Abalone Mushrooms

If I have not love...

2007-07-13T17:15:00.000+08:00

A recent poll has revealed that the favourite word of Singaporeans is not, contrary to popular belief, ‘money’, but ‘love’.

This is hardly unexpected, however. When we are asked to name our favourite word, we are naturally led away from pragmatism and perhaps even honesty. Words represent ideas, rationalism, transcendence; the form of the question itself demands an unpragmatic answer. Words are power, especially if a word is considered in isolation, away from context, away from the sentence. Asking for someone’s one favourite word is asking for a distillation of an alarming number of ideas, values and philosophies; it is tantamount to asking about the meaning of life itself.

Of course, then, the word that is eventually produced would almost certainly be an over-determined one, as ‘love’ is. A word which is used in a bewildering variety of contexts and situations, a word which encompasses wide vistas of experience, feeling and thoughts, a word which has troubled generations of philosophers and given to generations of non-philosophers, otherwise known as human beings.

The criteria of choosing one’s favourite word necessarily come across as highly variable and subjective. Choose words for the sound? ‘Cellar door’ has been selected as one of the most beautiful-sounding words in the English language. But ‘love’ does not have a nice sound. It is a short monosyllable, and we can’t even decide whether to pronounce it to rhyme with ‘laugh’ or ‘above’. It is an exhalation through the lips that is lightly carried away by the slightest breeze. If we went by sound alone, ‘love’ is banal, inconsequential, wispy.

So the selection of ‘love’ must have been based on the ideas that the printed, or spoke, representation of ‘love’, evokes in the mind of the Singaporean. But what of its multiple meanings? I ‘love’ ice cream. I ‘love’ that woman. ‘Love’ is patient, ‘love’ is kind. We ‘love’ because he first ‘loved’ us. ‘Love’ is but a lust of the flesh and a permission of the will. I ‘love’ going to the beach.

Has this caused love to become an entirely banal cliché? An over-used, worn-out word fraying at the edges, which has become completely emptied of meaning? Are Singaporeans shallow, unimaginative, wallowing in intellectual poverty?

No, as the Cyclops said when he was asked if he had two eyes. Why can we not view the selection of this word, with all its possible meanings and nuances, as a recognition of the fact that the idea of ‘love’ pervades every facet of life, from the everyday to the profound, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the superficial to the ineffable or transcendent? For Singaporeans perhaps, and for me too, I reckon, it is the principle of love rather than hatred, love rather than revenge, love rather than evil, that makes life worth living. It is a generative principle of existence, an insistence on viewing the world as comic rather than tragic, a small soft exhalation of breath which desires a full life in all its complications, privations and unutterable sorrows and unutterable joys.

‘What should Cordelia do?
Love, and be silent’ King Lear

But should we even speak of love, are we not cheapening the idea of the transcendent by reducing it to words? As Wittgenstein famously says, ‘Of that which we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent’.

The problem with this is that it is one of those throwaway phrases, like Goethe’s Faust’s ‘We in truth can nothing know’, often used to end a debate and bludgeon one’s way out of the call to engage in earnest and fruitful thought. Wittgenstein reached that conclusion after long, concentrated, intellectually honest reflection and discussion. As did Faust, for whom it is the process through which the knowledge of not knowing that is important. The process is consubstantial with the conclusion; we can only come to a conclusion that talking about love is useless, if we have honestly thought about it, argued about it, written about it; in short, used words. Words, however inadequate, are the tools with which we apprehend the world and turn feelings into experience.

And even if we have completely exhausted all talk of love, and intellectually convinced ourselves that love is unexplainable, and that talk about love, nay even the word ‘love’, is pointless, can we force our feelings to behave? Can we remain mute before powerful feeling, can we remain silent in the presence of the king and queen of all emotion, love?

‘She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of it?
Her eye discourses, I will answer it.’ Romeo and Juliet

Romeo, poor, happy fellow, is in love, and like all lovers, he needs to talk. Yes, Romeo is a big-mouth, yes, he’s a hotheaded young boy. And yes, the conventions of the Shakespearean stage make it necessary that he talk; there is no way else we can gain an insight into his feelings. This is the theatre, it is all made up.

But ‘what of it’? Does the Shakespearean stage not reflect in some way real life, and more than that, make what is commonplace in real life but somewhat obscured, both commonplace and obvious? And is not the lifting of the obscuring veil infinitely moving and infinitely truthful? The silence on stage must be filled up. When possessed with emotion, do we not have to speak, to fill up the yawning emotionless world with the strength of our feelings, just as Romeo must, for the audience to feel with him? Words are his instruments, spoken words then heard and understood and made significant by the audience to amplify, project and actualize, to share and at the same time jealously hoard an unutterable and completely personal hidden feeling. The ineffable is made, if not totally comprehensible, at least visible ‘through a glass darkly’. We see intensely personal feeling, if not in all its glory, at least showing a shred of its brilliance through a cleft in the rock.

In the same way, an emotion we feel, like love, is not understood until we talk about it, think about it, cry out about it, in words. We never can fully understand it, but by finding words, and combinations of words, with which to talk about it, it becomes experience, it becomes real, it becomes completely true. It becomes more personal, less of a mass of generalized fellow feeling or electrical impulses in the nervous system. It becomes anchored to reality through the mediation, or medium, of words, and the feeling itself becomes concrete reality existing in the world, through our ability of language. I may not like to ‘unpack my heart with words’, but it is inevitably human, and also, inevitably what makes me human. Words, language, and love.

So ‘love’, Singapore, and to hell with the people who deride you for sentimentality, or poor language skills.

I wonder what I would have done if 'zucchini' won the poll.

