Super Duper Blockbuster Thriller

"Super Duper Blockbuster Crime Thriller" -- these screaming superlatives usually advertise Tamil crime fiction stacked in tea stalls in Chennai. They may have well led to the formation of Blaft - an independent publishing firm in Chennai, started up by a mathematician and a fashion designer who thought it would be good to translate the books and find out what the hell they were about.

I met them both at ScRipt, a mini-feature of the Singapore Writers Festival -- providing a platform where emerging writers from South Asia could promote their work in Singapore.

I went for a few sessions and they were great but the Blaft session stood out with its bizarre posters and tales straight out of some Coen Brothers' film.

The Blafties translate pulp fiction in Indian languages to English as well as publish original fiction in English. They veer towards experimental fiction and what Rakesh Khanna (one of Blaft's founders) calls 'Irrealism.'

"Maybe its like surrealism, I don't know," he said. Kaveri Lalchand, who also makes clothes and acts in theatre and does all sorts of other things, talked about convincing Surender Mohan Pathak, a prolific Hindi crime fiction author, to let Blaft translate his work into English.

Rakesh and Kaveri tracked Pathak down to his house in Old Delhi and the man whose books have sold over 150,000 copies (each-see comment below!) in Hindi was understandably amused by their proposed print run of 5,000 copies. Still, they persisted and so their catalogue of books and translations keeps growing in direct proportion to their tenacity.

It's wonderful to see current, surreal or irreal work out of India exploiting the immense diversity of Indian languages. It was also just fun to hang out with people who are so passionate about what they do and do it alongside other full-time jobs.

We were never warned about heartbreak

This is a line from Julian Barnes' brilliant new short story -- Complicity-- published in the October 19th issue of the New Yorker. My favourite bit is below but the whole story is here.

"I used the word “complicity” a bit ago. I like the word. To me, it indicates an unspoken understanding between two people, a kind of pre-sense, if you like. The first hint that you may be suited, before the nervous trudgery of finding out whether you “share the same interests,” or have the same metabolism, or are sexually compatible, or both want children, or however it is that we argue consciously about our unconscious decisions. Later, looking back, we will fetishize and celebrate the first date, the first kiss, the first holiday together, but what really counts is what happened before this public story: that moment, more of pulse than of thought, which goes, Yes, perhaps her, and Yes, perhaps him."

The politics of Singlish

Given that this week is dedicated to the Singapore Writers Festival, I read some poetry by Arthur Yap-- one of Singapore's foremost poets. I first encountered his work at the National Library when I moved to Singapore five years ago. I was looking for local poetry and literature, and his collection of poems -- The Space of City Trees-- struck a chord.

I'm happy to post one of his poem here. It deals with the dilemmas inherent in the forging of postcolonial identities. There is also a great essay that analyses this poem and others like it in QRLS -- the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore.

The Correctness of Flavour -- By Arthur Yap

waiting for the lime sherbert to arrive,
mother turned around to her vacuous child:
boy, you heard what i said earlier?
nowadays, they emphasise english.

boy rolled his squinty eyes to the ceiling.
waitress returned, flustered, and started
on her own emphases:
lime sherbert today don't have.
mango got. strawberry also don't have.

mother, upset and acutely strident:
today DOESN'T have.
today DOES NOT have

Singapore Writers Festival

The Singapore Writers Festival started yesterday and is on till November 1. Workshops and conversations are happening all week at The Arts House -- one of my favourite buildings in Singapore. This is a multidisciplinary literary festival, featuring some 120 writers from 22 countries and over 170 programmes.

Today I saw O Thiam Chin, a young Singaporean author, talk about his book of short stories, 'Never Been Better' -- published by MPH.

"I don't always go for the big dramatic moments. I'm much more interested in the small and subtle moments of realisation that people have," he said.

When asked why he had not thought of looking for international publishers for his book, Thiam Chin said that he had chosen to be a small fish swimming in a small pond. "I'm not sure I was up to international standards. I wanted to look for local publishers first as my stories also had a local flavour," he said. He spoke of his dreams of getting published in The New Yorker some day.

It was a nice little session -- and I was glad to have attended it. I plan to walk around and attend free sessions over the next few days. And of course, I'll record impressions and conversations that stay with me and post them here.

Here's a picture I like -- of Thiam Chin autographing his book.

Our band gets a review

It's always fun to perform. It's even better to get a review !

Where synthetic biology may lead us...

Michael Specter is probably one of my favourite science writers. He has written a fascinating piece on synthetic biology in this week's issue of the New Yorker. It's fairly futuristic and it seems like this will be a field to watch. I quote from the article below -- a taste of things to come!

