hello neighbour

When I was a kid, this was one of my favourite books. Not so much for Dr Seuss's rhymes (I probably can't read then), but for the illustrations. None of the homes in those pictures resembled mine! There was one illustration of the chestnut-haired boy having rice with a chinese boy who lived on a boat. The rice was these round white balls. Even the rice was not like the rice I ate!

Looking through the book today, my adult eyes noted the stereotypes and the naive idealism of

"Some houses are rich, full of silver and gold.
And some are quite poor, sort of empty and old.
Some houses are marble and some are just tin.
But they're all, all alike when a friend asks you in."

Anyway, I thought of this book only because J and I are finally giving in to the wanderlust and taking a holiday - albeit a very short one with Ma Y to visit our peninsular neighbour. For a treat, we got ourselves into a neighbour's house that will have lots of marble, even if it is not full of silver and gold.

standing still

Yesterday HK launched the 1st Asian Film Awards at the opening of the 31st HK Film Festival. Yesterday was also the first day the tickets to our own 20th Singapore Film Festival went on sale. The former was all glitz and excitement. The latter is clearly standing at some kind of crossroads.

This SIFF's selection is patchy but continues its SEAsian anchor. It clearly lacks the vigour of a programme that has a good mix of obvious high notes, dependable festival regulars and low-key curiosities. Still, the SIFF is always a special time for J and I. I've many fond memories of the Festival - especially of the days when the films were screened at the old Capitol and Majestic cinemas. Hey, I even have all the programme booklets my old ticket stubs since I was a teenager! It was also at the film fest that J and I first became good friends.


So this year, we persisted and got tickets to: (pictures in order from top) documentary Aki Ra's Boys by Singaporeans James Leong & Lynn Lee; documentary Changi Murals by Singaporean Boo Jun Feng; Syndromes and a Century by Thai Apitchatpong Weerasethakul whose 2005 Tropical Malady we liked; and documentary Village People Road Show by Malaysian Amir Muhhamed which is supposedly a sequel to his The Last Communist.

I remember in particular watching all 4hours of Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day in 1991 (1992?), the only uncensored cinema screening of Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together in Singapore, and so many smaller films that were strangely memorable. Of these, there is Unloved by Japanese Manda Kunitoshi in 2002. For me, this was a film about standing still. While we assume that things that are bigger, more expensive, more glamourous, more beautiful are better, and should always be pursued, the female character's unwavering desire to remain as she is in her career, ambitions, lifestyle...struck me. Even though the SIFF may not have remained as it is over the years - it's had its ups and its down-down-downs - let it not be unloved!

So friends, ampulets urge you to support our own film festival! Though it feels a little deflated and probably plagued by organisational/financial/existential(!) issues, it's survived 20 years. It may not have caught up with HK, kept pace with the younger Pusan, or relate to the changing cinema/festival scene in Singapore, but it's still our own.

(Tickets are available at all sistic outlets. Visit the SIFF website for the programme.)

conversation

When I got home from work today, I found a young lady sitting in the living room.

"Hello." I smiled. So did she. I told her my name. Her name was YY. Her voice was slight, as was her handshake.

J was in the study with YY's husband, who was helping to resucitate a dead hard disk. They stayed there for the next hour. So YY and I started to talk.

YY was a PRC citizen, but was recently granted permanent residency here. A fine arts graduate (major in print making!) from a Nanjing university, we spoke about YY's job search, her inability to make any art here, her distaste for the noise and congestion in Singapore ("why such small toilets here? I really don't understand", she had said when I told her we had to knock away a wall to make a large enough bathroom from 2 small ones), her general disillusions with life, her concern for her husband's health, her views about the corruption prevalent in Chinese art colleges, her jobless and aimless peers in Nanjing, the huge pool of fine arts graduates in China (hey, what's new?), her husband and her search for a new flat so that they could move out of his parents' place, his desire for children (her indifference to that prospect), her views on money, driving and - the future... a simple life.

I told her about where she could get relatively cheap art supplies, why students here use linoleum instead of wood for printmaking here, the teaching prospects here, J and my lack of desire for children in our lives now ("we'll have to get new furniture"), our lack of desire to drive/own a car, the possibility of her teaching Chinese and art in our schools, and yes - the future... a simple life.

My mandarin was just about sufficient to survive the conversation.

She was surprisingly open and frank. We were, after all, strangers. Perhaps she was lonely? Having been here for less than a year and with few friends, I can imagine how it was not easy.

We had common experiences (art, printmaking, married life, work, Singapore/Nanjing, flats, husbands, public transport, space), and from these there, also divergences. And from the divergences, we establish again points of relation - comparison and empathy, contrast and sympathy. Perhaps this is why it is almost always enjoyable to speak with someone from another country, background, culture. This toggling of perspectives and contextualising of experience - it helps us keep sane.

agednap

Drawing 1 of Kidnap News 2! can't access my @&$*flickr acct, so not sure if this image can be viewed larger

L amazed us one night by saying that as he grew older, he looked forward to growing old. Ah, the horror, the horror. L smiled and added how he was happily looking forward to turning 40. J was incredulous.

Perhaps L was speaking of a mental and emotional reality. And perhaps J, observing Ma and Pa J, is terrified of growing old - of its material and corporeal reality. The former is of gain, the latter of loss.

Today, I realised I was wrong to imagine time can be stolen. We are never robbed of it. Busy-ness is a poor excuse I've been making. Time cannot be taken away from us, since it is never ours to begin with. It's just a slippery thing.