Singaporean Lit

2007-07-09T21:05:00.000+08:00

Some go to university to get an education. Some go to university to become a professional. Some go to university only to waste time. Of the people in all three categories those in the first are praiseworthy, those in the second are industrious, and those in the third are idiots, and such a one do I profess myself. Of all the subjects to study literature is certainly the most useless, and to give up so much time and energy and a proper social life to a study of uselessness is certainly indicative of some mental deficiency.

Some say that studying literature teaches you to write. It certainly does, but any literate person by definition can write. And in Singapore which has a 90+ percent literacy rate, it is hardly likely that the ability to write is going to be a sufficient recompense for three years of university study. Perhaps it teaches you to write well. Those who have seen my handwriting will be dispossessed of this fallacious notion. Perhaps it teaches you to produce creative writing and stuff which deepens and refreshes the imaginative life of people who read it. Unfortunately the study of literature teaches one to write only criticism and parody. The former is the lowest form of prose and the latter the lowest form of poetry. Even excellent criticism objectifies and pins literature on the wall for daws to peck at; if a piece of art has to be explained it has failed in its purpose, just as analysis rips the heart out of a joke. Mediocre criticism flings pearls to swine; bad criticism which is what I seem to excel in leads these swine by the nose-ring to the slaughter-house and out in Spam cans. A sniveling furtive prose is what a literary education has taught, and teaches, me to write.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, parody is the most insincere form of imitation. Gifted writers start out imitating the verses of masters and slowly pass into originality; writers like myself with no talent to boast of spit proudly on greatness and enviously trample it under sardonic iambic feet. The imitator learns; the parodist refuses to admit the concept of learning. And a parodist, not a poet, is what a literary education has allowed me to become.

So I go and dig up some old stuff that I have written in my first year of study, whenever I feel in the mood for a reality check. Much has been removed from my computer for reasons of decency; it appears that the anti-spyware program has far better literary taste than I. However, one sonnet seems to have escaped. I shamelessly and honestly reproduce it below:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
No lah Singapore where got summer one?
Use your brain and think before you write leh
Your girl is hot but where got like the sun?
Your England very powderful is it?
Later you kena teacher for your wife.
Your poem better go and do edit
Or girl see already run for her life.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Wah lau eh you still want to write like that!
Eternal mean what? She sure need first aid
After she read lor. Come lah, don’t be sad,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
Definitely can use dictionary.

A large waste of space

2007-07-07T19:52:00.000+08:00

'Thenne al rypes and rotes that ros upon fyrst
And thus yirnes the yere in yisterdays mony'

(Then all that sprang up at first grows ripe and rots
Thus the year spends itself in many yesterdays)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

'My way of life is fallen into the sere.' Macbeth

Almost a year has passed since the last post. It is only human, it is only natural, to wonder what have I achieved and what have I done; what a year in Cambridge has contributed to my, to use an overused term, CV.

Let’s count up the score. Number of books read – a truckload. Number of books understood – less than one. (And I only know how to count in whole numbers.) Skills learnt – none. Lives saved – none. Epiphanies or mystic visions – none. I detect a pattern here, and no regression analysis was required.

It seems that the only thing that has passed is time. But is it ‘only’? Much as life seems pretty much the same now as it did before, things have changed, certainly, just as time has passed. Seasons change and the world returns to how it was before, but there is irreplaceable loss, and death, which is a precondition for the miracle of renewal. Nature moves in cycles rather than remaining stationary only because it has to accommodate the irrefutable fact of expendability. Life multiplies and reproduces only because inevitably, it has to die.

It is tempting then, in light of my failure to achieve anything, to fall back on the crutch of death, to gain solace and support from the grinning skull and yawning grave. All are alike in death, all men, rich or poor, famous or notorious or mediocre, all resolve themselves sooner or later into a lump of flesh, then a pile of earth in which bones are embedded. The temptation is great indeed to say with the Qoheleth, ‘Hebel! Hebel! (Meaningless! Meaningless!) and write off a year, ten years, of wasted time with the pat but unanswerable statement that all achievements and honours mean nothing in the end.

Yet this cannot work. If one was to argue that only death (loss of the physical body, loss of life, loss of the conscious person) means something, and all else is meaningless, then if we were a little looser with the terms and fairer with the definitions we could also argue that even if achievements are meaningless, loss is meaningful. What is present therefore, in the absence of visible or invisible achievement or growth, is the concreteness of lost time and missed opportunities; in a way potentialities become meaningful only when they are unrealized and once they are achieved, they immediately become meaningless, ‘a chasing after the wind’. And this is just plain weird, and inadmissible.

Perhaps this is why man, whether religious or not, cannot use the inevitability of death as a postulate in formulating a practical philosophy of life, or of living. Intuitively, one realizes that however one welcomes the grave and / or the hereafter, one has to exist in the here and now, ‘to be’ rather than ‘not to be’, and achievements matter because the human mind, in its rational and emotional faculties, is structured to function through valuation. The perception of complex chains of causality, whether this causality be a construct of the human mind or a metaphysical property of reality, is a defining feature of Man and is applied unconsciously or consciously to every situation; valuation must occur and the best, or most valued course of action selected, so that purposeful action can take place and we don’t spend eternity and beyond deciding whether or not to take the next step forward. And since the human mind is also possessed of memory, revaluation occurs, and from this, we may argue, the feeling of loss is produced. Lost potentialities are not really lost because the potentialities cease to exist the moment the action is taken, they merely change in quality from a rejected nothing to a forgotten and impossible nothing. Memory and revaluation produce feelings which the irrational mind misinterprets as concrete objects and actualities; training the mind to be rational and logical would remove these non-existent objects and lead back to a healthy person.

