ampulets blog

carpenter dreams

2011-12-25T12:34:00.008+08:00

Sometime in October every year, we know we will have 2 design briefs to crack: the design of our front door; and the studio's annual project.

While the latter has been getting more intense and ambitious each year (and so friends, you will receive it only in January 2012!), the former has fallen into a comfortable, crafty pattern. Perhaps it is because whatever it is we want to communicate is already scripted in the good book.

So friends, since God loves you very very much, you know we got to just love one another too! Amps wish you all another loving Christmas and new year.

Past doors! 2010 2009 2008, 2007,2006

Same Same, Not Different

2011-10-12T22:41:00.013+08:00

Not that nothing happened in the last 4 months - work family art life - but nothing quite warranted a blog post until this...

became this.

Finally.

Although the market is no longer part of Mr Chiam's Potong Pasir and it has lost some of its early 80s charm, J and I are just relieved that after a year away, our old friends at the market have all returned!

There is Wings, who still makes the world's best BBQ wings and more than a dozen hawkers we have grown strangely familiar with and attached to. The fish soup auntie with the most amazing memory; the hokkien mee seller who is like a carbon copy of J's dad; SL the ex-taxi driver who now makes kopi; the lady boss of another kopi store who still sports a fuschia mohawk; the ngor-hiang seller who has a great relationship with his teenage daughter; a couple of Shatec graduates persevering with their western food store...

Ah, our village square has come back to life again.

To celebrate, we made Wings a welcome back gift. His own felt, stuffed wing with the mandatory 發 (huat ah) embroidery.

Perhaps I am romanticising the place, its people and the quotidian. Perhaps this kind of parochialism is unhealthy. But I cannot deny the comfort I draw from this community I have maybe constructed. Even so, I like to think I am not alone in this imagination.

on the slow lane

2011-06-26T22:10:00.021+08:00

J and I have always liked taking our bicycles to the reservoirs or neighbouring towns. Well, its our way of pretending we are kids on scooters in Taipei, zipping around and out of the city.

But for the last few weekends, we thought to venture further for some domestic tourism. From Toa Payoh, we visited Ubi's industrial estates, the Marina Barrage, the East Coast and Seletar.

All photos in this post are by J

We saw many things along the way, but for me, these 3 stood out:

Lovers

Because scaredy cat us would not go on the roads, a large part of our journey was through the ingenious park connectors that the National Parks Board had devised. In the various stretches along the Kallang river, starting from Potong Pasir to where the river meets the bay, we would often go by lovers on the park benches, under the trees or spread out on plastic ground sheets. They were chatting, listening to the radio, exhausting a bag of chips and doing everything else that lovers do. Thai, Burmese, Filipino, Indonesian, Chinese, Indian...it was the UN of love.

It made me think of this movie, and reminded me how little 2 people in love need to feel happy.

Workers

This is the closest photo I have to the idea of "workers", standing guard on a hot Sunday at Katong Park near Fort Road, on the way to the East Coast.

One of the strangest experiences we had was on our way to the Marina Barrage. The route we took was from the Nicoll Highway, past the F1 pit, the Singapore Flyer, the Marina Bay Sands IR, the Marina Bay Residences, and finally circling around the heavy construction site that will be the Gardens by the Bay, before we reached the Barrage.

What different worlds we saw in the making, and all within that concentrated promontory of land reclaimed from the sea.

We first observed young Singaporeans on their canoes, then the 2 paeans to tourism and the 1 paean to integrated resorting, before reaching the ultra posh Marina Bay residences. But once past the luxury condominium, it felt like another world altogether.

It was a world of cement dust. It was a world of make shift bus stops. It was a world of narrow pavements, where groups of workers in their heavy construction boots marched by or stepped aside, quietly, to let the other pass. On the way to the barrage, we spied rows of tightly placed exotic trees, still awaiting to sink their roots. And with similar order and the same degree of economy were seemingly endless rows of temporary dormitories, stacked 3 or 4 stories high. Men in their teens to 30s stood outside the doors or moved about purposefully. Their laundry was draped across the railing, their muddy bikes were all lined up. Two "barbers" had set up their make shift shop by the pavement, the barber chair a plastic stool on concrete. One chinese barber. One Indian barber. They were set 20 metres apart, a polite competition.

When we finally got to the Barrage, the workers had disappeared from sight.

Singaporean families crowded the rooftop garden and flew these magnificent kites. There must have been some 20 to 30 kites in the sky - but there was space enough. Looking at them, you never would have guessed the frenzy of the kite flyers on their tiny patch of green below.

I enjoyed the bike ride. But something felt not quite right, I think.

Trees

I enjoyed less the bike ride to Seletar - there was less to distract along the way. But whatever it was I saw, it felt "right".

For this, all credit goes to the trees - giant rain trees and angsanas lined the Upper Thomson Road all the way to Seletar. Cycling some distance behind J, I realised how tall and majestic these trees were - and in contrast, how small the usually-tall J was. I needed distance to see this.

Along our coastline too are rows of trees. Sea almonds, coconut and casuarina...and many more I know not how to name. They broke the force of the winds and provided a degree of shade in the mid-year sun. They are most likely not native to our coast, neither are the rain trees along our roads. But without a doubt, the trees, they were definitely the best decisions us islanders made in the history of our island living.

against time and place

2011-04-21T23:00:00.002+08:00

Friends, go watch The Impossibility of Knowing by Tan Pin Pin at the Singapore Art Museum as part of the Singapore Biennale 2011. It is screened together with another new film by Tan Pin Pin, Snow City and four other films.

For all the criticism that the Singapore Biennale seems to be getting in the press and as part of the general reception, the works at 8Q SAM seemed to be pitched just about right in terms of accessibility, criticality and... er, indoor temperature. For me at least, most of the works at 8Q all had this dual quality: one is the aesthetic, peculiarity and assertion of a singular or individual vision; and two, the encounter of a collective or common reality, memory or experience. In some ways, this tension or conversation between the individual and the collective is art's unique value and contribution.

But perhaps one should not expect a Biennale platform to always achieve that "just about right".

Unlike the public museum or any other institutional presentation, the Biennale platform should allow for some incongruence, error and dissonance between the curatorial or artistic and public or audience expectations.

Its advantage is that, as a form, it need not be inhibited by an institutional mission, collection or space/physical infrastructure - an advantage that allows it to be "ahead of its time", "off centre" in its approach, or even completely "missing the mark" in some aspects.

Its challenge, however, is that such advantage comes with a price tag so large that it often requires significant city or federal government funding. In the case of Singapore, where art's primary patron is still the government or rather public funds, a certain structure of accountability for the use of public funds is necessary; and with that, perhaps less room for "failure" or "dissonance".

It is a tall order: to feel right in its time and place, yet to go just that bit further to stretch the public's imagination of where, when and why.

童年真美麗

2011-04-11T00:09:00.005+08:00

童年真美麗－ I drew the kids, but the idea and eventual layout are by J. The kids, of course, are not ours. They are made by my Bro E and his wife M.

The oldest picture book on my shelf is a 1963 reprint of a small, pink cloth-bound book by Joan Walsh Anglund, Love is a Special Way of Feeling. I don't know how it came to be mine or how it is that I still have it with me, but I remember reading it as a child. That and some typical English animals-in-suits stories, plus Lady Bird versions of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales and Aesop's fables.

For as long as I have book shelves, I've kept a special shelf (or three) aside for children's picture books. So when J's design studio took on several commissions for children's books, I couldn't be more thrilled - yes, it's all justified now! So when J and I walked out of M and S's lovely store Woods in the Books this weekend with 3 more picture books, I felt no guilt. Finally. No longer an indulgence, but a work-related "investment".

Woods in the Books is an independent bookstore at Club Street that specialises in picture books. They also have a good collection of children's picture books from Taiwan and art by one of the owners moof aka Mike Foo.

If you visit Woods in the Books, also consider dropping by the cafe k.ki round the corner at Ann Siang Hill. There's a lot of care that has gone into making both stores. Respect!

on another island

2011-02-26T20:34:00.013+08:00

image by J

Paradise is an island. So is hell. (p6)

I remember having a world map pinned on the wall of my bedroom when I was growing up. But that was before my father brought home a beach ball-sized model globe. It was a relief model, where if you ran your finger across the surface, you could "read" the mountain ridges.

In the preface of Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty islands I have never set foot on and never will, she describes a similar experience of maps, atlases and globes.

While I confess it was the cover of this beautiful book (Schalansky trained as a graphic designer, and had designed the book and laid out the text) that first drew me, it was a brief read of the preface that convinced me to take it home from the bookstore. In the preface, Schalansky teases out man's fascination with the far frontier, our desire to conquer via knowledge and documentation, and the story threads behind these abandoned, conquered, disputed, cursed, marginal slivers and dots in the vast oceans.

An island offers a stage: everything that happens on it is practically forced to turn into a story, into a chamber piece in the middle of nowhere, into the stuff of literature.(p20)

For each of the 50 islands covered, Schalansky reproduces a drawing of the island on a scale of 1:125000, and offers a write-up crafted from facts and stories culled from histories, travellers' reports and other accounts - fictionalised fact, fact as fiction.

For me, the names of these islands alone are enough to fire the imagination.

Imagine: Possession Island, Deception Island or the first entry in the book Lonely Island. The names of places on these craggy, icy or just plain uninhabitable places tell equally of their painful realities. Try spending the night at Misery Fjellet or the Comfortless Cove! Even those islands with less unfortunate names promise some kind of an adventurer's tale (Raoul Island, Tristan da Cunha, or the fictionalised Robinson Crusoe Island) or folklore as exotic as the sounds of Banaba, Takuu or Tikopia.

Peaceful living is the exception rather than the rule on a small piece of land..."(p19)

I guess islands will always fascinate us, just as cities do. Both provide the circumscribed conditions of laboratories, prisons and retreats. The former bound by physical nature, the latter by human nature.

Schalansky's own story illustrates the boundaries of a city being drawn, redrawn and erased. Born in East Germany, when travel out of the country was not possible, Schalansky's early fascination with maps was somewhat ironic. Yet when the Berlin wall fell and she was free to travel out of t=her country, the country itself "disappeared from the map". It seems apt that she now resides in Berlin, in this renegotiated city.

Of course, it is also hard not to think about our own (in comparison) less remote and larger island when reading this book. Like many of these remote islands, our island can speak also of a colonial past, mythic and fictionalised creatures, (to many still) authoritarian powers and the utopian dream, or islandwide scientific/sociological experiments.

But unlike these islands, geography has undoubtedly given us a kinder fate.

no sweat?

2011-02-02T00:40:00.003+08:00

It took us almost 3 months to get this out. And so it went from being a Christmas gift for the design studio's clients and friends...to possibly a New Year's gift...and now, a Chinese New Year's gift.

Friends, if you want to know the story behind it, read this.

In any case, I'll repeat the happy greeting here - us amps wish you all a "Good Sweat" in the new year!

winged things

2011-01-30T01:07:00.008+08:00

leaf after a pagoda box worm is done with it -image by J

It became a winged thing imperceptibly, as a maturing face imperceptibly becomes beautiful. And its wings - still feeble, still moist, kept growing and unfolding, and now they were developed to the limit set for them by God, and there, on the wall, instead of a little lump of life, instead of a dark mouse, was a great Attacus moth like those that fly, birdlike, around lamps in the Indian dusk.

And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness. [From Nabokov's story in Russian "Rozhdestvo", reproduced in Nabokov's Butterflies]

It was actually Facebook that had sent me to find and wipe off the dust from my copy of Nabokov's Butterflies. And as I was reading random parts of the book again, I found the except above. Ah, who else but Nabokov could have written these sentences that seem to take flight, and just when you try to catch you breath, he tries his luck with just that one more word "ravishing". My literary hero.

OK, enough adulation.

The first Facebook link was to this NY Times article on the recent vindication of Nabokov as a lepidopterist. Nabokov's hypothesis was that the Polyommatus Blue evolved and travelled to the New World over millions of years from Asia. This was supposedly dismissed by most professional lepidopterists in his time who perhaps saw his hypothesis as more fiction than a studied possibility. Gene sequencing technology today has proven - finally - that Nabokov was right! Of course, what is fascinating is that a family of butterflies, these slight fragile creatures, had travelled through such enormous distance. Just how many butterflies over how many millions of years would it take?

The second link that led to a blog was left by J's Facebook contact K in response to J's photograph (see above). J had taken of a large leaf he had found that was punctured almost throughout his entire surface. K's link attributed these circular wounds to the appetite of the (pagoda) bagworm.

Bagworm moths are of the Order Lepidoptera, same as the butterflies and family Psychidae. The distinctive feature of bagworms is that their larvae are remarkable architects, building mobile cases made of environmental materials, in this example, the leaves, to hide themselves in. Thus, within each case hides a tiny caterpillar. For the pagoda bagworm, it scrapes the chlorophyll off the leaf before incising cleanly around the area consumed, creating a circular wound. The excised leaf piece is then added to the bagworm’s protective casing.[From the Urban Forest blog]

Images of the pagoda bagworm and other species of the bagworm are quite amazing, their cases looking at times like architecture and at times, almost fluid like a sweeping cloak. And who can resist a name like the "Pagoda Bagworm"! As if a diminutive traveling salesman had renounced the world and retreated, albeit with his bag of samples, into a quiet tower somewhere in Kyoto.

These little discoveries make perfect a rainy Saturday night.

welcome back, Taipei

2010-12-29T00:29:00.000+08:00

Photographs in this post by J, drawings by Y. This photo was taken at Spot Cinema, which screens foreign arthouse and Taiwanese films.

Since we are creatures of habit, discovering something new - a new cafe, restaurant, bookstore, day trip or tourist trap - was not top on our priority list when we visited Taipei again in October this year. In fact, it is always comforting when you re-visit a foreign city and still find that same ol' cafe at the same ol' street with the same ol' coffee served by the same ol' waitress. Perhaps in our own ever-changing island-city, this is a luxury we cannot enjoy.

Still, our October trip to Taipei yielded a few new finds that we would definitely revisit. And of course, we made sure to drop by several old haunts.

Friends, as a kind of "best-of" summary of our various Taiwan reports elsewhere on this blog, we present here a list (and images) of 3 New Finds, and 7 Old Haunts...

New Find #1 Le Park Cafe

For every chain cafe in Taipei, there is probably one that is owner-operated or independent, especially near the Roosevelt/Shida area. Not every one of them is as "pretty" as the one in the fairy tale-like Taipei Exchanges 第36個故事, but you may still be surprised by the stories you can cull when you step into one. This time, we stumbled across Le Park Cafe one rainy evening in a quiet street. The two-storey cafe used to be a children's clinic (J claims it still has the smell of an old clinic), which the owner of the cafe went to as a child. It has everything you want in a cafe - a good CD collection, free wifi, very tasty coffee, friendly and unpretentious owners and lots of vintage knick-knacks scattered about the place.

New Find #2 肥前屋

I'm not a fan of BBQ eel or queues, but this Japanese eatery specialising in eel warranted 2 visits during our trip. For me, what I liked was how hardworking and focused every member of staff was at that eatery. No one slacked off, every one of them did their part, no one got grouchy. The waitress packs the patrons in like this was a canteen (and it is priced almost like a canteen), so the queue - though long - moves fairly quickly. Warning: the eel runs out by 8pm. Amps' recommendation: egg roll with eel.

New Find #3 JiaoShi, Yilan

This doesn't quite count as a day trip, since we stayed a night at the Royal Jiao Shi Hotel. With the pre-Typhoon rains, we didn't get to see much of Jiaoshi's sights at all. But the town is worth revisiting for 2 things. One is the Royal Jiao Shi Hotel and its hotspring soaks (better than Beitou!). The other is the train ride there. Through the train windows on that 1.5-2 hour ride, you will see suburban Taiwan, agricultural Taiwan, mountainous Taiwan, desolate/abandoned Taiwan...and in the last 45mins as you near Jiaoshi, the train runs right along the beautiful coast where, for some stretches, it feels as if the tracks cut across the waters.

New Find/Old Haunt #4 Yong Kang Street

When we first visited Taipei in 2006, we stumbled upon and had our first meal at Yong Kang Street, in a restaurant called 吕桑 specialising in Yilan dishes. We didn't know then that it was called Yong Kang Street, and in 2008 we tried to trace our steps but failed to be as lucky. This time, we re-discovered the place via a write-up in a Taiwanese guidebook. The area features a cluster of mid-range eateries along the narrow streets all around Yong Kang Garden/Park, including the first Din Tai Fung at the furthest edge. This is a great place to go when you are sick of all that deep-fried or gooey Taiwanese street food. Besides, the small park in the evening is pleasant. In recent years, the area has also attracted some cafes and small boutiques, which helps to extend the dinner experience. To get there, amps recommend that you take the MRT to Guting, and from there, hop into a cab and ask for Yong Kang Garden/Park. The taxi ride should cost you no more than NT$70-80.

Old Haunt #5 Witch Cafe

Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening, the Witch cafe offers a stage for a band or a musician. The few times we've been there, we have heard a group of blind folk musicians, a university pop band and more recently, 2 guitarists singing hakka folk songs inspired by their trip to China. NT$100 gets you entry and a drink at the bar. The performance schedule is available online [this website provides a comprehensive list of all the music venues in Taipei].. Just 20m away at the main street round the corner from the cafe, there is an excellent shaved ice shop. Amps recommend the strawberry milk ice and the red bean milk ice.

Old Haunt #6 Human-scale streets
One of the best things about Taipei is that a large part of the city is still made up of narrow streets, lined with narrow shops/homes some 2 to 4-storey tall. These streets feel somewhat improvised, certainly old (and with age comes dirt and grime), and most definitely at a human-scale. For us islanders, wandering around these human-scale streets - even when there is nothing particularly interesting to look at - is one of the best things about our holidays in Taipei. The contrast is somewhat simplistic - but unlike Taiwan, our island was planned and built by a bureaucracy and big-time developers, a system that is greater than the sum of its individual human parts. This is not to say it is not a caring or effective body, just that it wil never reflect all the ingenuity or fallibility of individual creativity. It will be, to the best of all its ability (and good intentions), an efficient system of conduits, nodes, rooms and the occasional "destination". As a system, it can mitigate human error and aggregate human industry.

If you are not too adventurous and prefer your human-scale streets to still contain commerce and entertainment, amps recommend you explore the little streets around the Zhong Shan MRT station, the Taipei MRT station and the Zhong Xiao Hunhua MRT station.

Old Haunt #7 碗粿

Top on our Taiwan snack list is still this steamed rice flour dish which has a piece of tender pork and salted egg yolk hidden in the middle, and is best eaten with a liberal addition of chili sauce, black vinegar and garlic paste. The stall in the photo is at the LongShan Temple MRT stop, on the row of shops before you get to the Snake Alley/Hua Xi Street Market.

Old Haunt #8 Eslite
This bookstore (chain) really needs no introduction, but the list seems incomplete and inaccurate without it.

