how old are you

images by J

Do you remember how it was when you were young and random relatives would remark to your parents - “Wow, he/she has grown so much already!” or “長這麼大了!”. Not being very tall, this remark never appeared very sincere to me.

Perhaps J and I are now at a stage in our lives when the passing of time is marked not by the next school year; not by the prospect of graduation, a job or a promotion thereafter; not by the weddings or even the baby showers of close friends. Instead, it is starting to be marked by how quickly the kids around us – since we have none of our own – seemed to have grown.

J to a boy at church: Hello.
Boy: Hello.
J: How are you?
Boy: Hmm. Six.
J: Not “how old are you”… How are you?
Boy: Oh. Today, I’m fine...
[Pause.]
Boy: But yesterday was not so good.
J: …

very very much

The fall in May did give me a bump on the head for a few days, but the rest of the year was a strange combination of intense work days and nights of sheer ennui (which, according to J, simply calls for exercise). In any case, I’ve been thinking of reviving the blog, and what better reason than to have a chance to say - Dear friends, have a blessed Christmas!

J and I were somewhat uninspired at first when it came to the door design for Christmas and the new year. We did have all kinds of rabbit-inspired motifs at first. A giant 3D origami rabbit (nah, been there, done that). Vinyl sticker designs (too much of a hassle). A brand new coat of paint (but we’ll miss the 2 kids).

It was dinner with a friend D in early December and hearing his story that made it clear to J and I the message our door should bear in Christmas and into 2011.



The text and rabbit outfits are cut out from ampulets studio's year-end project last year. This year’s year-end project, incidentally, will be late going out to friends and the studio’s clients. Why? Now that’s a story I will tell once I get the all clear for its happy ending.

=========
p/s Just for fun, I dug out the links to the past doors! 2009 2008, 2007,2006

ouch!

click for larger view in flickr

I stepped out of the lift, slipped, fell and hit my head this morning! Thank God the doctor says it should be just a bruise. If I was 70, perhaps something would have broken. What an odd coincidence that I had just finished this Kidnap Bob drawing two nights ago.

a sad oldie

I had just finished a cartoony drawing of J while he was attempting to draw me sitting across from him. We were both enjoying a post-dinner kopi 10pm last night. I asked if he would like any text under this quick portrait. He shot me this immediate reply, "growing old makes me sad". I said, "you're so depressing!". He said, "that's how a feel." I said, "..." He said, "..."

Well folks, I don't know about you but it's been a dreary week at work so far and next week promises to be hectic. But there's nothing like reviving an old project to distract. J's portrait has therefore acquired the comforting figure of Kidnap Bob and his depressing line works surprisingly well for Kidnap News 2 so far. Enjoy...

Worry Not Worry Wart

click for larger view in flickr

Worrywart: What am I going to do now?
Optimist: Do? What about? Sounds exciting.
Worrywart: All these jobs coming in and design briefs to crack. I'm really worried.
Optimist: Wow! It's a good thing, sounds like perhaps it's time you thought about expanding.
Worrywart:Expand? I'm not even sure what's going to happen 3 years from now.
Optimist: Er, try it for a year first?
Worrywart: I'm really worried.
Optimist: Aiyah, you're always worried anyway, so it's nothing new that you're worried, so don't worry.
Worrywart: But, I've been like this for so long, that's worrying.
Optimist:...

the interim

Picture Tennis: The first serve was the fat caterpillar.

J and I played picture tennis just before I went back to work some 6 weeks ago. I've made no drawings and done no writing since. My body is adjusting - and forgetting. But I hope not to forget the lessons of the year out and the possibilities I imagined. Hmm, alright. There should be a proper blogpost soon...or perhaps installment 1.3 of My Life as a Magician's Rabbit. Right now, folks, it's pitch dark in the tophat!

better late...

than never. Click here for Part (1.2) of My Life as a Magician's Rabbit.

to be continued...

The week running up to my returning to work, I have:
(1) Fallen sick. A friend cleverly suggested the symptoms were all psychosomatic...
(2) Met up with friends every night for conversation and a drink (or two).
(3) Bought a new TV to numb the brain after work.
(4) Downloaded the super addictive Bejewelled on my iPhone, as suggested by J, for the daily commute.
(5) Finally started working proper on My Life as a Magician's Rabbit.