But this is rubbish too. Feelings are real because they exist in the mind of the feeler (I really have to find a better word for this, I am not a caterpillar) in the same way that sense impressions of objects exist in the mind. They are less specific, but equally real, and equally important. And perhaps this is where I may make a case for my lack of achievements, in case they threaten to take away my scholarship for not achieving stuff. Concrete achievements to a large extent are short-term, what is long-term and important are their effects on the achiever’s mind. They build self-confidence, develop the achiever’s ability to value, and enable the achiever to make correct decisions in future life. In short, it is the impression that these make on the achiever’s mind which are important. Hence, even if achievements have not been made, if a similar impression, or even a different one but of the same importance, has been created, there is growth and development. Just as the old vegetation must die for the new to flourish, the actuality of the lost time and lost potentialities must be spent for the learning to take place. And what is to be learnt? That it’s not really where you go (which after all is ultimately the same dark and unknown place) or even how you get there that matters. What matters is that the way that each one of us goes to that place (whether confidently or stumbling around or somewhere in between) makes you, and I, and all others, individual and unique and human. And being an individual, and at the same time being fully able to relate to others as fellow individuals, fellow human beings and fellow travelers on this dusty road, is what gives life its value.

So this is just a long ramble about how one learns from mistakes. Alas, not even a coherent or logical one. Well, English or GP tuition teachers out there, give it to your charges to practice their summary skills or something.

A jolly tree

2006-08-25T15:27:00.000+08:00

There's a tree outside my house.

When I look out of the window I see its spindly branches and its not-too-healthy leaves. But it's a tree nonetheless.

The cars run down the road and the construction goes on beside, houses rise and fall, people walk by and trample the pavement into the ground.

And the tree is there. It has always been there and will continue to be there until they cut it down.

Old trees don't die, they merely fade away. First the leaves go, then the branches, then the trunk, leaving only a rotting stump which breeds a fecund variety of life. I've never seen the life fade out of the eyes of a dying tree, never heard its hacking coughs in the last stages of its terminal illness, never sat by and held its hand when death comes in the front door with his grisly hands and black cowl. I've never buried a tree, taken a spade and thrown in the last bit of earth into the hole and set a little memorial stone up for people to trip over and drunk people to piss on.

Yet slowly, surely, the tree outside my window is aging. Once it overlooked a beach, now it overlooks cars, roads, fresh-faced freshmen, construction workers with faces downcast and grimy with toil, gibbering babies and noisy dogs. The sea breeze is now the wind from the onrushing buses, the monkeys now walk exclusively on two legs and adorn themselves with bright colours and brilliant objects, the salt air is now peppered with gravel and cement.

Still the tree remains. It's dying, or fading, but not so fast, not so quickly, not at all like how handphones are discarded monthly for the love of colourful advertisements and blaring jingles, not at all like how those evolved fishermen cast off their friends and wives and husbands like the water off a seagull's back. But still the tree fades, becoming more and more a background rather than a headpiece, an attendant lord rather than a sable prince.

It may not have a degree, it may not have a job, it may have no cash, credit cards, or bouncing whores. Yet it every day watches the sun rise, the sun set, the moon rise, the brilliance of stars in their firmament, and not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed like this grand old sage. It'll watch as scholars come and go, children grow tall and beards fade to white, it'll stand by and gaze as I love, hate, fight, rage, attempt suicide, count my grey hairs, call my lawyer in to write my will, call my undertaker in to take measurements for my coffin. And remain silent and aloof except for the gentle laughter of the wind in its leaves.

Untouched and transcendent, it'll outlive me, I think. It'll outlive my significance. It'll outlive my photographs, writings, memories, cars, attachments, joys, sorrows, children, friends, students, ideals. To all human intents and purposes, immortal.

I'm going out tomorrow to buy a very large axe.

Hemingway, this is for you

2006-08-22T10:48:00.000+08:00

I sat with my friend in the café.

The table was round and smooth, the chairs wooden and hard to the touch. The carpet was also smooth and soft and lovely to walk on.

“Your plane leaves in three hours. How do you feel like?” my friend asked.

The café was full of people in shirts and suits and well-creased trousers and talking in low voices. They were lifting white cups of coffee and eating small sandwiches and not smoking. Behind the counter a man was pouring the coffee in the cups. He had black plastic glasses and was tall and young.

“Coffee?” I replied.

“Cappuccino,” my friend said.

I walked back to the table with the cups of coffee on a tray I held with both hands. My shoes were brown leather and comfortable for walking in. I pushed aside my rucksack, pulled out the chair and sat down. My rucksack was blue and heavy but very new.

We sipped our coffee and stopped talking. My coffee was black and very hot and misted my glasses. It was bitter on my tongue and filled my stomach with warmth. It was excellent coffee, the kind that opens the eyes and brightens the mind and is drank at all times of the day in the heat of the coffee shop and the cool of the café. It smelt good and was very fine.

“Sandwich or toast or a muffin?” my friend asked.

My stomach felt warm and comfortable but I looked at my heavy rucksack beside my feet and the passport with the red ribbed cover and embossed gold and felt the nylon of the money belt and the newness of my shirt against my skin and I had a feeling and could not eat.

“Nothing please just order for yourself.”

“All right.”

People got up from their seats, brushing crumbs off their trousers and buttoning their suits and pushing their chairs in. Some held briefcases with a loose grip, the fingers far apart and thumb lazily ranged beside the four fingers which told me none of them had as heavy as bag as I had. But I was young and strong and my rucksack was very new.

“Now you have a good time. English girls are very pretty,” my friend said.

“Yes.”

