Sunday, April 29, 2007

syndromes and half a century



We had planned to watch these films at the 20th Film Fest but caught only Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century Friday night. That morning we had gone to the Bright Hill Temple where Ma J was cremated to collect her ashes, place the bones (laid out on a metal trolley covered with a plastic sheet) into a bright yellow and rectangular urn, and to carry that urn to stacks and tight rows of the same - a library of completed lives.

For J and I, we are, as J puts it, sad but relieved for Ma J. You could say Ma J dying did not take anyone by surprise. When she was hospitalised last Saturday for a heart attack, the doc had warned that should her heart would fail, he would not be able to resuscitate it. So for the next 24 hours, relatives all had a chance to visit with an unusually lucid Ma J.

Death has no syndrome. If not, these would be its most likely signs - or so others who recounted similar stories of their ailing and aged (grand)parents dying had said. Just a few days before her heart attack, Ma J had appeared angry, refusing to eat, sweeping plates off the table, yet strangely agreed to a haircut and perm at the hairdresser's. She had also supposedly told her brother she was not going too live long. But she told no one else. With hindsight, these appear to be "signs" - the seeming foreknowledge, what can only be fear and what then appears to be a stoic acceptance.

But for Pa J, nothing could have prepared him for Ma J's passing. Not even if she forewarned him herself. Not even all 15months of her lonely suffering since the stroke.

Pa J has been recounting, and no doubt would continue to do so for a long time yet, his last conversation with Ma J at the hospital. Have you loved me the last 50 years? They had asked each other early Sunday morning. It seemed right that for half a century of life and love, there was no more than a one word answer, reciprocated. And it was important still to affirm, even if only just to leave the other with a bit of story still to re-tell, remember, or just to have.

Friday, April 20, 2007

imitation goods


"one day, the great wall"


On our way to brunch -

J: Hey look [pointing at a rain tree across the road], that tree looks like a bonsai!
Y: Er, there's something wrong with what you just said...
J: What? Don't you think it looks like a bonsai?
Y: That's a - [pauses to count] 8-storey tall rain tree -
J: So?
Y: So? A bonsai is made to look like a giant tree, you're not supposed to say a tree looks like a bonsai!
J: ...

But I guess trees in Singapore are so regularly pruned, their lower branches sawed off and their crowns shaped, such that they are - like bonsais - bearing the marks of man's imitative art.

I will always remember my sister, then aged 5, asking "cheche, what is rice made of? flour?" And in my head, the picture of a factory line of women, their mouths under a mask and hands in gloves, dutifully shaping the tiny white grains we know as rice from mountains of dough.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

a tale of 2 cities (Part II)

You could say Singapore bears many resemblances to Penang.

Both islands were important pieces of the British empire's economy and both cities today wear their colonial past without any complicated postcolonial unease. In the case of Penang, many of the colonial structures remain government offices. This used to be also the case in Singapore, but we have succumbed to their more lucrative use as hotels, restaurants and - or the simplistic re-use of monuments as museums. Theirs line their esplanade. Many of ours, too, used to line our esplanade - but not since our esplanade has been redrawn post reclamation.

In a region where the Chinese and Indian are not native, both cities' population are represented disproportionately by these 2 ethnicities. The "fusion" shophouse architecture of both cities bears the complicity of this migrant population with the colonisers. But of course, being migrants, both populations also found the need to stake out their respective enclaves. The Chinese heritage in Penang is visible in the number of kong sis - clan complexes anchored usually by a temple/ancestral hall and surrounded by self-contained courtyards with homes and a school.

J, Ma Y and I spent Day 1 walking from our hotel by the Esplanade (we stayed at the E&O, sister of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Both were built by the Armenian Sarkies brothers and the second home for those British colonial types in the tropics. Hey, the E&O is even located on Farquhar St, named after the 1st British resident of Singapore) and through the more historic bits of Penang, cutting through the little lanes of Chinatown (including 1 Love Lane, ooh) and Little India.

We stopped at a Hainan Temple (well, in honour of Pa Y whom we have excluded from this little getaway, and whose ancestors are from that southern Chinese island). Our intended destination was the Khoo Kongsi, probably one of the most elaborate and well-preserved of such clan complexes (photo right).

