It has been an unbelievably rough week, work-wise. I have not been this exhausted since I completed my post-grad. And I have not done so much damage to my wallet in pursuit of retail therapy for a very long time.

Nonetheless, this post is not to complain about work, but rather to share a poem that a good friend of mine has shared on FaceBook. The poem is in Spanish and is sung by Adriana Varela, one of the main Argentina tango singers of recent times, in the clip below. The poet is Mario Benedetti, and according to Wikipedia, he is considered, in the Spanish-speaking world, to be one of Latin America's most important 20th-century writers.


The above is in Spanish, but you can find the English and Mandarin translations below. I particularly like the Mandarin translation, which is done by my friend, Angeline Ang Yih Ching. She is currently pursuing her postgraduate studies at NUS LKY School of Public Policy and is currently spending a semester in Harvard. According to her, she fell in love with the poem when she heard it, and decided to translate it to Mandarin to express it in a language that is most authentic to her. She has kindly agreed to let me post her translation here.
( Click for translations )

I just returned from Siem Reap yesterday, the trip is a photography workshop - 20 photographers going on a trip together. It was the first time I had ever gone on a trip where everyone is a photography hobbyist (and in at least one case, a semi-pro wedding photographer). It was quite an experience and I learnt so much from all the seniors who gave me pointers throughout the trip.

This is a photo which I think is also fairly representative of what comes to people's mind when we think of Cambodia.


( More Pictures ... )

Today (since it  is now past midnight) is my last working day of the month - it promises to be hell, but it is the last working day of the month! And I'll be off on a flight to Cambodia for a photography workshop on Tuesday. I just need to hang in here!!!

See the light at the end of the tunnel?

This is a lovely lovely waltz, and I loved the lyrics of the song - Open Arms by Collin Raye. Reminds me for some reason of John Donne's poem A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.
( The Lyrics & The Poem )

( Lyrics )

One of the most interesting things I have learnt in my Teochew lessons is that Teochew has a written form. I have always thought that Teochew (and the other dialects) have the same written form but due to regional and geographical distances, are spoken differently. I was wrong apparently.

A friend sent me the passages below earlier this week. It is a rather amusing monologue of an irate schoolgirl ranting about her teacher. The monologue is in Classical Chinese (wenyanwen), Mandarin (putonghua), Cantonese (Yueyu) and Southern Min (Minnan). While Teochew belongs to the Minan school, the interesting thing is that I actually find that the words used in Classical Chinese version more familiar, because I have come across them in my Teochew classes. Of course, I understand the Mandarin version - had to struggle with it for at least 10 years of my life!

( A Schoolgirl's Rant  )

Today is Thaipusam, which is a Hindi festival celebrated by the Tamil community and me and my friend, decided that it will be great fun to take pictures of the procession. It was an incredible experience - people were chanting, singing and dancing down the streets, sitting on walls, standing and sitting by the sidewalks, all cheering on the participants in the procession, and there were booths set up to give out free drinks for all passersby (including interlopers like ourselves). Even though there was a most horrendous traffic jam since some lanes were blocked off, the passengers rolled down the windows and waved and smiled at everyone, and the young boys giving out the free drinks at the booth ran up to the cars to offer drinks to the occupants. Even the drivers were smiling - one shouted cheerily out to me - "did you get any good shots?". We had a great time!

( Click for photos ...  )</div>

I admit it. I am a member of the Facebook group "I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar". I don't think I am fanatical about proper grammar - I am from Singapore after all, a country whose meek and obedient citizens have gleefully resisted the government's call to use proper English instead of Singlish (an utterly fascinating but (to non-Singaporeans, incomprehensible) mixture of English, Mandarin, Malay and other dialects).

Nonetheless, virtually nothing riles me up as much as reading a badly drafted document, email or blog entry full of slang, bad grammar and spelling errors. My guess is that as English is not my mother tongue in the strict sense of the word, I had been taught to respect English the way many people are taught to respect Maths  (just as 1+1 = 2, so it is always "you are" and never "you is"). 
 

( I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar )

Yes, I know - this is the third or fourth poem by Rudyard Kipling that I have posted on this blog, but I really like this guy's works.

By the way, if you are in Singapore, drop by the special exhibition Neither East Nor West by the Asian Civilisations Museum - there is a photograph of Kipling which ends the exhibition. It is rather apt - the exhibition opens with the opening lines from his famous The Ballad of East and West. My fellow volunteers and I hurried through photos of the richly dressed maharajas, beautiful wives of ambassadors, kings and queens and princesses, to gawk at the photo of this great man.