“Now you go and fall in love and bring back an English girls and maybe a bouncing English baby.”

“I don’t fall in love.”

“Love isn’t necessary for the girl and the baby.”

“You are right.”

I was remembering. My room on the third floor with a blue table and blue walls and piano chair beside the door opening into a corridor of paneled wood. Windows behind grilles and in the mornings and afternoons always hot and bright but the nights very cool and clean and the books and papers scattered and the bed very clean and warm. The dining table downstairs very large and flat and neat except during meals when it became smaller and also more noisy. But remembering was too easy and made my feeling worse so I stopped and was more happy.

“What is the time to go in?” my friend said.

“It is soon,” I said.

“It is good that I can see you off today.”

“That is so.”

I stood up and my friend helped me get the rucksack onto my back. It was heavy on the shoulders but I was young and strong. I was quite ready to go now and it was very nice because my papers were good and ready and my shoes were bright on the smooth floor and my shirt and trousers pressed and clean and very fine.

I walked to the gate, not finishing my coffee because it had gone cold and was not so good any more.

You are what you don't eat

2006-08-21T11:15:00.000+08:00

A detailed survey of the Straits Times over the past week has revealed one shocking fact.

Chant it together with me now all you good people of Singapore: Restaurant food good, hawker food bad. Restaurant food good, hawker food bad. Restaurant food good.... you get the idea.

A week ago an article appeared in Sunday Life detailing how food critics agree that Singapore's reputation as a paradise of street food is an ill-deserved one, and that 7 out of 10 stalls in hawker centres and food courts serve unacceptable food. Just yesterday Sunday Life published another article praising the restaurant scene in Singapore and heaping accolades on the plates of those restaurants that have won international acclaim.

Go out you good people of Singapore, bring out your debit and credit cards, send the piggy bank to the slaughter, pawn the annoying toddler. Eat at restaurants, pay for the carpeting, table-cloths and moustaches of the tuxedoed waiters. Dust off those moth-balled suits, break out the high heels, and rub shoulders with the rich and richer. If you're old and have lost your teeth, don't worry, the maitre'd would do your chewing for you.

Seriously though, why are restaurants rising to giddy heights of international stardom and the famed hawker centres and food courts falling from favour? Is it even fair to compare the two?

I think not, actually. The second article, about restaurants, waxes lyrical and swoons over (as far as newspaper articles can swoon) the restaurants acknowledged to be the best in Singapore. A list of Singapore's 50 best restaurants is provided by critics. How about the bad ones? How about those nightmare evenings in a not-always-cheap restaurant where the soup is cold, the wine has bits of cork in it, the entree half-cooked and the dessert heated in the microwave? All we get is a couple of small paragraphs on the indifferent quality of food in certain mid-priced eateries.

On the other hand, the earlier article seems written with the sole purpose of destroying the reputation of Singapore's hawker food. It's true, food from the food courts or hawker centres is, more often than not, mediocre or bad. Yet good food exists, and it is not rare. Reputations of good food are not built on thin air; the abundance of television programmes devoted to seek out the best hawker food in Singapore, while resembling thin air sometimes, proves that there is life yet in the old char kway teow uncle.

Perhaps it is Singapore's reputation in guidebooks and to overseas visitors that makes the writer of the earlier article so caustic. When friends come to Singapore from out of the country, they want to taste Singaporean food; and in a hot, sweaty open-air place with plastic chairs and Tiger that comes in bottles. It is the chicken rice, chilli crabs and char kway teow they want, and the Tourism Board has done a great job of publicising the merits of these. Newton Circus is one of the must-visit destinations for the tourist, even with its horrible reputation for touting and overcharging.

Yet it is not the responsibility of hawker centres and food courts to uphold the image of Singapore as a foodie's paradise. It is in the best business interests to feed as many people as possible in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible price to themselves. People complain that the standard of hawker food has dropped; people write in to the newspapers, bitch about it in their blogs, swap horror stories when the army stories run out, but they still throng the hawker centres and food courts every lunch hour, every dinner time, every weekend with their family. Bad food or good, all the food courts and hawker centres in the major shopping and business centres are always packed with queues at every stall. The cleaning ladies clear more plates of leftovers and unfinished food, perhaps, but the customer still pays, he still comes back, he still writes about Singapore's great hawker food to his ang moh friends.

Therefore, what is to be done about it? Eat only in Singapore's best restaurants? I hope you've got a generous expense account. Search out the best hawker stalls in Singapore on advice of the TV shows? Could be done, but be prepared to queue for hours. Good opportunity to catch up on your SMSing. Prepare all your food at home? Er... If you can cook this is vaguely possible, if you're anything like me I'll be rather concerned. So how now brown cow?

For me I'll just do what I always do. Expect the worst and you'll rejoice when you get lucky. 3 out of 10 is quite good odds actually.

Live dangerously. Dare to dream. Bring some charcoal pills just in case.

Read or Die

2006-08-18T16:56:00.000+08:00

I've just got a book which details 1001 books [fiction] to read before I die.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not planning to commit suicide or die anytime soon. I do, however, plan to do some reading and that's where this book comes in.

First of all 1001 books seems to be an inordinately large number. Just how much reading will it take me to finish all 1001 books? I sit down and take out my calculator, not neccesarily in that order, and do some calculating.

Assume that in 1001 books, there is one dud we can disregard. This is only natural, in every barrel of apples there is bound to be a rotten one. It also makes for easier calculating. 1000 books to be read in how many years?

The average lifespan of a human male is 70+ years (can't be bothered to look up the exact number). Meaningful adult life starts at around 20; before that one is busy causing trouble for parents and screwing sheep. Most of the books on the list cater for adult tastes; they are adult books without necessarily having pornographic connotations. Hence one has 50 years to read all 1000 books.

