Sunday, January 31, 2010

Verse City

I should also mention that I did a column about the state of Singapore literature for Quill, a Kuala Lumpur-based literary magazine funded by MPH. It's online here at the official site, and also at editor Eric Forbes' site, where it has more comments.

There's going to be regular coverage on Singapore lit by Singapore residents/citizens. Amazingly, the magazine accepted my name for the column: "The Noise Downstairs". :)

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Interview for South China Morning Post

I got this done during last year's Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival. Click to read!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Esplanade Concourse Show!

Hey guys, quick news: next Tuesday and Wednesday, I'll be performing poems from "last boy" at the Esplanade. I'll be accompanied by indie musicians Clarence and Sam, who've created songs based on poems from the book. (They're the main act, really.)



That's them, btw. Yes, Sam is short for Samantha.



Once again:

Tue 26 and Wed 27 January
7:15pm and 8:15pm (same show done twice)
Esplanade Concourse

B).

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I'm back from Flying Circus Project!

The Cambodian participants BEFORE our workshops with them:



The Cambodian participants AFTER:



Contemporary art = late capitalist globalised hegemony? Maybe, but we can have a good time while we're at it!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

What city am I in now?



Documenting Flying Circus Project every frickin' day.

Here's a clip of Papua-Indonesian choreographer Jecko Siompo, delivering a workshop to young traditional Cambodian dancers.



It's the kangaroo stance! More info here.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

I'm going to Cambodia for Flying Circus Project, 6 to 14 December.

Serving as documenter again - so regular updates will be appearing on the Flying Circus Project Wordpress Blog. As soon as we're back, we'll do a SUPERINTENSE presentation on 16 Jan at 72:13 in Singapore. Here's the publicity:

TheatreWorks / 72-13 presents

Flying Circus Project Platform 03
SUPERINTENSE

Superintense: 16 January 2010

Airan Berg, Ashok Sukumaran, Eszter Salamon, Filiz Sizanli, Gurur Ertem, Hafiz Dhaou, Heman Chong, Hu Fang, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Jecko Siompo, Manuel Pelmus, Mia Haugland Habib, Mustafa Kaplan, Nelisiwe Xaba, Shaina Anand, Tarek Atoui, Tim Etchells, Vlatka Horvat, Zulkifle Mahmod.



Superintense is a marathon of personal strategies of creativity in the urban context, in our worlds. From one morning to the next, all the FCP artists will have an hour each to present their work, their practice to themselves and a public audience. A table, a projector, a microphone, an audience; which can all be reconstructed into an open space – the same conditions are given to each artist. They are invited to share their practice with the audience; past work, present work, future work. It can take the form of a talk, a lecture-demonstration, a performance, slides, a video, a DJ session, a workshop, a discussion. Without a break, all the artists relentlessly articulate their practice, communicating an insight to the myriad ways of inhabiting, dissolving, thinking, making, living, destroying, rejuvenating. An actor, an audience, a shared space. Take a cigarette pause on the run.

Date: 16 January 2010
Time: 11am till late
Venue: 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road
Admission: Free

Oh, and before I leave tomorrow morning, here's a map of where I've been so far:


visited 40 states (17.7%)
Create your own visited map of The World

So much of the world left to see!!!!

Saturday, January 02, 2010

And a farewell to 2009...



It's a mashup of the year's 25 top pop hits, by DJ Earworm. For a better view, go to the HD page on Youtube.

It's a massive development over his already very fine 2008 and 2007 mashups. Personally, though, I feel his finest work is the mashup "No More Gas":




This is what the DJ said when he uploaded the track in '08:

…Lately in pop music there’s been this growing undercurrent of dysfunction and desperation.

Leona Lewis talks about love in terms of flesh wounds, Akon sings of girls being dangerous, Danity Kane complains of being damaged, Ne-Yo is unable to control himself, Rihanna is going crazy.

Meanwhile a burning hunger for more cries out: The Pussycat Dolls, Britney, and Lupe Fiasco all desire fame, attention, recognition, and they encourage the listener to feel the same way. All this, mixed in with Madonna’s pre-apocalyptic pop song plus Estelle and Kanye’s transatlantic lovefest, starts to paint a picture of where our culture is today, overwhelmed by our own raging appetites, even as we run out of what we need.