"No scientific achievement has promised so much, and none has come with greater risks or clearer possibilities for deliberate abuse. The benefits of new technologies—from genetically engineered food to the wonders of pharmaceuticals—often have been oversold. If the tools of synthetic biology succeed, though, they could turn specialized molecules into tiny, self-contained factories, creating cheap drugs, clean fuels, and new organisms to siphon carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

It is not knowledge we lack

I've been in the grip of Sven Lindqvist's book on European barbarism. It's called 'Exterminate All The Brutes' and is a terrible, wrenching account of imperialism and racism through the centuries. He ends the book with this paragraph that I think is broadly applicable to life.

"You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions."

Eugene sent me a memory in the mail

Traces of Gorm

By Eugene Tong

Goodbye Gorm.

Thank you for your service these past eight years. Time and again, you held your load and offer uplift to baby pictures, bric-a-back, stuffed toys, a sword, cookbooks and photo albums and DVDs; offered shelter to Buddha and my shoes and stood firm against the wall through earthquakes and other rumblings.



I brought you, feverish rantings and all, to my Koreatown apartment from Reportergirl's Exposition Park bedroom when said reporter moved back home. You were sorely needed then to bring order to the piles of papers and videotapes leaning against the wall on the floor in my one-bedroom abode.

You were there for about six to eight months, until a new job led us to North Hollywood, a large one-bedroom with a formal dining room in a 1950s vintage 2nd floor walk-up.

*

*BLAH BLEA
BLEAUGH

It was there that I decided to once and for all correct your structural deficiency and complete you. For you see, reportergirl neglected to install metal crossbars on your back -- a pair of aluminum rods -- so you won't tip over.

You stood tall and firm (with metal reinforcement) on the corner with the Buddha altar on your top shelf watching over the living room, next the an Ikea floor lamp rescued from another friend departing L.A.

I lasted all of six months there. Though apparently aesthetically pleasing with the right crowd and located in an up-and-coming artsy neighborhood in the shadow of Universial Studios, the apartment had one fatal flaw -- it gets HOT AS HELL.

I'm talking 90 degrees plus (32 C) INSIDE, when the temperature outside is in the low-80s (27 C). I would spend at least two hours each night after getting home trying to cool the place with an aging window air conditioner and two large box fans.

Screw vintage. I want a place built in the last 20 years with central air con and heating, and well-insulated so it's cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

I found it in Pasadena -- a three bedroom townhouse with a little patch of backyard between the 210 Freeway and an alley.

I lived there for seven years, and quite happily for at least six of those. But alas, with a career change and relocating back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I must put said home on the market (and in this market!).

And I can't take you with me.



I hope the Salvation Army of Pasadena can find you a good home, or return you to the earth from whence you came.

Eugene goes to see Miyazaki

By Eugene Tong

Hayao Miyazaki Live

Anime and manga legend Hayao Miyazaki in conversation. July 25, 2009.
Location: Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley.



The legendary animator takes the stage -- to a standing ovation, of course.



To the left: Roland Kelts (Tokyo University lecturer and author ofJapanamerica) asking the questions. To his right, the translator, Beth something...



Topics discussed:

-- Apocalypse as a theme in his films (he once thought the end of the world would happen in his lifetime, but at his age (68), that's not likely now...laughs).

-- With our interactions increasingly virtual, is that a bad thing? (It's all relative...)

-- Where does he go to find inspiration? (Walks near his house...)

-- He's told his wife as far back as Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (1984) that it would be his last film, due to the amount of work involved. Twenty-five years and eight more films later, he doesn't say that much, at least at home.

-- Making an animated film becomes so involving that when it's complete, he doesn't want to watch them again.

-- Which is his favorite among his films? Well, each film is like his child, and if you have eight children, you can't say you love one more than the others!

-- How do you think audiences will view his films 50 years from now? (He makes films grandmothers want to show their grand kids, rather than films mothers would take their kids.)

-- Why the tendency for strong girls as protagonists in your films? (Well, of the current crop of 20 or so animators he's hired and is training for his Studio Ghibli, only one is a man. Maybe I have to start making films with strong boy characters.)

-- There are rarely any truly evil bad guys in his films...(He doesn't want to have to draw that; and reality is never as simple as all good or all bad.)

-- On expressive eyes: In My Neighbor Totoro, he wanted his artists to draw Totoro's eyes so that you can't tell whether it's intelligent or not. As for the insect Ohmu from Nausicaa, you really have no clue with so many eyes.

-- His advice to young animators and artists: Draw everything around you for inspiration.

-- Some animators he considers contemporaries: Pixar's John Lasseter and Nick Park of Aardman Animation.

-- On true love in his films: It has to be earned after the overcoming obstacles (and he speculates things will be tough for Sosuke and Ponyo after the movie's (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea)over...).

-- On overcoming writer's block: When he gets stuck he would concentrate so hard that his nose bleed...