This works out to 20 books per year; slightly less than 2 books per month. The overwhelming question, as Eliot puts it, is: can we find the time to read 2 books a month? There are plenty of things to do, plenty of alcohol to drink, drugs to inject oneself with, dance tunes to dance to, relationships to conduct, TV shows to watch, cockroaches to step on; is there time?

No simple answer to this one... I have to fall back on the age-old answer that we make our own time, we decide and prioritise what is important in our lives. And I may say, not without some embarassment at my bookishness, that reading is important to me.

Perhaps it is because I was read to in my cradle and brought up thinking that reading is a meaningful activity, perhaps it is because I am not intelligent enough to ward off the mordant criticism of the deconstructionists and post-modernists, but all the same, I continue to believe that reading fiction has some inherent worth. Escapist and solitary it may be, but reading IS meaningful, as far as one can admit the existence of meaning in today's ravaged philosophical landscape.

Why meaningful? How meaningful? We'll leave that to the experts, suffice to say that if I don't read regularly, I get less and less capable of making intelligent conversation, and more and more businesslike and literal in my intercourse (social of course) with people. This is a fatal ailment and should be warded off at all costs.

Therefore, I read on. The books thus described are not always very long; in fact just the other day I finished Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons) and The Outsider (Camus). Hence I am one month closer to the grave, I guess. Got to plan my funeral soon.

Besides, reading the books on this list gives me another excuse not to start on the books on the Cambridge English Literature reading list. With murderous titles like Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer's not Shakespeare's) and Piers Plowman, I'll be ill-advised to start on them. Boredom might kill me and I will be buried in unhallowed ground for not finishing the 1001 books.

So log off the internet, turn off that TV and read.

And watch those glasses getting thicker.

Nature not nurture

2006-08-14T10:13:00.000+08:00

Little Johnny was troubled in his soul one day.

"My Lord, why is the world such a difficult place to live in? Why do so many things happen that I don't understand?"

The wind whistled in the trees.

"Lord, why is it that people are so difficult to talk to?"

The wind whistled in the trees.

"Lord, why are quiet handsome men known as strong and silent, noisy handsome men known as the life of the party, but quiet average-lookers known as timid and retiring, and noisy average-lookers attention-seekers?"

The wind whistled in the trees.

"Lord, why do people kill people in your name? Why the crusades, why the inquisition, why the intifada? Why do you allow evil men to hold sway over not just the world but also your church? Why is there hunger, depravity, poverty, cancer?"

The wind whistled in the trees.

"Lord, why don't you answer? Why do you not hear me? Do you not exist at all?"

The wind whistled in the trees.

"My Lord, my Lord, why have you forsaken me? Have I all my life believed in a lie? Is my life meaningless?"

Little Johnny cast his eyes to the sky. The sun was shining still, yet clouds black and white shimmered in the sky, rain was coming soon. He cast his eyes down to the ground. Ants hurried in broken wavering lines, among yellowing grass and the cracked brown earth. Birds shook the trees with their murmuring, cars sped down the adjoining road throwing up clouds of dust.

The wind whistled in the trees.

And Little Johnny believed.

Raising the bar on good service

2006-08-11T10:59:00.000+08:00

Recently, a bar with a difference has been set up in China.

Patrons are invited to vent their frustrations and anger on the bar staff. Not in any verbal sense of the word, either, but physically. Punch them, kick them, what you will; for a price the staff will even dress up like your boss for a nice relaxing spot of superior-bashing.

I'd have thought this was a hoax if not for the fact that Today, the Straits Times and the New Paper all reported this story. Ignoring for the moment the possibility that these three eminent publications obtained their information from an identical rumour-mongerer, this puts the veracity of this story above that of the major news stories of the day, including the war in Lebanon and the occurence of the National Day Parade.

Some might lament the culture which has created the need for such an establishment; the reserved culture in the workplace so characteristic of Asian countries, the failure of alcohol alone in resolving such issues (which is a grave failure indeed), the crackdown on violence against sex workers, the inaccesibility and harsh penalties for drug usage. The usual recourses to workplace stress, the conventional cathartic remedies, are denied to the worker by law or social stigma; the service industry now has to provide not only a listening ear to drunken banal confidences, a stomach for abuse and rudeness, but also a nose to be broken in the interests of good customer service.

However, I believe this is, on the contrary, a shining example of entrepeneurship that the good businessmen of Singapore may emulate. What examples have been provided to us of that coy goddess the government has coined "entrepeneurship" and encouraged Singaporeans to worship and burn incense to? Breadtalk, 77th street, Stikfas. What the hell's so entrepeneurial about these businesses? Sure, they have taken risks, they have gone where no Singaporean has gone before, but when it comes down to it, they don't redefine the business arena, they don't reinterpret cultural or social practices, they don't change the way we live. They sell bread, clothes, toys, just like what generations of merchants have done before, albeit on a larger and more noticeable scale, and with larger and more noticeable revenue, consequently with larger and more noticeable government plaudits.

This bar in China, however, turns the business world on its head. While other businesses make money out of creating wants in consumers by advertising and branding, which are, in a sense, eminently unproductive, wasteful and deceiving activities; this particular bar satisfies the needs of the dissatisfied by providing a legal avenue for controlled violence which might otherwise spill into the streets, the home and the workplace with messy, unproductive and rather undesirable results.

This bar also provides an interesting twist on the age-old business game. Those in the retail business say to the customer: give me your money or we'll make you look unfashionable. Those in the robbery business say: give me your money or we'll beat me up. This bar says: give me your money and you can beat us up. A thug who turns the other cheek? If somebody's going to ask you for your money anyway this is a very civilised way of doing it, don't you think?

