“I feel I want to fight for democracy. But I think we had better make a longer plan. We cannot go to the streets and get shot again. There is no one left to die.” – Video journalist Joshua, in Burma VJ
I sat in the cinema with tears streaming down my face. Tears, chased by quiet sobs, because the story flickering on the big screen made us relive that familiar surge of hope against all odds, the tales of optimism in the face of oppression, and the utter crushing disappointment when the bubble is burst yet again – the story, the endless story, of Burma.
But Burma VJ is not just another story. It may be pixels on a screen, it may be chock full of controversial reenactments, but for someone who remembers her friends from Burma, this is real life. A real life that hit far too painfully close to home when I saw a dear friend, retired photojournalist Law Eh Soe, on screen, “accidentally” caught on video as he braved it all to capture those by now famous photographs that told the world of the acts of extraordinary courage in Rangoon in 2007 – the story of the Saffron Revolution.
In 1999, I went to Yangon for a college community service project. We were told never to talk about politics with the people we met in Myanmar. I had only the vaguest of notions about the potential implications, and an even shallower understanding of contemporary Myanmar politics, but I heeded our teacher’s advice, and so found myself scowling at the university student from another team when he was so foolhardy as to ask our local liason, a young man barely out of his teens, on his thoughts about the junta, and got nothing but tears for an answer. It was to be two whole years later, along the Thai-Burma border, where words flow freer, that I began to get a clearer picture of this country I had witnessed, but not understood.
A research project in a Karenni refugee camp introduced me to many friends who wanted to share their stories. Please tell your friends about our situation, they’d say. Anyone who will listen. Every single soul who empathises; who cares, counts. Tell them our story. Do not forget us. We are still here. We are still suffering. And so on it went, and we left overwhelmed and depressed, unsure of what we could possibly do to make any difference, and in our desperation, we poured our energy into a little awareness and income-generation project, and while that helped in its own tiny way, it was not enough; and it always seems like it will never be enough.
“Please use your liberty to promote ours”, the lady, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi once said. And this rallying call was echoed in a voice shaking with emotion, by a Burmese lady during the discussion session after MARUAH’s Burma VJ screening.
Yes, it is heartbreaking to hear; it is frustrating to care, yet feel completely powerless to do anything. While it may not seem like much, ensuring that we know the facts on the issues surrounding Burma matters:
Because what we tell our governments about what we think of their engagement with Burma, matters.
Because what we tell the companies about what we think of their investments in Burma, matters.
Find out and speak up.
But perhaps what matters most of all, is assuring another person that they matter. My dear friends, though none of us knows when this may end, know this – we have not forgotten you.
Between moving back to Singapore (with all its attendant attractions and distractions) and short trips here and there (ok, yes, I’ll admit it: and huge bouts of evil, life-sucking, mind-numbing procrastination), I’ve managed to completely and utterly neglect this tiny corner of internet-dom. But as usual, all it takes is a few choice words uttered by a few lovely friends (shameless flattery will get you everywhere, my friends!) and I’m sucked back into banging away on my keyboard.
Procrastination aside, I am proud to announce yet another conquest of “things-I’ve-been-meaning-to-do-but-never-quite-got-around-to”; the latest on the “Create” agenda: SEWING!
I remember liking sewing back in the days of secondary school Home Economics classes. I loved making that hideously ugly pair of bermudas (that I never eventually wore, but inflicted upon some other unsuspecting soul during a clothing donation drive). I loved it so much (sewing, not the bermudas), I tried convincing my parents to buy us a Bernina – the machines we used in school that sewed like a dream. On hindsight, my request was the kind of insanity only a teenager could possess (have you any idea how much those babies cost?!). My parents however, in possession of a pair of very reasonable heads between them, were smart enough to resist their crazy adolescent’s harebrained scheme, yet indulgent enough that we lugged home an entry-level Singer instead. Plastic-fantastic Singer didn’t sew like a dream. I tried to make our relationship work anyway, but like a unrequited lover, I quickly lost enthusiasm for our affair. As the days went by (and the hideous bermudas were completed, graded, done and over with, left to rot in a dusty corner), I forgot all about Miss Singer, and by the time I needed her again, she flat out spurned me.
