I'm gonna be MIA until Saturday.

I'm going for the first Arvon Writers' Retreat on Pulau Ubin from Monday 19 Oct to Saturday 24 Oct - which is, of course, the day the Singapore Writers' Festival opens its doors to the public.

Do I think it's been particularly well organised this year? No, I do not. Witnessed its wonderful ambitious themes fall apart due to lack of budget and lack of luck.

But it still is the first year I'll be a featured participant. So here's the events I'm involved in (including one I'm moderating!):

24 Oct 2009, 12:30 pm
Listen to This

Price: Free
Venue : Living Room

Featuring: Madeleine Lee, Ng Yi-Sheng, David Leo

Moderator: Eleanor Wong

Cutting beneath Singapore’s sceptic veneer, Madeleine Lee, Ng Yi-Sheng and David Leo lyrically weave the nation’s essences into poetry. These poets are politically aware, transnational and cosmopolitan, frequently presenting their intensely focused, self-questioning and highly individualised perspectives of Singaporean life, society and culture via their collections. Listen in and find out how Singapore has inspired and challenged them.

Event end: 1.30pm

30 Oct 2009, 6:00 pm (TIME AND DATE CHANGED!!!)
Launch of Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore

Price: Free
Venue : Play Den

Co-published with the Iowa Writing Program, University of Iowa, the anthology Tumasik features the works of Singapore’s finest writers hailing from the four official languages of English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Edited by poet Alvin Pang, the anthology includes Singaporean writers such as Anuar Othman, Madeleine Lee, Quah Sy Ren, Johar Buang, Toh Hsien Min, Kirpal Singh, Verena Tay, MK Narayanan, Latha and Wong Yoon Wah.

Event end: 7.00pm

31 Oct 2009, 5:00 pm
Award-Winning Writers from Singapore

Price: Free
Venue : Blue Room

Featuring: Ng Yi-Sheng, Chia Hwee Pheng, Yeng Pway Ngon, Mohd Latiff Bin Mohd, Latha
Moderator: Kirpal Singh

Singapore’s multi-language and multi-cultural landscape is reflected best in its varied and colourful literary scene. Join Singapore Literature Prize winners and Cultural Medallion award winners as they discuss their roles as writers, their literary adventures in the four official languages of English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, and their hopes for literature in Singapore.

Event end: 6pm

01 Nov 2009, 3:00 pm
Evolution: The Curious Case of Books

Price: Free
Venue : Blue Room

Featuring: Thangavel Palamalai, Appala Narasiah, Meira Chand, Robert Yeo
Moderator: Ng Yi-Sheng

How do books affect or change our lives? What is this medium that moves and transforms? Does it have any place in our visually saturated and fast moving world? Join four of our top writers from India and Singapore as they share their favourite books and debate on the contemporary role of books and literature.

Event end: 4pm

01 Nov 2009, 5:00 pm
Dissecting the Merlion

Price: Free
Venue : Chamber

The Merlion is a many-splendoured thing, alternatively praised and parodied. From its birth as a uniquely Singaporean tourism symbol to its reputation for endless literary exposition since its lyrical lionisation by Edwin Thumboo, the completely made-up creature has earned much currency. How it has come to take on the baggage of a nascent nation is a compelling phenomenon. Dissecting the Merlion brings together eight writers from different backgrounds and generations for a fun, no-holds-barred debate to expound on the topic: the Merlion has been maligned.

Writers include Alfian Sa’at, Desmond Kon, Leong Liew Geok, Ng Yi-Sheng, Alvin Pang, Adrian Tan, Teng Qian Xi and Ovidia Yu. The moderator-host is Eleanor Wong. Also to be launched at the event is a poetry anthology inspired by the Merlion across the four national languages.

Event end: 7pm

Cruise photos

Yes, yes, of course I should upload my photos of exotic decadence in Bali, but I never actually got round to uploading the photos of exotic decadence from the Caribbean cruise we took this May to celebrate my brother's graduation.

That's right. The proletariat we are not.

Ship in dock, Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Preserves vendor, Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Souvenir vendor, Cozumel, Mexico

Annoying cruise director, open sea

Tour guide, Labadee, Haiti

Tour guide, Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Professional photo op, Cozumel, Mexico

Dining room, open sea

Setting sail, Cape Canaveral, Florida

Shared cabin, open sea

Brother eating, Labadee, Haiti

Sister eating, Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Father meditating, Labadee, Haiti

Child meditating, Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Running track/sunbathing deck, open sea

Haitian Flea Market, Labadee, Haiti

ATM, Tulum, Mexico

Deck 5, open sea

Shipwreck, Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Trilingual info panel, Tulum, Mexico

Breakfast buffet, open sea

Jerk platters, Ocho Rios, Jamaica

A la carte dinner, open sea

Me posing, Tulum, Mexico

Sister posing, Georgetown, Cayman Islands

Towel monkey, open sea

Hammocks, Labadee, Haiti

Singing waiters, open sea

Beach, Tulum, Mexico

Farewell party, open sea

Father waiting, Tulum, Mexico

Open sea

Experience Singapore Literature (An All-Night Symposium by the National Library)... deadline for registration is next Tuesday!