On our way back, we walked through Lebuh Chulia (there is also a Chulia St in Singapore), passed by an Odeon cinema (The Rex, Odeon and Cathay were names of nicklelodeon cinemas in Penang and Singapore), countless Taoist and Hindu temples and Catholic/Anglican/Methodist churches which sit next to each other, and shops specialising in engine parts, tools, framemaking, gold jewellery... The temples and churches may still stand side by side in Singapore, protected and kept alive by their respective congregations, but over the last 30-40 years, these trades and cinemas have given way to fancier offices and mulitiplexes.

Last but not least, food! No 2 populations love their food as much as Singaporeans and Penangnites, especially street or hawker food. And as a testimony of how much J, Ma Y and I enjoyed our food and the manner and environment in which the food was consumed, here are the only 2 photos we have of the food...because we did not have the time, space or interest to bring out the camera!


In the 2 lunches and 2 dinners we ate in Penang, we had a grand total of:
4 bowls of fishball/kway teow soup
2 bowls of curry mee
2 bowls of penang laksa
2 plates of fried kway teow
1 plate of penang fried carrot cake (with bean sprouts)
2 plates of oyster omelette
1 bowl of mee suah gor
2 plates of fried hor fun & yee mee
1 plate of Indian Rojak (or "cuncur udang?")
4 popiah
2 portions of penang otak
1 plate of sotong kangkong
1 plate of penang chee chong fun
1 plate of penang rojak
10 sticks of chicken satay
2 BBQ chicken wings (but our favourite Toa Payoh wings are still the best in the world!)
5 ikan panggang covered in sambal
5 bowls of dessert, including the lovely penang chendol


But of course, where we meet each other, there we mark our departures.

I wonder why when Sun Yat Sen came to the Nanyang to raise funds from his Chinese compatriots, he resided in this house in Singapore and another in Penang, but chose to make the latter his base. Rumour has it he fell out with the Chinese businessmen in Singapore.

I wonder why the "Rockerfeller of the East" then, Mr Cheong Fatt Sze would build a house in Singapore (supposedly at Philip St, but I don't know whether it still remains) and a mansion in Penang, but chose to make the latter the home of his favourite mistress and the most elaborate of all his mansions. Could he have knowm that in the former his mansion would not have survived, but in the latter city, a group of conservationists, independent of the government, would lovingly restore its indigo walls?

How did one city convince the children of its hawker chefs to inherit the delicious art and smoky business of a fried kway teow push cart - while the other city failed to even convince the hawker chefs themselves to pass anything on?

How did one city (sans lane markings on its road) avoid the angry impatient horn blasts from cars despite its carefree scooters and amusement-park driving style - while the other with its wide roads and elaborate traffic systems flame only road rages?

How did one city amass so much wealth and the other so many semi-ruins. Of course, both have their fair share of MNC factories and outposts. Both have their disenchanted youths and old-money families, differing only in shades and mathematics.

Was it all because one remained an island and was made a reluctant state; and the other an island with its abundant hinterland?

A friend's mother met us in Penang and so kindly brought us round the island 2 nights in a row in her dark blue proton. The first night she drove us across Penang bridge to Butterworth (where we ate the most amazine oyster omelette at Jalan Rajah Odah) because "how can you come to Penang and don't see Penang bridge - it's the third longest in Asia!" When J asked if she liked living in Penang, she replied: "well, how can I don't like - it's home. Home is always the best, right?"

=======
>> Of another city, Part I

Thursday, April 12, 2007

out of office



What us amps don't seem to think we have too much of appear to be islands! So friends, I set the out-of-office message on my work email a couple of minutes ago, and together with J and Ma Y, we'll be hopping on to this island along the straits of Malacca in the morning. It'll the first time we've taken Ma Y out overseas, but hey, I figured we had better do this while she is healthy and fit.

No laptop this time. But J's got his camera and I my $4 notebook. We promise some kind of island report after the weekend. And if the reputation of Penang holds true, it'll be a gastronomical report.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

man



Stealing from J's photoblog (image by J):

"managed to catch 'F' at the first free screening of this year's Singapore International Film Festival. 'F' is a documentary about this guy whose passion for films has driven him to extremes and the edge of sanity (which is what some might say). If you are a film buff, you would catch him at most of the film festivals in singapore, talking to anyone and everyone who passes his way about films and handing them a review or two of this or that film. Toh Hai Leong is also the director of the mockumentary called 'Zombie Dog'. I recall in the documentary, one of the interviewees said that one of the audience he showed "Zombie dogs" to complained that he wanted to watch the actual movie, and insisted that the film he just watched iwas only the 'making of...'. You be the judge of it, if you are able to get hold of a copy itself. Toh was diagnosed with Diabetic Type I or II (he can't remember which himself). "F" documents his day-to-day life, and how the disease slowly stripped away his dignity and confidence. But at the end of the screening, Toh vowed to 'live on' and write and play badminton again one day."