Every once in a long, long while though, I’d think of a sewing project and, in a burst of unwarranted optimism, I’d try to woo Miss Singer again. And so it was that recently, while reading my dear friend Yuling’s blog entry a while back, mentioning her need for new cushion covers, I found myself conveniently forgetting Miss Singer’s lifetime worth of attitude problems and raring to take on a cushion cover sewing project. Now, cushion covers are supposed to be one of the most basic of sewing projects and so you’ll forgive me for being overly optimistic about Miss Singer’s cooperation in this entire affair.
After a lovely day out shopping for upholstery fabric with Yuling and her sweetheart of a toddler, Raeann, I washed the fabric for shrinkage that very night, and eagerly awaited the fabric to dry (no, despite how it sounds, I didn’t sit there watching the fabric dry). A press with the iron, calculations, measurements, tailors chalk, more ironing and pins later, it was time to face Miss Singer. And while she refused to cooperate without giving up a fight, with coaxing and the occasional threat, she eventually gave in, and we succeeded in producing these babies:
But who’s to say Miss Singer didn’t have the last laugh? After all, she singlehandedly succeeded in producing this:
Evil sewing machines aside, I’m just relieved that I didn’t abandon the project this time. I didn’t bite off more than I could chew (or sew in this case), and the cushion covers are now safely with their lovely owners.
So, how about Round Two?
J’aime l’art de guérillero.
I love guerilla art.
I’ve always had a love-hate fascination with graffiti. With its (sometimes controversial) reclamation of public space and freedom of access for the viewer, it has a democratic nature that appeals to the idealist in me. Yet graffiti often tows a precarious line between art and vandalism.
Two works of graffiti I encountered way back, particularly stand out in my mind:
I.
It was 1997, the last day of school, and everyone was abuzz; not because it was the last day, but because those who had come early enough, had seen these words smack in the centre of the grassy circular courtyard:
<insert school acronym>
SUX
The school authorities covered up the offending patch of grass with potted plants (resulting in a most bizarre “landscaping” design), but the damage was done, and the student population afire with speculation. Two years later, over an ICQ (remember that?) chat, a friend owned up to it, confessing that the group of them had bought weed killer, and climbed into the school compound in the dead of night to pour out four years worth of bottled-up frustration onto the innocent grass. After leaving school, the “artists”/perpetrators tended to live life on the road less travelled, and achieved some pretty remarkable things along the way. I’ve often mulled over what kind of environment would better channel and celebrate creativity and energy such as they had, instead of so systematically suppressing it, only to have it explode out in an ugly incident of vandal’s diarrhoea. Come to think of it, the story goes that Chairman Mao himself, at age 22, broke the world record for the longest piece of graffiti, a toilet piece containing 4000 characters criticising his teachers and the state of Chinese society. And look where all that school-induced angst got him.
That begets the question: what distinguishes Banksy from Michael Fay? How does graffiti become meaningful? For me, graffiti can be elevated to street art, or more specifically, post-graffiti, and become — and this is controversial — “worth the destruction caused to public property” when it fulfills its potential as a medium for social commentary; jolting viewers into rethinking the status quo (particularly if it’s relevant to the space the graffiti is set in), and affects their interaction with the space, or even is simply something that causes people to stop and reflect. Yet, even this loose definition is a weak delineation, for what’s seen as vandalism today may take on social value tomorrow. Case in point:
II.
It was 2000, Day 20 of a 21-day community service project in Pulau Teluk Nipah, Batam. In high spirits after completing the project, we trekked out to a cave located on the other side of the island and found it covered in mariners’ graffiti carved out on the stone walls, many dating all the way back to the 1400’s; olden day versions of what might today be etched out as:
Her Majesty’s Ship Was Here
2009
Imagine standing at that exact same spot, your mind conjuring up visions of explorers of old, chiselling away at the rock to pass you the message: psst, we’re all travellers on the same journey. And what a rich visual record of all the nations that have been trading through these waters. So I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. After all, even anthoropologists equate prehistoric rock art to modern day graffiti. Come to think of it, Banksy summed the issue up very nicely in this piece:
Since then, I’ve started collecting images of (usually politically-charged) street art off the web and using them as my desktop wallpapers – to serve as daily reminders to rethink comfortable, smug assumptions about the world we inhabit. It was only after getting a camera phone three years ago that I started documenting this fascination myself – photographing bits and pieces of street art I encountered, mostly in Singapore, and organising them into a collection on flickr. As aesthetically-pleasing as some of them were to me, I found something lacking – meaning and relevance to the space. Some of the graffiti appeared to merely seek a free, public canvas, not pushing the art form to its potential of social commentary, and that sometimes smacked of self-gratifying anarchy to me.