And you can dance to it!

UPDATE: I've just found out he's a gay man, too. Used to spin for a San Francisco party called Faggot. See here.

Friday, January 01, 2010

Texts Dec 2009

Happy New Year!!! And here's the last of the books I read from 2009... oddly enough, no poetry this time round.

*FICTION*
+Amélie Nothomb’s “Sulphuric Acid”
+Mae West’s “She Done Him Wrong”
+“Body 2 Body: A Malaysian Queer Anthology” ed. Pang Khee Teik and Jerome Kugan
+Susanna Vance’s “Sights”

*DRAMA*
Sim Teow Li’s “Curios”
+Vijay Nair’s “The Gloomy Rabbit and Other Plays”

*NON-FICTION*
+QI, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson’s “QI: The Pocket Book of General Ignorance”
+Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-mei Balasingamchow “Singapore: A Biography”

*UNCLASSIFIABLE"
+Parvez Devan's "The Book of Hanuman"

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Troy Chin’s “The Resident Tourist”, Parts 2 and 3
+Philip Ardagh’s “The Lawless Sisters”
+Amruta Patil’s “Kari”
+Edward Gorey’s “Amphigorey Again”
+Chester Brown’s “I Never Liked You”

*PERFORMANCES*
+The Finger Players’ “Cat, Lost and Found”
+STAGES’ “Chestnuts Does Christmas Like a Hard Candy Virgin”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru’s ““Signposts of the Times”
Fort St George, Chennai’s permanent exhibiton
National Museum of Singapore’s +“Quest for Immortality – the World of Ancient Egypt”, +“THE BAG: Carrier bags in Singapore from the 1950s to the 1980s” and “Spot & Shoot 2009: Our Landscape”

*FILMS*
+Ron Clements and John Musker’s “The Princess and the Frog”
+James Cameron’s “Avatar”

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Three Cheers for ACT3!!!!


With my editor's permission, I reworked an article for my kids' newspaper into a story for The Online Citizen, paying tribute to Singapore's first professional theatre group on their 25th anniversary. (Hint: it's not TheatreWorks.)

Going clockwise from the top, that's Jasmin Sumaat Simon, Ruby Lim-Yang and Rama Chandran, from their first publicity photo in 1981. (Wah lau, they're old.)

Click here.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

National Columbarium of Singapore


My short story, "Nostalgia", on Five Foot Way, based on artist Michael Lee Hong Hwee's installation at the National Museum.

I'm not actually happy with the written version yet, so it's best if you listen to it in audio. It's supposed to be a little creepy. :)

(Image by Stephen Black).

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

@ School in Bengaluru!!!

As promised, here are photos from my workshop at Widia Poorna Pragna School:







And a few from Jnana Vijnana Vidyapeetha:










Sadly, no shots from the last school, whose name escapes me for the time being (though it was terribly posh). Camera breakdown, doncha know. The assistant teacher said she might mail me some, but don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: The last school's name was MES Kishore Kendra Public School. Wrote 'em all down in my notebook.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Flying back to Singapore tonight woohoo.

I have so many books. And a weird dry cough. And a new appreciation for the culture of Southern India and its foods. And (I'm afraid) a new appreciation for the cleanliness of Singapore's streets.

Vanakkam. Photos coming.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

In Bengaluru now!

Did a school workshop yesterday at a Hindu-based school, and I'll be doing another in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, the battery on my camera has gone out (think I left it on by accident) and I didn't bring my charger. What's more, neither Adeline Foo nor Felix Cheong, the other Sg , have brought cameras themselves.

What's a compulsive archivist like me gonna do? Can't use PhotoBooth for everything. Can I?

Evening event tonight at Time Out bookstore on Cunningham Road. 6:30pm - we'll be talking about sensationalism and censorship in Singapore. Adeline Foo, who's a kid's writer, will be reading excerpts of her new racy ho-mo-sexual play!

Oh, and this really deserves a post of its own - but I've finally figured out where my Singaproe Art Show short story "Nostalgia" was uploaded. Click here to download the audio story.

Photos from the Ubud Festival: a foretaste

Uploaded these before I left for India!


Haven't included the more holiday shots yet, so am not posting stuff on the blog yet. But if you'd like to browse without captions, click here and yourself out.