My Life as a Magician's Rabbit is a 4-part story (for now) that's been in my head for years. To start with, there are no drawings yet and I'm not sure if the text will inspire images eventually. But if you are interested to follow the story, I'm determined (ah, all gung-ho before reporting for work) to post a new installment once a week at this site for the coming months.

Otherwise, life goes on. There'll still be random posts on this blog about art, cinema, design and any domestic tourism we indulge in. J will continue bossing it out at ampulets design where he does corporate and commissioned work. In fact, check back here for news about a new T-shirt and possibly an exhibition project that ampulets design will be collaborating with some arty folks on!

why not?

Ai WeiWei at the Mori Museum, Tokyo - all images by J

Three conversations (or rants) about "Why Not?"

(1) The "Why Nots" of Old
Over a cup of coffee in Katong, a good friend was recalling his years growing up in Toa Payoh. He said, or as I recall him recalling, "everyday I would hear this: don't bother, this is not for you; yes others can do it, but you must understand what you are capable of; you don't have to try so hard, just focus on...When I was much older, I suddenly realise, f*** it, I can do whatever it is I set my mind to do."

It's never too late, friends.


The devil at the door

(2) Art and "Why Not?"
After a discussion with some folks about the arts in Singapore and what they want or see in the future, I felt a little depressed but did not know why. Everything I heard was linked, in one way or other, about what we could "realistically hope for". They were not entirely wrong. With limited resources in an absolute sense - finances, talent, physical space, lived heritage - it seems the wise thing to set our sights more "strategically". Tonight, after some sake, I suddenly realised why that conversation was so depressing. Isn't there something about the spirit behind artistic discipline that is about what others would not "realistically hope for", but nonetheless worth believing in and pursuing.

Perhaps this is why the artist and the manager will always be at odds. In the best of situations, the tensions and relationship between the two can bring about great work. Of course, I think this is a statement of the hopeful realist.


Nature, design by God

(3) "Why Not" is not just whimsy
J was telling me about the publicity material for this year's Singapore Design Festival that he had noticed on the MRT trains. The tagline for its campaign was" Why Not?" He remembered one of the train advertisements - "Edible Buildings. Why not?" His complaint: why must art or design always be promoted as a kind of cute, whimsical proposition when it has all the power and ability to change the world for better? His alternatives: "A world without petrol. Why not?" "Cycling lanes in Singapore. Why not?" I can understand his frustration. The whimsical is valuable, but art and design can often be limited by popular perception and even marketing to this one realm.

However, don't let this little advertising blip discourage you from checking out the many varied events being organised as part of this year's Singapore Design Festival. Keep an open mind, listen, observe, and there'll always be lots to learn - and question.

off

I have three two more weeks till the end of my "sabbatical". I place that word in quotation marks because after listening to Stefan Sagmeister (on TED.com, video embedded above) speaking about his year out in Bali, I think I need to use a far more modest term.

tunnel-visioned tokyo

Tokyo - that's all we'll be seeing this coming week! And that is plenty because it is going to be the week of the Tokyo Designers Week, 100% Design Tokyo, Design Tide at Midtown, the Emerging Directors' Art Fair, the Aosando Art Fair... But of course, J and I are just looking forward to walking in another city.

We'll try and load up the photos here as we go along! Meanwhile design critic J is appalled and depressed by changi airport.

A love supreme

time project #14. Turtle and machine.