Old Haunt #9 Les Suites Chung Ching
We've stayed in several hotels in Taipei, but if you are giving yourself a treat, we wouldn't recommend any other hotel than Les Suites - and the one at Chung Ching if you don't mind transferring on the Muzha line. The entrance to the hotel is 20m away from the Nanjing East station, but it is understated enough for you to miss it completely on the first visit.

Old Haunt #10 Chiang Kai Shek's summer mansion at Yang Ming Shan
Hidden in Yang Ming Shan is the summer residence of Taiwan's former president Chiang Kai Shek, aka the Yang Ming Shan Shu Wu. This tourist destination makes it to our list only because we have tried to visit this place three times already, but we've not been successful. Entry to the building and its gardens is ONLY allowed via the guided tours, and the tours take place ONLY four times a day. So unless you are prepared to hang around and wait 2 hours for the tour to start, please don't be repeatedly silly like us and check the website here for more information about the tour schedule. Well, should you really miss the tour, you can take a pleasant 30-45min walk along the shady road back down to the Visitor Centre/Bus Station.

how old are you

2010-12-26T11:42:00.003+08:00

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

2010-12-25T11:14:00.011+08:00

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.

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

ouch!

2010-05-27T17:26:00.003+08:00

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

2010-05-13T00:22:00.004+08:00

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...

the wise and the foolish

2010-04-19T23:43:00.007+08:00

...the same fate overtakes them both.

One evening on bus 145, I overheard this conversation. Well, there was no need to strain the ears because the conversation between the two strangers was louder than the bus engine. It was like a performance, and everyone else quickly quietened down to watch -

[The conversation in Mandarin. Old Man in a blue short-sleeved shirt sat near the front door of the bus. Old woman, also bespectacled, was standing beside Old Man's seat. Never once in the conversation did she look at him. They both wore smiles throughout. ]

Old Man: The next time you vote, I hope you vote the opposition party.
Old Woman: I don't need to vote.
Old Man: Why not? Everyone must.
Old Woman: Aiyah, I don't need to. Where I live, always don't need to vote.
Old Man: But next time, if you vote, must vote opposition party.
Old Woman: The next time? I'll be dead by then!
Old Man: You can't say that. The opposition is good. Vote for them.
Old Woman: Aiyah, whatever. Man must work. Man must eat.
Old Man: Yes, that's why you work so hard, you should enjoy -
Old Woman: Man must eat...
Old Man: You listen to me, I tell you -
Old Woman: Man must shit.
Old Man:[...] You work so hard, why must you give the Government all your money? That's why the opposition party -
Old Woman: Aiyah, I don't care what about this party, that party. I only want the Money Party.
Old Man: The opposition party won't take your money. Everything will be free. Like in Canada, Europe...
Old Woman: Why do you bother so much? There's no difference.
Old Man: You can, you can be like me. Next time you see anyone, just tell them to vote the opposition party.
Old Woman: Aiyah. Whatever will be will be. I tell you. It's like this heavy rain. It wants to rain, it rains.

Well friends, that's the latest report on political discussion in Singapore. Most of the time, the stifling humidity feels somewhat oppressive. And once in a while, it pours - though sometimes, the rain simply raises an equally unbearable heat from the ground.

hitch a ride or take a hike!

2010-04-10T00:34:00.010+08:00

In movies terrible things happen to hitchhikers. And sometimes, even more terrible things happen to folks who pick them up.

The only time I attempted to hitch a ride was in the summer of 1995. Both just a few months shy from turning 21, a Malaysian friend from university and I decided to spend four weeks in Europe bumming around with a rail pass and 400 pounds, but no planned itinerary. Yes, in the tradition of the grand tour.

One evening over Czech beer in a small town, we spotted Liechtenstein on the map and joked about how it would be cool to walk from the border of Austria, right across Liechtenstein, until we got to Switzerland. We could boast that we've walked, literally, cross-country. It couldn't have been the beer because two days later, after a healthy Austrian breakfast, we set off on our walk.

I think we had imagined it would be a leisurely kind of walk surrounded by alpine forests where we may stumble upon quaint small towns. But it wasn't. There were trees alright. But it was mostly asphalt and fancy continental cars zooming by. For the first hour or so, the diverse roadkill amused us (I still have the photos as proof). Then the summer sun and our backpacks made their presence felt. At some point, we attempted to hitch a ride. Of course, that was about as naive as deciding to walk across Liechtenstein. Which Audi salon and BMW convertible would pick up two scruffy looking (and possibly illegal) Asians? Well, we did eventually get to Switzerland in the afternoon, and best of all, on our own dependable feet.

Anyway, all this is just a preamble to... the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Exhibition. Curated by mojoko (aka Steve Lawler), the show features 42 Singapore-based artists and designers who show their intergalactic visions in a series of artworks inspired by Douglas Adam's famous novel.

We couldn't refuse the invitation to participate. So we made this.

It works as a lamp. And maybe more. Switch it on and you might just get the ultimate answer to the ultimate question...

The exhibition opens on 15 April 2010 and is on until 21 April at BLOODGROUP+ space at 32 Aliwal St.

Friends, go visit! You can take a bus.

=====================
p/s. Buses 7, 32, 51, 63, 80, 145, 175 and 197 stop at North Bridge Road. Aliwal St runs parallel to Jalan Sultan.
If you are interested in the work, we'll be there at the opening on 15 April.

folded verse

2010-04-01T00:02:00.022+08:00

See the actual Folded Verse T-shirts...and at least 400 more works at Pameran Poskad 2010!

The Chinese text "所羅門的衣，不如百合花" is our Chinese couplet for Jesus' teaching to not worry - "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these" (Matthew, 6:28-29). We made 2 or 3 folds on the tee before each character was painted. Read more here.

The show's on at "My Art Space" (Level 4, 21 Tanjong Pagar Road, beside the Maxwell Rd Food Centre) from 18 April to 1 May. There's an opening party on 17 April, 6-9pm; and a preview for eager beavers (well, they can try to spot those works by the established artists) on the same day at 3pm.

p/s - Drop us a note at info@ampulets.com if you are interested in any of the 10 tees. They are soft 100% cotton. The 所,羅,門,的,衣 and 不 are on Muji Men L-sized T-shirts chest 38-40". The 如,百,合 and 花 are on TopShop XXSmall-sized T-shirts, chest 32-34" for women or very very skinny boys. Each tee comes packed with its own postcard-sized image.

truth or dare

2010-03-29T23:47:00.008+08:00

I've shortlisted only 3 films from this year's Singapore Film Festival. A record low! The truth is, without a physical programme booklet and the website's tedious navigation, I gave up after two rounds of reviewing the programme online. But I guess my cautious approach is entirely in line with this year's rather flat (*yawn*) programming:
- Yan Lei (Tears), directed by Cheng Wen-Tang
- Dear Doctor, directed by Miwa Nishikawa
- Jao Nok Krajok (Mundane History), directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong

Friends, may you possess more daring in clicking on the "Buy Tix" button.

culture coming out of your s/pores

2010-03-24T01:01:00.005+08:00

It's the "Arts and Culture" issue of online journal on historical and contemporary Singapore society! Guest edited by Tan Tarn How, Part 1 of this issue features:

‘After’ Kuo Pao Kun › C. J. W.-L. Wee
For wolfnotes › Lee Tzu Pheng
Third Stage › Wong Souk Yee
“But there is nothing here to shoot…” › Tay Kay Chin
Raising the Subject › Jason Wee
Censure and Censor › Loretta Chen
National Songs Revisited › Tan Shzr Ee
First-World Economy, Third-World Culture › Michelle Loh
Review: +65 Indie Underground › Joseph Tham

Click here to read an issue that's really diverse which, given its theme, is apt.

my own Malgudi

2010-03-16T00:37:00.006+08:00

Part of a drawing made with J for his client. This is one of my favourites from the train series

The little town council posse that usually goes ahead of the MP came by tonight. We were working in J's office. But damn. We left the lights and TV on in our living room (ah, the lesson to be learnt about saving energy)! The doorbell, thankfully, wasn't working. Then from J's office, we heard their voices and slightly impatient knocks on our door. Five minutes later, I looked through the peep hole - and the folks in white were still there... giggling and taking photographs of our painted door!

Later we found the standard "Your MP was here" card tagged to the door, with the words "your door is very creative" scribbled across.

The next time J asks me if I was ever tempted by the endless fancy condo launches, I would consider adding today's (thwarted) visit by the provincial party cadre to my list of the many charms of village-living romanticised: our friendly neighbourhood electric appliance salesman (who hangs out after dark watching a beat up 14-inch TV at the old skool hair saloon); the inquisitive housewives who ask sly questions to try and find out what we do for a living; the noisy Taoist temple; last week's 3day void deck wedding party; the world's best BBQ wings; the bi-annual exodus of dying cockroaches from the rubbish chute; the funerals that peak in the hot months of May-June and the wet months of November-December; street cats that are too well-fed to taunt the rats...And best of all, walking with J, our very own voyeuristic patrol, around the village and across closed - and if we are lucky - open doors.

Worry Not Worry Wart

2010-03-02T00:32:00.006+08:00

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:...

applause

2010-02-21T22:38:00.003+08:00

At 陈珊妮Sandee Chan's Esplanade performance (as a friend CT puts it, it's been a more than 10-year wait for fans on our island!), she used the words 認真 to describe how she had selected the songs lined up for last evening's fantastic concert.

Most online dictionaries define 認真 as "serious", "earnest" and "to take seriously." The problem with Chinese-English translations is that the word often means all of this and more. 認真 suggests a degree of genuine care that is less removed than seriousness and more calculated than just earnestness.

I would like to think that the folks behind Friday night's play Invisibility/Breathing, also at the Esplanade under its HuaYi Festival, were equally 認真. There was a precision and detail in actor Oliver Chong's performance that warranted the adjective. And despite the work's weakness, the same professional dedication was apparent in the set design and construction, the sound and direction.

All of this makes the weak applause - particularly at Invisibility/Breathing - rather depressing.

Friends, the next time you attend a performance, be it a play, a dance or a concert, if you recognise that what happens on stage is taking place with the utmost of dedication, thought and craft of the performer sustained over an hour or even two, please do not be stingy with your applause. It won't cost you much.

not much

2010-02-18T23:29:00.002+08:00

"There's too much love on this train" is about all I can come up with today.

post-it

2010-02-04T23:24:00.003+08:00

J designed the event's logo this year. :>

If large canvases are not your thing, you may want to check this out!

In its 3rd edition, Pameran Poskad is, as its name reads, an exhibition of art that fits into postcard-sized plastic sleeves. It's been an interesting "egalitarian" platform so far, with work by really established artists placed next to amateurs from around the world. Started by fine art printmakers Keyakismos (Eitaro and Tamae), this year's exhibition already has close to 150 participants.

Even if you don't fancy yourself an artist type, you can go spend some of your Ang Bao money at the show from 17 April to 1 May. Heh.

a drifting line

2010-01-18T23:18:00.010+08:00

Click on each image for a larger view

JasN (B in the above sequence) suggested that we record our experience listening to and queuing for the inspiring Yoshihiro Tatsumi in a single panel drawing. Being less disciplined, we needed fifteen panels instead to mark the start and end of our groupie fanboy/girl days. And of course, the amazing 74 year-old artist wins our respect for his tireless dedication to signing/drawing for the line...

Well friends, while we enjoyed our Sunday afternoon pondering the intricacies of whether one should order 10 packets of prawn mee if there was a long queue standing behind, we recommend that your afternoons are better spent reading his short, sharp and shock(ing) stories instead. They have been collected, translated and published by Drawn and Quarterly in three volumes thus far.

The manga master's lengthier autobiographical tome A Drifting Life moves at a less punishing pace, but nonetheless leaves you wanting to read more. If so, there's Singaporean film maker Eric Khoo's animated adaptation of A Drifting LIfe (artist Brian Gothong Tan will also work on the project) to look forward to.

the interim

2010-01-12T23:33:00.008+08:00

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!

forever

2009-12-25T17:12:00.005+08:00

Don't believe your eyes. The theme this year is not "turtles" or "origami". J has captioned the photos "God is eternal". Well friends, may God's peace be with you this Christmas.

But should you be interested to see more of "turtles+origami", check out ampulets design's latest project.

And if you are really a fan of turtles, there's supposed to be "The Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum" at the Singapore Chinese Garden! Disclaimer: I've not been there myself so I can't vouch for it. The website claims it has over 50 different species of turtles and tortoises...

HERE! THERE!

2009-12-22T23:17:00.002+08:00

Photo by Jen

They are here! Or rather, they are there at the Post-Museum, all wrapped deliciously like roti prata.

watch design

2009-12-15T23:48:00.002+08:00

Video from here. More from the Herb and Dorothy website.

A librarian and postal clerk amass lots of art in their tiny New York apartment. Sounds like the premise for a short story? Well, it's one of many films you can watch at the Design Film Festival.

I guess there are enough films about architects and designers (and the odd collector) - those folks who create so much of what we live in and live with - that they could constitute a genre of their own. Anyway, J and I are just glad two of our interests are coming together at this festival from 20-30 January at Sinema/Old School. Click here to find out more.

Writing this, I am also reminded of designers Charles and Ray Eames and the short films they made as another way to record or communicate their ideas; including the still amazing Powers of 10. Enjoy.

Video from this youtube link, but you can also view it from the official website that requires just a simple registration process.

better late...

2009-12-08T23:15:00.002+08:00

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

t-shirts for a (good) cause

2009-12-03T23:59:00.007+08:00

Lost without you. This design takes as its starting point Post-Museum's location in busy Little India. One of the Post-Museum’s stated aims is to respond to its location. Wherever we may be, perhaps having a sense of place is part of our sense of community.

This design is inspired by the spirit of collaboration behind two simple shop-house spaces, where people get together to create community and culture. 2 is better than 1.

The folks at Post-Museum have been raising funds for the work they do. Some time ago they asked if we could design a t-shirt for their fundraising efforts. So we did!

Friends, if you must buy presents for Christmas, can't resist another t-shirt (or two), and/or just want to contribute to Post-Museum's work, here's what you can do:
(1) Get 2 is better than 1 in XS, S, M, L or XL* for $30 each.
(2) Get Lost Without You in XS, S, M, L or XL* for $35 each. This is a limited edition t-shirt...50 I think.
(3) Get a set of both T-shirts for a discounted $60 only!

The t-shirts come with a tag that tells you a little about the design, Post-Museum and ampulets.

All proceeds from the sale of these t-shirts go towards Post-Museum's work.

To pre-order the t-shirts, email admin@post-museum.org.

Hurry hurry! They will also be available for sale at the Post-Museum's Food #03 cafe from mid-December onwards.

(For updates and getting your friends onboard, check out the facebook page.)

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*About the Sizes: XS is 36 inches circumference round the chest. S is 38 inches, M is 40 inches, L is 44 inches and XL is 46 inches for men who gym.

Close-ups of the designs:

to be continued...

2009-11-29T15:52:00.009+08:00

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?

2009-11-20T00:14:00.004+08:00

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

2009-11-14T15:03:00.005+08:00

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.

city of books

2009-11-09T00:03:00.000+08:00

all images by J

Notwithstanding this, J and I do try to explore at least one district that we've never been to each time we visit Tokyo. This year, it was Jimbocho. It's a name I almost feel should be an exclamation. Like "Jimbocho!" or "J-I-M-B-O-C-H-O!"

Especially if you love books.

The first thing you'll notice is that there's nothing fancy about Jimbocho's bookstores. Its dedication is singular - books. And the folks who trawl Jimbocho's shelves do not need any encouragement from cute merchandise or interiors. They are - as I point out to J - true in their love for books.

posters on the wall of a bookstore

Next, you'll find that most of the stores have focused collections. Depending on the store's genre, every possible space is packed with books, magazines or manga. To add, the shelves are meticulously categorised and labelled, and if not, the organisation makes itself obvious, as if in the shopkeeper's own language of association. We had first walked up to a small bookstore on the second-floor focused on the Beat Generation, before stumbling upon a street of shops collecting all printed material related to the cinema and popular culture.

According to the entry by Yoshita Haba in Claska's Tokyo by Tokyo, "the stock on the shelves changes depending on the time of the year, so it's best to make regular visits - bookshelves are like living, constantly changing creatures."

After all this, you'd walk around wishing you understood some of the Japanese language so that you could access more of these creatures.

But with no Japanese, the book that accompanied J and I (we took turns reading/re-reading) throughout our stay instead was Narayan's novel Waiting for the Mahatma.

Probably one of the few Narayan stories that dealt with an overtly political context, Waiting for the Mahatma takes Siriam, a characteristically carefree Malguldi resident, and puts him through a coming-of-age experience that is not so much political awakening as an extended schoolboy crush. Guided only by love for Bharati, Siriam finds himself a participant in Gandhi's spiritual reconciliation of India and Chandra Bose's militant independence movement, while the rather benign colonial representatives look on and the Hindu-Muslim conflicts place questions on the nature of India's independence.

Waiting is a somewhat atypical of Narayan's Malgudi novels in the tragic undercurrents of its comedy. As if once outside Malgudi, Narayan's fictional paradise, the realities of India cannot but unsettle Narayan. With its last chapter set in New Delhi, Waiting as a love story cannot find its consummation. The title's anticipation therefore gestures at this always-tentative (political) romance.

It is a strange novel to read during a vacation in consumerist 21st century Tokyo. But returning to this wonderful novel and discovering a new district in Tokyo has been two of my best experiences in the last week.

villagers/creatures of habit

2009-11-05T00:26:00.003+08:00

The Aosando art fair pairs up artists with shops in the backlanes of Aoyama. A great way to get traffic to the quieter shops, and to get people to notice new artists.

On each of our visits to Tokyo, J and I have always ended up going to the same restaurants, museums and retail stores. Today, for instance, we chatted with one of the chefs and walked down our favourite street to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. But just as we note how Tokyo has changed (or not) each annual or biennial interval, I think we notice how we, too, have changed (or aged!!!) each time.

J: I now understand what you mean when you say you sometimes prefer Taipei to Tokyo.
Y: You do?
J: Yah. It's the language thing.
Y: Yes, and with it, the whole thing about accessibility... and alienation (ooh, big word) of cities.
J: Yah, for the first time, I can imagine what it is like to be alone and living in Tokyo - the loneliness and the possibilities.
Y: No kidding. It's a great place to run away or escape to. But in the same way, cities don't give a shit about you, so if you can't fit in or feel alone, it really hits you. Maybe that's why we always go to the same places in Tokyo, just to connect to this place.
J: In comparison, that's why Singapore is so attractive to expatriates, no?
Y: Uh-huh.
J: It has all the pretences of a big city, but in reality, in essence, it is a -
Y: - village.
J:Yah, like a village. Everyone more or less speaks some English. The aunties - if you stay in HDB - will talk to you and ask you questions. In no time, you will quickly find friends, know someone who is friends who someone who is also friends with someone...
Y: Yah. All the good stuff but also the trappings of a village. Which sometimes makes you want to run away to a real city...hah!

Well friends, if you ever feel like running away to Tokyo, there are two places we will not hesitate to recommend in Tokyo:

(1) Have a meal at Chopsticks Cafe or the Sora no niwa tofu restaurant. Both are at Shibuya, and for 4000 yen each, you can afford 5 courses of good food and at least 3 rounds of beer/sake/cocktails. Not to mention the great service and ambience.