Friday, December 11, 2009

I'm going to India!

Should've blogged about this before. Was featured in the Straits Times yesterday, in fact.

Basically, I'll be participating in the Bengaluru Habba and the Chennai Local. Here are my dates so far:

Tuesday, 15 December:
Literary Reading (with Felix Cheong and Adeline Foo)
Time Out Reliance book store
Bengaluru
6:30-8:00 pm.

Tuesday, 22 December,
Poetry reading
Spaces,
#1 Elliots Beach Road, Besant Nagar,
Chennai
7pm


I'll be back on Xmas eve if you all want to kacau me. Don't call my handphone, can?

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

BADDER

... This is very odd.



Apparently it's from the Michael Jackson film "Moonwalker", i.e. it's a self-created parody by the artist himself. Which makes it less awesome and more creepy, actually.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Birthday party pix!

From last Saturday night, at my place.



I love my beautiful friends.



And I love my beautiful cake. My parents provided it - good solid stuff from Lana. We polished the whole thing off in an hour, then I baked a batch of peanut butter cookies which were gone while they were still hot.



My party actually serves two main functions:

1) It's difficult to experience birthday blues when you're worrying about what kind of potato chips and wine to serve to all your guests,

2) I have friends from several different communities (e.g. gay activism, poetry, theatre, sign language class, JC, visual arts, and one lonesome engineer who practises Wing Chun with me), and I think it's awesome when they actually meet one another.

Seriously, I counted about ten different nationalities of guests present in my house: Singaporean, Malaysian, Japanese, Mauritian, Indonesian, Belgian, Indian, American and Ghanaian. NS boys, uni kids, newlyweds, professors, expats, Young Artist Award recipients, veterans, somebodies, not yet somebodies, and don't-give-a-fucks.

Was also going to upload a shot of my severely bruised arm from Wing Chun practice, but maybe that can wait.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Texts November 2009

*POETRY*
=“Reflecting the Merlion”, ed. Yeow Kai Chai
Rosaly Puthucheary’s “Dance on his Doorstep”

*FICTION*
=Meira Chand’s “The Painted Cage”
+Isa Kamari’s “Intercession”
+Hari Kunzru’s “The Impressionist”

*DRAMA*
=Wong Phui Nam’s “Anike”
=Goh Poh Seng’s “The Elder Brother”
=S Kon, Yeo Soh Choo and Ravi Veloo’s “Trial and Other Plays”
+Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy”

*NON-FICTION*
+Malcolm Gladwell’s “What the Dog Saw”
+“The Legendary Adventures of Alexander the Great”
+Ngugi wa Thiongo’’s “Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance”

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Sonny Liew’s “Liquid City Vol I”
+Troy Chin’s “The Resident Tourist Vol I”
+Hergé’s “Tintin
+Luca Invernizzi Tettoni’s “Singapore”
+Garth Ennis’s “Preacher: Dixie Fried”

*PERFORMANCES*
+TheatreWorks and Musée de la Danse’s “expo zero”
+The Necessary Stage’s “Sofaman”
+LaSalle Musical Theatre’s “Siren”
Musical Theatre Ltd’s “Lost in Transit”
Zebra Crossing’s “Victor/Victoria”
+LaSalle Theatre’s “Oresteia”
W!ld Rice’s “Beauty and the Beast”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+Chang Fee Ming's "Imprinted Thoughts"
=Asian Civilisations Museum’s “Land of the Morning”
Singapore Art Museum’s +“Thrice Upon a Time” and =”El Camino a la Modernidad”

*FILMS*
=Eric Khoo’s “Mee Pok Man”
+Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday”
+Roland Emmerich’s “2012”
+Kutlug Ataman’s “Journey to the Moon”

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I'm 29 today.

Yayz.

In a few hours, I'm gonna upload a pic of the only birthday present I've received so far.

UPDATE: Yeah, I'm a few days late, but here it is. It's from my ex-RJC schoolmate Lay Tong, who's now migrated to Toronto.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

And what could it be?

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Chocoloctables!!! And maple sugar cookies! (I ate those up before I had the presence of mind to snap photos.)

And a message (click on it to read it without ruining your eyes):

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Awwwwwwwww.