Secretary: Boss, do you know your business has just turned three? Praise God!
Boss Amps: Has it? Wow!
Secretary: Yah... er, still no time to put up the website proper huh?
Boss Amps: Clients' work come first mah.
Secretary: Yah, we're man, not machine.
Boss Amps: ...
Secretary: In the spirit of that, boss, I thought this year's annual report should not be about all that boring stuff. You know, how's work? what are the future plans? what was your favouritest project. Machines are slowly taking over all that. Let's talk about human stuff. Like music. After all, we're made to make music, the sublime stuff.
Boss Amps:It would be nice to play a musical instrument. Like after a day's work.
Secretary: What musical instrument do you play, boss?
Boss Amps: None.
Secretary: Ah. But say you could. What would it be?
Boss Amps: ...
Secretary: The trumpet? Miles Davis style.
Boss Amps: Yah, I did think about that years ago. But you know, it'll make my cheeks even puffier.
Secretary: ...
Boss Amps: Now I've been thinking...the double bass.
Secretary: Double bass! Just what I want to play!
Boss Amps: It's illegal for short people to play the double bass.
Secretary: It's a cool instrument anyway.
Boss Amps: Agree. Like the opening double bass in John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.
Secretary: Yah, best 4-note motif. Best jazz album ever.

So friends, that wraps up the third year for amps' design studio.

Watch a short recording of Coltrane's quartet in a 1965 performance below. You can listen to the first "track" of the 33min album here, but depending on your computer's speakers, you may not get much of a bass. So it's best to get the album of the 1964 studio recording with a copy of the original liner notes. In it, there's Coltrane's foreword and his psalm "A Love Supreme" which he "narrates" in music - wordlessly and so perfectly.

a thousand years of silence

According to this website, turtles in Chinese mythology (or maybe it's Japanaese mythology) get to speak "the language if humans" when they reach a thousand years of age. How is speaking "the language of humans" a reward for 1000 years of peaceful silence?

After 1 year of peaceful distance from work, tomorrow I''ll be reporting at my new job for a "visioning exercise." It won't be at least 2 months before I start proper, but reality is starting to s-i-n-k-i-n. So it was with some urgency that I finished this drawing for the turtle/time project.

trumpet tree viewing

images by J

From our fifteenth floor flat, we can see the top of trees - their varied shades and flowered crowns.

In the month of September, or round about the seventh lunar month, the trumpet tree (I think that's what it is) blooms and rains down its flowers.

J: It's our cherry blossom!
Y: Yah, like cherry blossoms! Pretty ah.
Old woman: [in Hokkien] Super pretty.
Y: [in a semblance of Hokkien] Very pretty.
Old woman: Every year around this time, these trees are like this. Sometimes all the way until the eighth month.
Y: Is it?
Old woman: This morning, wah, the ground was all full of flowers. They sweep it away already, But this morning, wah. Super pretty.
Y: If you look down from the window, the whole tree top is flowers.
Old woman: I can't go to the window ah. [gestures at the wheelchair] My legs are no good, afraid I'll fall.
Y: Yah, better to be careful...
Old woman: [sits watching the flowers while we walk off] Super pretty.

work in progress

On our walk after lunch one day, J spotted a strange "flower" rising above the general mess of green along the road. So we took a closer look. And wow - it was botanical skyscraper architecture! Some ants had created a sort of nest by sealing up the leaves at the end of a branch, resulting in a rather elegant bubble-like tent, with only the slightest of gap between two leaves to serve as an entranceway.

Two animated films and several documentaries later, ants are still fascinating. Regardless of shape or colour, you seldom see them still. They are always in the process of getting somewhere, doing something. In fact, those crazy black species that seem to run randomly around (J and I recently found out that they really are just called "Crazy Black Ants") are like a species created specially to parody their more purposeful cousins - they are the fastest, most frantic, most busy, but also the most seemingly lost.

When I took this year off work, I thought I would have more time to get some stories and drawings done (other than the dissertation, of course). Compared with last year, there are possibly a few more drawings. But it suffices to say that my productivity does not agree with my ambitions. It is a pace of work and living that is, as a friend recently put it, "utopian". I have thought of it as "Australian", recalling an Australian uncle's description of his 8.30-4.30 workday with morning, lunch and tea breaks thrown in.

Taken out of the context of formal, paid employment in any organisation, i.e. "a job", work can assume a freer definition. For example:

(1) Keeping clean the environment J and I live (and work) in is work. On one hand, it is work that reminds me how futile any work can be. The dust gathers, you sweep it up, it gathers again, you wipe it away, it gathers, you vacuum it up, it gathers... you get the picture. On the other, it is work that is necessary and labour that is gratifying in its immediacy.