Back from Bali! I'm gonna talk about the events I'm doing for the Singapore Literature Festival real soon, but first, here's a special side event that I've been planning with the National Library, happening on the night of Fri Oct 30 to the afternoon of Sat Oct 31. I'm pretty stoked.


Join us for a Symposium on 30-31 October! Forget about sitting and listening to boring discussions. We will be bringing you unique Experiences which are more exciting and on a bigger scale! As the name suggests, we want YOU to Experience literature. Come along and meet the ‘greats’ of the literary circles!

For more details and registration to the different segments of the Symposium, please access our blog at http://blogs.nlb.gov.sg/esl/symposium/.

Supper Club,

Starts 11.30pm Friday 30 October to 6.30am Saturday 31 October
Kick off at Possibility Room, Level 5, National Library Board
*open to those aged 16 years and above

Breakfast Club & Explore Singlit,

Starts 9.30am to 2.00pm on Saturday 31 October 2009
The Pod, Level 16, National Library Building

Admission to the two segments are free and on a first-come-first serve basis as seats are limited. Registration is from now till 20 October 2009. Supper, Breakfast and Lunch arrangements are included accordingly to the different segments.

*Your registration is complete when you receive a confirmation email from us. Seats are limited, so please register only if you can really join us.

Speaking today At the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival!

First time officially. Was corralled into replacing an absent speaker yesterday at the Lands of Chocolate event, where I read poems about mooncakes and vegan ex-boyfriends and shared anecdotes about how my father hates chox after being given flavoured laxatives as a child.

Things are luxurious here, but a little muddled. Will report more later.

Friday 10.45 – 12.15, Neka Museum

Breaking the Taboos
Queer Asian writing

Amir Muhammad
Ernest JK Wen
Ng Yi Sheng
Cok Sawitri
Chair: Dede Oetomo

Saturday, 10.45 – 12.15, Left Bank Lounge

Literary communities

Angelo Lacuesta
M Aan Mansyur
Omar Musa
Ng Yi-Sheng

Chair: Degung Santikarma

Sunday, 4.00 – 5.30, Neka Museum

A New Frontier:

Blogging, Dissent & Solidarity

Doel CP Allisah
Dian Hartati
Antony Loewenstein
Ng Yi-Sheng

Chair: Angela Meyer

Sep 2009 texts

Horribly meagre I know, but then, I was writing.

*POETRY*
+Mina Loy’s “The Lost Lunar Baedeker”

*FICTION*
=Ralph Modder’s “The Curse of the Pontianak”
=Catherine Lim’s “Teardrop Story Woman”

*DRAMA*
Lim Chor Pee’s “A White Rose At Midnight”

*NON-FICTION*
+Bettany Murphy’s “Helen of Troy”

*PERFORMANCES*
Fly Entertainment’s “The Extraordinary V Conference”
=Singapore Dance Theatre’s “Season of Brilliance”
+Buds Theatre’s “The Shagaround”
LaSalle School of the Arts’ +“The Woman in the Window”, =”You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” and +“Blood Wedding”
=Singapore Repertory Theatre’s “Defending the Caveman”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+NUS Museum's “I, Polunin”
=Erika Tan's "Persistent Visions"

*FILMS*
+Kiyoshi Kurosawa's “Tokyo Sonata”
=Kevin Tancharoen's “Fame”

So what the hell happened with the CAP Mentorship?

I'll talk about it in due course. But as of now, the most comprehensive place to talk about it is over at Yawning Bread.

Right now, I'm rushing journalism deadlines and running off for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. I'm doing three panels!

I still miss having a mentee though. Sigh. Probably selfish. Made me feel like a grown-up.

Why I've been silent.

I don't have a CAP mentee anymore. More will be explained in the days to follow.

I'll be doing a presentation on my musical "Georgette" next Saturday, 3 October, 2:30 to 4:45pm

Drop by!

Had a great time writing with the Proletariat Poetry Society today.

