celebrate

Goodbye March, humourless month of hospital meetings, anxious days and hurried meals. Happy April Fool's!

To celebrate, amps give you a rare photo from our wedding.


taken last month at wedding of our friends J&J

Me in a gown and veil...helllooo?

oh, this rootless generation!

we found this fancy bottle of Cognac XO at Pa J's house, and checked out if the world would indeed look rosier filtered through its happy spirit

Over the weekend Ma J returned to her home in a wheelchair from the hospital and received a visit from her youngest brother, the family jester (we amps are keen to inherit this role). Uncle Jester started it all by teasing Ma J on her resemblance to Lu Hsiu Lien. This triggered Pa J the opportunity to launch into one of his favourite topics..."THE EVIL THAT IS AMERICA".

Uncle: Wah, when you go out, doesn't anyone stop you and say "Lu Hsiu LIen ah!"
Pa J:[smiles and nods wisely] Yes...Lu Hsiu Lien... That Chen Shui Bian, won't last for long.
Uncle: [does an impersonation of the Taiwanese President, raises his fist and punches the air]
Pa J: But THAT AMERICA, they just want to split China up into 7 kingdoms.
Y [puzzled] 7 kingdoms?
Pa J: Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, Tibet... all independent, then America will be happy. They scared of China. Just like what they did to USSR.
J: No leh, I think Taiwan deserves its independence - right, Y?
Pa J: What nonsense, Taiwan rightly belongs to China. This is just what America wants you to believe! Taiwan is China's...you know the story of Taiwan? Mao Zedong didn't want to destroy the Kuomingtang completely, so he let them remain in Taiwan...you know -
Y: I think it's because Mao had too much on his hands to deal with in China, he couldn't have managed to get to the Kuomingtang in Taiwan.
Uncle: [laughs] Yah, yah.
Pa J: You all don't know. All you young people in Singapore, you people under 40, you are all "XX不定" (trans: I can't remember the phrase he used, but I think he means "rootless" or "fickle").
Uncle: You don't know ah, your father could have been a politician.
Pa J: All you young Singaporeans, you are a rootless generation! ("XX不定") You don't know anything that happens before the 60s.
Uncle: Remember? Last time in the 50s they wanted to ask you to stand for election, remember?
Pa J: ...
Uncle: But in the end, you didn't have secondary school education so in the end didn't...
Pa J... last time in Singapore, that MP Lee Lien Ying [sic?], he was a barber...they asked me also...aiyah, you rootless generation!
Uncle: [laughs]Maybe today you would be our Minister of Environment!
Pa J: ...
The Rootless Generation: Minister of Finance is better!

Well, some pioneers in Singapore make it into the National Archives' records, and some just get to repeat their story in their dining rooms to their rootless descendents.

it's no secret anymore

On our island, there are no secrets where good food is concerned. So in case you visit here but don't read tym's blog (which is unlikely I guess), I'm going to steal her post about our lunch at the restaurant at the Freemason Hall, Armenian Street. You may not know who their members are or what they do in the Hall, but you sure can know what it is they eat!

they came, lived, talked (and talked some more)

While having lunch with my colleagues at Earshot, the bookstore cafe at The Arts House at Old Parliament, I took the chance to scan its shelves of Singapore publications and music CDs...and came across this gem - Pioneers of Singapore: A Catalogue of Oral History Interviews (Archives and Oral History Dept, 1984 - now called National Archives of Singapore).


Check out this pre-Adobe Photoshop cover where you can see the crude edges of the cut-out lady/computer in foreground.

To be sure, the book is nothing more than what it honestly states in its subtitle - a catalogue. It does not contain the actual stories. It is not a transcript of the recordings. It does not even have photographs of the interviewees.

A colleague who flipped through its pages wondered why anyone would purchase this, well, boring book. Of course, there are fools like me.

Try this extract on civil servant Mr Sng Choon Yee (b.1897):

R01Family background. Early education in Chinese classics. School fees. School hours. R02How his eldest brother helped other scholars to pass examination...Recommended his father to a tax collector's job. R03His father infected by cholera.

Mr Sng, by the 4th recording, got to the story of his family's journey to Singapore. In his 6th and 7th recordings, he spoke about his school life at Gan Eng Seng School and how he had organised a strike in school to protest against praying in the rain, how he compained to each trustee of the school. He switched to Raffles School (yes, even in those days, civil servants had already hailed from that institution!). There are 24hours worth of stories from the anti-Japanese days, the China Reflief fund, mention of Tan Kah Kee and Lim Nee Soon, the printing of the Sin Chew Jit Poh (Chinese newspapers), the transport system in China Town.