(2) Getting the research done and writing up the dissertation is work. It is self-directed, satisfies a certain intellectual curiosity and, hopefully, brings more understanding and practical support to the arts. Technically, this could count as my only paid work* this year.

(3) Drawing is work. Besides the illustrations that were made in collaboration with J for Tiger Translate and Union, all the other drawings don't have a "client" or public platform as yet. But it is work that is enjoyable - an exercise of the mind/eye/hand to make visible and communicative what otherwise are fleeting ideas and stories.

(4) Helping J with the administrative bits for his design projects is work. It is work that, mechanically, most resembles a job - except there is no personal monetary profit plus CPF at the end of the month... (are you reading this, boss J?)

(5) Giving time to some community-led projects is work. On this list, it is the activity least like work. Yet it is a kind of labour that reflects all aspects of this list so far.

None of it is "work" in the way I would have defined a year ago. It is labour, but not laborious. There are no real externally-driven "KPIs" or financial profit, but it remains fruitful. I would like to go so far as to agree with the friend that it is "utopian", but it isn't. It isn't imagined. It is also not without financial conditions, especially considering the realities of the economic climate: i.e. I am aided by a generous scholarship* that gives me a monthly paycheck, for which there is a reasonable three-year service bond. In this sense, it is not "Australian", but very "Singaporean". ;>

help!

"go take my online survey...or I'll slaughter you"

It's been a year away from work. Well, student life is coming to an end in a few months' time, and I'm wrapping it up with a dissertation on independent art spaces in Singapore (e.g. spaces like good ol' Substation and this, among others.)

So friends, I'll appreciate it if you can take a few minutes to complete an online opinon survey about art spaces in Singapore. There're about 9 multiple-choice questions. I'll be sure to update you about some of the findings at the end of the month.

Click here now to take survey.

look and learn

the water that we (eventually) drink - photo of lower peirce by J

The school holidays are coming to an end. Marianne Suresh* (13) and her cousins, Ignatius (11), Victor (10), Jacinta (8) and Julitta (6) have been spending most of it at their Grandmother's flat at Ang Mo Kio Ave 1, and clearly running out of things to do. Between helping grandma make dinner or her suggestion to Marianne to "bring your cousins to the reservoir and see the monkeys?", the latter won more votes.

The reservoir is not far away. Marianne can see the mass of trees from the 10th floor corridor where her Grandmother pointed out the traffic junction where she would find the road leading to the reservoir.

It was early evening last Friday when J and I bumped into their little excursion as we, too, took our bicycles to the Lower Peirce Reservoir. We cycled on the path along the periphery of the reservoir, until it ended at a little bridge that led to the golf course nearby. The famous five had also gathered there, having a mini-conference in front of a sign with a waterdrop mascot that introduced the reservoir as "millions of drops of water like me".

"Excuse me," Ignatius walked towards J. "Where is the reservoir?"

"Er - This is the reservoir - " J gestured at the large, clear jade body of water we were standing beside, the supposed source of the Kallang River.

Ignatius and, by now, Victor and Marianne looked at us silently with disbelief for some 2 seconds. Behind them was a 20 by 20 metre concrete pool, exposed and dry. Their eyes told us they thought J was trying to pull a fast one.

"This - " J pointed again at the landscape before him, "is the reservoir."

"Thank you..." Ignatius offered blankly.

They ran back to the sign and wandered closer to peer at the empty concrete pool. Two minutes later, having exhausted their interest in the mysterious "reservoir" that was empty, they would continue onto their next task.

"Excuse me uncle." We heard behind us and turned around to find Julitta. "Excuse me uncle, where are the monkeys?"

"You see those trees there?" I pointed at a spot diagonally across the water, while Uncle J was busy looking amused.

"Yah, there?"

"If you walk there, the trees over there - there's a wooden path for you to walk on - maybe you'll see monkeys."

"Thank you!"

Then off they went, hopeful that they would find the very creatures J and I would rather not bump into.

And so we learn, to recognise the things we are already looking at but do not see. And sometimes, we may need to see and experience the thing on our own before we come to recognise it.