Invited emerging/recently returned from abroad and bloody good poets Johann Loh and Lee Yew Leong along as well. We must've generated at least 100 doggerels between us. Yew Leong says he wants to buy a typewriter of his own - better suited to his writing, he says.

Plus we get paid $30 each for our servility! On the downside, left my headphones back there.

And now for some lolz.

UPDATE: Seems that my mentee, [redacted], ordered a poem for me at PPF today:

you were all dying when it began

CLEAR

in taoist philosophy, there is something that is referred to as XUAN
it is a murky, unclear thing, existing somewhat like a cloud of
mystery and undefined certainties
all things pass through it before exi ting
and will do so again after their end
in it, this primordial substance
are the XXXXXXXXX imaginary numbers
and the unspoken words


Woowhee. I wrote my mentors an assload of poems. But did I ever commission any for them? Nosiree!

Kudos: I has it.

Oh yeah! And I'm going to be working with Proletariat Poetry Factory on Saturday (tomorrow) at Raffles City.

It'll be at:

Basement 1, Raffles City Shopping Centre (Outside MPH & Gloria Jeans)
3:00pm - 7:00pm

We'll be using typewriters and headphones to create stream-of-consciousness poetry on order, for $4 or so per piece. Come along and patronise us!

I think we're a run-up event for Singapore Writers' Festival? But I may be mistaken.

Rethinking the Nanyang

There's a public forum happening at 3:15 on Sat 25 September at the National Library on the Nanyang Artists (i.e. folks like Liu Kang, Georgette Chen and Cheong Soo Pieng who established a natively Malayan school of painting here in the '50s). Come if you like.

I'll be speaking the week after on Saturday 3 October, 3pm, same time, about the development of the musical "Georgette". Details forthcoming.

Comparative Literature Fail

The chronic procrastinator strikes again with found lols. Apologies to all.



see more Fail Blog

Speak Truth to Papa

(Scene: Car Interior)

YS: So mum wanted to have dinner on Saturday, and I told her I'd be happy to go if I could bring my boyfriend.

Father: Yuck! No!

YS: Yeah, well, that's more or less what she said.

Father: I've told you before. We are tolerant. But we don't embrace it.

YS: But don't you want to meet him? Aren't you glad I'm finally serious about somebody?

Father: Aiyah, I can't explain my reasons to you.

YS: Um, is that because they're not actually founded on logic?

(Yeah, this actually happened a few hours ago. Of course I love the fact that my dad brought us up to talk back to him)

Singapore MRT Anagram Map!!!

I've been wanting to post this since forever. Click on it. You know you want to.



From Black Coffee (Deprecated). Wonder if he's working on a version that includes the Circle Line?

YAY EIGHTIES!!!

Sorry, showing my age.

Texts August 2009

Yes, it's true. I only watched two movies last month.

*POETRY*
=Wole Soyinka’s “Selected Poems”
+Emily Brontë’s “Poems of Solitude”
+Koh Jee Leong’s “Equal to the Earth”
=Jerome Kugan’s “The Loneliest Profession in the World”

*FICTION*
+Mary Hooper's "Newes From the Dead"

+Jack London’s “Before Adam”
+Lloyd Jones’s “The Book of Fame”
+J.M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians”

*DRAMA*
+Rabindranath Tagore’s “Chitra”
+Peter Schaffer’s “Amadeus”

*NON-FICTION*
+Kenneth Paul Tan’s “Renaissance Singapore”
+Jan Morris’s “Conundrum”

*PERFORMANCES*
=Action Theatre’s “Streetwalkers”
+Dream Academy’s “Sing Dollar”
=Talk Sense’s “Ah Kua Show”
+Mux’s “What Day Is It Today?”
+Atlantis Productions Inc’s “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”
+STAGES’s “H Is For Hantu”
=Play Den Productions’ “Salusuah”
+Cake Theatre’s “The Comedy of the Tragic Goats”
+Toy Factory’s “The Crab Flower Club”
+Checkpoint Theatre’s “Recalling Mother”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+NUS Museum’s “Baba House”
+Chris Yap’s “Of Fingerbowls and Hankies”
=Matthias Heng’s “8-8-88”
+2902 Gallery’s “Paradise Lost”
+8QSAM’s “President’s Young Talents”
National Museum’s =“Story of the Image” and +“Lost In the City”
+Sarkasi Said’s “Batik Fusion Exotica”
+Malay Heritage Centre’s permanent exhibition
+Artspace@Helutrans’s “100 Objects Remixed”
+Valentine Willie’s “The Air-Conditioned Recession”

*FILMS*
Kan Lume’s “Female Games”
+Jack Neo’s “Where Got Ghost”

At the movies

Where Got Ghost? is actually quite watchable!



