O-whata-week

i mentioned something about orientation week and jadedness, but it was hard not to have some of that energetic, youth-bursting atmosphere rub off on me. it helps that i couldnt go anywhere without having to go through the spread of carnival all around the campus. although, i must say that i have been asked my age in one week more than i have ever in any 3 years back home! crazy people...:






gay and lesbian club - a very important association in school. you get all sorts of networking opportunities!


oh my che guevara, the heady insignia of every self-respecting university










you know it's hectic stuff when the student union (oh yes, unions... hallelujah...) provide sofas al fresco (and al free of charge!)
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then last sunday we headed to the beach. perfect weather - 20 deg, with the white sands, beautiful (and scantily-clad) people, and the pacific ocean rolling out before you:














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and then an opening dinner at college, rounding up the first week of school:
























You grow up in a place where you are told your country is multi-racial. But of course it is. Yet you, and every one of you, acquiesce to having your ethnicity effaced, erased, and abstracted to an inaccurate, erroneous, vacuous, category. Not for a moment do you stop to ask, what does 'Other' mean? What about the many other others? What does ‘racial harmony’ mean in a place whose people are ignorant of their own and of another's histories and culture, whose anthem is a foreign language, and whose pledge is an empty emblem? What does it say of a people who do not care that their unity is a mirage?

Then you come another place discovering that perhaps you have been deceived; that there is no such thing as the labels you have been acculturated with – that there are only you, and me, and anyone else who walks on this same ground. And if you are fortunate, half the world might travel to a place your paths could cross easily, and you might pause for a moment, say a hello, and have a picture taken.

melbourne vs sydney

i'm settling in alright, school doesnt start till next week, and next week is orientation week, and that means i've got one more week off. actually, i don't really have lessons proper, all i need is to arrange for a consultation with my supervisor, discuss some initial research questions and directions, and then invade the library. ah but these can only be done after everyone else are done running around excitedly.

and it's hard to be excited about something i've done three times before. i'm about ten years older than the freshies, attending my fourth uni (i did graduate from the previous three, just in case you're wondering) in a fourth different city, and i'm as jaded and exhausted as any jaded and exhausted institution-hopper can be. but that doesnt mean i don't enjoy my time now, and that the coming few years would be a dread and a chore. for god knows how long,this, is what i've been waiting for man...

but ideally, i'd have loved to be able to go back to melbourne. and coming to sydney this time only made me miss it even more - a case of so-near-yet-so-far. sydney's ok, it's got great beaches, a beautiful harbour and a bridge and the opera house, and sydney university's just gorgeous. but it's not melbourne. sydney can't hold a candle to melbourne's arty, groovy, indie vibes, wine bars and first-rate cuisine, its laneway cafe culture, its european, bohemian, air. these are things that appeal to me, and are what make melbourne more than just an old flame. i do wish i were back.

maybe i'd grow to love sydney, who knows. but as they say, first loves are the most unforgettable. when i first came to melbourne, it was as much a non-event as stepping out of my room to go to the kitchen. and it was winter then, rain, cold and grey and all. and how unknowingly i was in the kitchen's thrall. but well, mr sydney, i'll let you know in four years' time.

i promised to put up the aussie pics when i visited last june, what better time (than never) to present the two age-old rivals - forever putting the other down, engaged in a permanent battle to outdo the other - to be the city of australia:

Melbourne :


CBD area. the countless times i got lost amidst its buildings even though they were few and the streets were laid out in a grid!


southbank and the yarra river. i think of that one gloomy winter day having coffee with s, the grey giant clouds threatening to bring the city along with it


degraves street, and one of my favourite cafes in the city. when it gets very crowded you have working professionals milling around with cigarette and latte on the one hand, and a mobile phone on the other; and the bohemian types sitting on wooden crates in tubetops, jackie'O sunglasses, and a breakfast at tiffany debonair


the university of melbourne (ahhh...) - old arts (left) and law quad (right). how many times i've sat on the benches in front of the clock tower and read


anthropology and geography school. a lecturer there once gave me a C grade for a term paper accusing me of being a PAP apparatchik. i have since repented and reformed.