( IF )

I found my ex-classmate's blog (http://starbreez.wordpress.com) and found this video. I always have a weakness for the violin. I chose to learn the er-hu in secondary school partly because my parents thought that it is a waste to pay good money for violin classes for a hyperactive and sporty young girl with a short attention span. How things change and yet stay the same :-)

This recording is brilliant, brilliant, just brilliant. I never liked classical music for movies - because I always felt they lack that certain something, but this - as my friend said - he shed tears from his violin.

If anyone is interested, drop me a note, we can go down together :-)

I admit, I am not a great fan of poetry - my first experience was with Shakespeare's sonnets, and my response was to run far far away. Occasionally though, dragged kicking and screaming, I find myself enjoying some poetry - Seamus Heaney, John Milton, heck, even some of the metaphysical poets like John Donne were fun - always to my surprise.

I never heard of Elizabeth Alexander until recently, when news emerged that she has been selected as the Inaugural Poet for Obama's inauguration. And I did what every net-savy person do nowadays, I Googled her. 

Turns out that her poems are online (big surprise) and they are, surprisingly (for a person who always fliched from poetry that is) good, the couple that I read at any rate. A Huffington Post article quoted The Times Book Review describing her work as "intellectual magic". It sounds about right. The poem I have reproduced below is apparently one of her most well-known poem - and I liked it because it takes something that actually occured in history - something that in modern times is outrageous - and turns it into something beautiful - horrifying but not angry.

I also found a recording of an interview she had with Poetry Foundation, and one statement she made me think that perhaps there is not that great a difference between lawyers and poets after all:

"We think what we do is important because we struggle to be precise and that is how human beings communicate across divides, communciates across differences. We take that work dead seriously and that is the work we want our leaders to be engaged in with equal care."

Amen.

( The Venus Hottentot (1825) )

Reminisicing

2008 was a year of many endings.

Many Deaths...
2008 stood out for the sheer number of deaths that impacted me - Arthur C Clarke, Samuel Huntington, J.B. Jeyaretnam, Loh Hwei Yen

Arthur C Clarke(16 December 1917–19 March 2008)
Arthur C Clarke was the favourite author of my childhood - I spent hours in the library reading his books, and when my secondary school cleared out its library in preparation for the move to the new campus, I picked my way through the garbage centre in the school compound, picking up ragged copies of his books, many missing their covers or with pages dangling. These books accompanied me through many years, many of them finally disintegrating with so much use. Arthur C Clarke  introduced me to the mysteries and wonders of science and, in particular astronomy, and opened my mind to the sheer possibilities and potential (and limitations) of mankind. He was also probably single-handedly responsible for my dreams of being an astronomer, and even though I have since walked down a vastly different path, I still retain my childhood love and respect of science and most importantly, my appreciation of just how wonderful and amazing the real world can be in itself, without the need for the leavening of the super-natural, in no small part thanks to this man.

Samuel Huntington (18 April 1927–December 24, 2008)
Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order was a significant part of my A Levels education - History was my joy and passion during those years, and Samuel Huntington brought to mind the happy days spent sitting in class discussing the use and purpose of history, whether it can ever reach the kind of acceptance that economics and other social sciences seems to have achieved etc etc. He opened my eyes to the importance of culture, and lit in me a desire that still exists today to understand more about different countries, different cultures and how these influence how people think, how they make decisions, and ultimately how the world ticks.

The ideas of these two men have a significant role in who I am today - a person who strives to be a rationalist, and with an appreciation of culture and the arts. A lawyer who volunteers at the Asian Civilisation Museum, an atheist who is interested in religion, a person who likes to ask "why", a person who strives to understand the world - politically, culturally, scientifically.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (5 January 1926 - 30 September 2008)
Closer to home, the death of JBJ was unexpected. He was my introduction to Singapore opposition politics, which was sparked when my parents return from an opposition rally being conducted at the car park just below our block of flats - I remembered looking up wide-eyed when my dad entered our flat, while in the middle of a conversation with mum, saying - "he will be sued, for sure." "He" is of course JBJ, who was indeed sued by the then Prime Minister (now Minister Mentor) for making allegedly defamatory remarks. I remembered watching him hawk books in Raffles Place, and observing people discreetly pressing money into his hands that far exceed the cost of each book. At first I wondered, why would anyone help a man like that? As I grew older, I understand that it is precisely men like that who we should respect - men who lived for their principles, and not for a multi-million dollar salary. I remembered meeting his son, then President of the Law Society during a seminar by Michael Caplan QC on the Pinochet affair, and wondering, just what does the son think of his father's politics. I may not like his "angry" brand of politics but I respect him as a man of principles and a man who had sacrificed his material comfort in pursuit of these principles. I am not sure that I will ever have that ability to do so.

