ampulets

at the top - image by J "Succession planning" is one of many examples of management-speak that always make me cringe. It's prosaic enough, but "succession" is a word more often paired with "throne", and word-association moves on to give me "dynastic", "cronism", "privilege" and ultimately "undeserved". But for someone leading an organisation not to be actively looking out for folks who can eventually take over and run the organisation, often better, also suggests myopia, pride or just plain irresponsibility. In this area, arts organisations in Singapore don't have a great track record. I recall telling J how optimistic I was feeling about the SIFF, simply because a new team had taken over this year. Finally, an organisation in the arts that got it right by taking the risk, letting go and taking on new and different people, ideas and energy for the longer journey. Maybe my optimism was misplaced ... but I am ...

We put together the image above for Tiger Translate , a platform Tiger Beer has been promoting for some years now. The theme for us amps and 21 other illustrators and graphic designers is "Change". If you click here , you can also explore over a hundred illustrations on earlier themes such as "Merge", "Rise", "Gold"...yah, Tiger beery kind of words. Incidentally, last month J and I bumped again into "Mr Elvis" from the image above! It had been some 2 years since we last sketched him on the train. How did we know it was him? Well, how many train commuters do you know will bring their own foldable plastic stools/chairs for their commute? So there he was again, seated on the same low stool set up near that same side of the train doors. Having sketched and worked on the image, it was also easier to recognise him. But as if foretold by that theme "Change", Mr Elvis' proud coiffure from before was now a more tame bed...

Kidnap Bob comforts Pa J. Click on image for flickr view . It is easy to imagine why there are so many hospital-themed dramas. Families huddled along narrow antiseptic corridors and in curtained corners of a silent room. Relatives who didn't use to talk, must at least nod to each other in acknowledgement. Children who have squabbled over the medical fees must put up reconciliatory faces before the suffering parent. Parents must tend to their children, at a time of their lives when their children should really be tending to them. The old man who never ever gets any visitors. Doctors and nurses for whom all this is part of work - and more. Individuals taken out of their normal lives and stripped of their clothes and all that they have used to define themselves; put instead into pajamas that are not meant to fit, just in case you should forget that it is precisely your body, naked and awkward, that has rebelled or decayed. Other than actual medical tools, there's a whole lot tha...

"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.