Early last year, I flipped through Ontario-based illustrator-turned-guerilla artist Keri Smith’s book The Guerilla Art Kit and something spoke to me. She writes:
“You do not necessarily need to be able to draw or paint to be an artist. You only need to care about something. The biggest hurdle in creating guerilla art is not always how to say something but instead what to say.”
Fast-forward to 2009. Imagine my immense glee to discover the work of a Singapore-based guerilla artist who has something meaningful to say. Since 15 January, this anonymous artist has been creating a-guerilla art-a-day — small post-its with little messages left in public places in Singapore, archived on his blog; a virtual “to do” list of everyday wisdom such as this one from 4 February:
on the 1245 to dhoby ghaut, singapore
While post-it art is not uncommon, what distinguishes this work is that the artist imbues his post-it art with reminders that are universally relevant, and, on good days, are cleverly placed in locations that make the viewer reconsider his reading of that space.
With no profile, no rationale, and no write-ups, the artist lets his work speak for itself. His choice of post-its is clever, resulting in transient work which doesn’t pose a problem for the long-suffering workers upon whose shoulders the unenviable task of cleaning up regular graffiti usually lands on. It even invites the itchy-fingered amongst us to interact with it, since, if one physically encountered his work, one could even take it down and stick it up again somewhere else, endlessly, though perhaps subject to the post-it’s remaining sticky-factor. And since his work is so wisely licensed under Creative Commons, these little babies have gone viral, even inspiring reproductions in NYC.
It’s just lovely how this wonderful little project has captured our imagination, brought smiles to our hearts and inspired reflection. May we all remember to make meaning in the every day!
Je vais au bureau de poste.
I go to the post office.
Having been one of those kids who moved a fair bit when I was a kid, I spent a significant part of my schooling days writing letters to friends and family overseas. In Secondary 1, a classmate asked me to join a penpal service with her. Already used to writing letters regularly, I agreed, and ended up with a penpal in Australia, and then another in Canada (a bonus penpal, the agency informed me). By the mid-90’s however, most of us had migrated to communicating by email, and that, coupled with preoccupations with the multitude of demands on the attention of the regular teen, resulted in dwindling communication at best.
Intrigued after a junior college trip to Thailand, I wanted to know more about the country from a peer’s perspective, and so I signed up with the Bangkok Post Student Weekly’s pen pal column, intending “to help a Thai student practice his English” as the paper advertised. My details were published, and for countless months later, my mailbox would be continuously inundated by aerograms from Thai students from virtually every province; their alarmingly identical letters focused largely on pleading me to reply their letters so that they would get extra marks from their English teacher. Increasingly bored, but feeling obliged, I eventually resorted to stock responses. Some continued to write after, and from these folks, I learnt a little bit more about the lives of the regular Thai teenager. But with the concerns of university entrance preparations looming, these too fell by the wayside.
As we prepared to enter university, we gals received and sent snail mail c/o the Ministry of Defence, to the guys doing national service; stuck in basic military training, or on a RSS (Republic of Singapore Ship) somewhere in the world, and regaled them with stories of our travels and university life; a teaser of the life they themselves would soon partake in years to come. Once the guys completed national service, the need for those letters stopped too.
And so it became that the mail I sent mostly comprised postcards to Mummy and Daddy, from my various travels. When work started, travel became shorter, such that I’d arrive home before the postcards, and what good was that? Soon the postcards stopped too.
So it was with a gleeful sense of nostalgia that I stuffed a little envelope with a doodle of a friend and a little note, and popped it off at the post office yesterday. Someone back in Southeast Asia will soon have something nice to greet her when she next opens her mailbox. To think I’d almost forgotten how much joy I get from sending a little surprise out in the mail!