I wait in anticipation for this concept to come to Singapore. Meanwhile, I am slack-jawed in admiration at the persuasive skills of their recruiting department; they are even better at their job than the SAF recruiters and that is saying something indeed.

Stars and stripes, I mean moon, forever

2006-08-09T12:20:00.000+08:00

Happy birthday Singapore!!!

I have no poem to offer you, no achievement on my plate, no scintillating insight or flash of intelligence to burn as incense at your altar. I am only a poor stupid buffoon who has not contributed anything Singaporean to the international community, not touched the life of any Singaporean in any significant way, not done anything to make my country proud.

My tastes in movies run the gamut of Hollywood to ...Hollywood. I think that Singaporean poets do not understand or appreciate the basic tenets of poetry: rhythm, metre, honesty; Singaporean plays are excuses to fill up our spanking new arts venues with mediocre performances, Singaporean novel is a contradiction in terms.

Singapore politics is non-existent. Goal 2010 is a figure of speech, something along the lines of "if pigs could fly". National songs are inane teeny-bop for the 70s generation. Fashion trends are pale bastardization of East and West, campaigns to "Speak Good English", "Be Courteous" etc etc are peacetime examples of bad war-time propoganda.

So Singapore, I'm sorry, I don't give you any sentimental Christmas card. I don't say how I love you, I don't heap bouquets of roses on your already crowded mantelpiece, I don't cut out my (red) heart and wear it on my (white) sleeve. I'm afraid I'm one of those not-so-model Singaporeans.

Yet, Singapore, you can't help it. I'm a Singaporean. I'm part of you just as much as you are part of me. I've grown up with you, eaten at your table, breathed your (usually clean) air, fought in your uniform, tasted your mud. You can't shake me off like an annoying flea, nor crush me like a buzzing mosquito, just as try as I might, I can't iron out the distinctive Singaporean "twang" (as so many other Singaporeans have, perhaps inaccurately, put it) from my voice, be it still and soft or loud and strident as blaring trumpet. We are part of each other, and no amount of bickering in family court or extraordinary tribunal can change this little fact.

So, we say in the army, and also out of the army, suck thumb lah. A singaporean I am, a Singaporean I will remain, at least in part, forever; a bumbling lil' fellow you can never get rid of. I hope, Singapore, you have reconciled yourself to that fact, if not, well it's just too bad, isn't it?

Oh yes, did I mention, happy 41st birthday?

Stop piracy. Buy original. Or watch bloody old movies.

2006-08-08T12:18:00.000+08:00

'And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge
With Ate at his side, come hot from hell
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!", and let slip the dogs of war'

Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

In today's world, we see, if not Caesar's spirit, the spirit of the age, with havoc and the associated miseries, splayed out before us on plain display on the pages of the newspaper and the screens (plasma 21 inch) of televisions; a rapacious beast, a beast without a heart.

However one advantage that today's world has brought us, or me at least, is the cheap DVD of Julius Caesar (1953), black and white, bought for $5 at Carrefour, which preserves Marlon Brando's performance as Mark Anthony (the Roman, not the singer) for posterity.

Those who have only seen Brando as the corpulent tub of box office poison in such flops as The Island of Dr Moreau and Candy will gasp in astonishment. Those who have only seen Brando in his Oscar-winning performance as Vito Corleone will, also gasp in astonishment. Those who have the good fortune of seeing him in On the Waterfront and Streetcar Named Desire, will, likewise, gasp in astonishment.

When Mark Anthony first walks onto the screen, the fat mumbling clown is nowhere to be seen. Neither is the mumbling but strangely intimidating Godfather. Neither is the mumbling, shy, diffident, tortured Terry Malone of Waterfront, nor the mumbling, brutish Stanley of Streetcar. What we see, and god forbid, hear, is a convincing Roman statesman and Shakespearean actor.
True, he appears intimidated at first by the Who's Who of stage Shakespearean actors who he rubs elbows with, and his voice hints at a touch of the American whine amidst the confident baritone of the other characters, but come on, it's part of the role. At the beginning of the play as envisioned by Shakespeare, Anthony is not a scenery-chewing Machiavellian, but Caesar's clown, who runs naked through the streets as part of some Roman fertility rite, which I'm sure some moderns would lament the passing of.

As much as Shakespeare's Julius Caesar laments the passing of a great, good man in Brutus (who is a horrible politician and terrible military leader to boot), it is also about the metamorphosis of Anthony, who is transformed from, well, a festival sideshow, to orator and general supreme. This extraordinary transformation, at risk of simplifying too much, is achieved in two short scenes: the scene in which he meets the conspirators immediately after the assassination of Caesar, and the resulting soliloquy; and of course, the famous funeral oration.

One criticism of the acting in screen Shakespeare is that too often acting seems stagy; gestures are exaggerated and play to the back rows, the nuances of close-ups and voice are neglected. This, fortunately, is not a criticism that may be levelled at this production. James Mason turns in a marvellously understated performance as the tortured Brutus "with himself at war", John Gieglud gives Cassius fire without going overboard and imparts just the right amount of theatricality to a mildly theatrical character, Louis Calhern gloriously overplays Caesar and makes him the larger-than-life colossus that Caesar purports to be. Yet nobody burns up the screen as well as Brando's Anthony.

