January 18, 2012 •

New pastures

I was going to write a teary good bye post to Singapore, but there’s only so much procrastination a blog can take. Head over to fatponies where I will be continuing my surreal trip through SE Asia.

November 18, 2011 • 2 notes •

I’ve been meaning to write a post about the best photography shops in the Prinsep area, but it will have to wait.

Thirty Six is a lomography centric shop located deep in the bowels of one of the strangest little shopping centres in Singapore. It’s all camera shops and gemstone wholesalers and a guy selling cellos. They’re running the coolest little exhibit of Polaroid Spectras this week end only. If you’re a pola-nerd, go have a look. Noreen, the lovely shop assistant (that’s her behind the glass dome there) will geek out with you over the instant wonders. She also has an exhibit of her own experimental work in the shop window. Her dinosaurs on a polaroid had me at hello.

And if you look behind the counter, you might just find something impossibly rare…

Thirty Six

Sunshine Plaza, between Bencoolen and Prinsep Streets

November 17, 2011 • 1 note •

Oh HAI, CRHISMAZ.

It’s you again.

Long time no see.

Have you put on weight? What’s up with the crazy decorations on Orchard Road, Xmas? You’re like that loud drunken girl who’s intent on flashing her bra to the whole bar. Not a good look, Xmas, not a good look.

No, it’s OK, I get it. You want to feel pretty. You want people to love you. You want them to care. Well, in your honour, I’m going to give out some prizes, wet t-shirt competition style.

(from top to bottom, left to right):

Winner of the “Xmas? I don’t give a fuck” category

The elephant in front of Wheelock Place. There is some glitzy shit happening behind him at Ion Orchard, but Lace Elephant don’t care.

Winner of the “BOW BEFORE ME, PUNY MORTALS” category

Ngee Ann City, aka Takashimaya centre. This Christmas Tree is the godzilla of Christmas Trees. He will make you feel like the insignficant little ant you truly are. Also don’t touch him, or he will electrocute your ass. Now GET, peasant.

Winner of the “Lighting is for losers” category

Why so sad, floppy Singaporean construction youth? Oh yeah. Your 20 foot tall Christmas penis extension is broken. Ne’mind, ne’mind.

Winner of the “Santa’s creepy twin” category

Come in, little boy, come sit on Santa’s knee. *Brrrrrrrr*. 

Winner of the “This owl will devour your soul” category

This owl.

November 13, 2011 • 1 note •
I stepped off the plane exactly a year ago. One year in Singapore, in the heat and sweat and shininess and grime. I’d arrived clammy and sore from a long flight. Sitting in the cramped cabin, I had choked on tears and anxiety until I could feel the panic rising in my throat, my vision obscuring, my head swimming, my body cold and sweaty. I’d locked myself in the tiny toilet, my head between my legs, breathing slowly and trying to remember that I had asked for this, that this is what I wanted. I can’t remember much of that day. I walked broken hearted on the unfamiliar streets, amongst the walk-ups of Tiong Bahru, letting the warm air and tropical scents calm and soothe me. And today? I’ve spent the day sorting through my belongings, and packing them, again, in cardboard boxes. The motions are so rehearsed, the sight so familiar. 32 years, 4 continents, 9 countries, soon 10, countless moves, countless boxes, countless friends made and lost along the way. There are books that smell of long, dusty summers, old creaky toys, notebooks and papers capturing a fleeting moment fading, still, always. The rest is superfluous: mountains of shoes and clothes, cosmetics by the buckets, bits of string and cables, shapeless things that have no name and no function. It is exhausting, this business of moving, of shifting your way slowly, uncertainly, towards a new place, a new - maybe - home. My bones are tired and stiff. I’ve spent much of today thinking about the sparkly Miu Miu shoes I’ve been gawping at every night on my way back from work. They are so perfect, so pretty. Soft pink suede and silver glitter, shoes to be worn in high summer when the sun shines, the grasses are tall, and you’re in love and everything is good and right with the world. I’ve been shoving my meagre memories in brown cardboard boxes, and maddeningly, infuriatingly, longing for a pair of sparkly shoes. 

