a dog's life

My mother has been crying over her dying dog, a white peek-a-poo (a cross between the territorial pekinese and the yappy poodle) whose fur around his mouth and paws has turned a strange maroon and pink and whose eyes are cloudy with age. Now that its kidneys are failing, it cannot eat. Still, it seems oblivious to its ill health and continues to try to lift itself up from its bed. My brother E, who is the original owner of the dog, is a stoic about the dog's dying. "I mean, it's led a good life thge past 13 years, there's nothing more we can ask for."

Of course, what is a good life is relative. The standards shift. Even the markers change.

For a dog, a good life probably means regular meals, regular walks, no abuse, and lots of human company and love.

Last evening, J and I braved the weekend crowds at Vivocity to catch Malaysian filmmaker Ho Yuhang's 3rd feature Rain Dogs. I haven't seen any film from across the border, except The Last Communist, but J had read about the film from the Serangoon Rd notetaker and it was enough to pique our curiosity.

Produced by HK Focus Films, Rain Dogs is extremely well-filmed (beautiful cinematography, not a scene out of place or mis-timed) Perhaps because we walked into the cinema with no expectations, we were pleasantly surprised by the sensitively paced film, and a well-casted ensemble that did not distract at all with any awkward over-acting and included "Ah Chan" (remember the actor for played the character"Ah Chan" in that famous Hk TV drama serial Man in the Net starring also Chow Yun Fatt?).

(Warning: Spoilers ahead...)
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First, an overview. It's a coming-of-age story in every sense of the genre. College-bound Tung catches a glimpse of the city grit when he visits his elder brother (who bears a resemblance to Taiwanese actor Zhang Zheng) in Kuala Lumpur. Elder brother then plans to buy a flat and re-unite his family in KL, bringing his mother away from a life of loneliness and desperate dependence on a money-hungry boyfriend. Tung later returns to his quiet Malaysian small town. But he is quickly called back when his brother is knifed to death in a snooker parlor brawl. This marks the film's turning point. For fatherless Tung, the good life has so far been his fishing excursions with an older man and midnight adventures setting off fireworks at the train station with friends. But the KL jaunt has initiated him into a world of macho fights and cigarettes. He tastes anger - always potent for a young man. After an argument with his mother, he runs away to his uncle's coastal town where he discovers the next likely misadventure for a young man - girls (and guns).

It is to Ho Yuhang and his scriptwriters' credit that they did not milk this story dry for all tragic possibilities. There is a sensible restraint, a good line back to the sort of understated realism of the Taiwanese indie. There is Odetta's "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child" refrain in the soundtrack, but this still doesn't qualify the film for melodrama. It is also to his credit that he shoots a Malaysia in all his city-town-country diversity and presents such a tropics so beautiful yet real.

But both J and I felt that there was something missing in the film. Maybe it was just too neat. The urban/rural dialetic running parallel with the corruption/innocence play - and the small town, in between, the stage for the individual's dilemma and struggle between the 2. Nature, beautiful and bountiful, does not harm. Like a parent or an elder sibling, it harbours, soothes and reassures - whether on a hot, humid night, or a quiet, easy afternoon's bicycle ride. Individuals who are set loose upon the world (like Tung's uncle, a sailor who is literally adrift and who is fatherless like Tung) alone, inevitably feel the need to protect themselves. They use guns, snooker cues, exploitative boyfriends. None of these satisfy. Instead, they bring about further estrangement from nature, love, family.

Like the Malaysian landscape Ho Yuhang captures, this neatness is part of the film's simple, unpretentious beauty. But for me, it becomes a weakness when the director decides, at the end of the film, to actually spell it out in 3 short closing sequences.

If not the landscape and the Cantonese dialogue, you would have thought this a Taiwanese indie. For me, this too was is part of the film's uncomfortable neatness of mood and form. If I walked into the cinema without any expectations, I also walked out with no surprises (except maybe a small pleasant one about our neighbour's film talents).