Or the less chatty Forwarding and Security contractor Mr H J C Kulasingha (1900-1982), who had left his home town in Ceylon for Singapore and eventually started his own business in 1946. In his 4th recording, he spoke about

Reason for closing of company in 1967. How he got the name "King of the Islands". His public service activities. Interest in politics. Involvement in Progressive Party. 1951 Election campaign...

And what else did Mr Kulasingha contribute to? He was a Director of the Jurong Bird Park!

While this catalogue does nothing more than provide these "headlines" on the lives of these pioneers, I was amazed how eventful (I cannot think of any word but this) , even when recounted only in short phrases, the lives of these men and women were! In fact, I think I quite prefer it told this way. These bits and pieces, these skeletal fragments, leaving the skin, flesh, organs to the curious imagination - and to fiction.

============
Lucky tym actually gets to listen to these archival recordings as part of her job! Oh, envy!

from her eyes

For the past month, this is what greets my mom every morning (and night), as she gazes towards the entrance of ward, eagerly waiting for her husband and children to turn up to be with her. Finally, after much "discussion", we got her a new, nice wheelchair (not the one in the pic). Mom, be strong, keep your eyes on Jesus, and walk down the road with no fear and regrets - TOHA/J

a losing battle?

sketched on the train ride to the AMk hospital

Walking across the Toa Payoh Lor 8 half of Mr Chiam's Potong Pasir ward, J and I cannot help but notice how worn out its pavements, lift lobbies, playgrounds and other public areas are one quiet Sunday morning.

J: It really does look very old and in need of rescue. Quite depressing actually.
Y: Yah, I wonder how someone living here might think... whether they are frustrated when they look across the road at the flats under PAP's town council.
J: But old things are not necessarily bad.
Y: Hmm, of course. But in Singapore, something old always looks so out of place. And -
J: And the old things are actually broken.
Y: You're right! That's probably why. It's because we take such little pride in them being old we don't actually let them age, we let them break down.

Or maybe it is just the tropics. The heat, the humidity, the rainstorms - they leave us all - even the concrete - tired.

So if Mr Chiam loses the fight to keep Potong Pasir at this upcoming elections, it may not be because the Senior Minister has entered the ring, but because of our inhospitable clime - and our insatiable desire for air-conditioning.

from Gilead to Gomorrah?

Right after I sing praises of a quiet book about 3 generations of preachers set in the American MidWest, I get told this - that I'm closest to being a novel about "dandies, rich pretty boys...and decadent pleasure-seekers."

Ah, how J would like a dandy wardrobe! This much I know ;>

Which literature classic are you?

Oscar Wilde: The Portrait of Dorian Gray. You are a horror novel from the world of dandies, rich pretty boys, art and aesthetics, and intellectual debates between ethical people and decadent pleasure-seekers. You value beauty and pleasure but realize their dangers, as well.
Take this quiz!

Gilead

Gilead goats, image taken from BiblePlaces.com

Though I've wandered around Jordan with a group of friends many years ago, I don't think we strayed to Mount Gilead (goats, however, we saw plenty of!). And I can't boast about my knowledge of the bible. So instead, the first time I came across the word "Gilead" was in a Cowboy Junkies song Seven Years, a dramatic sort of Western track about a father and his estranged son.

My dreams are now filled with Gilead Trees
And other sights that I've never seen

Perhaps owing to it being the place King David fled to during the coup by his son Absalom, Gilead has become some kind of symbolic place of both refuge and regret, calm and storm.

2 weekends ago, I picked up Marilynne Robinson's second novel Gilead.

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old.

I don't usually buy a book if I've not heard of the writer before, but this first line got me hooked.

Set in an Iowa small town, the book's one long letter from an old dying preacher John Ames to his young son. It is a letter of regret - because he has left nothing materially to provide for his young wife and boy. But it is also a letter of immense calm and resolution - John Ames has lived what most people would understand as a good life. And so has his father and his grandfather, who are both also preachers. The passages on Grandfather Ames and the old man's fierce material generosity are the best.

At the beginning of the novel, John Ames describes a significant childhood experience trekking to Kansas with his father in search of his Grandfather's grave. The old man had disappeared one day after a disagreement with his son on the subject of America's war-like disposition, the latter a pacifist and the former a Civil War veteran. And we know for sure that this is a novel about fathers and sons - the strong, often irrational loyalty and love, and the inevitable betrayals.