I stepped off the plane exactly a year ago. One year in Singapore, in the heat and sweat and shininess and grime. I’d arrived clammy and sore from a long flight. Sitting in the cramped cabin, I had choked on tears and anxiety until I could feel the panic rising in my throat, my vision obscuring, my head swimming, my body cold and sweaty. I’d locked myself in the tiny toilet, my head between my legs, breathing slowly and trying to remember that I had asked for this, that this is what I wanted. I can’t remember much of that day. I walked broken hearted on the unfamiliar streets, amongst the walk-ups of Tiong Bahru, letting the warm air and tropical scents calm and soothe me.

And today?

I’ve spent the day sorting through my belongings, and packing them, again, in cardboard boxes. The motions are so rehearsed, the sight so familiar. 32 years, 4 continents, 9 countries, soon 10, countless moves, countless boxes, countless friends made and lost along the way. There are books that smell of long, dusty summers, old creaky toys, notebooks and papers capturing a fleeting moment fading, still, always. The rest is superfluous: mountains of shoes and clothes, cosmetics by the buckets, bits of string and cables, shapeless things that have no name and no function.

It is exhausting, this business of moving, of shifting your way slowly, uncertainly, towards a new place, a new - maybe - home. My bones are tired and stiff. I’ve spent much of today thinking about the sparkly Miu Miu shoes I’ve been gawping at every night on my way back from work. They are so perfect, so pretty. Soft pink suede and silver glitter, shoes to be worn in high summer when the sun shines, the grasses are tall, and you’re in love and everything is good and right with the world. I’ve been shoving my meagre memories in brown cardboard boxes, and maddeningly, infuriatingly, longing for a pair of sparkly shoes. 

October 23, 2011 •

Big Sister is watching you

Anne Yeo is our building manager. Her office is in the second basement of the condo. It’s a small, windowless room, a few steps away from the fluorescent lights of the car park. It’s more like an interrogation room really: a small, mean desk, two clinical chairs, and one small station for fingerprinting.

Yes, fingerprinting. Every door in my condo is controlled by a small fingerprint scanner. The main gate, the back gate, the lobby door, the lift, the gym door… “Success!” it chirps when it recognises you. “You are authorised!”

It’s a bit like living in the future, a dark sinister future where someone can keep tabs on your whereabouts in the living compound, how many times you visit the pool, whether or not you pick up your mail, and if you’re a regular recycler.

The first time I met Anne Yeo, she was sitting behind her desk, like a sour, whey-faced spider. She was wearing one of her neat little outfits, pinching trousers, sensible blouse, severe crop framing her bespectacled mole eyes. “Yes?”, she barked, affably. When I explained I was there to get my fingerprint access activated, she looked me up and down and said “You are the maid?”. 

Needless to say Anne Yeo and I now share a mutual dislike. We ignore each other politely in the street. I am the annoying foreigner she lost face to. She is the dictatorial Big Sister who must be challenged.

To this end I have been playing a fickle little mind game with her. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that she restricted access to the gym’s changing room and sauna, on no particular grounds. Pettiness, I suspect. She is fond of putting up infuriating little portentous notices in the lift, mostly about maintenance work, filled with pomp, circumstance, and a hundred subtle but glaring grammatical errors.

“We kindly advise to please inform your staff to locking the doors and windows”.

“We thank you for your forbearance with the above mentioned inconvenience”.

This particular notice, printed on heavy bright green paper, has been in our lift since the 9th of September. We’ve all read it several times over, and have absorbed the riveting information about gable end walls and ceiling painting many times over. One evening I turned it upside down, laughing quietly to myself. The next day it was back the right way up. Then I turned it upside down again. It was righted again. Sideways, high up out of reach, down low by the floor, no matter where the sign is put it always returns to its rightful place, staring at me mutely and resolutely. I almost chicken out sometimes. After all, she has my fingerprints. I look for hidden cameras in the ceiling. But the temptation is too strong, and peeling off the blue tac to adjust the position of the notice is just too appealing. I can just imagine her angry little face, the small stamp of indignation, the small bead of sweat forming on her brow.

