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Juraissic age HDB playground at Kim Keat - all images by J

My parents were born on this tropical island. But my father's father was from that most southern of southern China - the godforsaken island of Hainan; and my mother's was probably from Swatow. Pa J on the other hand was actually born in the Hokchia stronghold of Zhang Jian, and had travelled to the Nanyang by boat when he was a boy.

On our tiny city-state, the idea of a hometown may have little meaning. Ask a Singaporean "where were you born?", and the answer would probably just be "XYZ Hospital" instead of "XYZ Village/Town/City/Country". This would, of course, change with more new migrants.

Still, since we were both on leave from work, this morning J and I decided to put on our domestic tourist tags and go visit what comes closest to being our hometown - the neighbourhood of Bendemeer!

The walk from Toa Payoh to Bendemeer brought us through the flats of Kim Keat guarded by 2 dinosaurs (what was going through the minds of those Town Council folks who commissioned this?!), through the Shuang Lin Temple, across the Pan Island Expressway to the butterfly-filled fields beside Whampoa Estate, and across the Central Tunnel Expressway to the Towner Estate which is right beside the 4 decade old HDB estate of Bendemeer.



J's corridor playground + Sticker-style graffiti by disgruntled Bendemeer inhabitant

There's nothing romantic about this, just a fact of the smallness of our island that both J and I had actually lived in adjacent blocks of flats in Bendemeer when we were kids.

But I would be dishonest if I said I did not like being able to share with J memories of the same kindergarten, the playground just at the foot of our flats, the same market and food centre, the same provision shop, the same stationer's with its glass cabinets of colourful erasers and pencil sharpeners we would gaze at, the same Lao Fuzi comics by the barber/hairdresser, the same beautiful mosaic-tiled wall of the adults' United Overseas Bank...



surviving the times

But taking away these particular memories, our experiences were vastly different. I with my Grandma, and J with his family of 7 siblings. Admittedly, J seemed to have more varied and colourful relationships with the neighbourhood and its inhabitants and merchants.

It is also a fact of this island's life that the neighbourhood of your childhood memories will not stay unchanged through time. And perhaps a particular aesthetic of memory would evolve given all this. I don't mean a hazy, warm-fuzzy-feeling sort of nostalgia-influenced aesthetic. But a kind of aesthetic where materiality and time will lock arms, tightly.

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p/s Domestic Tourism food tips
If you are in Bendemeer, visit its market and food centre for yummy fried carrot cake (the black sauce kind) at stall 01-35 and the famously ungrammatical "Eat-May-Know" rojak. To get to Bendemeer, take the North-East line and drop off at Boon Keng Station.

white

click for flickr view

About Christmas and gifts, I just overheard this on a news interview tonight - "帶一個感恩的心". Friends, hope you have a good Christmas and New Year holiday.

the walking man

image by J

The joys of walking are seldom fully experienced on this island. The reasons are many: it's the weather - that debilitating heat or the indecisive raining that is not quite a steady drizzle or a thunderstorm; the fast pace of life; the design of our pavements and streets; "there's nothing to see"... Or maybe, as in many cities, we reserve our walking for indoor, air-conditioned environments designed to visually entice and seduce at every step (no, not museums, but shopping malls).

But the nature-lover's trek, the scholarly stroll, the solitary romantic's ramble, the lovers' meander, or just a destination-driven march are all possible (and enjoyable) on our small, car-mad island.

When I was a student, I had spent my holidays walking around the city alone. Now, since we don't drive, J and I walk a fair bit everyday whenever we can give the bus or train a miss. 2 Saturdays ago, with J at the gym and the December morning air agreeing, I walked around half of Toa Payoh alone. It was a lovely walk. I thought about this book.

When I had first read the graphic novel The Walking Man by Jiro Taniguchi, I did not know what to make of it. Used to either manga's futuristic apocalyptic visions (Jiro Taniguchi had drawn one of these, Icaro with Moebius) or strangely moralistic fantasies, I was expecting with each frame or page of The Walking Man that there would be an odd twist in the tale. Perhaps this nameless man was a serial murderer or rapist. Perhaps he had just moved into a town with a dark past. Or perhaps he will have an affair with that woman he has just met in the park.

But as the book progressed in its slow, desultory pace, all there was was as the title promised - a man (middle-age, seemingly well-off and nerdy) and his random walks in a town he and his wife had just moved into,a slightly old town. He gets caught in the rain. His glasses are smashed when he passes a group of boys playing in a field. He has a chance encounter with a woman in an autumnal park. He meets a bird watcher. He spots a local bird in the next chapter. He finds a lipstick left behind by a group of giggly schoolgirls. So used is the typical reader to our own cityscape and TV dramas that we expect these chance encounters to each lead on to something sordid, dangerous - well, exciting. Yes, now that's reality, or rather, life!

So for its stubbornly idyllic and nostalgic ways, I guess this story is not unlike a fantasy. Yet The Walking Man is oddly about "real" life. Not just for its realistic renderings in each frame, but how Jiro Taniguchi manages to evoke the very sensory experiences (and more) - the sight, smell, thrill, touch, humour, wonder, curiosity, taste, even possibly temptation - of that nameless walking man through his story and images. These walks translate into every positive sense of being alive.

I was also reminded of another book Designing Design by Japanese graphic designer (Muji's CD) Kenya Hara that J had recently bought. Kenya Hara, in writing about the disorientation of too much media/information today, describes it as too little information. Our brain has too little, not too much stimulation. He compares our experiences today to having a multitude of post-it notes on the brain, but none stimulating our human brain in all its sensory possibilities of knowing and living. There's a diagram in his book where, to an outline of the human body, he sketches a diagram of the brain not just in the head, but brains located all over our bodies - in our hands, shoulders, feet, chest...


not at this pace lah! - image by J

During one of our many walks around the city on a hot, sticky weekend, J and I were determined to get to our next destination in the shortest time possible. But I thought perhaps all the speed walking is generating more heat. So I deliberately slowed my pace, and made sure that I felt my feet - from heel to toes - touch and lift off the pavement each and every step. I don't know about J, but I felt immediately calmer and cooler - anchored not to to heat from the cement, but a kind of solid ground...metaphysically speaking!

Alone, you get to tune in to your body/senses in the context of the world around you; with someone, there's another kind of living. Either way, walking is good. Yes, despite the punishing sun, the irritating indeterminate half-rain-half-drizzle, the rush for the next errand, our often unattractive patchwork cement sidewalks, and the lure of those comfortable, shopping mall corridors...