Loh Hwei Yen (1980 - 27 November 2008) 
Hwei Yen - I still do not know how to respond to her death. I don't know her but her death hit way too close to home. One year my junior in law school, married to the brother of one of my hall mates, worked in the same two law firms I have worked in and am currently working in, gunned down in a terrorist attack on a hotel that almost every Singaporean lawyer will stay in if they are in Mumbai for a business trip. Our paths must have crossed numerous times - during school days, at office functions, at weddings and parties. I remembered the shock that went through my office when news of her death came out - almost all of us know her or someone who is connected to her - she is one of us - the illusion that most of us had been under - that we are relatively safe being but a insignificant little red dot with little political or economic clout in the world, and personally as non-combat professionals who are as far from the frontline as it can be - shattered with her death.

( Other Endings ... )

2008 was a year of many endings but every ending is a new beginning ...

Finally got round to developing my B&W photos taken on my Holga for the Borobudor trip. Enjoy!

( Warning - Image Heavy! )

STRAITS TIMES
Aug 11, 2007


Big Fool Lee made its points well


BIG IMPACT: Jeffrey Low plays iconic Cantonese radio storyteller Lee Dai Soh. -- PHOTO: TOY FACTORY


I WATCHED Toy Factory's Big Fool Lee the same day I read Hong Xinyi's review of the play (Big Fool Was No Fool, Life!, Aug 4).
I came out of the Drama Centre pondering how a play with a fairly straightforward delivery could garner a rather contentious review.

Hong pondered the logic of having Justice Bao and the Monkey God as the alter-egos of Lee.

Perhaps she could not identify with the fact that the imagination of Lee, coupled with his gift of gab, captivated thousands of audiences.

By portraying his inner mental state with such dramatic manifestations, the play showed the audience what made the man tick.

Needless to say, by pulling two characters from his stories to demonstrate his thoughts, the play closes the theatrical device loop pretty well too.

The reviewer also dismissed the play's portrayal of the Speak Mandarin Campaign as heavy-handed. She lamented that the comparison of the campaign with the Cultural Revolution in China was somewhat ridiculous.

I think she had missed the point by looking for such a simplistic link. It was plain that the play was trying to draw comparisons between the campaign and the revolution.

Both came about from political directives, both disgorged entire generations of people, and both left an indelible mark on the citizens of the countries.

To Lee, the campaign took away his livelihood and his passion in life. That he refused to use Mandarin to tell his stories speaks volumes of how the campaign must have alienated people in his generation.

Ridiculous or not, what we know for a fact is that families in Singapore grew stratified, with an entire generation of grandparents not understanding their grandchildren.

The reviewer ends by stating her estrangement from the play as she was born after the Speak Mandarin Campaign. I think this is salient as it explains why she could not relate to the ideas in it.


Steve Tan Peng Hoe

Coincidence ...

By sheer coincidence, it was exactly 364 days since I last stepped into the Drama Centre. On 9 August 2006, I went with my friends and colleagues to watch The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Award on JBJ. On 8 August 2007, I went alone to watch Big Fool Lee. Given that I had no idea where Drama Centre was prior to the day of the play itself, and given that I had no idea that Big Fool Lee was a social commentary (I can't really miss that point with The Campaign), I have to conclude that it was sheer coincidence that saw me spending the evening of National Day in 2006, and the eve thereof in 2007, in the Drama Centre watching plays that are actually social commentaries.

Memories ...

A child of the 80s, I had heard the voice of Big Fool Lee on Rediffusion. My maternal grandmother, and my next door neighbours had subscriptions, and his melodious voice, rolling out words I don't understand, formed the background of many memories - be it noisily trading dinosaur stickers with my neighbours in their flat, or idling, half-dozing on my mother's lap at my grandmother's house. But I never knew the name of the speaker, or who he was. I just knew that the older generation had their own radio channel, that communicates in a language that we kids do not understand - the Speak Mandarin Campaign in those days was to encourage Singaporeans to speak Mandarin, instead of dialect. My parents actively discouraged me from speaking Teochew, the language of my elders.