I’m going to leave it for a few days now, to give her a false sense of security. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t realised that the other notice, the one printed on white paper on the side wall, the one about larviciding and fumigating, is also upside down.

October 12, 2011 •

Enough

My hotel is just across the road from a Pizza Hut.

It’s not the usual one, with its eye assaulting orange colour scheme and its slightly tragic guitar player at the breakfast buffet. This is a slightly more local hotel, buried even deeper in the bowels of Jakarta. 

“I’m sorry, I’m not Indonesian”, I say to the check in girls. There are three of them, in brown crumpled uniforms, each assigned a small but seemingly vital task, like inking a stamp or folding a paper or filling in a tiny pink breakfast slip. They flap about, bewildered, smiling nervously, and after some time spent examining my passport, one of them ventures: “You are French?”. 

The way to the 9th floor is slow and tedious. I am spoken to in Bahasa repeatedly and repeatedly must explain that I don’t speak Indonesian. Random people insist on showing me how to make the key card function. The way down from the 9th floor is no better. “Where are you from?”, asks a man behind me. “You do not look Indonesian”. The next day two men have a loud and seemingly hilarious conversation just outside my door, at 6 am. I can hear the lift beeping cheerfully every couple of nano seconds. It makes me miss the 5 am call to prayers. At breakfast a solicitous maitre d’ follows me around the buffet, trying to entice me to the egg station, bringing refills of potato lyonnaise (the breakfast of champions) for my benefit.

Anyway it is still evening and, oblivious to the delights ahead of me, I’m sitting across from Greg at the Pizza Hut. We’ve just done “la bise” and the collective intake of breath is palpable around us. Two foreigners! Cheek kissing! Or maybe one foreigner and one Indonesian? I can sense the waitresses fussing behind me, like a brood of hens too scared to pick at the worm. Greg’s pizza (dry chicken, weird sweet black pepper sauce) arrives ages before mine (bits of corn, large helping of mayo). Two small girls wander over to us and hover near the table, wordlessly. We are irritable and tired, having both sweated all day in our respective offices. The problems on the project are stacking, crushing and oppressive, an endless litany of requests, inefficiencies, and inadequacies. Behind Greg a group of muslim men have settled into a booth, their bodies twisted grotesquely to stare openly at our table. I don’t mention this because he is telling me that he is sick of people staring at him, taking surreptitious photos of him, peeking at him from behind corners, or simply pointing and laughing. Nearby a child is screaming, loudly and repeatedly, like an angry car horn. We both wince, our hands going up instinctively to our heads, hunching over in exasperation. The sound system suddenly kicks in, and I can swear the cheerful, soul destroying song goes “Pizza Hut Pizza hut something something in Bahasa Pizza Hut Pizza Hut!”.

“So, anyway, how are you?” asks Greg.

“Oh, you know, I’m OK”, I say. “I quit yesterday”.