And The Blue Mansion trailer is hella professionally done... I wanna watch this!



But Female Games stinks. I mean, really, really. All the Sayoni lesbians who watched it felt offended.



So what else is coming this year in Singapore cinema?

I've printed the programme for ContraDiction!

Innit pretty?



Pfah, wait till you see my costume.

CONTRADICTION V this Sunday

Just to let all you guys know again, I'll be hosting our annual queer literary reading this coming Sunday:

ContraDiction V
Sunday, 30 August,
from 7-10pm
72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road, 2nd floor
(Here's how to get there.)
Part of the IndigNation Pride Festival

I've curated and emceed this edition, and I'm very happy with the standard of writing that's being represented, as well as the established and emerging faces who'll be present. It'll be very casual, so even if you're just curious and feel like sticking your head in a while for sh*ts and giggles, feel free. Be warned, though: seats fill up fast. Fortunately, there will be beanbags.

This year, our guests include Robin Loon, Jasmine Seah, Leona Lo, Michael Corbidge, Lee Yew Leong, Irfan Kasban and Iris Judotter, to name just a few!

Hope to see you there!

By the way, I'm attached.

His name's Mohan. He's adorable.

Have announced it on Facebook, but wanted to wait till I had a good picture of us together before I blogged about it.



Unfortunately, when we're together we're always too busy chattering or PDA-ing to remember to ask someone to take our photo. (We're both quite on about queer activism - holding hands in public isn't just pleasure, it's also propaganda.)

I have tried to take a photo today, but he claims he doesn't photograph well, and - to tell the truth, with me being so pallid and him being so dark, we haven't figured out the right exposure yet.

So the above photo (taken with my Mac) really is the best shot we've got of the two of us together. If you wanna see what he really looks like, go to my Facebook page.

Datuk Hitler tries to deal with Malaysian polygamy

Maybe you could call this Madu Hitler.



Anyone can help to translate the Malay subtitles? Saya cuba belajar, tetapi hanya boleh faham beberapa patah perkataan sahaja...

I have two poems in Asian Cha No. 8.

It's a HK-based online journal. Check it out.

Also, if you enter the Singapore national anthem in the original Malay into the English-Japanese-dada translation programme Translation Party, you get the following:

Singapore Rakyat northern Mali,
dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon,
dragon, dragon,
dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon,
dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon.

Dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon,
dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon
menuju, BERUJAYASHINGAPURA
North YANSEFUGADO mulia,
bahagia, to protect the country.

North Marilah berseru,
BAYAN dengan semangat.
Semua North bersatu,
majulah Singapura! Majulah Singapura.

It's singable in three verses!!! Try it!

I has a mentee!

She's a [redacted] girl named [redacted]. This is us at the Creative Arts Programme Mentorship Tea.

[image redacted]

She's my first official mentee! Interesting experimental bent towards prose poems. Hopefully this works out.

UPDATE: Photo from MOE official Ms Lim Siew Yea!

[image redacted]

God, I look cocky. I think I had chicken in mouth or something.

My review for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee...

... kena censor by Straits Times in today's Life!. Sigh.

Don't really want fight, since I'm just doing it for the money. But the bit that got cut is the focal point of my review (and pretty damn scandalous, so I guess ST didn't want to cause a conservative uproar), so I reproduce it here, excised material in bold.

> theatre
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Atlantis Productions, Inc.
Victoria Theatre
Wednesday

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is full of surprises. Sure, you might have expected this Tony Award-winner to be a song and dance extravaganza that inspires children to excel academically. Instead, it turns out to be a wonderfully mischievous drama, charming audiences young and old with its vivid characters.

The show takes a while to warm up. There is an energy missing from the first few scenes, as the cast sings too softly, moving without the exuberance one would expect of an opening. Even a song like “Pandemonium”, in which the contestants leap off their chairs in frustration, comes across as a little too tame.

However, as the players gain momentum, we warm to their roles. Johann Dela Fuente plays the endearing Leaf Coneybear, a child of hippies who feels out of place among all the geniuses, as he relates in his song “I’m Not That Smart”.

Another memorable figure is Nancy Park, an overachieving Korean-American girl played by Shiela Valderrama Martinez. After her solo, “I Speak Six Languages”, she dramatically forces herself to fail, encouraged by a kindly apparition of Jesus.

Extra spice is added through audience participation. Four “guest spellers” are invited on stage at every show, pretending to be students, and made to spell ridiculously obscure or ridiculously simple words – my night, guests got terms as varied as “pilgarlick” and “dog”.