I remembered in my secondary school days, I picked up a book by Chee Soon Juan (then infamous for his hunger strike) - I believe it is Dare to Change. I read the first couple of chapters and dismissed him as not worthy of my time (a conclusion that I still retained by the way) - one of the things he wrote was that Singapore of old had, in the wild fusion of Chinese dialects, Malay dialects etc, all the necessary ingredients of a unique and rich culture, but the Singapore (PAP) government had obliterated that by embarking on the Speak Mandarin Campaign and the imposition of English as the working language of the races. I pointed out that passage to my friend who was at MPH (Parkway) with me at that time, and we mocked his crazy sentimentalism - if the Singapore government had not taken steps to ensure that all Chinese Singaporeans speak Mandarin, how on earth is Singapore as a society going to function with so much fragmentation? The brashness of youth - looking only to the future and oblivious to the price that is paid for that future...

Last Evening ....

Last evening at the Drama Centre - these half-forgotten memories revived in my mind. Before this, I never thought that the Speak Mandarin Campaign was in anyway equivalent to the Cultural Revolution. Thinking back though, were the dialect speakers not forced to put on metaphorical dunce caps during the Speak Mandarin Campaigns of the 1980s? If I am honest with myself, is it not true that a part of me that believes that Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew etc are bastardisation of Mandarin? That only the uneducated speak dialects? When the young manager fired Big Fool Lee from his job at the radio station, his language and mannerisms were uncomfortably real - did I not use such language, such mannerisms when I speak to my Teochew and Mandarin-speaking parents and relatives from time to time?

An Uncomfortable Disconnect ...

During the play, I was unable to pay full attention to the stage as I had to keep looking at the written English translations on both side of the stages since a large part of the dialogue was in Cantonese and the other dialects. It resulted in a perculiar disconnect - when I watch plays, I usually immerse myself into the world created on stage. This time round, I was curiously unable to do so. And it is not just me - the audience around me were similarly torn between the translations and the stage actions. Is this disconnect part of the message the play is trying to transmit? It was a powerful demonstration of the generation gap - we literally cannot communicate anymore.

And yet, this is more serious than what we usually consider to be the generation gap - it is a complete break in the transmission of cultural values and heritage. My grandparents spoke Teochew, and my father told me a long time ago when I was still a child, that had my grandfather been alive, he would have told me stories from Hong Lou Meng, Shui Hu Chuan, San Guo Yan Yi, all in Teochew of course. My father told me bedtime stories in Mandarin of the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella. He did so in the belief that an English education, Western culture is the route to success in Singapore. Events have proved him right (thus far) but what was the price that was paid for that sucess? A family living in two distinct worlds, each generation looking on as the play of the other generation goes on - unable to understand or comprehend what is happening without the aid of clumsy translations by the side. Can a nation exist or even start to form where there is no transmission of memory, no common language to reach across generations?

A Singapore Culture...

A foreign director from China came to Singapore, with dreams of directing a masterpiece of a play about the great poet Li Bai. Mocking Singapore arts scene, Singapore talent, Singapore history, derisively asking if all that Singapore can present is this Big Fool Lee. A Westernised marketing manager, who pours scorn on the idea that a play about an almost forgotten Singapore icon can be commercially successful, using statistics and numbers to back up her claims. We have our history, we have our heritage, stretching beyond 1965 or even 1918 - but do we remember this history, do we respect this heritage? Do we care enough to discuss the impact of our break-neck pursuit of economic success, to debate different versions or different viewpoints of historical events? Or do we, in typical pragmatic style, ruthlessly discard everything that has become irrelevant, deemed unimportant, economically no longer viable, irregardless of their earlier contribution, whether economically, socially or culturally? Do we just look forward, and forget that the past holds the keys to our present and our future? Until we manage to achieve a balance between a historical consciousness and the pursuit of progress, can an authentic Singapore culture, one that every succeeding generation of Singaporeans will inherit from their precedessor and build on and pass on to their successor, ever really crystallise?

Just read an article that a group of primary school students has taken up special classes to learn dialects (Hokkien and Cantonese) so as to communicate with the elderly. The article was sent to me via one of the mailing lists I subscribe to, but it is an article from Channel News Asia.