Still, this film is worth watching. You can watch the trailer here. And if you have no special feelings for cinema operators, you may want to just watch the film on VCD instead. It's a lot cheaper at $11.90, as J and I discovered tonight, too late, at your ubiquitous Poh Kim video shop!

a herd of clouds

illustration by J

The night sky doesn't have the same joyful changeability or the more obvious theatre as that of the day. More often than not, it is a impenetrable stretch of purplish black. Of course, there is some poetry with the moon - those dramatic nights when it hangs large and low.

Two nights ago, round about 9pm when J and I were getting ready to go grab dinner, I looked out of the bedroom window and there was a whole herd of clouds - greyish in the dark - surging forward. The air was still. Yet these distinct clumps of various sizes and shapes moved as if they were chased by something, swift, even urgent, but quiet and smooth.

Later that night I was chatting with Ru over msn. Preggie issues, sick family, spouses, impending babies, job (or jobless) woes, investment-savvy peers, mortgages, retirement (!) fears...I thought, grown-up troubles, how old we sounded!

Of course there's a certain beauty about the night. A stillness where even the traffic sounds seem distant. The air grows cool and light. There's the calm smell of sleep and the sufficiency of your own thoughts. Occassionally, the nights are marred by a certain frenzy over the day that's coming up, but it is not the frenzy of activity. Or at some points of life, the sufficiency of your own thoughts turn against you, and there's only the oppressive monotony of trouble and heartache.

J and I are rather pleased with 安普樂 [read An(1) Pu(3) Le(4)] as the Chinese name for ampulets. 安 is peace, 普 is complete/all and 樂 is joy. When I think of 安普樂, incongruous as it may be, I see in my mind a herd of clouds in the night sky.

hill billies

The terrain on this island is mostly flat. Unlike our Indonesian neighbour, it is our good fortune to lie outside the ring of fire. There are no markers of violent past tectonic movements, no volcanoes, no sharp peaks.

But we do have little hills. The highest of these little hills being Bukit Timah, with an official height of just 538 ft. There's also Mt Faber for lovers, Mt Pleasant (which doesn't seem to have any elevation at all!) for its animal hospital, and Mt Sophia & Mt Emily, Singapore's own siamese twin peaks overlooking the Istana.

This evening J and I took a 3min walk up Mt Sophia Road, passing quiet condominiums and making a turn to find ourselves at the top of Mt Emily instead. There, between Mt Emily Park and a budget hotel , is an old bungalow that has been converted to be a centre for the arts and business.

Supposedly built by a wealthy Straits chinese, the house was later used as some Japanese HQ when we were occupied in WW2. At some point in its history, it was also the Japanese School, a girls' home, and more recently, 1 of 3 previous campuses of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

A group of artists and creative enterprises have now come together to develop the site into this:

Nestled amid the lush greenery of Upper Wilkie Road, Emily Hill is the first not-for-profit entity in Singapore that brings together artists and people whose businesses or lives are dependent on innovation and creativity. It is Singapore’s first prototype of a new partnership model wherein artists, arts groups and businesses support and sustain each other…and spark new ideas.

Its tenants currently include the Theatre Training & Research Programme (TTRP) of Practice Theatre, a hot glass factory that will also be offering public workshops, the studio of artist Sun Yu Li, the office of these musicians, the art gallery Monsoon Asia, a cafe/bar Wild Oats...and more. Today these folks held their open house and a small gathering for friends.

It does seem odd that for a small island, we don't have a habit of collaboration - whether among artists, neighbours or businesses. Am I right to call it a desire for exclusivity? Or maybe it is precisely because the pond is small, that everyone is so keen to mark and secure their own little part? Whatever the reason may be, the Emily Hill project is laudable for the courage of this very motley crew to not only co-locate, but to collaborate.