September 13, 2011 • 1 note •
Every one knows a kleptomaniac. Chocolates in a fancy store, a slightly damaged toy, that lipstick that looks so great on your sister. There is small child in all of us that wants what it can’t afford, what it cannot have. Just the other day I stole a small silver spoon at the Ritz where I’d just had afternoon tea. It was so small and shiny, and it fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. It looked wonderful swirling around in a cloud of milk, making those perfect little clinky sounds against the edges of the teacup. So I opened my bag and slipped it in. Nobody saw it, nobody needed to know. I must get this from another kleptomaniac of my acquaintance. To protect her identity, let’s call her “Maman”. Maman steals sugar cubes from cafés. She’s been known to steal silver teapots from hotel rooms, bread from  bread baskets, handfuls of fruit at the supermarket. There’s always a napkin or an assortment of miniature jams at the bottom of her bag.  Lately though, Maman has taken kleptomania to the next level. She bigged up petty theft, Cambodia stylee. She improved her illegal acquisition goal realisation. She stole a cat. Well, she didn’t really steal it, technically, she was more the architect of the reprehensible deed, the evil mastermind, the Brain to the Pinkie. She’d spotted the black kitten at the silk farm, all skin and bones and cuteness impersonated. “You bring the pink basket”, she told her accomplice. The pink basket was duly brought, the small hungry cat scooped up into it, and off they marched through the gift shop, smiling beatifically, the kitten meowing dramatically, the staff ignoring them politely. Now the kitten lives in my mother’s house. It’s a bit angry, a bit aggressive, probably separated from its mother a tad too early. It’s well fed now, but it still fits uncomfortably in their daily routine, a small energetic ball of fur that hurtles between legs and attacks plants and insects. It is a moment of irrational thought. It is the stolen item at the bottom of the bag. It is the tiny tea spoon, all lovely in its shiny perfection, that no one really knows what to do with.

Every one knows a kleptomaniac. Chocolates in a fancy store, a slightly damaged toy, that lipstick that looks so great on your sister. There is small child in all of us that wants what it can’t afford, what it cannot have.

Just the other day I stole a small silver spoon at the Ritz where I’d just had afternoon tea. It was so small and shiny, and it fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. It looked wonderful swirling around in a cloud of milk, making those perfect little clinky sounds against the edges of the teacup. So I opened my bag and slipped it in. Nobody saw it, nobody needed to know.

I must get this from another kleptomaniac of my acquaintance. To protect her identity, let’s call her “Maman”. Maman steals sugar cubes from cafés. She’s been known to steal silver teapots from hotel rooms, bread from  bread baskets, handfuls of fruit at the supermarket. There’s always a napkin or an assortment of miniature jams at the bottom of her bag. 

Lately though, Maman has taken kleptomania to the next level. She bigged up petty theft, Cambodia stylee. She improved her illegal acquisition goal realisation. She stole a cat. Well, she didn’t really steal it, technically, she was more the architect of the reprehensible deed, the evil mastermind, the Brain to the Pinkie. She’d spotted the black kitten at the silk farm, all skin and bones and cuteness impersonated. “You bring the pink basket”, she told her accomplice. The pink basket was duly brought, the small hungry cat scooped up into it, and off they marched through the gift shop, smiling beatifically, the kitten meowing dramatically, the staff ignoring them politely.

Now the kitten lives in my mother’s house. It’s a bit angry, a bit aggressive, probably separated from its mother a tad too early. It’s well fed now, but it still fits uncomfortably in their daily routine, a small energetic ball of fur that hurtles between legs and attacks plants and insects. It is a moment of irrational thought. It is the stolen item at the bottom of the bag. It is the tiny tea spoon, all lovely in its shiny perfection, that no one really knows what to do with.

September 11, 2011 •
Update: the classes are now from 6pm on a Sunday, same place, and ask for a $3 contribution. I’d heard nudity was a bit of a taboo, that even art schools didn’t encourage drawing from life. I’d despaired of finding a life drawing class in Singapore that didn’t cost an arm and a leg and consist of tedious long poses.  Then I met a tall moustachioed German gentleman who pointed me in the right direction. Run by the animation department at NYU Tisch Asia, these free sessions are all about short poses and movement, from 30 seconds to 15 minutes. I’ve missed them over the summer - melting into the crowd of complete strangers, sitting in the semi-dark of the sound stage, getting lost in the music and letting my hands move thoughtlessly over the paper. I’m rusty and a bit self conscious after so many years of not attending regular drawing classes, but I’ll be going along as soon as I get back from Jakarta next week. Every Tuesday evening from 13th of September 19:00 - 21:00 NYU Tisch Asia  3 Kay Siang Road Shooting Bay #2, ground floor

Update: the classes are now from 6pm on a Sunday, same place, and ask for a $3 contribution.