Bread & Tulips
The Singapore International Film Festival opened its 22nd season this weekend…and I’m missing it for the 2nd year running. Before you start to think I’m some tragic no-life who (not so) secretly wishes that she’s actually in Singapore during film fest season just so she can watch images unfold on screen in a darkened cinema full of strangers, let me make a feeble attempt to exonerate myself from the charge.
The SIFF holds a funny little place in my heart. The first SIFF “film” I watched was a trailer back in 2002. I can’t remember what the trailer was all about anymore of course, but I remember watching it in Archana’s room in our uni student hall, and then posting a review. I’m not sure what really happened (perhaps a grand total of 1 person, i.e. me, watched it and bothered to submit a review) but a few weeks later, I received an email informing me that I had won two complimentary tickets to the screening of the delightful, life-affirming Italian comedy Pane E Tulipani (Bread & Tulips) at the 15th SIFF. Since I had watched the trailer with Arch, naturally, she was my date for the screening. It was my first taste of the wonderful world of film (beyond Hollywood, and beyond a certain self-made short film I shall not name, that a college lecturer and aspiring filmmaker I shall not name, forced my whole Lit class to watch), and I never missed another season, up till last year, that is, when I was in Australia for work all throughout festival season.
My 2nd year missing it makes me reminiscent about the good times, and of course, the amusingly bad as well:
The 16th was where I watched Royston Tan’s soon-to-become iconic Singapore film, 十五 (I know I shouldn’t link to illegally uploaded, low-quality versions, but…) and grew to love a good Singapore film, and was reminded that young people need something to believe in, and someone to believe in them.
The 19th was where I discovered that I had been loving Yasmin Ahmad all along. At a free screening at the Goethe-Institut, a sparsely-filled, tiny room of strangers watched a little screening of the amazingly heartwarming Rabun. And then I discovered that Yasmin was the same storyteller behind the beloved Petronas public service messages – the same ones I had viewed in the company of family year after year, always leaving us with a warm and fuzzy feeling, so much so that the new Petronas ad for the season had become one of the things to look forward to when back in Kuching for Chinese New Year. I was hooked, and would go back for more, and more: Sepet, Gubra, Mukhsin and Muallaf. Last year, while waiting for Wall-E to start, though usually fidgety during trailers/commercials, I sat transfixed by a story, and was convinced that only Yasmin could have told it. Sure enough, it was a TVC Yasmin was commissioned to create by the National Family Council. May we all tell stories with such heart!
The SIFF was where hoardes of seemingly unrelated friends, colleagues (past and present) and acquaintences would bump into each other, brought together by our common love for a social cause, at the countless quality documentary screenings, emerging into the bright, post-screening light, depressed and affected. These stories would continue to affect our worldview, the way we lived our lives, and the causes we believed in, in countless minute ways we probably barely even realised.
And the SIFF was where friends and I would groan in the middle of yet another James Lee film (why do we never learn our lesson?) or a Filipino “new wave”. And so I’ve always remembered to stay away from “new wave” – okay, fine, you can say I’m too “conventional” for “new wave”, but groaning through the occasional SIFF screening has helped me recognise my own tastes, and I’m okay with that.
I credit the SIFF for gently guiding and helping me find my taste in film, and probably countless other people besides; providing a starting platform from which to discover and appreciate all the little gems of insight humanity has to offer. But perhaps most important has been the fellowship of like-minded friends meeting to go to or bumping into each other at the same screenings, or in between screening changes, show after show. The hurried dinner bites before the early weekday evening screenings, the lazy post-show teh sessions, the thoughtful discussions, the animated banter – for that, my dear kakis, I thank you, and hope you enjoy yet another eye-opening season!
Est-ce que vous aimez le hiver? Non, je n’aime pas le hiver.
Do you like winter? No, I don’t like winter.
That’s the question la professeure français loves to ask me, just for kicks – to get me to answer as above, and I indulge her.