HDB sky well- image by J

While chatting with a friend B (one of the folks behind this venture), he shared this observation about space with us. Once he was watching a group of regular kids at a dance workshop being asked to "spell" their name using their bodies. Most of the kids did some shoulder/neck wriggle, and a few others twisted whole bodies. There were only 1 or 2 who leapt across the room, waved their arms and stretched and curled their bodies in expansive, broad strokes. He found out later the difference was that they were not Singaporean.

Ah, so this must be what drew us amps away from our HDB cubbyyhole to this old bungalow atop a hill - not the wine or the yummy fried chicken from this kitchen, but the possibility of a space that can be infinite if collaborative and inclusive. And of course, to wish the folks at Emily Hill all the best for their new venture!


other well wishers - image by J

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p/s If you are interested to sign up for some glass making workshops, dance/movement classes, photography & other lessons, check out the Emily Hill programmes.

recalling on sounds

playground at the mall - image by J

Last week, J and I finally made our way across the monster mall Vivocity to reach this bookstore, designed by the same architect for the Kinokuniya and the very first PageOne at Marina Square. Like the PageOne at taipei 101, entering this bookstore is like entering a forest (well, paper is from trees). Its slanting shelves of unequal height, overhead shelves and displays, crooked paths, uneven floor heights and hidden nooks where you could pause, sit and read - these give the store a labyrinthian quality. But PageOne is especially lovely because, for those who read Chinese at least, the Chinese titles are shelved alongside the English ones.

And in this way I chanced upon this book: <形象追憶> (Recalling on Image) by 杨卫 (Yang Wei), published by 宋莊 (the artist village to the more Soho-esque 798 galleries).

For a long time to me, Chinese contemporary art = Revolutionaries and a Prada logo + identical grinning men + bright green dogs = anachronistic pop art = trendy/sexy = big money = happiness for auction houses Christie's and Soethby's = another sign of China's renewed ascendancy.

But reading Yang Wei's reflections on the artists he knew at Song Zhuang and 圓明園 (Yuan Ming Yuan, another artist village) made me envious of their ability to relate to a history, to dialogue with a coherent past, hence chart a clear trajectory - for the individual, and later retrospectively, of a millieu. There is therefore a meaningful visual language to interpret, reshape, and even trade.

I have no such luck with language. Especially as I read these essays on art, what my eye sees my mind sometimes does not register! (Yes, so much for the bilingual policy). I have better luck when I read the essays out loud; as if the sounds of the words or their approximations would trigger another skein of memory, recalling those dubbed TV dramas, snatches of mandarin pop songs and even more vaguely, those radio plays on redifusion some sleepy afternoons.

killing time

click for larger pic

J: What is picture relay?
Y: Picture relay is when you draw something, then pass the pen on to another person to draw the next thing. It's like stream of consciousness drawing, but in an inclusive way, you know - almost like some kind of collective consciousness. Visually.
J: Er...ok. So can more than 2 play?
Y: Of course, it's a game for everyone! But with 2 people, you can play picture tennis. You know, back and forth until the page is all filled up.
J: I challenge you to picture tennis.
Y: Loser is the one who gives up?
J: OK. On.

Anyway, I lost to J's aggressive backhand of a man falling down into a deep, tiled room.

If you have time to kill in a cafe while waiting for a movie to start, and the book you are reading is not enough to stop the wondering, why not try some picture tennis?

easy

Dream Numbers - click for larger pic

Pa J spends a good amount of whatever cash he has in his pocket each week betting on toto and 4D, and has been doing so for as long as J remembers. Several times in his lifetime, Pa J has made the top few prizes. However few and far between those wins are, and however quickly the winnings are whittled away, Pa J still hangs on to the hope, at age 72, of scoring the winning bet of his life. Perhaps it is the fact that his wife is bedridden and there is nothing much left of her now he recognises but her unlovable difficult stubborn-ness. Perhaps there's now a closer realisation of his own mortality and the desire to be able to leave his children a more substantial inheritance - that they may remember him more fondly.