inside the old quad. leaning against the cold sandstone pillar while clad in comfy woollies and pondering the profoundest existential questions of life is one of the profoundest satisfactions one can derive from studying at this institution - that is, provided you have a propensity to ponder profoundly

Sydney:


the harbour bridge at sunset. i always wondered what's so fascinating about those gigantic steel structures while being fascinated by it


the famed opera house. likewise, i can never understand people's obsession with this clutter of faded, dated, aging seashells. i suppose architectural effects can be rather gestalt-ish.


st. mary's cathedral. when i took this picture there was a rainbow pouring through the fan of waters


the university of new south wales: john niland scientia building, where graduation ceremonies are held. when i visited as a tourist, who'd have thought i'd return eight months later as a student. life's endless surprises huh


its modern-ish buildings cant compare with sydney uni's (or unimelb's), but some pretty good research gets done here, they have a few rhodes scholars and nobel laureates already.


the business faculty, otherwise known as the asian money spinner. my word of advice to anyone wishing to experience a true university education is - never enrol in a business degree (unless you wanna do economics). hey i'm speaking from experience


the library, also one of the ugliest buildings in sydney. but they do have beautiful books inside, so it's all forgiven
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that's all the pictures for now, there're too many to put up and i don't wanna go figure out how to go the collage thing all over again (thanks, Apple). i'll try to keep you guys updated on what i'm doing as much as i can, and as you probably can tell, i seem much happier already - i am. i need to be re-acquainted with communal living. the art of making small talks and joining in activities i've not much interest in etc etc. i really just wanna be left alone to read my book. my next door neighbour, an architecture student, is also like that - i think we're just made for each other.

while i'm still rambling about universities, i'll put up the picture of the uni i'd most loooooooove to attend. when i drove through new england last october, i visited a few of the ivy leagues - just to stroll through their green lawns and hallowed halls - yale, brown, harvard, upenn, columbia, and none could match this sentient rush of vertigo this uni invoked - the prestigious, the secluded, the aristocratic, the elegantbeautifulravishingfantabulouslydazzlinglychokestoppinglyheartbreakinglygorrrrrgeousohhhhmyyyygorrrrrgeooooooussssssssss....


..... ahhhhhhhhhhhh.... dartmouth college

i wrote on my last night in singapore

i wrote on my last night in singapore - something i hadnt done for some time - wondering why i was talking as if i were never returning. i hope so; the past three-odd lay-about months have been slow, agonising, frustrating, it's a miracle i survived the ordeal. where do i even begin penning the things in my mind then? i wished i would just go, start a new life, and never look back. but who knows? eternity in an hour, william blake once said. there i sat by my desk, in that room that'd grown familiar over the last four years, and gazed out of my window with an armload of thouthgs. despite the metal grilles and wooden slats blocking the view, despite the rows of north korean-ish, utilitarian-brutish rows of flats, despite the never-ending whirr of expressway traffic that never ceased to irritate, i'd surprisingly managed to complete quite a bit of work proper the years i sat there. and i wondered, as i looked out into the empty night, if that was it - the night i'd been waiting for. but what, actually, is the day i've been waiting for? is today my new beginning - or yet one another - or tomorrow, when i'd be at a different land, writing in another place, looking out to a different view, outside and below, a different traffic?

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.-- four quartets, t.s. eliot
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and i'm very touched by the students who turned up at the airport, and of course, i'm grateful to friends and family, without whom. i'll share some pics:


in the cab, on the way to the airport. these cranes'd be gone the next time i pass by. is this all singapore is about - building and demolishing, and still building? i want to love this country, but what can i love, if the present is forever vanishing?


there's samuel on my right, who put in quite an effort to organise the airport excursion


tis' aixin - despite being a cute little girl, she can wail like a siren. it's a compliment of course :)


the sec 3s. to think that when i first walked into their classes they were little sec 1 kids.