Seasonal tofu starter at Sora No Niwa.

(2) Visit Issey Miyake's work
This includse 21-21 Design Sight, a design museum adjacent to the Midtown complex at Roppongi, and his Pleats Please store at Aoyama. The former always has intelligently curated shows while the latter never fails to have pretty (for J's sake) and friendly retail staff who are ever ready to talk about design, no matter how difficult it may be for them in English.

Night view of 21-21, architecture by Tadao Ando. J testing his new camera at 3000 ISO

tunnel-visioned tokyo

2009-10-31T00:13:00.005+08:00

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.

finally!

2009-10-28T12:03:00.002+08:00

J decided to ditch flash and started all over again with plain ol' homemade vanilla html instead. So finally!

watching 'em grow

2009-10-27T12:52:00.012+08:00

My brother E, good citizen him, has three kids. E1 is three, E2 is one and M3 is a month old. Each is their own person.

It's been interesting just watching them grow and express their personality. E1 is gentle and agreeable ("You try. It's good. Try.") E2 is observant and a quick storm. M3 is a small parcel that sleeps and poops. So far. And it is easy to imagine the joy associated with parenthood. Brother E's is obvious. A typical conversation in the car as Brother E drives us home after dinner on Sundays goes like this:

Bro E: I gotta think using about a different strategy with E2.
J&Y: Yah, they are so different!
Bro E: With E1, once I smacked him on the backside a little harder. I just wanted to test how far to go. Experiment, haha. And he immediately knows he has done something that has made me more angry than usual.
J&Y: Aiyah, he's a softie.
Bro E: But with E2, it's different. If I just slap his hand when he does something wrong, he hits me back! It's like monkey see monkey do still.
J&Y: Hmm, he's a fierce one.
Bro E: ... I must think about it some more, use a different strategy.
J&Y:...
Bro E: You know, it's nice seeing how E1 has changed in the last 3 weeks. He used to just ignore his little brother. But yesterday, while we we out on a walk, he suddenly just kissed E2 on the head! It's nice, seeing him learn to relate to his little brother and show his love.

Awww. But no, we have not changed our minds about not having our own. That's three negatives in one sentence.

gone to meet the bookmaker

2009-10-21T00:55:00.013+08:00

click to view in flickr

The description of Tuas on streetdirectory.com begins "Tuas is Singapore's version of Chernobyl."

Comparing Tuas to Chernobyl is way too flippant, but to most of us islanders who don't work in a shipyard or any of the heavy, manufacturing or chemical industries, Tuas will seem somewhat surreal.

There is really no distinctive architecture - just these monotone blocks, some of them windowless or clad in metal. There are no high rise buildings. Even the trees are low and overwhelmed by the concrete and steel. The streets are wide. Or perhaps they feel especially wide because the traffic is sparse, save for that roaring truck. There aren't many people hanging or walking about as you drive by. But although the place seems deserted, there is the knowledge that inside those concrete and metal blocks, there is almost non-stop activity. Man operating machines operating the economy operating man.

Why were we in Tuas? To visit a bookbinder for one of J's projects.

It was fifteen minutes to one o'clock when we arrived.

A dog stood by the wide entrance. A group of men were resting by the side. The place was dark - and lazy. Of course, it was their lunch break. We were directed to the back of the cavernous space that was filled with pellets of print and quiet machines which resembled abandoned amusement park train rides.

The office was a florescent glow behind a clear curtain of thick plastic. We peeped. On the walls hung portraits of leaders, politicians, gods and celebrities. There was (I think) Osama, Ganesh, Obama, Thaksin, Abdullah Badawi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Old Man himself, Ella from Taiwanese girl-band S.H.E., the Harvard-educated Japanese princess...

M finally emerged. After a ten-minute discussion between J and M in the office, we turned around and saw, to our amazement, the entire factory floor transformed! The factory floor was lit, the machines grew noisy one-by-one, and a group of some twenty men and women seemed to have appeared from nowhere and were now industriously carting books, folding covers, pushing buttons and supervising machines. M smiled at our undisguised curiosity.

"Come," she offered, "I show you. You never see before, right?"

Our tour, however, was interrupted before it really started by our introduction to Mr S, the boss-man, master bookmaker and lunchtime portrait artist.

"Good good, you must see all the machines, then you designers can understand how it works!"

And so began a personal tour of Mr S's $4 million-worth of secondhand German binding machines ("except this machine, this one is from China. The Chinese they copy everything, exactly the same as the German one."). They fold, glue, stitch, cut, separate, make hardback and cloth covers, apply the little ribboned ends to the spines... all the mechanised hands, wheels, presses and rollers.

"Nowadays, I see the design, aiyah, immediately I can tell: over-designed. They design, don't think about how it can be made. I tell them, this cannot be bound this way. Sometimes simplicity is better." Mr S offered his design advice to J.

About Mr S's portrait painting, he credited it to this - "For one year I studied art and book binding in France, in the 70s. Every day the French, they grill you about binding. So many different things to learn, I tell you. There are so many different ways to bind a book. I also study art, art and book binding."

"One day I saw this exit sign, then I hang these portraits here because they are, haha, *you know*..."

We ended the tour almost an hour later, with Mr S inviting J to organise a study visit for designers to his factory.

"I am preparing some slides about binding. You can go and organise a small group to come lah. But make it informal, we can walk around then discuss. Good that you designers come and see. Make our job easier also!" He laughs.

At two thirty, we walked back out into Tuas' empty streets, thinking about the books that we could possibly make with Mr S's German (and sometimes Chinese) machines.

the wake-up bird

2009-10-10T19:22:00.013+08:00

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the calls of the wake-up bird. It has plagued me since. Not the calls per se, which I enjoy for the way they enter the HDB soundscape of bus stops, chittering mynas, chattering children and the incessant varied noises from the nearby taoist temple. But rather just identifying the bird itself.

Not satisfied with mystery, I've since been searching online recordings of bird calls. But with no real clues, it got as desperate as googling "whoo-ooo bird call". At one point, we even thought it could be the frantic call of the monkey that has wandered from the pierce reservoir and spotted hanging around our street.

But a monkey it is not.

Last afternoon, J finally spotted the creature perched on the top of a tall tree, issuing its loud "woo-ooo" uncharacteristically at noon. Ah, it was a large black bird with a distinctive tail and a beak that did not look like that of a crow's . That helped narrow down the options. From descriptions and photographs in the "Guide to the Common Birds of Singapore", it could either be a house crow, possibly the nightjar or a bulbul, or the greater coucal. The greater coucal is from the cuckoo family. And it seemed to make sense that it was some kind of a cuckoo bird. Unfortunately, after 2 hours of online searching, none of it sounded like our wake-up bird.

Just when I was about to abandon the search, one of the random references from "greater coucal" on youtube read "Asian Koel". It was something about the sound of that word "Koel". I clicked - and heard that familiar call. Ah. The wake-up bird.

Video by Diana57 in Singapore of a male koel calling out for a mate.

Sound of a female koel, by tankavideo

Avianweb.com's page on the Asian koel identifies it as a bird in the cuckoo family. It is also known as the "Rainbird" in Australia, while its name "koel" means "nightingale" in India. In Toa Payoh, I think the koel shall remain known as the wake-up bird.

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p/s. Here's a video of a mating dance between two koels. The male is black and the female is the brown and white-spotted.

island biography

2009-10-05T01:05:00.007+08:00

Check out this book by tym and Mark Frost about the lives that made our favourite island in the tropics! From the previews so far, the book promises to be a great read.

There are 4 things amps recommend that you do:
(1) Read the previews/snippets from the book and the writers' posts here.
(2) Buy your copy from the bookstores, or pre-order one. Of course, proceed to read it!
(3) Attend one or all four of these events where the writers will talk and gamely sign your copy of the book.
(4) Buy another copy for a friend.

A love supreme

2009-09-29T11:57:00.004+08:00

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

2009-09-14T22:02:00.000+08:00

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

2009-09-11T18:54:00.006+08:00

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.

a distraction that is not facebook

2009-09-08T10:09:00.008+08:00

image by J. Nothing to do with this post. It's just a cool picture of the universe in a glass of iced water.

In between writing my dissertation, I've been reading the following books online. But being the bibliophile that I am, they have since appeared on our shelves, save for the rarer Annals. If you need reasons to get Facebook off your computer screen, here are three good ones:

Troy Chin's Loti is uploaded by its author regularly on his website. It could be that the stories are nostalgic for most readers. Not the sepia-toned variety, but the household kind - familiar experiences of childhood - primary school tests, a classmate's birthday party, corny jokes, haunted houses in the neighbourhood, visits to the "wet" market. It could be the innocence and naivete of the characters. Of course, it could be Troy Chin's comic timing. Whatever it is, this is one addictive comic.

[Volume 1 of Loti is available in print in most bookstores, as is his Resident Tourist.]

A 1821 copy of John Leyden's translation of Malay Annals or Sejarah Melayu is available on NLB's digital archive. It has an introduction by the white man Raffles himself, a fascinating read for his critique of Dutch imperialism as justification of the British administration, as well as his characterisation of Southeast Asia's diversity in the "absence of bigotry and inveterate prejudice" (Raffles notes that this trait also makes the region perfect for EIC's moulding, "the humanizing influence of the arts" and the creation of new wants and luxuries!).

Anyway, the civil servant introduction aside, the rest of the Malay Annals - a series of stories surrounding the Malaccan sultanate and various noblemen's exploits, including outwitting foreign emissaries and forces. A commissioned work, it is also an example of how the arts have, to varying extent, have served their patrons' vanities and purpose - just as how Leyden's translation, endorsed by Raffles, furthered the British empire's "brand" of imperialism as enlightenment. But don't let this put you off. If not as an historical account of 15th and 16th century, read Malay Annals like any romantic narrative, especially one that begins like this:

It happened at a time that Raja Secander, the son of Raja Darab of Rum, of the race of Makaduniah, the name of whose empire was Zulkaneini, wished to see the rising of the sun...

I suspect, however, that the manga Pluto may have a less legitimate online presence. So you should either borrow the books from us, buy them, or else ask google - because this series by Naoki Urasawa shares the genius of Osamu Tezuka and is well worth reading.

Tezuka, creator of Atom or Astro Boy, has always written works that hit at man's insatiable greed and corruption as the root of war and bigotry. They would have been depressing, moralistic rants if not for how Tezuka inserts such tension into man's redemptive efforts as well.

Astro boy, or robots, as an idealised image of man is something Hollywood has appropriated, mostly poorly. But in Pluto, an adaptation and continuation of Tezuka's original Astro Boy manga, the conflicts between the ideal and corrupted often remain unresolved, as with the line between man and technology. For example, when a robot cop is "killed", the robot-detective informs the cop's robot wife and offers to place the cop's memory chip in her processor. This leads to a strange but moving depiction of mourning and loss as a literal "playback" of memories. In a way, it's not unlike the kind of flickr/facebook/blogger archiving we do today - except that it's private and unedited.

So friends, on this note, I'll leave you to your ~~facebook-ing~~ reading.

to see the world and the living room

2009-08-31T00:08:00.015+08:00

This being the weekend when Singaporeans are busy booking their year-end packaged holidays at the travel fair, it is apt that J and I overheard bits of this conversation (well, it's more like a monologue) at the Kiliney Road Kopitiam -

Woman: Yah, when I was in Hokkaido last year, it was hard to find this ... [Sips her coffee, eats her mee rebus] I really enjoyed Paris. I mean, for me, that was the nicest city. The trip started at Denmark, stayed there for a few days, then the next few days we moved on to... [Sips her coffee, eats her mee rebus] Oh Canada! That was when I went for... [Finishes her mee rebus] But you know, Sengkang, Punggol, Jurong East*, I don't really know these places.

Hey, 700 square kilometers is pretty large an island to have to trek around for folks who prefer to lug around a suitcase.

Unfortunately, save for our rather obsessive bike rides to this, us amps cannot claim to have contributed much to domestic tourism this year as well. But Saturday evening, we overcame our inertia to find our way to a part of the island we seldom venture to - Bukit Timah. Or to be precise, Upper Bukit Timah.

If Katong was our genteel east, where old money built their seaside homes and breathed a little easier, then Bukit Timah is where they eventually landed their wealth. Unlike the east, whose refinement got reclaimed together with the shoreline, Bukit Timah continued to be where their grandchildren (or those aspirational families) continue to populate the bungalows and condominiums and patronise the fancy "specialist" grocers and butcheries. Well, it's therefore not surprising that ever since my junior college days and a brief stint volunteering at the old Salvation Army Store's sorting house, Bukit Timah is a part of the island J and I don't have much reason to frequent. But we found one to warrant a Saturday evening bus ride from Toa Payoh to Upper Bukit Timah Road.

random shot off from a cab across the island.

We got off bus #157 at the Bukit Timah market and hawker centre. That was not the reason for the bus ride (at least not this time), and neither was it the old skool Beauty World Shopping Centre and Bukit Timah Shopping Centre. So we headed past both shopping mall ~~relics~~ classics down Upper Bukit Timah Road until we saw the large neon signboard for Courts. The air-conditioning from Courts was tempting, but we resisted. We continued our walk, away from the bright lights to the soft, residential glow of the condominiums and bungalows nestled against the nature reserve of Bukit Timah Hill. Once we neared the trees, the air seemed to drop a degree - quite naturally this time. Ah, even the air the rich breathe in seem cooler, J envied, even though such air was not reason enough for our visit. Instead, just when the darkness of a nearing nature reserve got us a little worried, we spotted it.

The cluster of low-rise buildings that used to be the Bukit Timah Fire Station was turned last year into another one of those hip "lifestyle" places, a la Dempsey and Old School. This one houses several offices, schools that teach stuff like photography and digital arts, a spa, a bistro called *surprise* Fire Station... and our destination - Raw Kitchen.

Housed in a single-storey unit in the innermost corner of the whole compound, Raw Kitchen is nothing if not charming. That night, all the chairs in this small, owner-run restaurant were placed in its backyard where Substation's associate artists, collective Mux were giving a performance. For more than an hour, we sat, sans dinner, just relaxing and listening to this group of very young, talented folks:

We shot this on the iphone, but you can watch a recording of their performance specially by Common People made in a living room by clicking here. If you want to get out of your living room to Raw Kitchen, it's at 276 Upper Bukit Timah Road. Warning: It's not a live music place, in case you are mistaken.

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*Place names in Singapore

birdsongs

2009-08-23T23:25:00.005+08:00

Over the weekend, J and I went with tym to check out the "Curating Lab: 100 objects" project under the Singapore Art Show. The first object was of a series of blown-up 1960s newspaper clippings from artist John Low's collection. Other than sightings of the "Oily Man", "beast in Serangoon Gardens" and ghosts in cabdrivers' backseats, there was a kind of non-article (if there was ever such a thing as non-news, this would be it) about some kampong residents' alarmed sighting of a "death bird" and its call. From its description, the "death bird" sounded just like the common house crow. Perhaps they were less common in the 60s. If so, maybe it is not too difficult to imagine then how a lone crow could possibly alarm a kampong with its aggressive cawing and its seemingly ominous haunting.

Round about eight in the morning, a bird in the cluster of trees by our block of flats will issue a series of loud echoey calls - "whoooop whooop". A couple of mornings ago, I woke up hearing just that loud call; and drifting in and out of sleep, all that filled those brief in-between moments was the bird's call. A kind of audio-only dream.

How would you describe the calls and songs that birds make? Pigeons coo. Crows caw. Mynahs, those comical birds with their random head shaking and awkward hopping, they make these appropriately untuneful clicks. And hummingbirds hum?

It is hard to forget Murakami's description of the "wind-up bird":

There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could hear the mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were winding a spring. We called it the wind-up bird. Kumiko gave it the name. We didn't know what it was really called or what it looked like, but that didn't bother the wind-up bird. Every day, it would come to the stand of trees in our neighbourhood and wind the spring of our quiet little world."

Then there are the more prosaic but no less curious descriptions in Clive Briffett's A Guide to Common Birds to Singapore (part of this series of pocket-sized books published by the Singapore Science Centre that I am addicted to), such as:

...it issues a monotonous two note whistle "coo-oo" fairly regularly every two seconds and has been likened to a demented hiccupping! (Brown Hawk Owl)
Often calls attention to itself using a raucous call followed by a noise resembling a whinnying horse as it sits on overhead wires (White-throated Kingfisher)
Frequently issues a noisy shriek resembling a saw grinding against metal (Collared Kingfisher)
...listen for the distinctive call of "whats it" or "peepit" issued in flight (Asian Fairy Bluebird)
...has a "chwee chewee" call with an alarm note resembling a "tissyip tissyip" (Richards Pipit)

I've been listening to online recordings of bird sounds for the past hour, hoping to find the name of my morning alarm clock. But until I recognise it, I think it'll just bear the unflattering name: the wake-up bird.

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p/s If you want to listen to an actual bird songs in Singapore, there's actually a CD recording Bird Songs of Singapore at the National Library (Lee Kong Chian Reference section.

soft spots

2009-08-19T11:15:00.011+08:00

screen capture of website

Vote

If you've time this weekend, make a trip down to the Singapore Art Museum where there's a show of works by Donna Ong, Vertical Submarine, Felicia Low and Twardzik-Chng Chor Leng - the four artists/collective selected to be this year's President's Young Talents. Alternatively, it's probably worthwhile to time your visit with the curator-guided tour, conversations with the artists, or better yet, to observe or participate in one of Felicia Low's workshops.

This year's exhibition includes a "People's Choice" segment, where you can vote for the artist whose work you most admire. I must confess that none of the works blew me away, although Donna Ong's sculptural installations are - as always, to me - considered and rigorous in both construction and thinking. But I've always been biased towards artists who have a direct engagement with the society around them, and who have an inclusive approach towards their art and audience. For this reason, my click on the vote button is likely to be next to Felicia Low's name - not just for the exhibition, but the work she seems to do daily.

You can view videos of the artists and their work, and submit a vote at this website. *shameless promotion for J* ampulets design did the environmental and communications design! I think it's great, another bias.

Give

I've a soft spot for this space. But after 2 years providing its space for artists and various NGOs to meet, collaborate and present their ideas, the Post Museum now needs your contribution!

Click here to find out more about how you can give to. For starters, some projects that are easily identifiable include its hosting of the "Green Drinks" project; as well as its organisation of the "Soup Kitchen" project and Singapore Really Really Free Market. Of course, you can also help support the work it does more directly with artists by supporting its residency or exhibition programmes.

If all that sounds too daunting for you, you can also have a healthy vegetarian meal at its cafe, Food#03.

Hokkaido for Ladies with Unladylike Appetites

2009-08-15T14:46:00.016+08:00

If there is one image that summed up my one-week experience in Hokkaido with Ma Y, it is this:

The meals you can have in Hokkaido are reason enough why anyone thinking of taking their mom on a holiday should put Hokkaido on the list of possible destinations. Especially if your mother enjoys her food and cooking as much as mine. Sure, Hokkaido is a tourist trap aimed at both domestic and foreign visitors. But hey, this means that the destinations are mostly accessible and visitor-oriented without losing too much of its authenticity.