the zombie dog man

Monday, April 9, 2007

I don't want to sleep alone



A certain pattern is now clear in Tsai Ming Liang's films. A dystopian view of the city. Empty houses, apartments - even the half-built carcass of an entire complex whose basement is filled up like a lake. Water sustaining and connecting us but also carrying our diseases, our fears and our thirsts/desires. Food and drink - never an elaborate meal, not an occasion for social interaction and togetherness - but always consumed on the sly, alone, whether perfunctorily or hungrily. The little absurd and comic things we do when we are alone to fill up the silences and spaces, or just to get by - to breathe amidst the haze, to sleep amidst the ruins. And of course, sex - always the desperate seeking of strange bodies - alien to us but familiar in our alone-ness. Against all this, there is music, always nostalgic and perfect in its sentimentalism, a romance, the sweetest of escapes.

With his latest film I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, I think Tsai has distilled all these elements into their barest, simplest and their most comic, absurd, tragic and beautiful variations.

But if there is something that is missing from Tsai's films, it is death.

It was Good Friday the morning after we watched Tsai's film, so J and I were reminded of death - Christ's and all of ours,eventually - if not for the hopeful promise of Easter and Christ's resurrection.

This weekend was coincidentally also the Chinese Qing Ming weekend, a time to visit and clean up graves of ancestors. Visiting the dead (or rather, their graves) is something that the living do. This year Ma J, alive but so weak and distraught she cannot even bring herself to sit up, is not allowed to go with Pa J to visit the graves of Pa J's parents. J tells me this evening that when he looks into Ma J's eyes, he is drawn inside her hopelessness and absolute loneliness, a living death.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

dream community

This morning I was strangely awake despite the short sleep and perhaps because it was a dreamless sleep. On the train to work, I read in the Mar/Apr issue of Art Asia Pacific an article about Gordon Tsai Tsung Ming and his dream community or 夢想社區.

A farmer's son in Hsichih (Taipei County), a place previously devastated by floods, Gordon Tsai had a dream about a community completely energised by the arts - not necessarily the kind in museums, but of the street and parades. 5 years ago he also created a dream parade, and with his own money (supposedly US$500k per year), creates residencies for foreign and Taiwanese artists, and organises workshops and activities for the community.

According to the article, he's a businessman (real estate?) and
"anyone interested in one of his apartments must sign a contract agreeing to 3 conditions: a prospectivetenant must go to a worldwide arts festival...and return with photographs documenting his or her participation; the tenant needs to organise a group of at least 10 people under a unified theme to martch in the Dream Community parade; and...should the tenant wish to resell, any increase over 3% of the original price goes back into the community."
Wow. This dreamy man clearly walks the talk. He drivesa scooter, and rents his home. "I want to change society through the arts and destroy values of desire and luxury. Rich people are a bad influence on society, teaching others to be big consumers and destroy the environment."

If you are going to be anywhere near Taipei, here's a review of the Tree Cafe at the Dream Community with some travel instructions. The website may have more travel details.



J and I, we are definitely living in no Gordon-Tsaish dream community. (photo above by J)

There're no street parades by generous, maverick businessman here. Instead, 2 nights ago, we had a traditional puppet Hokkien opera troupe perform by the taoist temple nearby. There were tables of men sitting at the temple, chatting, staring into space. They were definitely not watching the action of the 2 tiny puppets at a distance. They had no audience - just us and the occasional kid. The middle-aged women behind the stage, however, didn't seem to care. They sang, improvised the Hokkien script and seemed to enjoy each other's company. The row of musicians behind them - white-haired men - were in a different world. They played their instruments, with one ear plugged into their handphone.



A few streets away, between 2 blocks of flats with shops on the ground floor, was a nightly/daily gathering of middle-aged men and women for beer and groundnuts. Not far away from them will always be 2 cats and a giant black wolf-like dog. They belong to a tiny old woman who lives with her trolley and chairs by one of the blocks. Above her are 80 square metre apartments of working class Singaporeans, similarly asleep. No rich person here to be a bad influence on society!