I’d heard nudity was a bit of a taboo, that even art schools didn’t encourage drawing from life. I’d despaired of finding a life drawing class in Singapore that didn’t cost an arm and a leg and consist of tedious long poses. 

Then I met a tall moustachioed German gentleman who pointed me in the right direction.

Run by the animation department at NYU Tisch Asia, these free sessions are all about short poses and movement, from 30 seconds to 15 minutes. I’ve missed them over the summer - melting into the crowd of complete strangers, sitting in the semi-dark of the sound stage, getting lost in the music and letting my hands move thoughtlessly over the paper. I’m rusty and a bit self conscious after so many years of not attending regular drawing classes, but I’ll be going along as soon as I get back from Jakarta next week.

Every Tuesday evening from 13th of September

19:00 - 21:00

NYU Tisch Asia 

3 Kay Siang Road

Shooting Bay #2, ground floor

September 11, 2011 •
Sunset over the Tonlé Sap, Phnom Penh.

Sunset over the Tonlé Sap, Phnom Penh.

September 9, 2011 • 1 note •

Home

Far below, the water stretches out as far as the eye can see. It’s grey and yellow and perfectly still, like a piece of thin silk held taught beneath the sun. I see fishing villages floating on the water, red blue and brown wooden roofs, boats like toys abandoned in the distance. It takes me a while to realise the bushes dotted across the water are actually trees, half submerged by the rising waters of the rainy season. From here the Tonlé Sap looks peaceful, and gargantuan.

We’ve landed. Through the window I can see the string of visitors making their way down the stairs and the smiles breaking on their faces. Siem Reap is a perfect little airport, with red tiled roofs in a classical Cambodian style, its immaculate white walls standing against a backdrop of luxuriant countryside dotted with sugar palms. Everyone stops to take a picture. Singapore girls coyly doing a V sign, students with heavy backpacks, solemn looking Chinese men in comfortable windbreakers.

While everyone fills out their visa forms I walk on towards the immigration counters, bracing myself for the conversation I am about to have. It’s the same conversation I will have every day for the next 10 days, with every waitress, shop keeper, hotel receptionist we encounter. Here though it feels more like a test, designed to break through the 5 broken sentences of Khmer I know, to challenge the very heart of who and what I am.

Me: Hello.

Immigration officer: *after a long time spent flicking through the pages of my French passport, unsmilingly* Oh. Khmer, huh?

Me: Yes. *awkward smile*.

Immigration officer: *keeps flicking*

Me:  *nervous glance at the random officer leaning casually against the counter, listening to the conversation*. My mother is Cambodian.

Immigration Officer: Oh, your mother is Cambodian?

Me: Yes. My mother is Cambodian. She lives in Siem Reap.

Immigration officer Oh, she lives in Siem Reap huh?

Me: Yes, that’s right, she lives in Siem Reap.

Immigration Officer: Your mother is cambodian. And the dad? French?

Me: Yes, The dad is French.

Immigration Officer: Oooooh. Ha ha ha. Your mother is Cambodian, and your dad is French.

Me: Yes! Ha ha ha. My mother is Cambodian, my dad is French.

Immigration Officer: Aaaaah. Ha ha ha. You’re a child of mixed race, huh?

Me: Yes, ha ha ha. That’s right. I’m a child of mixed race.

Immigration Officer: *stamps the passport* OK thank you!

Outside it takes me a while to find my mother, who’s waiting beyond the line of touts and tuk tuk drivers waiting for their allocated tourists. Every time I see her, her hair looks greyer, the lines on her face more pronounced, her body smaller and less substantial somehow.

We climb into the beaten up Lexus, its wheels caked with the red mud of the dirt roads. “Hungry?”, mum asks. She reaches into a plastic bag at her feet, and pulls out an ear of corn, fat and juicy and still warm. 

I take it gratefully and bite into the sweet crunchy kernels, and for a brief, peaceful moment, I am home.