So if you've scrunched up some savings and have set aside a week from work, here's a fairly typical itinerary for a reasonably-paced tour of the central parts of Hokkaido:

Day 1: Starters in Sapporo

Start the trip with a leisurely walk in one of Sapporo's many parks*. Without wandering too far from the city centre, there is the Hokudai Shokubutsuen (Botanical Gardens). The park is far from the carefully planned and neat Botanical gardens in Singapore, but it offers some quiet paths and over 40,000 plant varieties. The park also contains some old structures in Sapporo, including Sapporo's 1st museum.

When getting to the park entrance at North 3 West 8, stop first at the strikingly red building at N3 W4. The first Municipal Government Building in Hokkaido, its red facade makes for a great first photo! Plus it is also surrounded by a pretty park with two ponds that attracts the Salaryman-on-a-lunchbreak and the Japanese retiree alike. The Shokubutseun entrance is a short walk right behind the Municipal building. At the entrance is also Hokkaido Ainu Association, which has a small display of Ainu culture objects.

After the walk, stop for lunch at a cafe as you make your way southward towards the Tozai subway line or the Odori-koen. Odori park is a fairly narrow strip of green that marks the North and South ends of the city. It's another great place to wander around or even sit and people-watch while having a takeaway lunch (the 7-11 or Lawson's have good tasting sandwiches). This is because Odori Park has some fun sculptural pieces that double up as a kind of playground for kids. In summer, the Sapporo Jazz Festival and various beer/wine/cheese festivals also take place in tents set up around the park

Take the Tozai line subway from Odori Park (several stations are located alongside the Park) for your first Tourist Trap - the Ishiya Chocolate Factory! Get off at the Miyanosawa Station, which is the western terminus of the Tozai line. Check out the map in the station, which would show the location of the chocolate factory. The walk there should not take you more than 10minutes. Even if you don't spot the tour buses, you can smell the Ishiya chocolate biscuits once you are near the building.

Ishiya's oompa-loompas hard at work

The Factory, aka the Shiroi Kobito Chocolate Park, is really a glorified shop for the company's products. There, you can wander around the faux-English facades of the buildings, tour its faux-English rose garden and miniature houses (the kids love this), and make a 15-minute visit to its "museum". From the top floor, you can also look through glass windows down at the chocolate making facility - but that's about as close as you'll get. Still, the Park makes for a relaxing time for your mom taking photographs, watching the kids goofing around, and having a cup of coco. (The Ishiya chocolates are available everywhere in Hokkaido and even at the airports. Prices are the same, so you don't really have to make any purchases here)

After a short rest at the hotel, head on out to Susikino, Sapporo's party district for dinner! Other than Odori Park, Susikino is another venue for Sapporo's festivities. When we were there, the streets were closed to traffic and were filled instead with hawker stands selling beer, noodles and grilled food, and a traditional drumming competition! The Hokkaido folks sure love to party.

*If you have more time to wander further off the city centre, there are more impressive parks. For example, there's the Art Park or the beautiful Maruyama-koen (which has the Hokkaido Jungu temple).

Day 2: Start the gluttony already

The Nijo Fish Market at S2E2 is perhaps only one tenth the size of Tokyo's famous Tsujiki Fish Market, but Hokkaido's reputation for fresh seafood makes up for its small scale. Start the day with a walk to the Market. If you are walking from the North side of the city, take the chance to stop by the Sapporo Clock Tower at N1W3 for a photograph. It is supposedly the oldest working clock tower in Japan, but a clock tower's just a clock tower. At the Nijo Fish Market, try the Hokkaido hairy crab or snow crab, grilled scallops, and a bowl of rice topped with roe, sea urchin or the fish of your choice. If your mom is, like mine, a ~~glutton~~ lady of appetite, ask for the "Yakoburi-don", aka Glutton's don, topped with a variety of seafood. You can eat at the seafood stalls themselves; most have a table or two. That should settle brunch for the day.

Walk off the meal at the Tanuki-Koji arcade, the longest shopping arcade in Sapporo. It starts round the corner from the fish market at S2E1 and ends at S2W8. The shops are mostly souvenir stalls, eateries or rather dowdy boutiques. But it's a pleasant walk away from the sun. If not, exit and walk along W3 or W4 and you will find the Parco departmental store. Your mom will appreciate a toilet or coffee break there.

From there, it's a short walk to the Odori station along the Toho line, past the Odori Park. Take the Toho line to the Higashi Kuyakusho-mae stop to get to... the Tourist Trap of the day - the Sapporo Beer Museum and Bier Garten! Since the actual brewery has moved to a modern factory, the visit is not really going to shed much light on the brewing process etc. The museum's collection, however, does include an interesting display of Sapporo poster advertisements through the years while you fill up on the various brews at the museum bar. The grounds of this old brewery also makes for an enjoyable early evening walk. And as you wander around, decide on the setting for your dinner - you can have Hokkaido's famous grilled lamb in the old beer hall (men in suits), open air restaurant (families and couples) or a more modern annex building (groups of college/high school kids). There's an eat-all-you-can option (with a drink-all-you-can add on)... definitely for Ladies with Appetite.

Day 3: A Venetian Cuppa

Venture out of Sapporo for the day. Otaru is a port town about 30-40 minutes away by train, and touts itself as the "Venice of Japan" (read Major Tourist Trap). It is a scenic train ride. During the 15mins approaching Otaru, the tracks run right beside the coastline, so it feels just like that scene in Spirited Away - a train floating on water.

Once at Otaru, take your time to wander through the streets towards the warehouses closer to the coastline. The town is a mix of preserved old warehouse structures (wooden skeletons completely clad in heavy stone), Victorian buildings and modern concrete shophouses. Once you reach a stretch of canal lined with warehouses that have converted into eateries, take a couple of photographs (yes, it is picturesque) before filling up on an early lunch.

For the rest of the day, visit the many glass studios and shops. You can even try to make your own glass at the K Glass Studio. There's also the Music Box Museum (aka a very large shop) where even if you're not keen to make a purchase, your mom can spend a good hour or so just fiddling around with the various designs. In between, remember to take a break at several dessert and cake shops in Otaru where both of you can have a coffee before your mom fills up the shopping basket. There's the famous Rokkatei, Nii Kuraya and Kitakaro. I won't describe the confectionaries you can find at these places...but they will definitely make you wish later you had left some space for dinner.

Sushi is a relatively inexpensive option at the dedicated Sushi Street. If not, wander into the Sun Shopping Arcade on your way back to the train station. Midway through the arcade, there's a little street that has some 5-6 small bars/eateries that are more like the owners' extended kitchen. Either way, your mom is not likely to be disappointed with her meal.

Day 4: It's Japan Hour!

Hokkaido has many onsen towns. Some are nestled deeper in the nature parks, while others, such as Noboribetsu, are located more accessibly for less adventurous folks. An overnight stay in one of the onsen hotels provides a good break in the middle of your trip for mom to recharge.

Noboribetsu is a 1hr train ride away, south of Sapporo. Leave your luggage at the Sapporo Hotel and pack enough for the next 3 days before heading out. We checked into a "Japanese style" room at the popular Daiichi Takimotokan at Noboribetsu, but I'm sure if you make your bookings early enough, there are a lot more options. Try to see if the hotel offers a dine-in option where they will serve the 8 to 10 dishes in your room. Very Japan Hour, no?

To work up an appetite for dinner, take a walk around Noboribetsu's "Hell Valley" - the source of its sulphuric heat. If your mom has the stamina, extend the walk by trekking to see the crater lakes or the foot bath. The pre-dinner programme can therefore take anything from 20minutes to 2hours or more. There are, of course, other programme options, if your mom is into visiting the cheesy re-created Edo village or the cruel (and smelly) Beer Park nearby. If not, unwind after your walk with an ice cream at the street of shops leading to the hotels. While at the shops, you can also load up on beer, sake or any other drinks for your dinner (warning: prices in the hotel are at least double).

Back in the hotel, spend the next few hours before dinner soaking any tiredness away and warming up your stomach muscles for the stretching it'll get with the dinner!

This is just for starters!

Day 5: Not for Teetotalers

Sufficiently refreshed after the onsen experience, travel by train to central Hokkaido to visit some of Hokkaido's farmlands. We made Asahikawa, Hokkaido's second largest city, our base. Why? Because it is the location of several sake breweries!

The train journey from Noboribetsu to Asahikawa will take you right through lunch. Once you've checked into your Asahikawa hotel, you may have 2 hours or so to see at least one of the sake breweries.

We went to the popular Otokoyama Sake Brewery via the public bus. It's a 20minute ride on Bus #67, 68, 70, 71 667 from Bus Stop 18 by the Seibu departmental store 5 minutes away from the train station. At the Brewery, there's the usual explanation in Japanese of the brewing process, observation windows into the factory spaces, an outdoor display of the traditional tools, a fountain where you can fill up your bottle with the spring water used in Sake making, and... the tasting room! The ladies in the shop will let you taste most types of Sake, except the priciest ones, and are able to give you some simple explanation in English.

Take the same bus back to the city centre. The central pedestrian avenue from the train station is a pleasant pre-dinner walk, sometimes with lively college buskers. There are lots of Izakayas (little bars that serve a wide variety of seafood and grilled meats) in Asahikawa, so as you wander down the Avenue, look out to the streets on your left or right for Izakayas. We had a delicious meal of grilled meats and gyoza with our ice cold beers!

*Most visitors to Asahikawa go to the Asahiyama Zoo, supposedly the most popular zoo in Japan. If your mom is interested, you may have to put up for one more night in Asahikawa.

Day 6: Fruits of the Land

Furano and Biel are 20-60 minute train rides from Asahikawa where you can recreate those postcard shots of Hokkaido - a field of endless lavender, a patchwork of greens, that lone tree against a bright blue sky... You can start the day at Furano, and stop by Biel on your way back to Asahikawa. If you want an even more leisurely look at this side of Hokkaido, it is worth spending an extra day here. Hey, take things slow - it's a holiday! There's even the Norokko Train (literally 慢吞吞) to both places that travel at a pace deserving of the label "slow coach".

Furano has several food-themed ~~Tourist Traps~~ destinations. There're hourly buses from the Furano station to most of these: the Cheese Factory, Chateau Furano Winery and Grape Juice Factory. They are fairly disappointing, being no more than retail shops where you catch just a glimpse of the actual process. But your mom will likely be rev-ed up by the food shopping. If you haven't tasted Hokkaido milk, the Cheese Factory retails milk in single serving bottles. The same bus will also take you to Farm Tomita, the most visited Lavender farm. Needless to say, photo opportunities abound.

Ma Y was too tired at the end of all this to stop by Biel. But if you make good time at Furano and the weather is pleasant, a 1hour stop at Biel is recommended. If not, head back to Asahikawa for another satisfying Izakaya or Ramen meal. The Asahikawa style of Ramen is supposed to be different from the Sapporo style. I'm not a gourmand enough to tell the difference... but you may be!

Day 7: Last Dips

We were taking the plane back to Singapore on Day 8, so we made our way back to Sapporo on Day 7. At this stage, you may want to spend the day at any destinations at Furano/Biel/Asahikawa that you had missed in the last couple of days. Ma Y opted to spend the day shopping at Sapporo. This meant that we had the chance to track down any other Hokkaido dishes we had yet to try - Soup Curry (it's not just diluted Japanese Curry) and more Izakaya fare! For food-related souvenirs, the basement food halls of Tokyu and Daimaru around the Sapporo Train Station are one-stop shops. They also present another way to end this trip for Ladies with Appetite - a dinner of little snacks, salads, pickles and other dishes from the Japanese supermarket.

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More tips for travelling in Hokkaido with Moms

1. Air TravelThere didn't seem to be any direct Singapore-Sapporo flights. Be prepared to transit in Osaka or Tokyo. For arriving via Osaka, international and domestic arrivals are in the same airport/terminal, so transits are easy to make. However, you will need to clear the immigration gates and pick up your bags before checking them in with your domestic flight. For your return journey, however, you can check in your bags straight through to Singapore from Sapporo. All you need is to clear the immigration gates at Osaka or Tokyo Narita. Confirm with your airline/ticket agent on the transit arrangements.

2.Planning the trip Hokkaido is a large island, so train journeys from a city at one end to one at the other could take some 4 to 5 hours. Unless you are spending more than a week there, it'll be tough to see some of the sights at the northern parts. You don't really want to subject your mom to too many long train rides...however comfortable Japan Railway is!

3. Weather Hokkaido's dramatic seasonal shifts will mean that some sights or destinations may be shut to visitors or not what they are advertised to be during certain periods of the year. July/August is great for seeing the lavender fields or even sunflowers in Furano/Biel, but it can get hot, sticky or even wet. Warn your mom to bring her sunblock and a very wide-brimmed hat!

4. Directions/Maps Hokkaido is one of the most "planned" parts of Japan. The cities/towns are essentially grids. You can basically navigate most addresses/maps by checking out the North/South and East/West location. For example, the location of a hotel could be along the North 3 road (N3), by East 3 street (E3). It is not difficult to navigate. And if you can read Chinese characters, you can even figure out the addresses in Japanese.

5. Stamina! Some of the "walking trails" in the nature parks may appear mild/short on the map, but what seems an easy trek to you may be - literally - an uphill struggle for your mom. So be prepared to shorten the ~~walks~~ treks or better still, have your mom take along a hiking or walking aid.

6. Accommodation As with Tokyo, a hotel not more than a 5-6 minute walk from the train station is best. Your mom will probably not have the energy for a long walk back to the hotel after a day out. Note that check-in times for hotels in Japan are usually 2 or 3pm, and are strictly followed. So if you are arriving at a hotel early, be prepared that you won't get a chance to rest in the room first.

7. Shopping Your mom is likely to want to buy lots of the locally produced food/beverages home. So pack less on this trip and bring along a sturdy additional bag (or two) for that return flight!

murakami country

2009-08-08T23:23:00.005+08:00

Hokkaido is Haruki-Murakami country.

I'm thinking A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance. Jazz, grilled lamb (you know, dead sheep), Mild Seven scenes of green fields and clear skies (not lungs), that Sapporo beer star, and a silence that urbanites will normally know little of. There's even a Dolphin hotel, although this is not likely to have elevators that get stuck in-between floors...or any elevators at all.

You can't tell all this from the images above, because I am spending the day/night with Ma Y at a touristy onsen town. After all, Hokkaido is also Incentive-Travel-for-Mothers/Housewives country.

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p/s If you are thinking of taking your mom for a holiday, check back here for a leisurely itinerary a couple of weeks from now!

work in progress

2009-08-03T11:32:00.006+08:00

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". ;>

pass it on

2009-07-17T17:14:00.005+08:00

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 still hoping something good will nonetheless come out of it!

And on that note, s/pores - new directions in Singapore Studies, an online journal, is unafraid in taking on a new look, its first 1st guest editor, and some new writers. So unafraid it is that it is celebrating all this at Food#03 at the Post-Museum this Sunday, 26 July, 6.30pm.

So friends, if you have not read S/pores, click here to read Issues 1-3. Better yet, if you have never been to Food#03 for artist-chef Tien's vodka-yakult or good-tasting vegetarian menu, do so this Sunday - and you'll also get to chat with the folks behind s/pores.

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p/s Click here for directions to Food#03 at the Post-Museum.

change

2009-07-13T01:16:00.009+08:00

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 of stingy curls. He seemed to have lost some weight. That faint smile and relaxed pose we had glimpsed 2 years ago was replaced by an expression and shoulders that spoke more of tiredness. We alighted at the same station as he did and actually made an effort to stay close. Yet as if shaken from a daydream, he and his folded stool disappeared from our sentimental story of hopeful retirement into the anxious march of the morning crowd.

======
The chinese text in the background reads:歲月不變 The Chinese text on the side reads: 本人陳來發，今年六十三歲，身体健康，喜歡唱歌，聽音樂，从小熱愛貓王。有空也去溜滑輪，在家写写blog，或和朋友喝喝啤酒。如今已退休，希望有位知心人共享春花秋月。虽然一切都隨緣，相信有心栽花花會開。賞花人請九三三四四一七九九，或電elvis-again@mailbox.com.

Loose translation: My name is Chen Lai Fa, 63 years old, healthy, likes singing, listening to music, an elvis fan since young. When free, I also go skating, stay home to write a blog, or meet my friends for a beer. Currently retired, would hope to find someone to enjoy those autumn years. Although fate rules, I believe hope springs eternal. Interested parties please call 933441799 or email elvis-again@mailbox.com.

get better

2009-07-07T13:09:00.005+08:00

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 that design can do to improve hospitals and the environments in which rest, healing and rehabilitation take place. In many ways, while much of the design rightly revolves around getting you in and out of the hospital as quickly as possible, the body does not always respond as efficiently.

When Pa J was hospitalised recently, he gave the "my last words" routine (e.g. "I hope you'll both have kids") and insisted his daughter wore his watch. All this, even though it was only a minor surgery. But put him in the most serene of pre-operation environment, and the same fears and regrets would probably still characterise his experience. I am reminded that there is nothing design - or any effort of human mind and hand, however creative - can do for the one facing death.

help!

2009-07-01T14:08:00.002+08:00

"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.

here, not there

2009-06-26T11:46:00.007+08:00
After Transformers on Wednesday, I can confidently say Here was definitely more enjoyable. It was playful and beautifully filmed, playing up the density of nature and the cold concrete of the hospital. Friends, if you are thinking of visiting the cinema today, why not spend your 90minutes and $8.50 on a film by Singapore artist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen at the Picturehouse/Cathay?

Warning: Spoilers ahead

Here's film-within-a-film (within-a-film...) structure is not new. But it did give rise to some interesting devices. The mockumentary and multiple "videos" made of and by the mental patients constantly shift the audience's gaze, keeping our curiosity about the screen. In one transition, the closeup of a tree outside a window blurs seamlessly into what an impressionist rendering of the image would be, a sublime moment of nature, colour and transformation that takes the viewer in.

Another device of introducing each character via a shot of their signature on a consent form (consent for participating in the "documentary") takes place throughout almost 90% of the film. This serves as a kind of default opening credits. Of course, this could mean that the film that we are watching is, in effect, only the repeated opening and closing sequence of the lead actor killing his wife, followed by his arrival at the Island Mental Hospital.

This loop of action and arrival - is it meant to reflect the mental patients' state of being trapped in their particular moment of criminal action or obsession? Or is it in fact reflective of their conscious choice to remain in their "here" and "inside", the safe "island hospital" where they are happily drugged and made to perform repetitive tasks that aim to condition them for the world "outside"?

"The island hospital", supposed to be previously an actual asylum. Photo taken from here

For J, the film was rescued from contrivance by the "non-acting" of the amateur actors, giving it the charm of a mockumentary. Plus you can't deny the humour with some of the characterisation and situations. The wannebe-actress auntie and the toastmaster man...J recalls and impersonates over lunch today.