Although Brando seems a trifle uncomfortable in a toga, seemingly unable to decide whether to bend his back, bend his knee or both when stooping to touch the corpse of Caesar, it may, by the friendly critic, be attributed to Anthony's shock, or pretense at shock, on beholding Caesar's body. His piercing gaze at the conspirators, his sarcarstic tone when addressing them and shaking their hands, is perfect; one almost hears the balance of power shifting, one understands why Cassius urged Brutus to kill Anthony as soon as possible. The conspirators wilt under Anthony's eloquence; of course Shakespeare wrote it this way but Brando finds the right mix of sarcarsm and sorrow, rhetoric and passion, to deliver the lines. He says nothing and implies nothing that the conspirators can legitimately take offence at, yet his tone mocks them, scourges them and clepes them traitours. Yes, and not a mumble in hearing.

When the actors leave the stage and Brando gets his first (and only) soliloquy, it is the moment of truth, both for Brando and Anthony. Brando chooses to play this soliloquy with rage and power, rather than contemplatively, and it works. It works so well. Alone in the Capitol with Caesar's dead body, he moves from sorrow and wistfulness to titanic rage, showcasing an emotional range that is appropriate in the volatile Anthony, and again, not a mumble in hearing. He is coherent, clear, and though not polished, he handles the verse with respect without enshrining it in a glass case.

The next time he is seen, he interrupts Brutus' oration by carrying Caesar's bloody corpse down the steps of the Capitol. Ramrod straight, silent as the grave, with his piercing eyes sweeping from Brutus to the crowd, he makes them shrink away in guilt, without saying a word. Shakespeare here has written the scene perfectly, given Anthony the perfect lines, all Brando has to do now is deliver them flawlessly and the funeral scene will work like magic. To Brando's credit, he does this, and more. Still not a mumble in hearing, he delivers the words with a deep undercurrent of passion, effortlessly straddling the line between grief and anger. He pitches the loaded, rhetorical phrases into the crowd without flinging them, he talks to them at their level while at the same time remaining aloof and above them by virtue of his clean hands and love for Caesar.

Then comes the defining moment in the oration when Anthony pauses to "weep" for Caesar. One sees Brando's eyes scan the crowd from behind his sleeve, then an unmistakeable glance of shrewd cunning and satisfaction levelled at the camera, and one realises that he is in the presence of an actor endowed with no small gift. He goes on to turn the crowd against the conspirators, and though, as a literature student I believe that most of the credit for this scene must go to Shakespeare, Brando is the perfect vehicle; the devastating rage and anger that Brando is so effective at conveying in Streetcar via physical power now is poured into his voice, to complete one of the most effective speeches ever written in history, theatrical or non-theatrical.

The rest of the movie goes on to its well-known conclusion; certainly it presumes some knowledge of the play just as Shakespeare presumes some knowledge of the Julius Caesar story, as the introduction of new characters and a confusing battle scene involving, of all things, mistaken identity (a device more suited for comedy than tragedy) puts undue stress on the coherence of the play/movie. However, unlike the audience of Shakespeare's globe, I have a remote control and a fast forward button.

If the later scenes fail to sustain the intensity and power of the ones that came earlier, these do not irrepairably damn the movie. It is still an excellent translation of play from text to stage to screen, and an excellent performance by the actors, particularly Brando, for whom it really isn't his type of movie. This DVD, of a movie made in the early 50s, preserves what may be the finest adaptation of a Shakespeare play for the screen, and one of the most outstanding performances from one of the most brilliant, and unfortunately most inconsistent, of all film actors from any generation.

Not bad for a $5 Carrefour Clearance bargain. And original some more.

"This blog is written to showcase the personality of its subject, or lack thereof"

2006-07-30T22:46:00.000+08:00

Is blogging mental masturbation? A very valid question raised by the Sunday Times today. To which I have an equally valid reply, from the movie where the phrase "mental masturbation" originally came from -- "Don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love."

Certainly, if you choose to, you may view blogging as the ancient solitary province of self-interested, angsty non-intellectuals. Blogs are diaries, you may say. Diaries are meant to be private, ergo a public blog is the diary of a media whore; a supposed personal secret which you intentionally allow people to discover -- kind of like the Paris Hilton video (and I don't mean her MTV or any House of Wax DVD either).

Hm.... First thing, not all personal accounts are private, or remain private. Journals have all the same characteristics as diaries: accounts of personal goals, complaints, woes, joys; without the "top secret" connotations that the use of the word "diary" seems to convey. Call them "restricted" if you will; like army documents they are restricted only to those who are able to read. One does not in fact need to keep an airtight lid on one's private thoughts; one may perceive that these are important secrets to be kept close to the heart, but almost invariably when the secrets are shared with others they prove to be banal and commonplace, the stuff that drunken confidences are made on.

Next, may I ask, what is the function of a diary? A record of one's soul state, for one to look back on when one is older and wiser, and snicker or weep for lost innocence? A public blog permits this, with the added benefit of allowing others to snicker at or with (depending on your luck) you, or sympathise, if they feel so inclined. A therapeutic release of one's pent-up emotions, in written form? A public blog allows others to enjoy the mellifluos sound of your complaining voice, and thus provides for a more complete catharsis. Often, we complain only in other's earshot; it is the rare person who whines to himself or his future self. A hole in the ground for one to whisper his darkest secrets into? Perhaps here's where the private diary is still relevant, unless you have a great desire to place your deepest, darkest secrets online for the education, edification and amusement of the reading public.

Now we've established there is nothing much wrong about blogging as a kind of public diary, or journal, if you prefer, let's look at the question, why blogging? Why not write a book of life experiences, make a newsletter or a TV show? Why not indeed? Most of us are poor people, who (you won't believe this but it's true! Honest!) are unable to afford the $10 million it costs to make a programme like, say, the Simple Life. Perhaps for those of us who live more Complicated Lives, it may cost even more. Publishers are picky, radio stations are only interested in news or music, Speaker's Corner is a desert. On the other hand, blogging is free, and despite what economists insist, there is such a thing as a free lunch, and when you are given it you better eat up, or face the wrath of hungry children the world over.