Remarkably, these hapless guests are soon persuaded to join in some of the basic choreography, while the MC improvises commentary on their appearances, noting, for instance, how they were the first in their grade to grow facial hair.

The biggest surprise, however, is the level of adult humour in the show. This ranges from intellectual references to Nietzsche to shocking flashes of sequined panties under checkered skirts.

One character faces pressure from her gay fathers (their relationship is fairly dysfunctional, which is probably why the censors okayed it). Another character, played excellently by Felix Rivera, has a lament about the circumstances which caused him to misspell his word, entitled “My Unfortunate Erection”. Pretty funny stuff – and fortunately, it goes right over the heads of younger children.

Spelling Bee is not your typical big-budget musical, nor, in my opinion, is it brilliantly executed by this cast. Still, the power of the script and its lovable band of quirky characters shines through. Audiences can still expect a satisfying, rib-tickling evening at the theatre. Thankfully, no surprises there.

There was a giant puppet of "Mrs Raffles" in the National Day Parade last night.

Given that:

1) such a character has never appeared before in the parade,

2) my play "The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles", staged last year, featured Sophia Raffles as a prominent character,

3) the parade director this year, Ivan Heng, was also the back-up director of my play "The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles" last year (my original director, Christina Sergeant, had a family emergency)

... did I inadvertently influence this year's NDP?

It could've been someone else's idea, of course. :) Like maybe Loo Zihan's:



That's from his multimedia project Sophia Raffles, staged in '07 at NTU.

I'm performing this afternoon!

Why not mark this occasion with a delightful Youtube?

Things I do when I'm supposed to meet several deadlines in the week, #57

Pluck all the hairs off one side of my moustache.






Actually, I restored the balance, so I'm not freakish now. Well, other than in the everyday psychological way.

THE PATRIARCH ALWAYS PAYS at the Arts House at 4pm Sat 8 August

... is the title of the commedia dell'arte inspired play that I've devised with four other writer/performers as part of the DramaBox Blanc Space collaborative playwriting programme, under the guidance of American playwright Joan Holden.



It's a makeshift presentation using texts we wrote over the weekend, so it won't be stellar, but it'll be fun. It's a comedy set in old Suzhou about organ transplants! I play the faithful servant Ah Lek, based on Arlecchino.

Once again, it's on:

Sat 8 August, 4pm
The Hall @ The Arts House (i.e. the small building with the Vietnamese restaurant, next to the Arts House proper)
Price: FREE


The writers/performers are:

Chris Lee
Verena Tay
Peggy Ferroa
Jacklyn Kuah
Ng Yi-Sheng

Every Annie Lennox song remixed

by DJ Earworm, with her blessing. In the future, every a cappella group will be doing remixes like this.

Texts July 2009

Weirdly enough, I've read only a handful of non-graphic books and watched only two films this month. What's wrong with me?

*POETRY*
=Wong Yoon Wah’s “Beyond Silence”

*FICTION*
=Mikhail Kuznin’s “Wings”
+Julia Leigh’s “Disquiet”

*DRAMA*
=Bryan Tan’s “Travelling Light with a Heavy Heart”

*NON-FICTION*
+Robert Schnakenberg’s “Secret Lives of Great Authors”
+Terry Tan’s “Stir-Fried But Not Shaken”
=Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa”
+Stephen Fry’s “Moab Is My Washpot”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Larry Gonick’s “The Cartoon History of America”
+Kurt Busiek’s “Superman: Camelot Falls: The Weight of the World”
=Daphne Gottlieb and Diane DiMassa’s “Jokes and the Unconscious”

*PERFORMANCES*
=World-In-Theatre and Singapore Indian Association’s “Thillana Mohana”
+W!ld Rice’s “Own Time Own Target”
+Short and Sweet Singapore’s “Gala Final”
=The Theatre Practice’s “4:48 Psychosis”
Fran Borgia’s “Film – Faust”
Action Theatre’s “Streetwalkers”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Woods & Woods’s “Resuscitation”
+Brian Gothong Tan and Zulkifle Mahmod’s “Synaesthesia”
+Peranakan Museum’s “Baba Bling”
+National Museum’s “Night Festival”
+NUS Museum’s “Site, Situation, Spectator”
+Yi Hwan Kwon’s “A World Not Quite Alike”
Jendela’s “The 28th UOB Painting of the Year Competition”
=Your Mother Gallery’s “Seelan Palay: Solo Exhibition”
=Singapore Heritage Festival’s “Corridors of Celebration”

*FILMS*
=Marcel Gisler's "Fögi Is a Bastard"
= Chukiat Sakveerakul’s “The Love of Siam”