the 3p3 boys (once a 3, always a 3 la)


plus the 3p girls


dragonboy #1 - he practises his dragonboat by standing on his classroom desk and clapping out a rhythm to english poetry


dragonboy #2 - he absolutely detests people who litter in class (because he detests picking up those litter even more)


dragonboy #3 - he's the sole inventor of the Darken Your Skin for Whiter-looking Teeth dental regime


dragonboy #4 - if you ever lend him a dvd, make sure to activate the loansharks. otherwise, he's one of the most lovable kids around :)


this one robo-boy - he's the first student to ever tell me in my face during a lesson, "wah lao so boring sia..." of course, it was the screening of the movie Dead Poets Society


bertybert - an old old school friend


pingping - otherwise known as the Guardian of My Books, Fellow Wintersonian, and Eternal Fayenatic


mr fadz - this guy would burn a planet to help a friend in need, what more can i say?


looking like some HK celebrity just arrived


ah, there he is... the latest photo scandal


the 8-hour flight flew by like nothing. my most pleasant ever (qantas is a greater way to fly!). this otherwise innocuous signboard appeared in front of my eyes like a dream


my room for now, i'm trying to do it up a bit so that soon it'd start emitting my very unique smell. and i think it's ominous to have bookshelves in the room already.
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up to the point before i saw everyone at the airport, i had looked forward to sydney, to waving goodbye to all that's in singapore, and just be by myself, a stranger in a strange world. then i wasnt sure anymore - it'd be hard not to complete this trip without getting that phd. in a way, coming to see me off was conferring an expectation on me. and should i do graduate at the end of it all, i have very very much to thank my family, friends. and these students too, who gave me almost two magical years. some feelings are beyond words, indescribable, like strange, new, destinations - and these kids had brought me there. i may be in another life and time now, but i don't think i'd left that enchanted place, and perhaps, i never shall.
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you kiddos: we'll all work hard, and we'll do fabulous, and we'll all graduate.

remember carpe diem :)

and then there're my books

and then there're my books. i've been reading since i was a kid, cultivated by the regular trips to the library with my mum, who would also never refuse to buy me a book i wanted. book shopping was a weekly event till sometime in my late teens, when magazines and hanging out in malls interested me far more than words and stories, and i stopped reading. but even then, those reading days were a big blur - i could read, and i read, but i never knew how to read until i discovered winterson, who through her exuberant prose, taught that language was more than words strung together to convey meaning - it was also about style, lineage, rhythm, effect, beauty, and above all, poetry. to paraphrase blake: she taught me /to see the world in a grain of word/ and heaven in a wild letter/. and through her novels, i learnt how to appreciate serious literature, and the shelves after shelves of fiction in the bookshops were strangers and daunting no more. through her i could go on to read and appreciate the great, the canonical, the sublime.

and to think this was a mere three years ago. when i returned from melbourne i brought back with me my one stack of books packed into a courier box with much space leftover. how much i've accumulated the last few years; that one stack of books grew and started threatening to topple, and was soon shifted into a new shelf. i still remember thinking, on the way to ikea, if i really needed to buy a bookshelf (that money could go to buying at least six books!). but i think i was buying books at a rate of twenty, even thirty a month (those 30%, 40% borders coupons aren't helping), and not long after a bigger bookshelf had to come, and then an even bigger one. when there was no more space for yet another bookshelf the books had to be double-shelved, and they were bursting off the planks.

unlike walter benjamin, who wrote a lovely, touching, essay on unpacking his crates of beloved books, and installing an exquisite library in his new home, i've had to pack up my beloveds the last few weeks. preceding this was two months of agonising over what books to bring with me to sydney. so for the past forty days or so i was swinging between bringing all and bringing none, and bringing some-of-what in between. brutality works, really. singpost charges me $90 per 20kg, and that meant i could only afford to send down what i need (academic books), and what i really need (some literary tomes; ok, very few). the rest have gone, all eight boxes along with the three bookshelves, to a dear friend's house; they went this evening, and jp and i spent the next few hours unpacking and shelving the books in his room. it was surreal, seeing my familiar loves, a few more than a thousand of them, standing nonchalant in a foreign room, as if they were angry with me. my room now looks, feels, and is, bare. in a way it seems to have lost its soul. this is one reason i find book-less houses a horrifying and depressing affair - is it all about the newest home theatre system and slimmest laptop computer? what does it say about the person who thinks so? i think not much.

i shan't see my books for the next four years, but i know they're in good hands, that they would be read and appreciated, homage adequately paid; and i take comfort in these, as well as the thought that in a way, i'd be reading them vicariously, over oceans and timezones. and four years is a long time for another personal library to not be erected down under, what more with its more established literary culture and rows of small independent bookshops (who genuinely care about books). but this time, at the end of it, they'd be coming home, and we'd all reunite, and live happily ever and ever after.