====
*Their names and context are made up.

spare the grandma (spoil the child)

9 lives - click for larger flickr view

Y: Hey, look at this! [points at image in the Butterflies of Singapore book.]
J: What's that?
Y: It's a caterpillar! You know, the young one of a butterfly...before it transforms and becomes a pretty butterfly. Duh.
J: [grunts]
Y: Anyway, the book says that in order to avoid being eaten by its predator, this caterpillar of a lime butterfly "adopts the shape and colour of bird droppings". Haha...
J: Haha...
Y: Caterpillar A meets his friend Caterpillar B on a leaf and says - "Hey man, what's wrong with you?"
J: ... Haha, I know I know - "Hey man, what's wrong with you? You look like shit today!"

J and I finished this drawing today. The idea was inspired not by our corny conversation but triggered by the monologue at the dinner table next to ours last evening. It wasn't difficult to eavesdrop, given the agitated tone of the speaker - a lady in her 30s - and the volume of her frustrations all through dessert. The complaints to her companions were about her mother-in-law who helps to look after her two young daughters and in the process, has supposedly spoiled them. It's tough to be a grandma if you aren't allowed to indulge your grandkids, and are required instead to re-play the disciplinary routines you exercised with your kids. It's a flawed logic, but maybe it would be better not having kids if you cannot enjoy one of the rewards of parenthood - spoiling your grandkids to bits.

plenty

22 March-Turtle Hatchlings and a branch of the Sea Almond

J: [points at a tree] So what's this tree called?
Y: Er, it's...I don't know.
J: [points at a tree] And this?
Y: Eh, I saw it in the book! I think it's...I don't know.
J: [points at a tree] And this tree?
Y: I don't know.
J: [points at a tree] And this tree?
Y: I don't know.
J: [points at a tree] And this tree?
Y: I don't know.

Repeat ad nauseam.

This little book has gotten me looking at trees every time I step out. But I don't seem to quite have a head for botany. A "conical crown" and "compound leaves" are echoes of the Primary School science text book, abstractions that I recognise but cannot translate into what I'm seeing. The lives of the trees when described - some of them indigenous, many are migrants from the Americas, Africas or the immediate region around us - read a little like magical fiction and sometimes, like memory.

I like the Sea Almond. It is supposedly "a common seashore tree of the region, easily recognised by its pagoda shape of radiating branches growing at regular intervals along the stem. The tree sheds its leaves twice a year and before they are shed, the large, simple leaves turn vivid red". The fruits of the sea almond "have a corky layer which helps them float in the sea, this being their normal method of dispersal. The single seed has an edible embryo, tasting rather like almond, thus the common name."

Walking along a short stretch of road leading to my mother's house last evening, I think I came across more than 5 varieties of trees. There is one whose dried and open fruits always provide a satisfying crunch under the foot. There is some sort of palm - that much I know. There is a lone Frangipani on the traffic island at the Y-fork of the road. Then there are the tall, outstretched branches of a tree whose bloom and falling leaves have the same shade of yellow. And a tree whose bark is pale and whose crown is thin, but maybe its roots are deep.

The natural world would always inform and amaze with its abundance of form and colour, the inventiveness and genius of its making; and of course, God its maker.

I am not sure how this is related to nature's plenty, but with a year away from formal work and a global environment marked by economic shake-ups, I am thankful for being able to get back to a more grounded living. Perhaps I mean to say a more plentiful living.

meet the people

"Afternoon Tea my MP", made by J with his phone and imovie
[to view, click the play button on the left of the bottom bar]

And so, friends, this goes to show that laboriously going from apartment to apartment, knocking on your constituency's doors (and finding them out/ignoring you or obliging you with a 5-second smile from behind locked grills) is not as effective for getting a response on our island as simply offering free (*) fried curry puffs on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

At the void deck, Grandmas and Granddads were cheerfully filling in their names and addresses on the forms, collecting party balloon animals and, of course, their goodie bag of fried food. Ah, we couldn't resist the call of the void deck. So while we didn't meet the lady herself, we dutifully followed the example of our elders by also writing our little "feedback" about this on our form before...of course, collecting that bag of cholesterol.