital to join the court of ministers. Merchants are respected and disdained for their wealth. Poets drown. Artists (if they survive) must pander to the taste of the emperior and the court, or the lord and his clan - service the legitimising and celebration power with the display of prosperity and human achievement. But hairdressers. Folks who use their hands, service the body or its appearance - thair dressers, ear-cleaners, tailors, artisans, singers - they are at the bottom.



Against this limiting order emerged the liberating, fictional jiang hu - an alternate universe of swords(wo)men, and bad evil villains on the extremes of yin or yang. The jiang hu and its unwritten codes of coduct (not unlike the Italian mafia underground), return compassion and justice to the alienating forces of officialdom (whose bad eggs are often in cahoots with the villains with the red eyeliner and green smoke bombs).

Aiyah, I don't really know why or what I'm ranting and rambling about here. Perhaps it's just been a frustrating week at work, and I almost wish I could, like Terz and Tym, imagine living away from this small island.

But back to hairdressing.

In Singapore, a hairdresser is not something a child dreams of becoming. It is a job associated with low-wage foreigners from across the border or the Middle Kingdom, and Secondary School dropouts. Designers and artists are marginally higher on that ladder. J and I know go to G for our haircuts. After so many years, he's a friend who amazes us each time with some fancy two-headed scissors he's just bought from an 18 year-old master in Japan, a new tale of his new snazzy salon in Shanghai, or some strange concept salon he's been dreaming about.

But hairdressing can be more than an occupation stuck on some invisible ladder going nowhere, it can be an art. And as with most arts, it takes skill, experience, knowledge and understanding - creativity and vision. I remember a conversation with G once about what he does. We talked about texture, fashion, form, perspective and lines, logic and intuition, sculpture, cultures, ergonomics (in the design of scissors!), business, the future and shampoo.



In the end, hairdressing saved my week.

:: At its start, I learnt about Read Singapore, and the Library Board's initiative with several hair salon owners to introduce a reading club in their salons. What a great idea! Why can't there be a politicians book club? A civil servants' reading club? These are folks who really ought to read more -and not just management books or reports, but fiction, glorious fiction, redeeming fiction of jiang hu!

:: Two nights ago, I invited J to try his hand at trimming a fringe that demands to be trimmed. Tonight, after studying the results, we're going to do more cutting. After all, he has been observing G for almost a decade now, surely he had picked up something! Time for an experiment! (see images above)

:: Yesterday, I chanced upon an article in Forbes that listed the 10 jobs that will disappear, 10 jobs of the future, and 10 jobs that will never go away. Guess what's #5 and #6?(*)

:: Today, I met with Wheyface and orange clouds (back from Beijing). Over a yummy lunch of fish roe spaghetti, what else did we talk about for 30mins but that fascinating art - hairdressing - Japanese haridressers in China, horror perms, selective rebonding, tri-coloured highlights. Even hairy Lee made a guest appearance, courtesy of Wheyface's professorial observations during the conversation.

So long live hairdressing! Long live hairdressers! Long live hairy hair!

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(*) 1 - politician
2 - prostitute
3 - mortician
4 - tax collector
5 - barber ("nothing is certain in life but death, taxes and haircuts")
6 - artists inc. designers, writers, entertainers
7 - parents/parenting
8 - religious leaders
9 - criminal
10 - soldier

you quit, i quit

poster by J

J's post, numero 2:

I popped the question to her today. She is still single. Still beautiful, in her early 40s, I think. She did not seem surprised. It was as if she read me like an open book. She smiled and asked me about my plans. I told her I have no plans, but I know it will be a period of explorations, experimentations. She told me she had expected me to pop the question. She had felt it would be so every year when she asked me about my performance. Her reply this time was short and sweet. You know you are absolutely dispensible when you ask your boss "is it ok that I quit next month?" and she does not even ask you to stay a little longer.

Y: So, congratulations!
J: ... for what?
Y: Well, for finally telling your boss you are leaving your job!
J: I guess it's about time. After 8 years of lying to myself that I can be good with this corporate shit, maybe even be a director or a consultant.
Y: Haha. Consultant.
J: Maybe I am still lying to myself now by quitting. to think that quitting would bring me some place better, that I can do something else different and make it in the outside world.
Y: Is that why the poster you made for that non-existent movie says 七月之謊, July Lies?
J: Yah. The biggest lies are made in July.
Y: That's depressing! You're really very drama, you know.
Melancholic J: That's me. I'm a melancholic.
Y: Haha. Meloncholic!
J: And you are corny.
Y: Yah, amaizeing that we are together hor. Haha.

what you learn at art class

There are things that you can learn at art class besides how to make a pretty picture.

(1) Like how NOT to make a pretty picture.


4 ugly monoprints of my hansem J

Because the monoprint is a one-time thing (it literally means a print you only make once, by applying pressure directly on the paper against ink), and because it doesn't allow for too much fussing or control, it demands a certain spontaneity when you make a picture. In fact, the more you ask of the monoprint a precision and clean-ness of form, chances are the more the image you have in your mind slips from you. It demands, therefore, that you accept the possibility of failure from the start.