怀念

好想念你那一夜躺在我胸怀轻唱的那温暖感觉。
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有时侯， 我想、 我想、 我想我不是我。

cny

Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what you wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

-- Red, Ted Hughes.

it must have been some eight, ten years since i visited my paternal relatives during chinese new year, and come think of it, other than those years i was away studying, i don't know how i pulled it off not visiting them. last cny i simply avoided all visiting and phone calls and locked myself alone at home. and just like that, years and years vanished. visiting them brings back lotsa childhood memories coz when i was a kid my grandma used to bring me visiting every other week, and aunts and uncles would shower me with candies and food and teasings and i had lotsa cousins to play with. now we've all grown up and old, i'm really happy that everyone is doing very well and establishing careers and families and all. only if my grandma were still around; everyone remembers her unending supply of yakult - whenever one of us arrives, it's one bottle outta the fridge, as a welcome, a treat, a gesture of love. lately i've realised being around family softens me a little, brings me back to myself, humbles me a little, not least the quiet reminder at the back of my mind that one by one we'd one day be gone.

(but one shall not end on such a gloomy note. two more weeks and then *i* shall be gone. HOORAY.)

手心

最近交了个新朋友，就如遇到了久违的亲友， 从一开始就聊得轻松自在。 有一次他跟我说，他去算过命，那师父看了他的手文， 说他只能活到三十多岁， 而且这条路也可是孤单的。

我不知道人的命运是注定， 或是自决的。 其实，既使知道了答按， 又能怎样。 对我而言， 人生长短不重要， 一年，十年， 都是时间， 一天一秒也是时间。 更重要的是怎么去把握剩余的时间， 来活得更充分， 更开心， 把撒在地上的一分一秒捡起来好好地珍惜， 把无明时间磨成珍贵的时光与快乐。 岁月在窗外地划过， 又能怎样。岁月最后的失散， 与我们终归的成灰， 也不过是当然的。

孤单不代表孤独， 自立也是一种特权。 在这有时苦不堪言的人间上， 能平安地自力更生， 静心地流浪独自的小天堂，有可还是一种恩赐呢。 快乐真的那么难实现吗？但是， 我想人心总可是欲壑难填的吧。在着世上， 有谁不寻找爱。

in credulity

i had dinner with my dad yesterday, and i brought up my plan to migrate to Australia. It slipped my mind that I had never mentioned it to him before, though i've discussed it with almost everyone else in my family. So when his response to me was a hearty, "But Singapore is the best country in the world! What do you want to migrate for?" I don't know what got to me that very split-second when I abruptly burst forth in a hale of laughter. he must have been taken aback, and so was i, because when he looked at me in that sincere quizzical look and asked me what i was laughing about, i was stupefied i didn't know what to say. for all my rantings about my frustrations of this country and it's rude, vain, vulgar, loud, crass, stupid people, i had taken for granted that my dad knew this contrarian side of me.

and what is wrong with this country? really, with it's world class first class first world blahblahblahs; really, what can be wrong?

with our first-class propaganda and indoctrination, what can be wrong, really?

but really, what can be real?

just read the straits times daily and i'd be hard pressed not to come away convulsing in embarrassment and frothing in vomit. i hope you would too.

take one of yesterday's articles “Squeeze on Everyman's wallet: Issue tackled in subdued way” for example - a piece of drivel written by a 'senior correspondent' relaying some happenings in parliament. it provided for a fantastic read, with rich renditions of the ‘debate’; MP’s potential ‘fire-power’; madam halimah yacob being a ‘reliable, folksy heroine’; mr tharman ‘always a study in calm and lucid authority’.

these gratuitous descriptions aside, since when has debate come to reference an exercise resembling a docile press conference more than a sustained discussion and critique of differing opinions? madam halimah’s ‘probing’ question to mr tharman was whether more levels of assistance would be forthcoming. mr tharman’s reply: an iteration of the existing range of welfare avenues, did not address her question! one would have thought an inquiring and courageous madam halimah would’ve pointed this out to the minister, given that her enquiry in the first place implied a current inadequacy of assistance, or at the very least, the possibility that more might be preferable.

perhaps for a reporter to highlight this in her writing would be asking for too much. that the local media lack objectivity and are hamstrung in providing searing analyses, are quite doubtless. but they needn’t come at the expense of intelligence. partisan, pro-establishment opinions can nevertheless be formulated and conveyed with acumen. but one hopes.