But for me, there are places where the film's cleverness inevitably runs into contrivance. Scattered through the film are the usual predictable references to the state of being "here in Singapore", an island. The hospital assistants are dressed in a white shirt and trousers, held up by a black belt (*yawn*). The hospital is called "Island". The patients fantasise about being watched by an abandoned house on a hill. The cleverness of the film is, of course, whether the patients' paranoia reflect the state of paranoid fear among us islanders, or whether the audience's reading into these signs is itself a sign of our self-reflexive paranoia. Are we reading too much as an audience? How much is this a critique of the audience's condition "here" on this island, a conscious choice to remain in a safety zone?

At the end of the film, the narrative suggests a romance instead. We are first prepped for this by the nostalgic strains of 80s song <我找到自己> by Liu Wen Zheng, a musical cue borrowed from Tsai Ming Liang's inspired use of Ge Lan's music in his films. The final shot, resting on a female mental patient (acted by Jo Tan), confirms their enduring and redemptive relationship. Perhaps the decision to settle for a sort of emotional resonance provided a necessary balance and relief.

And so expelled back out there, we were able to go for a late dinner of fish and chips.

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For an interview with Ho Tzu Nyen on his film, see this blog and here. Criticine also features another interview.

Post-script: Singapore comix found this journal article about the day release scheme for patients at the previous View Road Hospital, where the film was shot.

look and learn

2009-06-22T15:22:00.011+08:00

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.

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*Their names and context are made up.

spare the grandma (spoil the child)

2009-06-13T15:27:00.004+08:00

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.

the more (you keep) the merrier

2009-06-07T16:09:00.007+08:00

100yen to store the world. All images by J

The impulse to acquire starts with the fear of having nothing, but the impulse to collect becomes the fear of not having everything.

Barbara Flanagan wrote an interesting article "To have and to hold" in last month's I.D. magazine observing the creativity and energy - particularly that of America - that goes into designing storage solutions. From the 20cm long tupperware to the 20foot wide shipping container, she reminds readers that what started as the go-west pioneers' need to stockpile for winters and that rainy day, eventually became a suburban romance of self-sufficiency in the 1950s and today's enslavement to acquiring things that are desired but not needed:
New items categories of acquisition demanded new storage concepts, as items from the outside world moved inside: contractor-grade power tools, gym-quality exercise equipment, commercial kitchen appliances, hotel-scale furniture, and theme park-like lawn inflatables for Christmas.
In fact, the design of bigger and more efficient "containers" encouraged more acquisition.

But I have no complaints about one of the largest storage solutions humans have sustained - the water reservoir.

Last Friday, craving for roti prata, J and I decided to take a few hours off work for a midday cycle from our flat, across, Braddell Road through the parks of Bishan to Upper Thomson Road. From there, it's a slight incline past the Lower Pierce Reservoir (phew, no monkeys by the roadside!) to the Casurarina Road prata house where we loaded up on carbohydrates.

Perhaps seized by a post-lunch guilt, we decided to take our bicycles down the Old Upper Thomson Road to Upper Pierce Reservoir. It was a 20minute cycle, but on that long, windy and hilly road (oh, the return journey would be breeze) where we were occasionally overtaken by black cars of the European variety and distracted by two large black-and-turquoise butterflies, 20 minutes sometimes felt like eternity. Once there, it is difficult to leave the shade of trees and the sight of the surrounding nature reserve (yes, ignore the visible edge of a golf course) intercepting the seemingly endless body of water.

So friends, if you have the chance to take a morning or afternoon off on a weekday, amps recommend that you make your way slowly along Old Upper Thomson Road to the Upper Pierce Reservoir. The experience may convince you to adopt Barbara Flanagan's "owning less, but living larger".

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p/s If you do make it there, remember: DO NOT FEED THE ~~MONSTERS~~ MONKEYS. Nature provides well for them.

a night ramble

2009-05-25T11:17:00.012+08:00

portrait of J against Chinatown's words of wisdom

It was a warm night. But otherwise, a perfect night for a ramble.

J and I met with L at an art exhibition opening by the folks who work at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute.

So for sure, we started at the exhibition at a Spottiswoode Park Road conservation shophouse. But looking at the street directory and Google Earth now, I can't quite plot the exact path of our walk. We must have meandered along Cantonment Road, Kampong Bahru, Neil Road, Bukit Pasoh, Craig Road, Keong Saik Street, backtracking several times and stumbling upon an underpass that led to a little park of swordsmen and women behind the Duxton Plains construction, before reaching -

"The first swimming pool* in Singapore!", L introduced.

"Wow -" J immediately whipped out his Ricoh.

The Yan Kit Swimming Complex was, without a doubt, the highlight of our night ramble. To be accurate, it is actually the second public pool in Singapore, opened in 1952. (Sorry, L) *The first was Mount Emily swimming pool, opened in the 30s by the British.

Located on a sliver between some Tanjong Pagar HDB flats and Yan Kit Road, the low, plain structure was unadorned, except for its porthole-shaped windows and a fringe that indicated its flat roof. The ticket counter was right by the entrance, and hence clearly visible. No double-volume atrium with electronic ticket machines here. Through the gated entrance, it was a maze of abandoned concrete to me. But L pointed out the sides of the empty pool and the mirrors of the changing rooms at the other end of the complex. My imagination forbade me to look. We walked to the end furthest from the entrance where, through the portholes, they saw a small resting area that overlooked the pool.

Its architecture spoke of a more modest time - and a more human-scale.

"I think people were much shorter then," I said somewhat longingly, but was ignored by all 1.78m and 1.82m(?) worth of J and L.

Unlike L, J and I never knew of a swimming complex in this district. For us, there is no memory and hence no occasion for nostalgic reminiscence. If there was a sense - even for a slightest moment, of being in a time warp, it was from the almost immaculate state of the 50 year-old complex in the dark.

The signs read "Meeting Point" and "Low Pipes Ahead"

After dinner at the Maxwell Road Food Centre, we crossed South Bridge Road to reach the quiet shuttered streets of China Town, eventually emerging at the busy thoroughfare of New Bridge Road. My watch said half past ten, but thankfully, this little cafe at the 3rd floor of a shophouse was still open to offer us the hospitality of air conditioning, music and ice coffee.

"Tonight would be perfect if the temperature was...hmm, maybe 10 degrees lower." I huffed at one point during a slightly inclined path.

L seemed to agree, but after a moment or two, added - "I think just 3 degrees will do."

Otherwise a perfect night ramble.

J and L, night poses.

poetry day

2009-05-20T16:34:00.001+08:00

Very loose translation: "How can you wait until the autumn day clears, when the sun is setting and the cicadas call!" － late Tang poet Li Shangyin. Drawing of Pa J as J distracted him with small talk.

Three anthologies of classical Chinese poetry sit on my shelves. One has pictures and pinyin (hoorah!) accompanying every poem. I bought it years ago wandering discount book fairs. Another is a 500-page tome with a grandiose title Song of the Immortals. I have forgotten how it found its way to my bookshelf. The third is an anthology of Chinese lyrics, translated by a Chinese scholar Chu Dagao, who had studied at Cambridge in the 30s. It cost me BP3.30 from a second-hand bookstore in that British university town. As if reflecting the weight of their content, they are all hardbacks - even the picture book - and are built to last.

The books left their shelf and jacket of dust some weeks ago. I was searching for a Chinese poem that would go with a drawing of Pa J that J and I made one Friday evening. We had abandoned the TV the rest of J's family was watching in the living room and sat with Pa J listening to FM95.8's dialect news broadcasts on his portable radio at the dining table. It was a hot evening. Finishing the drawing at our home, I thought of the cicada and the sound they make.

The exercise got me reading (however poorly) some of the poems again, alternating between the dense Chinese text and its almost always-awkward English translation. One of the first poets in that anthology Song of the Immortals is the Zhou Dynasty poet Qu Yuan 屈原.

If he sounds familiar, it's because we all have him to thank for this!.

Friends, just to jolt your memory (probably from your Primary School Chinese textbook) - Qu Yuan was a politician/minister to the King Chu. His advice to the King not to walk into the ambush set by the Qin King and to form an alliance with the other states instead was ignored. This and the jealousy of other officials led to his being sent into exile where his poetic sensibilities were stirred. Some of the earliest recorded Chinese poems that were attributed to a specific/named author were by Qu Yuan. When the Chu state finally fell to the Qin empire, in despair Qu Yuan jumped into the Mi Luo river. The commonfolk who loved Qu Yuan, the patriotic and righteous public servant, supposedly threw rice packets into the river in a bid to distract the fishes from eating Qu Yuan's body. If that was not enough, they beat drums and rowed boats on the river for similar effect.

But Dragon Boat Festival is an uninspiring name for what is otherwise a great story. Us amps will, from now on, eat rice dumplings on Poetry Day, the 5th day of the 5th lunar month.

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p/s. Poetry Day falls on 28th of May this year.

and again

2009-05-11T13:18:00.006+08:00

click for larger flickr view

Some four years ago, this tree survived the town council/HDB's "upgrading"; its roots run too deep to be harmed by the censor of concrete. However, most of the tree's colourful and diverse inhabitants have left after an initial valiant effort to reclaim their home. Last week, on our almost-daily walk past the tree, J and I discovered that the tree has once again transformed itself...this time into a public gallery of sorts! Ah, an illustration of the word "indefatigable".

commonfolk

2009-05-03T01:02:00.007+08:00

screenshot of their main site

Common People is a new online archive of video interviews with folks working in/through art, design, fashion, community...or just "people who constantly create and make things happen in Singapore, for Singaporeans. These people combine thoughtfulness, a sense of craftsmanship and sensitivity to their context to create stunning and relevant work" (see their blog for more details). Friends, click and bookmark this for updates!

remembering

2009-04-23T13:29:00.008+08:00

lyrics from the folksong 青春舞曲 should read 我的青春小鳥一樣不回來.

It was 2002. I was in Hong Kong for a work-related visit. I don't remember where exactly in Hong Kong it was or what led me there, but there I was, in the audience of a kind-of remembrance event on the passing of Singapore theatre practitioner Kuo Pao Kun. A mic was set up in front of the small auditorium. The carpet and curtains were a deep dark blue. There may have been a lit candle (but memory plays dramatic tricks). A group of Hong Kongers were in the audience. There were some speeches in Cantonese.

Recent discussions about LKY's legacy, civil society (ah, the AWARE saga) and an arts NMP brought back memories of this experience in Hong Kong, as well as those very brief, by-the-way encounters with Mr Kuo. I wonder if younger folks on this island will remember and study his works? Because it was reading Kuo Pao Kun's Papers and Speeches, Volume 7 from his Complete Works (ed. Quah Syren, World Scientific Publishing) that made it clear why he is often missed - not just as a dramatist, but as a kind of cultural voice, the closest we get to a public intellectual.

Perhaps his plays, essays and speeches come across as powerful because they carry with them an equivalent weight in action and in a life well lived. He thought, he wrote, he felt, but he also interacted, taught/mentored, acted on his vision, and influenced and inspired private individuals and public officials to contribute. In addition to his plays, he founded the Practice Performing Arts School, the Theatre Practice, the Substation (this island's first independent art centre), and the Theatre Training and Research Programme.

It is 2am and I realise now I was being too ambitious in wanting to highlight some of the observations about the arts, culture and civil society he has made! Far wiser to simply recommend the 10-volume complete works, including the 7th volume containing his essays and speeches. There is also Kuo Pao Kun: And Love the Wind and Rain (image left), a 2002 volume with a few of his essays, some recordings, and the reflections of his peers and other artists. The books are guaranteed to start you thinking... and hopefully, acting! After all, Kuo Pao Kun's most quoted phrase (the title of an essay/article he wrote?) is "Better a worthy failure than a mediocre success".

from another island

2009-04-14T12:39:00.010+08:00

image by J, in a Taipei pub/cafe

On the way to the cinema last evening...
J: What's the film about?
Y: Er...something about migrant workers in Taiwan.
J: Hmm, why did we decide to watch this? The tickets are really expensive!
Y:I don't know...I think we got tickets because it's a Taiwanese film!

It's been several years since we last caught the opening film of the Singapore Film Festival. The last time was probably Makhmalbaf' Kandahar in 2002. I remember that the opening and closing films were screenings I always looked forward to - Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together, Edward Yang's YiYi and A Brighter Summer Day, Ann Hui's Ordinary Heroes, Tsai Mingliang's The Hole... films by established directors that cinema operators at that time did not want to take a risk with (but now do).

This year, we were initially skeptical about Rich Lee's Sincerely Yours (Chinese title reads: Qilutiantang ~ On the way to heaven). Was the SIFF budget so stretched that it is opening with a debut film by a film academic-turned-director? But Sincerely Yours did not disappoint.

Trust the academic to make a first film with all the textbook ingredients! The actors were convincing, attractive and likeable. The narrative played with every conceivable emotion - the classic 喜怒哀樂 - happiness and joy of lovers fulfilled and at play; awkwardly comic moments (actress Yang Gui Mei grimacing when she learns that a Film Festival wants to programme a retrospective of her films; men costumed as Chinese deities dancing in a Thai disco); anxiety if a "theft" would be discovered; anger at unjust treatment of the workers; sorrow and sadness on occasions of partings and selfless suffering. It had a evocative soundtrack and a very apt theme song - Taiwanese electronic pop veteran Lim Giong's love song 愛情研究院, sung at times by the leads in their Thai and Indonesian-accented Hokkien.

Movie still

For us, the film worked because the first-time director had sufficient discipline and restraint. It was a film that could easily exploit the pitiful plight of the migrant workers, candy-coat the cross cultural relationships, further vilify the abusive "employers" and chastise the unforgiving and indifferent globalised city. Imagine Jack Neo in the director's seat!

Instead, Rich Lee's script left room for the characters to breathe and to take their own decisions, even if only within the limits of their economic and legal situation. There was a certain dignity. In so doing, the script also left open situations which invites questions, but for which the answers may not matter. Was it inevitable that the lead actress would one day become a karaoke hostess, and what does that change? Was the lead actor being cheated by his fellow countryman, and does it matter if he is? What does one's religious faith mean in a foreign land, a cultural expression, a personal faith, a way to stand apart or to draw closer? Is it possible to compare suffering - is physical pain more enviable a state than poverty? Or that perennial question - was it true love?

Before the film's screening, Rich Lee mentioned that Singapore was an appropriate place for his film's international premiere given its "multicultural/lingual/religious" environment. With similar restraint, he stopped short of saying that this island is an apt venue because it is also an island that relies heavily on transient foreign workforce, though he did add a general comment in that the maturity of a society can be measured by how it treats and relates to its temporary migrant population.

Friends, the point of this post is not so much to recommend a film that has already been screened, but to say that it's not too late to get your tickets and support the rest of the Festival!

Finally, as a treat for all you 世界的男男女女，here's the Karaoke/MTV of Lim Giong in the early 90s (?) singing 愛情研究院 (i.e. Luuurveve Research Institute!).

weirdo x eccentric

2009-04-05T11:23:00.005+08:00

The first "comprehension" assignment/test I had to mark as a full-time teacher in a Junior College more than 10 years ago now (!) was based on a piece of writing on the differences between weirdos and eccentrics. Not unlike comparing nerds and geeks.

My memory fails me somewhat (Tym?), but I think the writer was saying that the key difference was that the latter (i.e. eccentrics), despite displaying behaviour that was not comprehensible to most of society, nonetheless posed no threat to society. In fact, they were tolerated, even appreciated, for their inscrutible interests and quirks. Odd but even charming or intriguing - from a distance. Weirdos, on the other hand, deviate from the norm in ways that society do not necessarily value.Odd and somewhat unfriendly, even frightening or just smelly.

The short piece made sense then, but now that I think about it, I wonder if the differences are not as simple as this: eccentrics are wealthier.

This is my 6th trip to Hong Kong in the last 10 years. Three for leisure, two for work, and this one for "study". But I am indifferent to Hong Kong, and hence the lack of photographs in this post. Still, I can see where Hong Kong is charming and Singapore is not. At the risk of cheap over-simplification, I imagine a visitor wants to like Hong Kong, while Singapore perhaps tries hard in wanting to be liked (but oh, tropical isle, you have a fan in me regardless).

The two big auction houses locate their auctions in Hong Kong. Years ago, they held them in Singapore. There are many reasons for them leaving - GST, proximity to vast Chinese wealth and East Asia's cultural/economic ascendancy over the poorer, fragmented Southeast Asian region. But I wonder if it is also because Hong Kong has the kind of private wealth that Singapore only has in its corporations,and usually partially state-owned or foreign corporations for that matter. While individuals can afford to be eccentric, such corporations with their public or multiple stake/shareholders can't.

So in the five days I spent in Hong Kong, I did meet some eccentrics, however "mild" their condition. They were magazine editors, collectors and gallery owners who confidently flaunt what distinguished them from us plebians - their wealth. But not through diamond-studded Frank Muller watches. Instead, they showed me their vampiric skin, told their dramatic personal histories (with the accompanying wardrobes), and pursued, ultimately, a knowledgeable collecting.

plenty

2009-03-23T14:35:00.000+08:00

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.

island ecology

2009-03-17T11:08:00.011+08:00
Over the weekend at the Natural Sciences shelves of Kinokuniya, I chanced upon over thirty titles of pocket-sized guides published by the Singapore Science Centre from the late 80s- 90s on various aspects of plant and animal life on this island.

Unable to resist, I bought A Guide to the Threatened Animals of Singapore (1st published 1995, reprinted 1998) edited by Peter Ng and A Guide to the Wayside Trees of Singapore (1st published 1989, various reprints since) written by Wee Yeow Chin. They've both been hard to put down.

Imagine these storied names...the Missing Marvelous Katydid, the Silver Forget-Me-Not, the Saint Andrew's Cross Toadlet. Or consider the sad gaze of this stuffed Banded Leaf Monkey at the NUS Raffles Biodiversity Museum, supposedly one of two subspecies of mammals found only here (image from WildSingapore.

Novelty aside, that most of the pages were on threatened reef and mangrove creatures made real for me this city's identity as an island - a reality we exploit through reclamation, and in this way, an identity that we inadvertently erase and rewrite.

That we are in the tropics (damn the humidity and heat!) gives rise to this great sentence in the guide on wayside trees- "Nearly all trees planted in Singapore develop flowers eventually" (italics mine). In the same way, the "garden city" vision would almost appear like destiny if it was not a determined, well-planned outdoing of Raffles and his friend Farquhar, those colonial enlightenment botanists.

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For a complete title list, see this. They are also available at Kinokuniya, Select Books Popular Bookstore and public libraries.

meet the people

2009-03-08T15:54:00.010+08:00

"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.

asking for answers

2009-03-02T09:04:00.006+08:00

image by J

And my unimaginative answer, similar with half of the folks interviewed, would be "home/my bed". See the film project "Fifty People. One Question" here. Friends, what would your answer be?

family history

2009-02-24T11:15:00.003+08:00

For someone who counts film as a...hmm, ~~second~~ third love, I've never been drawn to watch the Academy Awards ceremony. The only televised film award ceremony I've sat through is Taiwan's Golden Horse, as a kind of teaser for what films to look out for during the Singapore film festival or on DVD. One of these films was Wu Nien Jen, 吳念真's film A Borrowed Life or Duo Sang (mangled shortform for "father" in Japanese).

