Etienne

Mommy beware! Boys' club in the making!

Spent the afternoon with my Godson, his Daddy and Daddy's new toy, a 1:18 Ferrari 250 SWB. Watching Etienne sleep so soundly and for so long reaffirmed my believe that my pot belly would be of use some day. Feeling Etienne's heartbeat so close to mine is really something. I can't quite describe it but it is most certainly an experience.

Toothpaste

Sting; All you need is

To borrow the words of four post-modern philosophers:
There's nothing you can know that isn't known,
Nothing you can see that isn't shown,
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.
All you need is love.

Pillbox

Emptied.

We live in a society obsessed with survival. We take pills to make it to tomorrow, we're afraid of illness, of death. But is surviving such a deeply important matter? I remember reading a story which said that unless a wheat falls onto the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Survival cannot be the ultimate value.

Chair

Waiting, sitting, Waiting.

I like chairs. Chairs are my favorite genre of furniture. I love how they can be so full of potential energy, like a moment waiting to happen; inherently incomplete until somebody chooses to sit on it. A beautiful chair is more than just an amalgamation of horizontal and vertical materials. It is an expression of what its creator anticipates a future event to be. And I don't just think that only bespoke chairs are beautiful; mass produced chairs can be equally captivating. To me, apart from the meeting of aesthetics and functionality, there is beauty in the purpose, in the incomplete.

Understand

Go on, take a peek.
You know you want to see what is on the inside.

It cuts both ways. This I finally understand, a little too late.

"I am trying to learn that this playful man who teases me is the same as that serious man talking money to me so seriously he does not even see me anymore and that patient man offering me advice in times of trouble and that angry man slamming the door as he leaves the house. I have often wanted the playful man to be more serious, and the serious man to be less serious, and the patient man to be more playful. As for the angry man, he is a stranger to me and I do not feel it is wrong to hate him. Now I am learning that if I say bitter words to the angry man as he leaves the house, I am at the same time wounding the others, the ones I do not want to wound, the playful man teasing, the serous man talking money, and the patient man offering advice. Yet I look at the patient man, for instance, whom I would want above all to protect from such bitter words as mine, and though I tell myself he is the same man as the others, I can only believe I said those words not to him, but to another, my enemy, who deserved all my anger."
~Lydia Davis, Trying to Learn.

Romans

The conflict in man

7:15
I do not understand what I do;
for I don't do what I would like to do,
but instead I do what I hate.

Dreams

Arbite Afternoons

Life is more than just the material things.
It is about fulfilling your dreams.

Tulip

Christmas meatballs.

"Why don't you make the foods I like?" he asks sometimes.
"Why don't you like the food I make?" I answer.
~Lydia Davis, Almost No Memory

Berlin

Tiong Bahru

We arrived just before closing time, which was not too surprising given the hours that we keep. As we ate, chairs and tables were being stacked all around us but I didn't realise. Throughout dinner the conversation flowed, just like time; a continuous stream only punctuated by laughter. 'O let not time deceive you, you cannot conquer time'. After we'd finished our food, we felt the weight of stares; Time to pay and leave.

Linger

A raindrop lingers
for just a moment
before letting go;
Irreversible.

Moka

In case of emergency.

The espresso machine died on us this morning and it was my trusty Moka to the rescue. Things these days just aren't made to last anymore.

Decadent

Introducing Camus

Decadence is reading in bed on a lazy morning,
with the blinds drawn and the sun trying to sneak in;
bringing with it the promise of a new day.

Framed

The soul never thinks without an image.
~Aristotle

Servants

Dedication, personified.

Both of them spent more than a decade in post-war Burma before being expelled by the junta, bringing them to the rest of South East Asia and eventually to Singapore. They arrived in Burma as young, newly schooled novices and left wiser but kinder. Burma would always be spoken of fondly, even as their memory starts to fail. There will always be a place in their hearts for this special land, where the ravages of time cannot reach. Collectively, they speak a total of 9 languages and dialects, including Teochew, Burmese and Mandarin. Its hard to imagine that one of them used to have a penchant for Burmese cigars or that the other used to be a dashing young infantry officer in the French army. Their work brought them deep into the mystical Chin hills, which was also rebel country; where dodging bullets was a regular occurrence and where even government troops fear to tread. They didn't have a choice back then or maybe they did. They were instructed to go. And they obeyed. Even though they feared and doubted.