(2) Like how obsessed, typical Singaporean that I am, with achievement and success.

How I struggled with the monoprint! Not that it is a complex process, it is not. I told N, the teacher, that even the sketch book I carry around with me is not filled with random casual sketches, but "complete" drawings. Since I draw with a pen, once I discover what I think is a "mistake" and the picture failing to conform to my will, it is considered a failure and abandoned. If I could, I would rip out the page.

(3) Like how learning is about allowing failure.

Yes, however cliched this sounds. Failure is discomforting. It shakes your sense of who you are. It makes you feel good, strangely, like you are learning something.


A self-portrait by Y of a photo by J of a print by Y of J - tis what you would call a serious printmaker!

<4> Like how it's important to know that you are good at something.

I'm stealing J's lesson here! While I'm in a Thursday printmaking class, he's at a Monday/Thursday Visual communications class at the same place. After almost 2 years of being in a job where what you think you are good at is not needed or valued, J told me how he felt alive again at his class, doing what he knew he could - and learning to be even better.


Self-portrait of the serious J

sure win!

a giant BBQ chick wing? It's a whole BBQ pig! - photo by J

Our friend demonstrates yet again why his name is Wings.

(this exchange is in mandarin)
Wings:: Long time no see.
J: Hey, where have you been the past few weeks? We came by, but your stall was either shut or there were no chicken wings.
Wings: Ohr [he glances at his parents by the satay pit], they two old ones went for eye operations mah.
J: Eh, [lowering his voice to a conspiratorial level] I tell you, we went to that chicken wing place and tried their wings...you know, that old-style hawker centre you said you thought about joining last time, the one with the high rent...now it's behind the "durians", you know... [J refers to the "Makansutra Glutton's Bay"]
Wings: Ohr, that one! [he pauses, then drawls, knowingly.] Hoowww? Niicce?
J: Not nice lah!
Wings: See, I told you!
J: They're not very tasty.
Wings: I told you. I ate there once. Went there to try. Not nice!
J:...
Wings: Very crispy, right? But the taste is a little sour? [He pauses, but not enough for a reply] I told you! They add vinegar. It's all just vinegar! The vinegar makes the chicken wings dry, so it BBQs faster, crispier - but there's no taste, sour sour only right? The skin is crispy crispy only lah -
J: Yah yah, your chicken wings are still the best...
Wings: Hng...I know. [he smiles, shows his broken teeth and walks away].

the young, the old, and the missing

Helen is too big for our island?

The National Arts Council will be supporting the 2nd NOISE festival in Singapore this year. The trick with NOISE is that once you are above the age of 25, you are essentially disqualified from submitting any work. Not that such a festival makes much of a difference (as its name implies) or that the age limit cripples anyone, but it did bring to mind the conversation J and I were having recently about growing old in Singapore.

In Lee Kang Sheng's directorial debut The Missing (2004: companion piece to Tsai Ming Liang's Goodbye DragonGate Inn), the title refers to 3 groups/people. One is the grandchild, who goes missing in the Park. The second is the grandma who is desperately searching for the child. Hence, figuratively "missing" is the lost grandma - she misses the child and misses the company of society in what is a bewildering and increasingly alienating Taipei. But the third is all the working population in Taipei. Shot during office hours, most of the working adults are literally "missing" from the screen. Their voices are heard on the phone or on a loudhailer (touting carrot cake!). They may race by in their scooters. But their lives are missing figuratively, and literally from the drama and emotional going-ons that we are witnessing.

A strangely moving movie, despite or maybe because of its long takes.

In the same way, a large part of our island population seems to have gone missing. Not just the retiree-old, but the definitions of "old" seems to have crept into the working population... In fact, when you hit 45, the government has to "incentivise" employers to hire you for your "experience" (which paradoxically tells employers that those over 45 are otherwise not worth their pay!). What are the measures of worth we levy on the individual as a society. I guess our salaries reflect our economic worth. Our degrees (or lack thereof) reflect our potential economic worth. And our age reflects our increasing or diminishing worth (the young have "potential" that are worth an investment). But beyond these exacting terms, what a whole lot of missing "value"!

Of course, this is probably not particular to our island. But it does seem particularly persistent in our obsession with youth. (I was just reminded when I went back to the UK rcently how their whole Open University initiative and their lifelong learning campaign celebrate opportunities for those who may not have had those opportunities when they were "young". Here, if you are 45, all you can do is maybe "upgrade" your skills - or learn how to use toilet cleaning equipment. The UK is a different island. It has a different respect for what may be old and deemed expired on our tinier island.)

But I digress!

The point of my conversation with J was that perhaps there should be a real celebration of the creativity of the not-so-noisy old. Remind policy makers that while it is great to have dreams (fancy or not so fancy ones, practical or impractical, whimsical or engineered) when you are young and society is happy to take some risks with your dreaming, surely it is just as important for a 45 year-old to entertain these dreams - that visioning is not only for politicians and CEOs.

How idealistic us ampulets are, to even think that we maybe we could organise a little festivity to bring out the creative works of the (wo)man above 25 above 45 and gone missing. Anyone?