I had bought a copy of its screenplay almost ten years ago, but it was only at our recent trip to Taiwan that I found an inexpensive copy of its DVD and finally watched the film.

But first, who is Wu Nien Jen? To most folks in Singapore, he is probably recognised as the older man in the Jolin Tsai Visit Taiwan TV commercial below.

Of course, he got to be the "Visit Taiwan" ambassador because he is also well-known as a prolific writer for the cinema, having crafted screenplays for countless films since the 70s (e.g. Hou Hsiao Hsien's A City of Sadness), and an actor for half as many films (e.g. the lead in Edward Yang's fantastic Yiyi). His 1994 directorial debut A Borrowed LIfe is a restrained yet moving film.

When Wu directed A Borrowed Life or Duo-sang, he perhaps had picked up from Hou the habit of keeping the camera a respectful distance from the characters, literally framing the individual histories against a larger social and historical backdrop. But A Borrowed Life is, if nothing else, about personal history.

The premise seems typical enough - the narrator is a Taiwanese boy growing up in a coal mining community, eventually goes to the university and forms a family in the city. But the film is, more accurately, about the narrator's observation and remembrance of his father's life - a coal miner who had grown up during Japan's largely benevolent rule over Taiwan, remains enamored with Japan (he is referred to in the film as "Sega", and his children call him "Duo-sang"), and dies of a lung disease without fulfilling his dream of visiting Mount Fuji and the Imperial Gardens.

The English title "A Borrowed Life" is apt in several ways. The film borrows from Wu's own life - he, too, was a son of a coal miner. The narrator, the eldest son, remains almost fiercely filial to Sega throughout the father despite Sega's shortcomings (his biggest vice was gambling), conscious of a son's debt to his father - a life borrowed from one spent in coal mines. Sega is representative of a generation lose to modern Taiwan - a generation for whom Mandarin is not a native language, a generation that had grown up under a Japanese schools and riding Japanese railways. Sega's life is one of borrowings from cultures foreign and distant - Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese modernity.

I am reminded of Pa J and his strange defence of all things Chinese (as in People's-Republic-of-China Chinese), including his insistence that Taiwan is a renegade province that should be "reunited" with China. Strange because he left that country for Malaya at the age of 8 or 9. Yet any relative from China, however distant, is welcomed by Pa J with open arms today. He keeps track of developments of his extended family in China via frequent phone calls. In fact, he even disapproves when any vaguely disparaging comments, even in jest, are made relating to China. At the same time, it is not so strange. Despite having spent most of his 70-odd years on this island, besides the few family relations he maintains, there is very little on this island today - its culture (heh, did you say "what culture"), its people, its society - that Pa J can connect emotionally with.

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p/s. The 22nd Singapore Int'l Film Fest (better logo this year!) is coming soon! For preview of its website, click here. Tickets are supposed to go on sale 14 March only.

diapers

2009-02-18T16:59:00.002+08:00

12-13 Feb

J: At the end of everything, it all comes down to the price of diapers [points at the article in The Straits Times about retirement/nursing homes across the causeway and the accompanying table comparing the price of adult diapers in Singapore and JB nursing homes]. You start in diapers, and end in diapers.
Y: ...
J: Last night I dreamt I was in a prison...or some kind of prison camp. There was this 1 year-old kid in the camp, but he could already talk. Together with another guy, we were planning a prison break. There were these people cycling up and down a slope nearby. I remember looking down and telling the toddler something. Suddenly, he touches my face and asks: "you have a baby or not?" He was reaching for my other cheek when I woke up. It was creepy!
Y: Creepy...

how big's your neighbourhood?

2009-02-09T19:20:00.000+08:00

watching the sunrise at Burobudor

The islands that make up the Indonesian republic are only an hour or so away from ours by air. But other than a trip to Bali some 10 years ago, I've not been to this part of our ASEAN neighbourhood until the trip last week.

The 5 days to Yogyakarta and Jakarta were taken up mostly by visits to artist studios, galleries and (very wealthy!) art collectors' homes. It was a cloistered view into this vast nation. But even so, the very narrow glimpse afforded by the art and the very few folks I met already suggested the complexity and wealth of the social and cultural resource and challenges of the world's 4th largest population. The trip and various conversations were short, but difficult to summarise. So instead of trying to make something coherent of it, here's a photo-diary (and some links):

Jogja Community DIY:

wall art on the IVAA courtesy of Jogjakarta's resident street artist "LoveHateLove"

The Indonesian Visual Art Archive is a 2-year old organisation. It is housed in an old, modest 1 storey house comprising a library of art books, a small canteen, a 3x5m gallery space and, its main business, a treasure trove of interviews, event videos and articles about Indonesian art. The staff are in the process of digitising the material. Other than some "guilt money" funding from Netherlands and "goodwill" money from the Asia-Europe Foundation, the centre runs on a small revenue from library subscriptions. No Indonesian state funding. The walls, shelves and chairs show their age. But the folks who run it are far from run down!

Independent Curator Enin introducing Jumaldi Alfi at the Kelompok Jendela

The latest artist-run residency space by Kelompol Jendela similarly receives no state funding. A beautifully designed 2 storey building in concrete, timber, exposed concrete and stone, it was supposedly started following a conversation between independent curator Enin and 30-something artist Alfi when the former asked the latter what he could do to "give back" to the Jogja art community now that he was financially stable. Admirable!

different ways of masking - (L)plaster model at Agus Suwage's studio, (R) the dgtmb shop set up by a group of comic/street artists

Collectors nationale:

Prominent collector Dr Oei Hong Djien's contemporary art collection

Maybe it's just the pragmatic reason that the economic value of Indonesian art makes for a better investment, but almost every collector - young, old, educated, informed, passionate or just plain rich - has a singular interest in Indonesian art. When asked why, their reply would usually amount to "because I'm Indonesian". Their more altruistic elaborations include supporting young Indonesian artists ("so many of them don't even have money for food!"), collecting a part of the nation's history, or just being able to appreciate and understand the context and culture from which the art arose. One impassioned collector organises regular art education seminars and discussions for young collectors and issues 1000 sms-es each week on art events.

But the strong influence of the market is starting to show its negative impact. For sure, many of the collectors are also hard-nosed investors (a couple have moved on to be art dealers). Except for 1st president Sukarno's art collection, the best of Indonesia's art is now in private hands. While collectors like Dr Oei Hong Djien (a member of the Singapore Art Museum board!) have opened up his comprehensive collection to the public by erecting 2 gallery buildings in his private compound in Magelang, most remain hidden from public view. In a way, the situation reflects the glaring chasm between the wealthy and the poor in Indonesia.

Another Biennale?:

installation Zacht by Iswanto Hartono

The divide is obvious in the city's high-end shopping malls, which are quiet save for the visits by the chaffeured class. It is therefore telling that two of the latest shopping malls, Seneyan City and Grand Indonesia, are hosting a segment of the Jarkarta Biennale.

Organised by the Jakarta Arts Council, this is the first time the Jakarta Biennale includes international artists. The opening was mostly attended by the art student crowd, and the work at the National Art Gallery was patchy. Still, there were some gems. Indonesian artist Jompet's installation of phantom soldiers harking back to the period of Dutch colonialisation was especially powerful, their programmed drum beats reverberate menacingly in the basement of the Gallery. Many of the works explore Indonesia and, indeed, the region's colonial past, and the possibility of cultural dialogue against the contemporary narrative of economic and cultural globalisation.

On opening night, video projections on the Gallery's facade. One is a footage of modern Indonesian streets, one B/W footage of the past. One of Mozart's piano concerto (I think) plays in the background.

A writer expressed to me her optimism about the Jakarta Biennale's development towards greater regional representation and exchange, in particular the ASEAN region since the world at large were sufficiently engaged with East and South Asia culture. A collector expressed his skepticism that such regional optimism had existed in the 60s and was not new (i.e. would not take off). For me, the trip and conversations made real of art's dynamic and tension-filled relationship with society, state and the individual; its use for change and to celebrate/cement the status quo. It probably wouldn't be too harsh to say that the art I saw in those few days was immaterial to the average Indonesian's quality of life, yet it seemed absolutely integral to the identity and vitality of the collective body. It also made me even more conscious of how much there is to learn about the countries - their history, culture and society - around our little island.

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p/s Keen to see Indonesian art in Singapore?

(1) Work by artists from the Jendela Group would be exhibited at the NUS Museum from 27 Feb till Apr09. For more information, see here

(2) Indonesian artist Agus Suwage just completed a residency stint at the Singapore Tyler Print Institue (see here), so his works should be on show at the STPI sometime this year.

(3) Dr Oei Hong Djien's collection is documented in a book Exploring Modern Indonesian Art, available at Select Book store. 35 works from his collection are also on long-term loan to SMU and can be viewed at the campus, see here.

what a stop - for a start

2009-02-04T18:19:00.004+08:00

Yogya from the Melia Hotel

The Garuda GA877 hits the tarmac still at high speed. The green through the window is a blur. The ground is dark, with rain. The brakes work hard. There can't possibly be more runway left. Then it stops. Ah, safe in Yogyakarta.

bookstore travelling

2009-01-30T14:26:00.003+08:00

27 Jan click for flickr view

Visiting emporium-like bookstores is a little like travelling. You either visit the sites you have obvious interest with the hope of deepening your knowledge and acquiring more of what you love, or you escape to the towns where you cannot entirely navigate the street signs and have no expectation of what you may encounter. For the latter, your eye scans the shelves and you pick up whatever it is that triggers a memory, a latent question, a curiosity. With little background in that field, the links are sometimes tenuous but the views almost always expansive.

I've been doing a lot more of the latter - escapist bookstore travel - in the nature and science shelves of Kinokuniya. Admittedly, the pop science and coffeetable books make easy the approach for subjects like water, lobotomy, stars...and sea turtles.

what's new is old

2009-01-23T17:23:00.004+08:00

Taken from youtube, 1938 version of Lonely Planet. Footage from this film is available for licensing from www.globalimageworks.com.

This 11min clip is titled "Singapore - Cross-roads of the East 1938". 71 years later, I think we are still hawking the same thing about this island. Ah, the legacy of a colonial imagination. And the streets are surprisingly clean!

in sequence

2009-01-20T23:08:00.005+08:00

J sun bathing

The sun is back on our island.

I almost forgot about the sun. But still, there is something reassuring in its return. Not for its monotonous heat, but for the semblance of a pattern or season that it brings. Another season, of which this island has three: hot & humid; rainy & sleepy; indoor and aircon.

J is watching online the live CNN coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration as US President, the rehearsed process of ceremony. I guess everything happens in a sequence of patterns, order, influence - whether or not we recognise it at its occurrence. And maybe this makes historians a kind of sequential artists.

Artwork by Jose Munoz

When I first heard the term "sequential art", it seemed an odd way of describing what was explained to me as comics. My first "graphic novel", a second-hand 1987 English copy of Joe's Bar by J. Munoz and C. Sanpayo, but I didn't recognise it as "sequential art".

Though composed of distinct frames, in reading, the eye and mind does not stumble across the borders. The narrative in fact proceeds seamlessly - the relationships between idea, characters and events told not only in text, speech, but image and imagined motion. In this way, the graphic novel form lends itself well to the telling of history, personal or public.

Jason Lutes' Berlin (a series that has been compiled so far into Book I "City of Stones" and Book 2 "City of Smoke") is an engrossing network of stories set in the German capital between the world wars. You begin with a community of artists and students, unsure of where their stories will take you. Somewhere in between, you may even get a little lost as the stories multiply to include the city's journalists, workers, vagrants, hedonists, musicians, police, politicians... all this while building a picture of the political and artistic ideas and ideals that were born from the formation of a new German republic and led to its later fascist, Nazi regime.

Like any good piece of historical fiction, Berlin immerses you in the details of the fictional world and lives created, but allows you to eventually identify the larger historical narrative, an inevitable historical sequence.

Ah, Obama's speech has ended. To my right, J's screen shows Bush's helicopter exit from Washington. And despite the daytime heat, the night is surprisingly cool and breezy still - perfect for sleep.

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p/s - Also check out Art Speigelman's famous Maus, completed in 1991, a story about Holocaust survivors; Chester Brown's biography of Canadian rebel Louis Riel; or Singapore's own To Tame a Tiger by Joe Yeoh.

culture push

2009-01-15T21:55:00.007+08:00

the shape of the land

Amps is spotted on Culture Push, thanks much to contributor Michele! J mentioned in it one of his favourite design projects, the quarterly newsletter for this school that ampulets design has been developing since 2007 (image above). The rest of the designs are here where, more importantly, you can read about the good work the school has been doing with the talented kids.

*yuragi*

2009-01-02T19:48:00.013+08:00

30 Dec, 31 Dec, 2 Jan, 5 Jan...click on images for flickr view

Regret is not something productive, motivated and generally forward-looking folks are prone to feel. I don't have such ambition, but I don't want to regret wasting the time-off from work that I've been blessed with this year. So for a start, exercising some discipline for a drawing a day when I'm not at class or working on any assignments is the plan. That and spending more time with other folks.

Y: Boss, how about you? How's the new year looking like for you?
J: Must get our website up.
Y: OK.
J: And one or two more good, regular clients.
Y: Wah. Very task-focused.
J Well, as I'm aging...
Y: [aging?!]
J: ...I want to adjust and come to terms with the new rhythm of life.
Y: [what "new rhythm of life"?!]
J: You know, energy levels are down - physically, mentally. I don't want it to be an excuse. Must find the energy to want to do things. Not just exercise or work. But regarding everything.
Y: Er, you mean like motivation?
J: No, [shows irritation, a definite sign of aging] which part about what I said do you not understand!?

Friends, I'm not going to be pedantic about this "rhythm of life" business, but what I did learn about "rhythm" today is that our new KDK fan has this cool-sounding yuragi or more specifically 1/f yuragi function - "1/f Yuragi is a fluctuation pattern that makes people feel comfortable. It exists in the gentle breeze on grassy plain, hypnotic rhythm of rolling waves and even in the classical music."

It is also a patented technology for inter-mingling or weaving yarn by signals having a 1/f fluctuation, giving it supposedly a "natural, comfortable feel". "Yuragi" is also a title for a 1993 dance, an extract of which you can watch here. It can supposedly heal...And if you read Japanese and understand the general workings of biotechnology, check out the Yuragi Project. Ah, science - another universe to explore in 2009.

2 wise kids

2008-12-23T23:28:00.005+08:00

click for more in J's flickr

This year, the kids at our door wanted to know the meaning of Christmas. Friends, amps wish you Christmas as it's meant to be with your friends and family!

on a Hou Hsiao Hsien movie set

2008-12-18T01:49:00.003+08:00

By the tracks of the Jiji Station, the oldest train station in Taiwan

OK, not quite. We did not even manage to go all the way south to Hou Hsiao Hsien's KaoShiung or even Tainan, but we did venture out from Taipei for 3 days to Taichung. But the real takeaway was actually this supposed feature of Hou Hsiao Hsien's films - trains!

Trains are about the best thing about traveling. Unlike cars and taxis, trains are a social mode of transport. Train stations allow for reunions and departures, points to assess and affirm relationships. I admit that all this fades away when you are tired or in a great hurry (or both). But seriously, cars (oh, 4-wheelers!) have only brought about pollution and wasteful consumption, traffic jams, asphalt, mindless obsession with speed and countless quarrels in the stressful, enclosed interiors of cars. Friends, take it slow. Take the train. Read a book. Hold your partner's hand. Be there with the people around you.

With Taiwan's highspeed rail system (aka bullet train, 高鉄) up and running, the journey from Taipei to Taichung costs no more than S$20 and takes slightly less than an hour. From Taichung, we managed to take 2 day-trips that provided an opportunity to take the train through some movie set-like old stations and little towns. Taiwan's railways are a legacy from its Japanese colonial period, and the Jiji line is one of the oldest tracks/routes that has been preserved. Here are two ways to experience Taiwan's ol skool rails and towns:

(1) Lu Gang & Changhua:

Lu Gang ("Deer Harbour") is one of the oldest ports in Taiwan, but it had silted up some time ago. It is now largely promoted as a town with one of the best-preserved old streets in Taiwan and some mean street food.

Glutinous Meat Balls Stall at Chang Hua. Good stuff.

On the way to Lu Gang, you will transit at Chang Hua. At Chang Hua, cross the street from the train station, take the street diagonally on the right into some narrow streets where you will find Chang Hua's famous "Meat Balls", a chunk of deliciously marinated minced pork in a thick glutinous skin. This palm-sized snack is steamed, then quickly dipped in a pot of hot oil. It is served in a bowl, covered generously with a flavoursome brown/garlic/chili sauce. When you've finished, bring your bowl to the woman who will dilute the leftover sauce with some meat broth for your post-meal soup!

posing in front of someone's house

The bus terminal is nearby and buses to Lugang depart every 15mins. The journey takes about 20mins. Let the bus driver or a fellow passenger know that you want to get to the "Old Street" (老街), and someone will alert you to drop off (it is the penultimate stop before the Lugang terminus). In fact, the proud local Lugang resident who tipped us to get off the bus spent the next 5mins giving us a guide on the town and the places to visit. If you're not lucky enough to meet a kind local, there's a map right outside the 7-11 where the bus stops. From there, it's a 1min walk to the start of the Old street. Some folks may find the street cheesy, but it is in fact very nicely preserved and worth your just stopping and examining the Qing era architecture of each house. Depending on how often you stop to take photographs (like J), you would get through this street in 5 or 30mins.

At the end of the old street is a whole street of hawkers. Try Lugang's sorethroat-causing tempura tiny prawns, babycrabs and some crayfish-like crustacean called "prawn monkey" ("蝦猴仔") covered with basil leaves, pepper and chilli powder.

10mins away on the other side of town is another backlane called "Nine Turns Lane". But if you have the time, Lugang's small enough for you to just wander around or to pop into its Folk Art museum.

9 turns lane

(2) The JiJi Railway Line:

You don't need to be a Hou Hsiao Hsien fan to enjoy a lazy day riding on an old train routes through sleepy towns, stopping by the pretty train stations built during Taiwan's Japanese colonial era. One of these routes run from the town of Er Shuei (二水) to Che Tou (車投), with Jiji (集集) in between. Most guidebooks will have more information on these towns and what you can do there. But the best thing is that there are often not many spectacular sights at all! Just rent a bike or take a walk down whichever little lane or trail you feel like, take in the country air and enjoy the aimlessness of being on vacation.

J and I stopped only at Er Shuei and JiJi Stations. At Jiji, we didn't have much time so we rented one of these motorised bicycles (~NT150 per hour. You can also rent mopeds and bicycles). It ended up being pretty good fun. Plus if you don't have that much time, it does help you to get to the one sight we recommend you visit - a Taoist temple whose ornate roof had collapsed whole and directly on its base during the 2005 earthquake. It's fairly surreal and eerie.

posing in the train

At the end of it all, catch the train back to Taichung and join other retuning day-trippers, students and working commuters. If you are tired, close your eyes and let the rhythmic train tracking lull you to sleep.