But that was winter, and it’s time to put that aside; for now, it’s springtime! The city has finally thawed, its people have come to life; each competing in the latest game of “Who Can Wear Less Clothes in Today’s Temperature?” (9°C today, in case you’re wondering, and yes, some people are wearing t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops). The sun is shining, and there’s a general atmosphere of joy and goodwill in the air.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry, I took the bus (but got distracted by that unpleasant incident in winter, when really, I should have been celebrating spring). I was running a little late, and so ended up taking a later bus than usual. When I boarded the bus, it was driven by a bus driver I had never met before (yes, the bus schedule here is so on-the-dot regular that we know exactly who will be driving which bus, when). He was in the middle of a merry conversation with two elderly ladies, happily on their way to a bingo game. At the next stop, the ladies got down to transfer to the bus behind us, and our bus driver radio-ed over to ask the other driver to “wait for the ladies rushing to their bingo game”, to delighted chuckles from fellow passengers all around. Then we rumbled along, coming to our usual pause at the downtown transfer point. While waiting for transfer passengers, a toddler came running towards the front door of our bus, Harried Mummy chasing closely behind, admonishing him, “No, that’s not your bus”, to which our jolly dear bus driver replied, “Oh, yes it is. Let him up.”, and proceeded to hoist the boy, by now squealing with glee, up to perch at the driver’s seat, and helped the young tot to toot the bus’ horn. Harried Mummy gasped her unbelieving appreciation, “You’re such a lucky boy!”, and our young superhero gurgled with delight, charming all the passengers on board as we all let out a simultaneous sigh of, “Awww, that’s so cute…”. What a difference attitude makes! I’m glad I ran a little late and got to partake in the joy of the jolly bus driver who makes everyone’s day just that lil’ bit happier.
As if to crown it all off, mother nature decided to send us a special present – sun dogs, as I learnt from the lady next to me – a winter light display that looks like pieces of a rainbow (I know, I know, you’re thinking: “Didn’t she just claim it’s spring now?!” Well nature doesn’t switch every part of the seasons exactly on 21 March the way humans do, right? Can you concentrate on the “looks like pieces of a rainbow” part already?!). So anyhow, you can be sure the whole busload of us ooh-ed and aah-ed over the lovely sight, as if we were a busload of tourists gawking at one of the wonders of the world (and it sure is!) instead of regular travel-weary commuters. It’s all about perspective eh? What more can you ask of a day?
Aujourd’hui, j’assiste à un cours de français au collège. Je vais au collège en l’autobus.
Today, I attend a French course at the college. I go to the college by bus.
Taking the bus made me recall some of the different experiences I’ve had taking the Kingston Transit. On 12 February, I witnessed a particularly unpleasant incident involving two girls and two guys, in their late teens/early twenties, who boarded the bus together with me late one night going back from the college. The girls got on after Guy A, sat one in front of the other, and settled into a very loud conversation; all the while glancing back at Guy A and snickering away with what I had then thought was simply juvenile girlish glee. Guy B boarded, and the whole scene quickly turned ugly. The girls decided to pounce and started taunting Guy B, asking him if he had a date for Valentine’s (hence I remember the date of the incident so clearly) and without waiting for an answer, told him that Guy A was available. They proceeded to detail the homosexual acts that Guy A allegedly appreciates, ostensibly as an “enticement” to Guy B, which, given its usage in this context of bullying-verging-on-verbal-assault, are simply too rude for me to reproduce here. A few bus stops worth of this nonsense later, a petrified Guy B couldn’t take it anymore, and stopped the bus to get off at some deserted stop in the middle of nowhere, to which the girls mockingly cried out, “Getting off already? But you haven’t gotten his number yet”, their malicious laughter reverberating through the bus.
I was angry because I realised that the girls had created precisely the kind of climate of fear that females around the world have had to endure from males for centuries. But I was also in shock, because it says something about a society where the tables can as easily be turned thus. As I sat there stewing, it occurred to me that this was not what the feminist movement was fought for; turning the tables is not the point. We, men and women alike, need to be breaking down the geography of fear, not contributing to it. Too late, I realised that I should have gone up to the girls and told them to lay off the guys, and that they should be ashamed of themselves, or at the very cowardly least, have gone up to the bus driver to tell him that passengers were being harassed. But I know better now, whether the perpetrator be male or female, and perhaps you’ll think about it too.
Image by Kingstonist at flickr.