While John Ames' relationship with his young son lacks the same sort of dramatic tension found in the other father-son stories, he makes for a good narrator precisely because his own story seems at first so dull and pale in comparison. But this allows for a gentle humour, and a different kind of pathos - a father who cannot be.

Hmmm, I guess with a premise like this the writing could have become something really too precious. Maybe it is, but it seems just right to me now amidst all the unhappiness with Pa J's family of 5 sons and 1 daughter.

In the past month, J and I have seen "children" driven by selfishness, distrust and irresponsibility. We pity the mother who has given all her life, but has inadvertantly spoilt her "children" (the inverted commas because most are already parents themselves in their 40s and 50s). We have learnt that "the democratic process" is only as good as the people who participate in it are - and can become the convenient ground on which responsibility is disavowed, and inaction and excuses take the guise of "discussion" and "engagement".

But in Gilead, I think the lesson is also about forgiveness...


image by J

...and with that, new beginnings! So J and I are real glad that, 2 days ago, someone new joined the family! And my entrepreneurial brother E now also bears the name of father.

=====
p/s read the review of Gilead in NYT?

Kara-永远-ok

singing the blues- images by J

Having lived in a house in a private estate most of my life, I've been used to stepping in and out of the house without seeing or having to greet any of my neighbours (with the exception of 1 Australian neighbour who seems to spend all her time gardening). J and I would walk around the estate some evenings and peer through the gates or above the walls into the expansive dark gardens and living rooms. We would guess - by the number of cars, the furniture, the presence of kiddy bikes, koi ponds and lap pools - what sort of life went on behind the dark windows.

Yesterday marked my first month living instead in Toa Payoh Lor 8. Ah yes, the heartlands.

There, even taking the lift every morning has brought familiar faces. On the 6th floor live Ali and Ana, 2 adorable children of a good-looking hotel chef. On the 16th floor there's Geroge, a quiet bespectacled 10-year old who lives with his sister, mom and aunt. They live across from K, a jet-setting executive who buys us chocolates from her travels - I think of her as a dorm-mate. On the 14th floor is the Karaoke-loving auntie who believes that croaky karaoke ought to be shared with everyone at 10amin the morning.

Last night on our walk home from the world's best BBQ wings, it was the voice of this auntie we thought we heard amplified across the open space.

We traced the noise voice to an outdoor Residents' BBQ and Karaoke Night



Men and women in their 50s and 60s belted out the sappiest love songs, tapped their feet, closed their eyes in concentration and sometimes made up words for the lyrics they couldn't read.

What a night! Even if it was just a 15minute interlude between dinner and home.

Perhaps the Residents Committee had organised this event because the elections were coming up, and this was another platform for the minister to show his face, show that he cares and is one with the people. But how could this be a night for cynicism when it is my one-month anniversary with Toa Payoh Lor 8, its singing residents - most of whom had lived here for the past 20 years - their children and their children's children. And for this, some naive romanticism must be allowed?

art heals

That's the claim of the Necessary Stage-M1 Singapore Fringe Festival which ended last week.


a colour remix by J

Having learnt no lesson about healing despite many evenings at the hospital (except maybe that you need patience), I abandoned J one evening for The Edge, a play at the Fringe Festival by young Thai company B Floor Theatre. A series of vignettes about society's false ideals of beauty, wealth, power and relationships, the mostly wordless drama was played passionately by the 5 or 6 young Thai actors/actresses, but painfully - painful in its literal interpretations of these ideals and in its trite conclusion that we only have to reconcile ourselves to the grand drama of life in order to find our place.

I suppose art does heal. Sometimes, it plays doctor by trying to make explicit our sickness. Often, it becomes condescending in its diagnosis. Other times, it serves as an empathetic hospital bedfellow, providing company and conversation - an art humbled by compassion and weakness. And because art can create alternative fictions, and in them we find comforting distraction.

So J and I finally decided to take a movie break last night and caught Capote at the cinema. Truman Capote, most famous for his Breakfast at Tiffany's, seizes upon the murder of a Southern family for his next piece of work, a documentary or non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. To extract what could be truth, Capote resorts to an artful falsehood that, I guess, fooled even himself.

I guess art may heal, but it doesn't save.

=========
Trying some alternative remedies...
>> For Haruki Murakami fans, here's a treat from The New Yorker.
>> For film freaks, the programme of the Singapore Int'l Film Festival is out.

the week ends

#4 in the adventuring bunny series. See #1,#2 and #3?