There are days of unending work and obstacles (like today!) when I, too, can imagine how easy it is to just dream of easy money, easy living. Then how much easier it is for a man who has held those tens of thousands, felt that giddy mix of relief and elation, and who now has nothing left to distract him from this memory of a singular, uncomplicated happiness.

So now, to sleep.

Review/ Skincare: Origins - Constant Comforter

This is one of the first few products I bought when I first started with Origins. I cant remember why and how I started with this brand but I've never looked back. I buy this by bulk cos one of my friend's cousin works in duty free and she gets huge discounts off Origins products.

I've never quite taken up with creamy products in a tub since I find them to be messy and doesn't spread very well with my sensitive and yet, dry face.

But this one was the exception. It was very spreadable, despite it's texture and whenever I have a serious attack, I would slather this on my areas of redness and when I wake up the next day, my skin would have calmed down. Not a miracle worker but at least it doesn't scare people on the streets.

It's my saving grace for now, until I find something else that works even better.

so how heavy is your brain?

I first came across an interview of (Elizabeth) Ewen & (Stuart) Ewen in I.D. magazine last month. The interview was accompanied by a full page photograph was of a stern-faced middle age couple, the man bearded, and one was seated. Both were wearing (in my memory) dull-coloured patterned sweaters in front of a shelf of books.

What are you thinking when you read this description of them? What image, if any, forms in your mind's eye?

What we see, of course, is also what we have been taught to see. The ideals of beauty, the judgement of chcter, the assignment of racial attributes, the rationalisation of power - it is really quite amazing how much contradiction we actually live with in order to maintain these notions.

From the the opening pages of historians Ewen & Ewen's book Typecasting: The Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality, the reader is presented with a sweep of vignettes not so much about stereotypes per se, but how we perceive what we see - particularly other persons, race, gender etc - is tied to the evolving geography of power; the forces of urbansation; the sly strategies of the early European and American colonisers; the curious histories of "Curiosity Cabinets"; the rather bizarre rise of physiognomy and cranioloy and phrenology (and noses, of course!); and the continuing complicity of art, science and entertainment.

One chapter on how folks were exported and presented at the World's Fair, "scientific"' shows and even in a zoo, right up till the early 20th century, was disturbing. Even after their deaths, their skins were sent to the taxidermist, their body parts pickled and their skeletons taken apart before being stored in museums - often forgotten. One of the most well-known of such persons being a lady Saartje Baartman from South Africa.

Another chapter on American Orson Fowler (publisher of the first edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass!) was interesting how phrenology, born in Europe under the guises of science, became a multi-product self-help enterprise in America. In fact, beyond the deterministic theories of the early phrenologists, Fowler departed by admitting a degree of free will and self-determinism, guided by the moral imperatives of an early protestant America. So if there were 2 boys endowed with a similar "cranial potential", Fowler allowed for 1 to choose the way of righteousness and the other could still choose the "downward course". But in one respect, the American phrenologist was consistent with his European predecessors: both insisted that Indian and African skulls - or for that matter, the "Jewish nose" - were proof of the intellectual and moral inferiority of these non-European races.

We don't need a 555-page book (thankfully, there're lots of pictures!) to tell us that ideas of human inequality is perpetuated by those in power. But I guess it is always good to be reminded how easily the very things we love - the images we create, the knowledge we investigate - can be systematically employed in such degenerate enterprise.

Review/ Hands: Crabtree & Evelyn - Gardeners Hand Therapy

Got this as a Christmas gift from J.Low.

This is the first time I received or used anything from Crabtree & Evelyn and feeling pretty excited over it.

Anyway, the cream has a very zesty and tangy smell which scored well with me since I'm not really a musky scent person.

It wasn't as oily as I thought it to be. Absorbs well and leaves a nice sheen on the skin and nails.

This is a definitely must keep product in my bag in future.

Got a La Source Hand Therapy from another friend too. Will use it once I'm done with this tube and give the reviews.

The 50ml one retails at SGD$18 while the 100ml at SGD$30.

* Picture source from Crabtree & Evelyn Website*