You need all the rest you can get because the night is still young in Taichung! Once back, head out to the Feng Jia Night Market for your supper! (check out this blogger's food adventure at Feng Jia) Unfortunately, Taichung is only about to start building its MRT system, and since Feng Jia is a little out of the way, you'll need to take once of those nasty four-wheeled things there (the cab fare is about NT300).

[Read about other day trips from Taipei here.]

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Notes on Getting to these places from Taichung:
(1) Lugang - Take the train to Changhua from Taichung train station. Catch the bus to Lugang from the small bus terminal diagonally on the left once you exit the train station. The bus ticket is about NT44. The train ticket to Chang Hua costs no more.
(2) Jiji - Take the train to Er Shuei from Taichung train station. From Er Shuei, change to the Jiji line. Check the train schedule ahead for the return journey.

city day-trippers

2008-12-13T00:04:00.001+08:00

Home from a day trip - click for larger view in flickr

A Taiwanese friend in Singapore once asked - "During weekends, which are the "rural/country" places (her phrase: 郊外) that Singaporeans like to go to?" Her question stumped me for a moment. I am not sure what answer I gave her...maybe I had said Botanical Gardens, Sentosa, Pulau Ubin or, if I recovered quick enough, Sungei Buloh.

While us amps are advocates of good ol' domestic tourism, the idea of "郊外" as a regular weekend distraction on this island is still somewhat remote. But not so for the Taiwanese, young or old, and probably especially so for the Taipei city folk who are daily gas-ed by scooter-fumes.

Among the things J and I miss most about Taiwan when we got back to our little island is this "郊外", often a MRT ride just 30min or less from the city where everything slows down. So if you are ever in Taiwan, day-tripping is a good way to see this island the Portuguese had very aptly named Formosa. With the air cool between 15-22C,

If you are ever in Taipei, below are 5 easy day-trips to make:

(1) Yang Ming Shan (From Taipei):

on yang ming shan

The #1 weekend spot for Taipei-ites, Yang Ming Shan is a lush retreat of hot-springs, parks and peaks. If you get there early enough, you can hike up Mount Qi Xing (seven stars), the main peak. The paths are actually mostly paved or staired, so it's do-able in a leisurely way. We saw old folks in twos or small groups walking, but for lazier folk (like us!), there's a mini-bus that leaves from the small terminal which goes to almost all the main sights for a flat NT15 ticket. The bus is in a loop, so you catch the same bus back to the terminal.

J, the Da You Kang, expelling more hot air

If you are taking the mini-bus (see note below), schedule at least an hour for each stop. We stopped by the Xiao You Kang (little oil valley?) where there's a fairly dramatic sulphuric fume from the side of the mountain, some short trails and really photogenic fields.

We tried to visit the Yang Ming Shan Shu Wu, one of fifteen mansions built by Chiang Kai Shek to host foreign dignitaries, preserved with furniture intact. But be warned, you can only tour the large grounds and mansion via the guided tours from the site office, the last of which starts at 3.30pm. We got there late, so had spent the next hour walking the periphery of the mansion's grounds. Paranoid Chiang had painted his mansion army green, camouflaged it with greenery and guarded it on high ground - so we only caught a glimpse from the road 50m away. At one point, we could hear the guide's amplified voice amidst the rustling of leaves and their green. Still, the 1hr walk back to the bus staion via the narrow road was enjoyable and would bring you past a waterfall viewing area and the Yang Ming Shan park where there's a kitschy giant flower clock that plays ching-chong music at the hour.

token sunset shot on the way down Yang Ming Shan

On the way back to Taipei city, stop instead at Shilin (1 station away from Jiantan) and make a dinner of all the Taiwanese ~~junk~~ street food you can eat from the Night Market. Be warned: the buses from Yang Ming Shan back to Jiantan/Shilin MR station gets very crowded in the evenings from 5.30pm onwards as they also ferry kids released from the Yang Ming Shan High Schools - yes, the smell, chatter and squeeze is enough to inspire claustrophobia.

(2) Mao Kong:

I ad wanted to visit Mao Kong just for its name - "Cat Space" (impossible to resist!), but Mao Kong proved to be a surprisingly good afternoon trip to a tea house up in the hills where the first Taiwanese Tie Guan Yin tea was grown.

We had started our day late. After a brunch of fantastic Ru Rou Fan (Stewed Prok Rice, our #1 culinary find on this trip, but more on food in another post) and a leisurely coffee in a modestly-furnished cafe that scored "A" for connoirsseurship (the waitress first brought you the freshly ground coffee in a wine glass to sniff, then its brew in a fine-bone China cup, before a cold version in another wine glass!)... we didn't waste anytime waiting for the bus to bring us up to Mao Kong for more caffeine. Instead, from the Taipei Zoo MRT station, a cab brought us to a quiet tea house.

The driver claimed that the teahouse 水仙官 is the one he frequents, and is cheaper and slightly off the more popular Tourist stretch. When we arrived, the only other guests were two groups of middle-aged Taiwanese men in sports jackets or business suits. If the weather is good, sit out in the open or opt for the little pavilions. For NT400 (~S$18) and "water-fee" of NT80 each (~$3.50), we had a small canister of very fragrant Tie Guan Yin that should last through 30 brews.

Mao Kong supposedly gets busy at night, and the 山水客 teahouse at is open 24hours! J and I can only imagine how pretty it must be to watch the city from Mao Kong in a cool summer or spring evening, talk till dawn with friends, and marvel at how tall Taipei 101 really is. Before it got dark, we took a walk round the hillslopes and eventually flagged a mini-bus down to the Taipei Zoo.

If you've not got enough of the city view, take the MRT to the Taipei City Hall stop and walk to Taipei 101 for a fancy dinner at the uppermost floors! Taipei 101 has the usual chain stores. More interesting is the new Eslite nearby which also has cafes and restaurants...of course, and books in a well-designed setting (*it shuts at 10pm instead of the Dunhwa 24hr Eslite).

(3)-(5) Danshui, Beitou and JiuFen
We didn't revisit the seafront, hotspring and ex-mining towns respectively this time, but we had loads of fun in all three places three years ago. If you want to have a sense of how much fun these towns can be for a day-trip, read our accounts of Danshui, Beitou and Jiu Fen!

Both Danshui and Beitou are accessible by MRT on the red line. Danshui is at the end of the line. Jiu Fen is a bit more complex to get to: Take a train from the Taipei Main station to RuiFang, from the Ruifang station, catch a bus to Jiufen. The whole journey is about 1.5-2hrs.

======
Note -
>> Getting to Yang Ming Shan:
Get to the Jiantan MRT station. From there, catch any of these buses (#260, #5) for NT15 to Yang MIng Shan main bus station. Just check the Jiantan station map for the location of the bus stops nearby. The bus ends at a small terminal in Yang Ming Shan round about a small cluster of starbucks/7-eleven and the public toilet. Get there early! *In the late autumnal and wintry months, the winds can get quite fierce, so make sure you have a windbreaker or a scarf/hoodie. *If you are spending the day walking or moving round Yang Ming Shan's sites, bring your own water and lunch. Some main sites do sell cup/pot noodles.

>> Getting to Mao Kong:
Get to the Taipei Zoo MRT station on the Muzha line. From there, take a taxi (ask the cab driver for recommendations of tea places) or take the small bus (#15) from across the station which leaves hourly on weekdays and tell the bus driver the name of the tea house. He/she will just drop you off. To get back to the Taipei Zoo station, just flag down the bus any where along the Mao Kong roads. In 2007 a cable-car system was opened that will bring you straight up to Mao Kong from the Taipei Zoo in 20min, but a year later, the system was shut for "maintenance" (soil erosion had supposedly weakened the supports!).

what is XXXXL and 18 Grams light/heavy?

2008-12-06T00:25:00.009+08:00

This is what we've been doing instead of blogging about Taiwan.Click on images for larger flickr view.

The good folks at this research-driven architecture and ID studio moved not too long ago into one of the best offices in Singapore - the previous campus of the Trinity Theological College at the top of Mt Sophia (i.e. right next to Old School). More specifically, the company is housed in the College's beautiful 1969 chapel, its roof shaped to resemble the Chinese word for man "人" leading to a cross.

They asked if we could make some art for the large glass surfaces in their office, and we could not resist such flattery (heh)! Even harder to resist was their motivation and the brief they gave us - to create works that reflected their ethos and the site, engaged and were not too inaccessible to most folks, and resolved some "practical" issues of light/reflection/identity.

"and it was good" - cities, trees and daydreams on a meeting room

J and I really admired their open profession of their Christian faith in a professional context, and how it seemed to ground the folks who ran the studio. As such, we made 3 illustrations inspired by Genesis and around the idea of creation/creativity, trying to tease out the kinds of relationships - positive or antagonistic - between creation/creativity that is divine or human. 2 of the 3 illustrations also continue the whole train-series we've been making, except that the idea of sleep and repose takes on a new dimension in a space that used to be a chapel! As you can see, we are really excited about seeing our usual images XXXXlarge and watching the folks walking by interact with them.

"to each of them he gave a name" - balloon animals, labour and rest, flesh and air, reality and fiction on the external wall

"union" - 2 versions of a tree, natural and urban habitat

So friends, if you happen to be at Mount Sophia (like you wanted to get some exercise!) and if you see anyone coming out from the chapel-now-turned-design-studio, tell them how you much you like the illustrations on their walls! Of course, don't let loose that you've received specific instructions to do so by us...

And if you need an excuse to troop up to Mount Sophia, here's a good one: the screenings at Sinema at Old School. On the strong recommendation of friends, we will be watching Han Yew Kwang's 18 Grams of Love , last shown at this year's Singapore Int'l Film Festival. Watch and find out how much love really weighs.

So far, the reviews have been positive. We saw Han Yew Kwang's 2006 comedy Unarmed Combat on DVD and found it a very watchable debut feature film.

To find out more about the film:
> Watch the trailer here.
> Read a review of the film here and here, or an interview with the director here.
> Check out the Film's schedule at Sinema here. It will be screened daily from 4-13 December, but there's usually only 1 screening a day.
> Better yet, go watch the film itself!

To get to Old School and the previous Trinity Theological College campus: Take the train to the Dhoby Ghaut MRT. Exit the station and cross the road to MacDonald House. Walk towards the new condominium 8 Mt Sophia, and you'll find a flight of steps leading to the top of Mt Sophia. Take a deep breath (or two) and trek up. If you survive, both Old School and the ex-theological college are right across the road.

Formosa and the Invisible Republic

2008-11-21T09:34:00.006+08:00

view from from 2005

Us amps will be on our way to here tomorrow, and if I complete this essay on art markets by 2am later on (ah, a prospect growing dimmer by the minute!), we'll bring you some live coverage of Formosa over the next week.

While we will, you don't have to miss this talk "Get yer ya-ya's out! The Rolling Stones in Singapore and other 'cartoon' adventures" tomorrow (22 November, 2.30-4pm, The Salon) at the National Museum on comics and political cartoons in 50s-60s Singapore, and the role of other "cultural workers" (pop bands, musicians) who were part of the "invisible republic" at the time of this island's independence.

And if you do make your way there, you'll be near enough to a bookstore where you can pick up a copy of Liquid City, a collection of comics short stories by illustrators and comic artists in Southeast Asia. The book is sitting on our shelf at the moment. I've not had a chance to read it, but oh, the cover art beckons!

1 Dec

2008-11-18T00:51:00.004+08:00

J made this image for magazine FL.ag #1's latest issue for world aids' day.

Facts about HIV here.

counting time

2008-11-17T01:06:00.007+08:00

holiday dreaming

Friends have been asking me how's life been now that I am a student again. It seems indulgent to be saying this just two months after taking my year's leave from work and so soon after the trip to China, but I would like to have answered them "I need a holiday!".

In the two months, I've managed to squeeze out 3 papers (1 more in the writing) and, together with J, made 6 commissioned illustrations that will actually appear on real-world mediums and not this blog (hoorah!). It feels just as busy as when I was working, only that I'm in jeans and the time seems more like mine to manage. But all in all, my usual answer to friends (i.e. "it's been good") is no lie.

But I am also reminded that all this will come to an twelve months later. With this at the back of my mind, it become easy to grow selfish with time - and be lulled into thinking that it really is just your own. It becomes easy also to then take for granted the time spent with J, to begrudge the time spent taking a walk or cleaning the house or just being with someone. If time is thought of as a resource, stinginess and greediness are always tempting. But friends, if time is not really yours, does it make it easier to give it away more generously? If it is not a resource, but a rhythm, will we be less tempted to count it, measure it, "invest" it?

and the winner of the show is...

2008-11-03T15:17:00.006+08:00

All images in this post are taken by J

...the Beach Road Camp and Non-Commissioned Officers' Building.

A mouthful? Obviously the developers who won the tender to restore and re-develop the site by 2012 figured they have a sexier-sounding (and in true Singapore fashion, unoriginal) moniker: "South Beach".

Despite being barely halfway through an essay on "Art Law" (*shudder*), J and I decided to take a less legalistic approach to the rest of the Saturday afternoon and continue our visit of the Singapore Biennale at the remaining Shigeru Ban and "South Beach" sites before the circus leaves town on 16 November.

In a way, all Biennales or such large-scale art spectacles are as much about their host cities as it is about the art. The gesture towards the global loops round to the local or domestic. In this way, the 3 main sites for this year's Biennale in Singapore are telling of how this island sees itself as a city:

1. The historic <City Hall site, destined to bear the unenviable weight of being the National Art Gallery by 2014, reflects the island's inability still to fully engage with its past.

2. Shigeru Ban's paper tube structure at the Marina Boulevard is dominated instead by containers bearing the name of the corporate sponsor, while the paper tubes mimic the neo-classical of our City Hall. But once at the site, the structure is overwhelmed by the new glass and steel tower block across the road and the vision of cranes across the Bay, slaving for the new Sands casino resort. On the field beside Ban's structure, the Aquilizans' installation of a sea of slippers mounted atop bamboo poles is an appropriate contrast - stark in its seeming poverty of colour and form, almost desolate if not for the positive text describing the work. And of course, this island's history as a fishing village and subsequently a trading port are aptly reflected.

3. The "South Beach" venue is my favourite. I must confess that the reason is the buildings themselves - the brass lamps, the faux 70s stained-glass sticker, the baby blue rooms and uneven concrete floors, the pane-less windows overgrown field, the large assembly hall, the brass plate commemorating the National Volunteer Corp's role in defending Singapore against the Japanese invasion. Certainly, my response is sentimental. it is the most "romantic" of the venues in being abandoned by the rest of the city - though not for long. And in this mood of shameless sentimentalism us islanders are prone to be in, ampulets leave you this picture.

And yes, this being Monday and I'm blogging, the "Art Law" essay is now out of the way.

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p/s. Click here for more information on the Biennale, what to see, and how to get there.

art+capital (part 2)

2008-10-17T00:51:00.012+08:00

Shanghai Night - 不夜城

A friend looked at the Shanghai skyline, turned to me and said - "You know, every city now has one of these roof top bars."

Shanghai has always been a global city. Historically, with all the foreign concessions, it was akin to being colonised by multiple nations at one time. Its landscape reflects these influences - the assimilations and tensions, and its status today as an "expat" paradise merely continues that past.

It seems obvious that the art industry and centres of cultural influence are always built around centres of financial power - London, New York, and now, Shanghai+Beijing. Like most service industries, the art industry serves the powerful. As such, if you are thinking of starting an art business, the Chinese art industry offers these lessons:

(1) Land

Today Art Museum in Beijing; Installation at Zendai MOMA

If there's a Chinese Bill Gates and Donald Trump, it would be the latter who would be more likely to open and develop an art museum in China.

The museums of modern or contemporary art in China that I've visited all happened to be private and non-profit. Given the nature of contemporary art, it seemed natural that such museums are operated privately instead of by the state. But another thing these museums often have in common is their close relationship with real estate play. Both the Today Art Museum in Beijing and Zendai MOMA in Shanghai were started by real estate investment giants who collect and enjoy art.

While both non-profit institutions have different business models (I like Today's diversification into art publishing and archival/video documentation services), it is not by coincidence that both are located within new, large commercial or mixed-use developments by their founders' companies. In fact, the Zendai MOMA is gearing up to expand into its glass/steel cube "Zendai Himalaya Complex" nearby, named no doubt for its proportions. While the government has no direct stake in these developments, the promise of a hip contemporary art museum is not only a plus for property buyers/investors but may up the attractiveness of the land bid to the government.

(2) Location Location Location

lift to artist studios at M50

The development of art districts like 798 or the MoGanShan Road (or M50) art district have similar real estate impetus for the owners.

But for some galleries, their strategy is to get out from that competition and circus. And where your gallery is located says much.

ShanghArt's has expanded from its M50 location, and opened a branch on one of Shanghai's main shopping streets, in the compound of a beautifully restored and converted French residence along Huai Hai Rd together with some high-end fashion labels.

James Cohan Gallery

New York gallery James Cohan spent months searching instead for a 1930s building at Yue Yuan Rd in the quiet former French concession. The building seems an unlikely place for a gallery. It is still inhabited by other residents on the other levels, and shares a compound with another residential building with laundry in the balconies and garden. But walk into the Gallery and you will find beautifully restored stained glass, a lovely art deco stair case and terrazo floors, decorative Chinese ceilings and a garden with a stretch of scholar stones. Instead of focusing on contemporary Chinese artists, it is bringing major international artists like Bill Viola to China instead - hence its subtle location.

140sqm in the Black Stone

Former Beijing curator Yue located her new gallery 140sqm in a dark, rundown (by Singapore standards lah) 1920s building called "The Black Stone" a few streets away. Entering the building, you past a tiny room where a woman lies on a beach chair, walk up a narrow mosaic-tiled staircase bathed dimly in orange light, walk down a grey corridor before entering a sunlit apartment of art. Her focus is to discover new Chinese contemporary artists who maintain a strong artistic and intellectual integrity in their work. Asked if the location deters collectors, she says that the location often works to her advantage in attracting collectors curious about the space.

(3) ~~Lots of Money~~ Labour

workers taking a break, backlane of M50

You can't get away from labour if you are running a business. Perhaps taking this to the extreme, Shanghai-based artist Zhou Tiehai openly declares that he has never actually painted anything and pays a team of 11 assistants to execute all his paintings. Conceptually, he is of course locating the art not in the product, but in the conception and the entire process. When asked if his work is then similar to that of a film director and script writer, he agrees but adds that for his latest dessert series, it is his friend, a French chef, who is the actual writer and co-director. When the follow-up question was asked about what then does he actually do, he smiled and said "My job is talking to you."

Zhou TieHai's Studio

Making art is labour-intensive, but in a capitalist context, the real value is reaped not by the workers but the guy who directs the workers and makes the sale. Your labour, as I found out from all the gallerists, is in the service extended to the customer - the talks given at museums, the interviews given to journalists, the hospitality extended to visitors, the advice handed to young collectors, the explanations and stories woven around art works (told perhaps over a cigar in your office), the liaison with shippers and pacifying of worried collectors...