So it was that last night, J and I decided to bring back our friend, Kidnap Bob! Only this time, Kidnap Bob will not only meet with kids, but grandpas and grandmas too. Will Kidnap Bob only be accused of abducting the young? Will Kidnap Bob be as popular with our frail and aged as he was with kids? Where has Kidnap Bob brought grandma and grandpa to? And will Kidnap Bob ever prove his innocence? I am looking forward already to the weekend with my notebook!

gone fishing

image by J

It was like a stage. Or maybe a bear-baiting pit.

In a section of a canal that cuts across Mr Chiam's sliver of Toa Payoh and joined an even larger monsoon canal from PAP's Bishan towards the Kallang River, residents from both constituencies were joined in watching the spectacle of 4 men wading in the murky water.

A pot-bellied and bald Chinese man was moving barefoot, miraculously avoiding all the chips of cement and rock on the canal bed. Another a track-suited Malay man in jogging shoes was on the other side of the canal, similarly dancing about without slipping on the algae. They wade in the water that is knee-high by the sides, and waist-high in the middle of the canal. Above them, walking on a large beam that held a (sewerage?) pipe were two other men, skinny and monkey-like.

A fishing net was half-sunken in the water.

The audience joked, shouted instructions, or watched curiously. Boys scrambled about above ground and tossed them rocks and chunks of broken brick and cement. They were all united in weighing down the base of the net to the canal bed, before raising the top with bright yellow nylon ropes tied to the beam.

Someone shouted that there was a school of fish coming. There was a flurry of activity, and shouts for more rocks. Bald Chinese porky man rushes ahead towards the net, slips and soaks himself from head to toe. He laughs - we all did.

Last evening, there was no fish caught when J and I left the show. I don't really know what kinds of fish swim in those canals, or the water they tasted of. Later that evening, we passed by the same spot again. It was dark and the men were already gone. There were 3 boys sitting in the canal, chatting away. The water level has receded.

Every weekend, this stretch of the canal is partly given to the fishermen among us - or sometimes the fishermen among our foreign laborers. I hesitate to call these scenes idyllic, romanticise the kampong or how even the canals in Mr Chiam's ward have more spontaneous life - of fishes or man - lest the short walk becomes less solid, less real. But, of course, it is already less real now.


an image from Taipei

All I recall now is thinking there's been talk about turning the canal into some ludicrous "water sport zone". I recall J and I remarking how murky the water is, how kids have no fear of germs or strange skin infections, and where we should be heading for dinner before the week began again. And another recent conversation about communities - their sometimes cruel, selfish or ultimately self-damning exclusivity. Perhaps as a kind of theatre, communities can be more inclusive - the line of spectators almost elastic.

distracting time

Nostalgia a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time

Other dictionary definitions replace the wistful with a taste "bittersweet", or more simply, "The condition of being homesick; homesickness", which in 1770 was classified a disease.

J: You know, people like to talk about the past.
Y: Yeah?
J: They seem happiest when they talk about the past.
Y: As in...
J: Like how guys talk about army, your mom likes to tell us about her childhood...
Y: So?
J: Well, the thing is that those times are probably rather miserable, but when they talk about it, all that is miserable feels like it wasn't there or wasn't as miserable. People love to reminisce,
Y: I see,
J: I wonder if it's only like that here. I've never lived anywhere else before.

Wistful.

Typically, the most popular chinese language drama series on TV is set in Singapore's past, the pre-independence years. Those were tough times of war, colonisation, poverty - and hardship makes for good drama.

Disease.

Some of the most popular and mainstream works on the Singapore stage are also set in similar times. I remember Kuo Pao Kun's Lao Jiu, recently made into a mandarin musical, on the lost traditions of puppetry. Of course there's Dick Lee's musical Fried Rice Paradise. The past was something you could sing, dance, laugh and cry about - the distance made it easier to mourn or celebrate.

A homesickness.

Last Saturday, J and I watched Toyfactory's 3rd staging of Titoudao. Titoudao is the name of a comic role in Hokkien opera (literally
shaving knife/blade), a hardworking and loyal servant of a family that has seen better times. In Goh Boon Teck's script, the scenes of this opera are interspersed with scenes from each stage of opera actress Ah Chiam's life - growing up in kampong
Singapore, joining an opera troupe, marrying, growing old, reminiscing... An economical script (save for 1 long childhood scene) that resisted the temptation to lament.

I remember when it was first staged in 1994, a friend visiting me in the UK then had brought its publicity brochure for me as a gift. In the early 90s, the two of us would watch every single play that was produced in Singapore. 2001 was its second staging, a staging that won the play several Life! Theatre awards (Click to readThe Flying Inkpot's Review of the 2001 performance).

But last Saturday I was sceptical. The TV trailers seemed to suggest this was going to a noisy play. And it was. But in the context of the play's street opera premise, the noise seemed apt (or else I am biased). Exposing the backstage of an opera stage, the overall stage design was effective in transiting between 3 worlds of a play within a play, the play itself and the "live" interaction between some actors and the audience. The cast was likable, their performance was energised yet practised.

Today, when I met an old gentleman who had watched the play on Sunday I asked him if he enjoyed it, he answered in the affirmative. Then he qualified, smiling gently - "as a distraction".

Perhaps he had on his mind weightier issues - business, health, family, today's Sumatran quake.

Some folks are better able to keep their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon, if not the next couple of steps. Their bodies may wander or fight some currents - maybe even remain unmoved - but it is their gaze which remains fixed. When we reminisce, tell a story, play another's part, we look inward and around, forward and back, in space and time.

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p/s - Titoudao is showing until 31 March, everyday except Monday, at the Drama Centre. Tickets are available from Sistic.