Oh, to be able to get some sleep! 3 cheers for the weekend!

teach, do something worthwhile with your life

[drawing coming up later...]
In the absence of books, films, art and daydreams that inspire during these past few weeks, I find myself enjoying more than usual these casual, meandering, sometimes nostalgic conversations with my family. And of the many stories about her childhood that my mother has told me (and re-told), this remains my favourite.

Mrs L cannot remember when the Health Sciences class became her responsibility. A honours (distinction) graduate from the Malayan University in geography, there are days when Mrs L wonders how it is that she has fallen from high mountain tops to the darker, unclean regions of the human body and its earthly abode. But the principal did not fancy any of the male teachers teaching the young girls the correct way to wash their hands and brush their teeth and keep god-knows-where-else clean if their mothers had not already told them to. So here she was, an educated young woman of her time, called to join the men in leading the nation's charge from third world darkness to first world light. And if health science was what she had to teach, so be it. Mrs L would do her utmost to make tomorrow's class one that will be remembered by this generation - and the next.

Perhaps fourteen year old Siew Gek heard this passionate timbre in Mrs L's voice and was moved.

That afternoon, with Mrs L's instructions noted in her little 555 blue notebook, Siew Gek set out to prepare for tomorrow's health science class.

Her first stop was the coffeeshop at the corner of a long row of shophouses. There, she asked the kopi-su if he would let her have one of the empty ABC Stout bottles at no charge. He waved her away. This, she took as a "yes". Next, she took a shortcut through the coffeeshop to the back of the shophouses and headed in the direction of her kampong. Just by the edge of the squatter was a drain, about one meter wide and deep, its sides narrow to a V. She bent and balanced herself with one foot on each side. There were only leaves and trash. It was dry. Thank goodness there has not been any rain the past 2 days. Slowly, Siew Gek advanced towards a hole by the side of the drain that was the outlet for drainage from some other place, taking care to avoid an especially slippery spot of moss. Once there, she could see their shiny brown bodies, barely camouflaged against the grainy concrete.

It was not difficult coaxing them into the bottle.

The smell of stout was still strong. And perhaps because they have never been harassed much, except maybe by boys on a hunt for spiders, their instincts were yet developed to sly human traps.

After a couple of minutes, Siew Gek counted the number of cockraches in the bottle and was pleased. There was just about enough to go round the class if two girls shared one cockroach and one dissecting blade between them.

Y: Why did you bring so many cockroaches to School?!?
Mom: Aiyah, I was kind-hearted. A lot of those girls I know won't bring any.
Y: Oh I see... [though not quite convinced]
M: I'll always remember that stupid teacher. Until today I can remember her name! That Mrs Lim! You know what she said to me?
Y: What?
M: In front of everybody in the class, she said so loudly, "wah, Jenny, your house is so dirty!" I tell you, I was so angry. All my kind intentions. And I purposely went to the drain to catch... I will always remember her name, that Mrs Lim!

paralysed

J/TOHA's second post! (The first was months ago.)



I held my mom's left hand, the weak side, and asked if she could grasp my hand. She said it was impossible, and told us not to force her to try.

"Don't give up. Keep focusing on it. Train your mind to understand that this is your hand, and you want it to move when you tell it to."

"Don't force me lah."

Deep down, I was a little disappointed by her response, but I couldn't help but to liken her situation to mine. Definitely not a fair comparison, but I felt, at that very moment, paralsyed. Not literally or physically, but my mind was numbed, blurred and confused.

Life at work has just gotten worse. What's new, most of you who know me might say. I don't think I want to elaborate how bad it has gotten, but just take it that it is so bad I felt like tendering my resignation on the spot this morning. A month back, I had kind of decided that I would quit my job this May and to enrol in a full-time design course with what little savings Y and I have. Boy, I felt so free then.

Things have changed, of course.

Since my mom was hospitalised, quite a few things have popped into my mind. First, that I am an unfilial son. I have been living away from my folks for several years now, and I visit them no more than 6 times a year. Thinking back, I could have paid more attention to my mom's diabetic condition. Perhaps if I had taken better care of her, brought her to see a specialist, she might not be down with stroke.

Second, the medical expenses for her hospital stay and the later healthcare, equipment and other costs means that I would now need to delay my plan of leaving my job. I feel trapped, once more.

So it does feel like I had the stroke - a stroke that has left me "bedridden" in my job and I would need to start learning again how to deal with the daily struggles of work.

Really need to pray for direction and guidance - when will it be time for me to move on to a new job, if at all; and for my mom's spirit, so that she will not give up on herself. I tell myself that if these two major issues can be resolved, my "stroke"
may just be cured.