In China, where labour and rental is cheap, you may not need lots of money to get a gallery going (NB. lesson obviously does not apply in Singapore!). But the relationships and trust nurtured with artists and collectors is not something that financial capital can secure. For a few, it is a labour of love.

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Part 1 here

art+capital

2008-10-14T21:12:00.013+08:00

A one-day crash tour of the Beijing contemporary art industry could bring you to the following places:

(1) The Art Mall

The Dashanzi or 798 Art District is a district of old dis-used factory complexes and low warehouses/shops inhabited by artist studios and galleries since the 90s, but more distinctly marketed as an art destination in the last few years.

Today, it receives busloads of domestic and international tourists daily, and is the first destination mentioned not only by art magazines but newspaper travel reviews. There are cafes, souvenir stores, bins for recyclable waste, litter-free paved streets, new brand-name galleries from Korea (T-Space), New York (Pace Wildenstein), Italy (Continua)...and a new section supposedly developed with state support and ironically bearing the name "798 Originality Square".

Feng Zheng Jie's new work - glamming up death, decay and consumption.

With all the market hype about Chinese contemporary art, it is easy to decry the rapid developments at Dashanzi and the by-now familiar iconographic paintings of Mao, bald men, grinning or green faces as a kind of "in-authentic", factory (pun intended) art. But art and commerce have always served each other, first through patronage, then through industry. Sometimes the exchange gets too exclusive in its intimacy, and art's other relationships with critical process, society, invention etc appear distant or even absent - but hey, this is not unique to Chinese contemporary art. Perhaps the underlying discomfort is a post-colonial one, that the power in this exchange lies not in China but in "the west", the old boys of the art market.

(2) The Art Bungalow

the dusty neighbour, in the process of Beijing-style "upgrading"

As with all things Chinese, though not unique to China, these contradictions and tensions somehow grow to exaggerated proportions in the Middle Kingdom (not unlike the gigantic faux Parisian hotel across the street from the hotel I am staying in!)

After spending the first half of the day walking around the Dashanzi district, we walked and drove around the Cao Chang Di Art District (Detailed NYT Review here). Cao Chang Di is certainly more subtle than Dashanzi, but the contradictions remain. The Cao Chang Di galleries are mostly foreign-owned or off-shoots of foreign big name galleries. Located in a quiet district of warehouses and new, cube-like brick buildings that are barely visible behind high concrete walls, the mood in the tree-lined district is almost genteel. At the same time, the district sits right beside a still-dusty (very), unpaved warren of homes and little shops.

This maybe sums it up: at the Cao Chang Di, we walked pass what is supposedly Ai WeiWei's sometime studio, cheekily or perhaps very aptly labelled "258 FA KE". A self-parody and a raised middle-finger.

(3) The Art Factory

Xu Zhong Min's work at his studio

If you are lucky, you may get the chance to visit an artist studio.

We were brought to Xu Zhong Min's studio. Located an hour's drive away from the city, you will see, enroute, entire Truman-ville estates of "Little America" bungalows (with SUVs in the drive way and a 3 storey clubhouse) or modern Chinese mansions complete with fancy roofs and circular doorways.

Looking more like some village workshop housing some kind of contraband goods, his studio is in a large gated compound with a L-shaped workshop and an outdoor shed. When we got there, 4 of his assistants were cleaning some fibreglass skeletal figures that would later go on one of his stop-motion rotating sculptures. He tells us he had been to Singapore many times ("if there's a good party"), that a Singaporean collector had just bought another of his works a week ago, and that he works 6 days a week. Then he shows us his personal studio at the back. It is an airy, double-volume 200sqm space.

Trained as a print-maker in a Szechuan art academy before spending some years in the UK, his early print works and more recent oil paintings and prints line the walls. There is an impressive technical finesse and range in his work.

At the end of the visit, I am reminded that for all the cynicism (and perhaps jealousy?) that may now characterise attitudes towards the commercial success of these contemporary Chinese artists, these artists are very skilled and good at what they do, smart, talented, imaginative and inventive. Not forgetting that they work incredibly hard (single-handedly managing their assistants, collectors/gallery owners, production needs and finances), and have been doggedly pursuing their art for years, with or without commercial success.

Talent. Hard work. Persistence. If you don't have all 3 in abundance, I guess neither the art nor the capital will happen.

what I've learnt from J

2008-10-05T16:28:00.009+08:00

When I first visited J's flat (where we now still live) years ago, I learnt that instead of using the usual mop and pail to clean the floor, he uses a cloth or rag to clean each of the tiles, Cinderella-like on his knees. I had thought then he was just being super ~~anal~~ fussy about cleanliness. In time, I found out that he's not really a neat-freak, but is just someone who takes very good care of whatever he has - however small the thing is or large the effort. Perhaps it comes from being from a big, lower-income family. My nouveau-riche household has fewer qualms about use/waste-and-replace!

Though it doesn't always work out this way, the care invested is sometimes reaped in terms of a certain longevity. Simply put, the object lasts. The same goes for work - I think what results is that a design stands to longer and repeated scrutiny. And for certain, there's something in there about relationships.

What I've learnt from J is that when you've decided something or someone is yours to care for, you should do as you've decided - and recognise that it's not without effort. So Happy Birthday J! Here's wishing you many more Birthdays - with me, heh.

speed

2008-09-30T00:23:00.007+08:00

3 men riding the train home from a day out at the racec- click for larger flickr view

The desire for speed is bewildering. Rubber on tarmac. Ecstatic champagne bottles. Loops and crashes.

More understandable is the desire to be part of a spectacle, to participate in revelry, to gape and gawk and cheer, to say "I've been there too". That we collect experiences and their memories is also part of our desire to consume. So the the Singapore Tourism Board knew that the crowds who attend the Formula Races would in fact be spending more time (and money) in other forms of consumption.

Yesterday afternoon, with J's work meeting and my class assignment out of the way, we decided to spend the afternoon luxuriously sipping tea, across the street from Raffles Hotel, at a fancy cafe with lace curtains, tasteful furnishing, and the conspiring whispers from the ladies at the other corner. We've always wanted to do the lady-of-leisure thing. And we did. There. Experience consumed and collected.

In a way, we were really no different in our motivations from the folks who gather to watch the F1. Perhaps only that our experience was much slower and far quieter.

what we talk about when we talk about running

2008-09-20T01:29:00.006+08:00

the original running man

On our island, running has become the latest fad. This year alone, there has or will be the Nike "Human Race", the Great Eastern Women's race, Adidas' sundown marathon, the super crazy "double marathon", some new balance thing, the annual standard chartered run...and too many for a non-participant to name. It's a little bit more crazy than when yoga and roller blading were the rage, perhaps because running is something you can do alone and is basically a outcome/goal-driven activity, quantifiably by time, speed and distance.

Maybe this is why this book flew completely off the shelves, but Kinokuniya has re-stocked it again.

Now that I got my copy of Murakami's latest "memoir" comprising reflections on running, I wished I had just borrowed a copy from the library. The prose is thin and loose. The premise is indulgent. Or rather, the premise is indulgent because the prose is thin and loose. And perhaps owing to the conversational tone (after all, the title does declare that its talking), Murakami's attempts to link running to writing are not so much contrived as they are pedestrian. And for an activity - running -that requires much discipline, Murakami did not appear to show any in the writing. This is a book that ought to be just a 800 word essay.

If you are a Murakami-fan and finding it hard to believe that he can write something pedestrian? Well, it could be because of the subject matter. To demonstrate, us amps attempted a version of "talking about running", since J is also the running type:

Y: J, you are a runner. You have been running voluntarily since you were young. You enjoy running. You feel ill if you don't run for some time. Tell me, what do you think about when you think about running?
J: Well, mostly, when I run, I think about...
Y: No, not when you are running. What do you think about when you think about running?
J: Erm, slimming down.
Y: So superficial!
J: Well, if you want a more PC term, try "keeping fit".
Y:Keeping fit is too utilitarian. What else do you think about when you run?
J: OK, when I run, sometimes I also think about and get new ideas.
Y [*yawn*] It's late. I think I am going to bed.

"Wah, so stylo!"

2008-09-13T13:34:00.008+08:00

Notes below. All images by J's dusty Nokia phone camera...and photoshop

...that's a Singlish and somewhat reductive version of the Singapore Biennale's theme this year. Yet the ability to wonder is not something we should scoff at - it suggests, at the minimum, curiosity and if it implies a level of naivete, it's because our cynicism is not far away as a counterpoint. Nor should we underrate the almost unique ability of art - among other exercises of inquiry, craft and expression - to cause its viewer to stop, be amazed, think and question.

But in today's world of expensive, Olympic-scale entertainment, is art no more than another spectacle? Because what indeed are we wondering at, or what are we to wonder about? And does it simply stop there? Is wonder as a purely visceral response to art enough?

J and I spent Thursday evening wandering the halls and rooms of the City Hall building. Some of the best pieces at the City Hall site were multimedia or video works. Clare Langan's magical and epic-like scenes of domestic interiors or small town landscapes covered in snow or threatened by suggestions of an impending storm are captivating. There is a segment of close-ups of what looked like the night sea - its ominous waves, deep and dark, oil-like in a slow-motioned viscosity - which, to me, was all of nature's horror, power and beauty. There is Charly Nijensophn's quiet video "The Wreck of Men" placed figures, monumental in their stance, but wasted as they stand on precarious pedestals in stretches of sea and water and sky, a beautiful, enduring and ultimately indifferent landscape. We also really enjoyed Yuan Goang-Ming's video "Disappearing Landscape - Passing" and Thai filmmaker Apichatatpong's elegiac "Morakot".

And while there were few overt political or specific references to national or global events, these works are both timeless yet entirely in and of our times - the massive earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and storms that have accompanied our rapid urbanisation and consumption, and the continuing man-made destruction and chaos of fallen governments, armed rebellions and wars.

Amidst these large canvases, J and I found a moment of escape in the Surrender Chamber of the City Hall where we saw under our feet the google earth map of the island the Japanese surrendered to the Allied Forces at the end of World War II. The oil refinery offshore islands were all geometric patterns, stark in their graphic order. The main island itself was all green and concrete grey. It was harder than we thought finding Toa Payoh. We located it in relation to the MacRitchie and Pierce nature reserves, followed by the bright blue of the public swimming pools. With a piece of paper, ampulets claimed this spot, marking the politically-divided constituencies and the island's best BBQ chicken wings.

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p/s The Singapore Biennale is now on until 16 November. For folks with kids, there's a special Kids Biennale programme.
Click here on directions to the Singapore Biennale sites.

Notes to Images above:

1. Ki-Bong Rhee's "Bachelor - The Dual Body", a beautiful installation of a book,
Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus that floats and flaps its pages in a tank.
2. Clare Langan's "Metamorphosis", a video work.
3.Zadok Ben-David's "Blackfield", an installation of stainless steel miniature plants.
4. Wit Pimkanchanapong's "Singapore", a google earth view of Singapore laid out in the Surrender Chamber at City Hall for you to walk over and "footnote".

cross culture

2008-09-09T11:19:00.005+08:00

J's sketch of his 2 favourite shelves

Last night J and I met with some friends (to be precise, they were ex-students from one of my past lives) who started this blog, putting down their thoughts and readings on what the cross means to culture, and by extension, what it means to a growing group of folks - Christians or otherwise - who are practitioners and/or consumers of the arts, design and all forms of "cultural" goods. The post on "What's wrong with my Christian Tshirt" made me smile. J and I had walked into one of those stores selling "Christian" paraphernalia - and it was an experience somewhere between amusing and horrifying. Imagine - bags of "bible-verse mints"!?!

One of the first things that ampulets design did some years ago, just a little while before it was formally registered as a business, was the visual identity for a church. It was a pro bono job for a friend's church, though in the end they gave us a $200 popular bookstore voucher. With it, we bought the first set of stationery for ampulets design...more UHU glue sticks and green ball point pens than we would ever need. More recently, after talking for the longest time about wanting to do something for the church we've been attending, J finally started designing some of its print collateral.

It got me thinking. In some ways, it should not make a difference whether the work is for a church, a not-for-profit organisation in another sector or a commercial/for-profit company.

The questions we ask in the process of creating the design and the desire to do good work don't change. What does the design communicate? Who is going to encounter the design, where and how? How should or is it received, held, felt, kept and, not forgetting, enjoyed - not just at the instant but also over time? And at the end of it all, J and I often ask each other these further questions in one form or another. How is the project or work to be considered good? Has the process interacting with the client been encouraging, productive and enjoyable - or what have we learnt? Is the end product something both our clients and ourselves will want to own and identify with? But I guess these questions are so generic it applies to almost any kind of work. No?

out, out!

2008-09-05T00:38:00.004+08:00

#5 of Kidnap Bob 2. Count the roaches on a typical day. click for flickr view

Given all the common values we may profess and the common ground we will always try to build on, the reminders of the possible divisions - be they cultural, financial, physical or generational - are not always pleasant. Still, they exist and persist.

Two days ago, the Town Council conducted their periodic "fogging" of the rubbish chute. For folks who don't live in HDB flats, this is when they smoke out the rubbish disposal chute located located in all the kitchens and connects all the flats. J and I had taken a walk for brunch, having forgotten about this exercise. When we got back, we found the void deck (i.e. ground level common area) littered with over a hundred dead cockroaches and those half=alived, upturned, their legs twitching or trying to carry their poisoned bodies away. When we next ventured out of our flat in the evening, the cockroaches were gone. (It was probably in the pest company's contract that they had clean up after the massacre.)

By now, the idea and image of a whole colony of cockroaches living it up in the 16-storey tall rubbish chute just a metal door away from our homes, are no longer as vivid in my mind. But in reality, these hardy creaures, I am sure, exist and persist.

back to school

2008-08-30T23:55:00.002+08:00

The idea that, come Monday, for the next 14 months or so I would be a student again is a strange one for a self-professed workaholic. The reality has not quite sunken in yet. And in a way, I am still trying to digest and understand the lessons from my past 2 years at work.

But as a precursor of this study break from work, J and I had a near-perfect day this Friday (I was on leave on what was officially my last day at work) of meetings together.

First up, we trudged up Mount Sophia to meet a group of interior designers, architects and design researchers who had recently come together to form a company held together by their Christian faith. J and I walked away from their office excited about the spatial possibility of illustration and graphic art. More than that, I was just happy to get to know design folk who can be so grounded in their ideals and trying to live out their faith in their work. We walked down the hill to have lunch with tym and daydream about having a studio of our own.

photos by J

The rest of the afternoon was spent browsing through Casual Poet's stock of indie Chinese pop, magazines, notebooks and other little knick knacks. All that time we were there In that little 2nd-storey Chinatown shop, there were only 2 other people who walked in. Otherwise, it was an air-conditioned oasis, more Taipei than Singapore. We settled for iced tea and our sketchbooks in their cafe, not once tempted to disturb the quiet with chatter.

The only thing keeping it from being a perfect day was the occasional intrusion of thoughts about the work emails I would need to clear in the week ahead in-between attending the orientation programme for my study programme. But for a start, it is perfect enough.

the world at home

2008-08-24T16:44:00.005+08:00

my fellow commuter who is past heeding the Prime Minister's call to procreate - click for larger flickr view

On a bus, a younger colleague who had just gotten back from studies in America last year glanced outside at the new entrance to the Orchard MRT station and remarked, "sometimes I feel like a tourist in Singapore. Like when I come to this part of town, there's always something new and I think - wow, I've never seen this before...".

She said this casually, without any angst about "a sense of belonging" or any pointed reference to the pace of change on this island. Her sentiment is not unique, though the shades are as many as the folks who express it.

A few are captured in Troy Chin The Resident Tourist, a 3-part (so far) graphic novel about his move back to Singapore after 9 years in NY and Philadelphia.

The Resident Tourist is no different from other graphic novels with an autobiographical slant in having these elements: a somewhat depressive and nerdy narrator, a self-absorption that alternates between charming and annoying, references to childhood traumas and dreams, the close-yet-so-faraway girl/guy friend etc. Of course, what makes The Resident Tourist particularly enjoyable is the familiar Singaporean context. The indulgent Teochew grandmother, the reunion of Secondary School buddies, geo-caching (which I recall some friends being strangely fond of), the fact that most of the characters are bespectacled, the re- and dis-locations of Singaporeans who had spent some time away from the small island, the quirks and desires of Singaporeans who want to have it all on this small island, or the experience of finding a baby bat in your shoe are things many can relate to (OK, maybe not a baby bat, but perhaps a house lizard?).

Troy Chin's drawing is somewhat raw and uneven in Part 1, but by Part 3, the frames are a lot more layered and the perspectives more varied. All in all, with the weather turning rainy this time of the year, us amps recommend The Resident Tourist for a stay-home read on lazy, cool sheets. Plus Troy Chin knows how to tease the reader with some curious bits in the narrative.

Besides, if like J and I, you also have a soft spot for video arcades, you'll want to like the narrator.

And as a kind of afterword on the desire to see/have the world, playing in the background as I'm typing is Bjork's wonderful "I've Seen It All"... What about China? Have you seen the Great Wall? All walls are great, if the roof doesn't fall... The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State?/My pulse was as high on my very first date!

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p/s Parts 1 and 2 of The Resident Tourist are available as palm-sized paperbacks from Ani-Play at Sunshine Plaza for $10 each, and Part 3 can be read online.

dvd memories

2008-08-21T01:12:00.004+08:00

Get this now. Comes with a limited edition Invisible City poster at Kinokuniya and Books Actually.

Despite this being a small island, I'm a little ashamed to confess that I don't have any recollection of ever having been to Lim Chu Kang - no memories, I imagine, of its squishy red earth, low houses, damp greenery or live animals.

J and I had wanted to catch these 2 documentaries that investigate the filmmaker's memories of the community and subsequent development of Lim Chu Kang, but we have somehow always missed the screenings. If you're like us, don't miss the upcoming screenings at the Arts House on 19-20 September. Tickets are available here.

in.side.out

2008-08-08T23:49:00.007+08:00

design by amps J!

Every time I have a chance to visit this school and observe its students, I think - there's hope yet for our small island!

If you've never had a reason to troop down to the School of the Arts/SOTA (their interim campus is the old Goodman Rd campus for LASALLE), the faculty and teachers there have given you more than one to do so this week.

From 13-16 August, this Wednesday to Saturday, the School's holding their first ever festival of student performances, film screenings, exhibitions and readings, together with performances and workshops by a rather impressive line up of experienced practitioners and educators. J and I will try to make to Thursday's series of evening performances.

Admission is free, but registration is required for some of the activities and I heard seats are going fast! The event calendar and various links are here, and the map to the school is here.

cave

2008-08-06T00:10:00.001+08:00

Cave on the right

3 years ago Lee Fook Hong drew a forest of lines and titled it "Big Land". At this year's VSA annual show, J and I found his new painting "Cave" - and were pleasantly surprised.

Chinese ink on paper, this time the brush strokes have introduced more expressive lines and a sense of abstraction. There remains a preference for graphic flatness yet, perhaps as the name suggests, there's also a new sense of depth and perspective. I like looking at the painting - its walls and surfaces, the hint of an entrance.

According to the short bio, Lee Fook Hong still aspires to be graphic designer. Amps wish him well!