How did the reporter come to conclude that the GIC and Temasek Holdings are independent, are a powerful symbol of Singapore financial and economic decision-making at its best, are strategic, responsible and generally masterful in profiteering? Because the minister said so.

one does hope too, that one day our parliamentary sessions can be rightful, respectable houses of lively, genuine debates of the highest intellectual rigour, rather than this embarrassing soiree of puerile antics and vacuous Q&A. We do not expect any less from our illustrious cavalcade of scholar-mandarins, do we?

until then, when national policies can be earnestly and substantively debated – perhaps about adequacy and type of government assistance, perhaps about the ostensible prudence behind our global investments, or perhaps even about the wisdom of engineering a naïve, gullible citizenry via a cloying, fawning press – I reckon singapore’s aims to true development and maturity would remain a fantasy, in fact rather like that reporter's unbelievable piece of composition. and what an insult and a shame.

when our beloved LKY declaimed that singapore will never be a gracious society in his lifetime, everyone agreed, naturally, including myself. and predictably, out came the straits times' craven parrot (see “Singaporeans’ lack of social graces a social disgrace” ST 14 Jan 08), pretending to analyse our boorish problems and to sound the death knell (these grave peals of bells somewhat a regular recurrence in our country innit?).

but rather than cite a few instances of anti-social behaviour, as the reporter did, many of which have been well-washed in the daily press, even well-understood among the culpable themselves, (it would be interesting to ask why they do not do the right thing) it would have been more useful to examine the root causes, and galvanise thereupon, for positive change. perhaps, for all our vaunting of a ‘world class’ society, education, infrastructure, they indeed do not effectuate genuine manners and refinement. perhaps our ‘world class-ness’ is a myth we have blindly purchased.

i wonder if it's correct to establish distinctions of politeness, civility, and graciousness. (can I be one without being another? more importantly, can I consciously choose to be one without being another?)

that reporter then concluded that singapore amidst increased inward migration would well find in its 'best interests' to be civil or gracious, ignores the point that civility and graciousness are virtues in themselves. in coercing them toward utilitarian ends - as one is wont to in Singapore for almost any other endeavour - i wonder if our penchant for pragmatism isn't a major cause of our sad little predicament.

prelapsarian days

For those who dare to defy the given models of defiance.

- Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias
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another one and a half months, and i'd be departing this country, this old life, and start another life at another place. it's a wonder how much things have changed in the last five years, how much i've changed, so that what came before seem like prelapsarian days. i wouldn't be able to recognise my past self, and i don't think i want to either. is it really that there's only the present, and nothing to remember? some moments are best forgotten, but how much really can I will? there is much to leave behind, and much less to bring along. my newfound lightness feels heavy, maybe i'm not yet used to the light. i hope the gravity that has accumulated and accompanied me the last few years would eventually slip away.

and i hope i'd be happy.

when i turn to look back a few years on, what will i see? in a country where hearts are given to money, minds to shallowness, and heads buried into sands, what will i see? heartless mindless headless corpses, the faceless throngs on orchard road, how did this little island come to be so powerful? how did its indoctrination come to be so omnipresent, its propaganda so subliminal? when i come to that crossroad of nostalgia, will it be one silent cry, or one more lyric on my manuscript?

is it nostalgia, or is it pinings for a never-existed world?

but to be able to look back in time, in time to come, i have to leave this place. to carry on here would be to duel with it, the mindlessness of it all, for my sanity my voice my self. to carry on here would be to sing its cadaveric songs.
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Susan Sontag, Fascinating Fascism -

The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstacy, the fantasy is death.