Lamps

The past is gone except in memories.

Do you remember these lamps? I was reminded of them when I saw something similar over the weekend. I gazed at it for so long that the concierge asked if I wanted to buy it. I sheepishly declined his offer, unsure if he was mocking or sincere. Has it been that long? We saw these lamps in the Bazaar, I am sure it was the stall that was just after the crockery area, next to yet another intersection. You said that they were very pretty and I remember being tempted to take one home. I also remember mouthing off some comment about how I had bought lanterns from Hoi An which I never got round to hanging up. I was always full of comments. And perhaps still am. You laughed and I casually asked the price of the one we liked the most; the response was enough to send us along. I think we headed for tea, although now I can't be quite sure. After all, tea was such a regular occurrence then.

Bricks

Mostly red and white, though not quite

This is the sixth National Day photo on this blog and I can't quite believe that this blog has been running for almost six years now. It seems like only yesterday that I started out this blog to post photos from my year on exchange. Time passes so quickly when you're not looking. The passage of time has allowed me to invariably track how my life has progressed vis-a-vis this little island I call home and to see how the themes of each National Day photo has developed beyond the snapped date. Maybe in another six years, I will look back on this photo and re-evaluate this post?

This year's National Day photo is inspired by Arbite, which is quite possibly the highlight of my year thus far. I like lego bricks for the simple reason that there is a uniformed functionality about them; each brick is capable of interlocking and integrating with another by itself without the need for adhesives or a keystone. The result of this wonderful "socialistic" feature is that there is no special brick, per se. Every single brick can stand on its own and every single brick is capable of being part of a greater collective.

In a way, I think this little lego structure here represents a snap shot of our society. There is a school of though that the concept of "Nation" is no more than a social construct, held together by a social contract which is evidenced by an aggregation of people sharing a common belief or ideology. Such a social construct may not be that obvious in "old" countries where there has always been an attachment to the land. However, in a country of migrants like Singapore, I cannot help but find this definition of "Nation" highly seductive. I dare say that our social contract is entering a phase of renewal, where it needs to be re-examined and to some degree re-defined. And it is this redefinition that will provide for many interesting years ahead. Looking around, I see many people who unlike me were not born in Singapore but still call this place home. Increasingly, we find these first generation Singaporeans or new Singaporeans (not to be conceptually confused with NEWater) becoming our neighbors, classmates, colleagues, customers and perhaps even our lovers. Increasingly, we also find ourselves complaining or knitpicking about these neighbors, classmates, colleagues, customers and lovers in a way that we might not have, had they not been first generation Singaporeans.

In this photo, the newer bricks unlike the existing red and white ones are of a different colour. The very fact that these new bricks are able to interlock and integrate with the existing red and white bricks suggests that these new bricks have in some way subscribed to the basic tenets of our social contract; like it or not, these new bricks are very much a part of the structure now. Only time will tell whether this interlocking will form a strong and stable structure. It will be interesting to see what form this structure will take, or what our new social contract will be. But regardless of the outcome, one thing is for certain; the new bricks do add colour and variety. And this is something we should heartily embrace. Happy Birthday Singapore!

Ava

Peekaboo

Finally, the long weekend's in sight.
Plenty of driving and driving.
I hope the weather holds.

Oats

Sow your Oats.

Looking at the latest display to go up at Arbite, I can't help but think that Arbite has really come a long way. But then again, its only been a couple of months. What a surreal sensation. Anyway, kudos to the team from Oats for a job well done.

Etienne

Is he not the cutest baby on earth? Now I really know the true meaning of 'a bundle of joy'. And so what if I am biased, which godparent isn't.