Blogs don't have to be diaries, you don't have to bare your soul if you don't wish to or don't have one. Blogs don't require knowledge of programming lingo, you just have to learn to point and click. Blogs don't require video cameras or sound studios, a $500 computer will do (a $50 computer will do too, but try finding one in Singapore).

Blogs can be the poet's launching pad, the novelist's Random House, the sportsman's training diary, the terrorist's bible. They can be cruel, they can be kind. They can be honest, they can be deprecatingly funny, they can be evidence in court.

Most damningly, they can be boring, a waste of space, a blight in cyberspace, an load of ballast. This blog is written as a case in point.

Please, do carry on partaking of the three-a-penny opinions, terribly-executed jokes, bad speling, revelations about myself you could find from the pages of a telephone directory. If you find something brilliant, new or exciting, I've probably lifted it from somewhere, so feel free to use it with impunity. If you feel inspired, don't be. I won't be responsible for the consequences.

A little about myself

2006-07-27T16:36:00.000+08:00

"Those who can't do, teach."

I've always wanted to be a writer, wake up at 2 every day (in the afternoon), hammer away on the computer keyboard for 3 hours about imaginary worlds, emotions and characters; then put on my egg-stained suit to attend a book signing in the evening, with optional amorous activities to follow after. Unfortunately, a writer must be able to write, and I'm eminently under-qualified.

Therefore I put a lid on my ego, and resign myself to waking up every day at crack of dawn, or even before, to look on the faces of our nation's future: pimply, unshaven (usually), and invariably bored, for the first six years of my working life. In short, to be a literature teacher. To teach is to enable a man to eat for a lifetime, provided he likes fish; to be the engineer of the human soul with the blunt instruments of assignments and test papers; to be the surrogate parent, brother, and friend to people you can't remember the names of. To become an expert in form-filling, deciphering bad handwriting, writing formal apologies for the behaviour of students; to learn to look forward to school holidays as a time when you can finally get that paperwork done. I don't speak from experience, I've not been part of the "in" crowd of relief teachers, yet it's good to be mentally prepared for the worst, isn't it? The rehearsal of nightmare scenarios may seem paranoid but that's just what emergency services and defence forces do on a daily basis. If you expect the worst and prepare for the worst, we ward off the undesirable event. We've got Hollywood to thank for the dearth of alien invasions and abductions in the world today.

So why would I sign on as a teacher? For the money? I can't say yes, can I, or I'll have lied a hundred times over in the past few weeks. For the love of literature? Lovers of literature have a huge range of job options open for them, ranging from librarians, to.... librarians. For the desire to make a difference? I'll paint my house bright pink before I'll admit to any such shade of idealism.

Then why? The more I think about it the more I want to stop thinking. But the reason that comes up most often when I take a random dip into the recesses of my mind (I'm omitting the unprintable ones, of course) is that I am a teacher, because I have to be one. It is a compulsive psychological disorder that afflicts a certain number of people every year, people who are otherwise generally accounted sane and live relatively normal lives. Good people, honest people, intelligent people, who are driven by this little voice in their heads, calling them to sign on for years of trials, tribulations and sore throats. There are some bad eggs in the bunch, no doubt, and some who go on to create legends for all the right reasons, but the majority of us go on to do our quiet jobs in our not-so-quiet ways, complaining often but getting the job done, and more often than not, doing so much more than is required or asked. And for what? To obey that maddening little voice in the soul that tells us: you must teach, it's what you were born for, it's what you were called to do, it runs in your blood. To know that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth but to choose this life regardless.

Teachers crazy? Victims of schizoprenia? Case studies for the thousands of wannabe psychiatrists and self-help gurus clogging up the gutters of society? Perhaps. But I'm proud to be one, even though I've never yet been out there in front of a classroom.

Damn, got to go find some pink paint now. And a very large brush.

The dearly departed

2006-07-26T22:46:00.000+08:00

Due to my imminent departure to the United Kingdom I have been in a little fix over what purchases to make for the stuffing of my nice black suitcases.

Fortunately I already have a number of articles of winter clothing at home so that clears up the matter somewhat. My settling-in and warm clothing allowance can be diverted to the various Cambridge pubs for the betterment of the British economy; however SOME purchases have to be made to keep up the little illusion. Somehow it does not feel right to be departing on a long journey without spending some money buying things you won't be needing... Kind of like decking out your coffin with flowers, fruit and jewellery. Therefore I obey the good Singaporean in me and head out to the shops for some bootless purchasing.

A few hours later, I find myself with 5 sets of cotton long johns, 5 pairs of woollen socks, a pair of waterproof trousers, 3 cotton vests, a number of plug keys, an extension cord. I wish I had bought something interesting to brag about, but I didn't.

Damn.

If only that fellowship at that foreign university was a little more reasonably priced. My settling-in allowance regrettably doesn't cover "unnatural services".

Under Construction

2006-07-26T09:38:00.000+08:00

I'm looking for ideas, subjects to write about, etc etc etc; I've jumped on the bandwagon of web publishing but content eludes me. Oh well, just wait up, something will come; for now look at the blank page and admire the brightness of your screen. If you're here looking for agricultural or cooking advice, I offer my sincerest apologies for the lack thereof. I'll do my penance, I'll contribute to disadvantaged fungi, I'll set up schools and old-age homes for shellfish caught in the poverty trap. In the meantime, you are advised to go elsewhere for your recipes and gardening tips.