-- On the Japanese government viewing Anime and Manga as "soft-power": Well, the government won't be around much longer (laughs)! But his films are mostly intended for Japanese audiences. The fact that they've found an audience outside of Japan is just a bonus.

(ED: Japanese PM Taro Aso called for new Diet elections due to low approval ratings.)

-- What lies ahead? He doesn't think about the future...



As with any chat that relies on a translator, there's an unpleasant lag between his answer in Japanese and the English translation for us non-speakers.

The questions from Kelts were thoughtful, despite early on focusing too much on Miyazaki's latest film Ponyo, which I haven't seen. Some tough questions drew a few good humor groans from the filmmaker.

Still, Kelts sometimes made the mistake of asking questions with long prefaces, which may have elicited some off-topic answers from Miyazaki. Always keep it short and tight, then shut up and let the subject talk.

Miyazaki often answer questions indirectly -- maybe it's a cultural thing, or he's trying to be diplomatic. And I'm sure some of his answers got lost in translation too. In the end, he revealed himself a thoughtful, tough-but-fair minded visionary artist who can have a sense of humor about his work.

After the event, a group of autograph hounds (myself included) gathered by the stage entrance waiting for the man the emerge. He did about a half hour later and posed for a few photos, but declined to sign anything.

Why read poetry?

"Poetry connects us with our deep roots, our evolution as an animal that evolved rhythmic language as a means of transmitting vital information across the generations. We need the comfort and stimulation that this vital part of us gets from the ancient art."--Robert Pinsky

We Real Cool

I love this ballad by Gwendolyn Brooks. It has a sad, sweet recklessness that grips me ever so often. I'm usually a sensible and measured sort right up until I'm not. There are days when I want to drive off the cliff that is the balance between emotion and intellect, just to see the crash.

I found this poem in a book called 'The Making of a Poem' -- a Norton anthology of poetic forms. It's a wonderful book for any aspiring poet because it explains the importance of form and illustrates with examples. For those of you who care, a ballad is apparently a short narrative usually arranged in four-line stanzas with a distinctive and memorable meter.

We Real Cool

(THE POOL PLAYERS.  SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.)

We real cool.

 We Left school. 

We Lurk late. 

We Strike straight. 

We Sing sin. 

We Thin gin. 

We Jazz June. 

We Die soon. 

The morning hours

Eugene said he couldn't afford the luxury of introspection yesterday. He had many things to do so he'll be here later in the week.

As for me, I woke up pretty early today and enjoyed the dark quietness till the cats decided to start pawing around and mewing like babies. I'm re-reading Slaughterhouse 5 and its a little scary that I remember nothing. I might as well be reading it for the first time. I love how it begins: "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names."

Please press the button for the desired floor

This little circle of light on number one makes me very happy on Fridays. Reportergirl has left the building.

I worked hard this week and pretty well I thought. Found a new tasks bar on gmail which is so handy for keeping track of things I have to do...Oh the joy when I struck off the last task on the list! I'm looking forward to a peaceful weekend

Good hare day

By Eugene Tong

In the hills above my home a family of wild hare reside.

This family, consisting of several large, well-fed grown-up hares and three little ones of various ages, spend their springs and summers lounging on the lawn in the shade, munching on grass and shrubs.



In fact, hares big and small typically emerge about two hours before sunset -- I guess it's a bit too hot to be foraging when the sun's out at full force. It's the same time when I have my dinner. Of note are the little hares, who are never alone. Their elders are always nearby, keeping a look out for potential dangers while the little ones munch and munch. Much like mama hare here.

Here's a little one -- and they're real tiny compared to the well-fed grown-ups -- hiding here as a scary human with a camera approached. One of them even has a white tail -- which sets it apart from its black-tail siblings. The photo is a bit blurry. It was shot with my 300mm zoom lens without a tripod, and my hands weren't especially steady.

Here's bird. I don't know what kind. But it likes to hang out by the rose bushes.










Sunset Saturday.










A nice sunset, set to hip-hop music coming from my Indian neighbor's backyard.










Hares can sure get pretty fat on a vegetarian diet.










Hares like to keep clean too.







--Photos by Canon Rebel XS.

Be careful of words, even the miraculous ones...

I've been logging long, bleak hours at the 'puter. This morning, I'm like a bat out of hell starving and devouring words that hold feelings or dissect them or stick them up to the light to see if they change colour.

All week I have worked at words that hunker down into flat opaqueness.

So I did what I usually do and turned to Jeanette Winterson's collection of poems and was rewarded with Anne Sexton's brilliant poem on words. Sexton was a troubled woman by all accounts. She killed herself in her late 40s after having won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

This is a photograph of the luminous Ms Sexton whose words encapsulate everything -- from the trickery of words themselves to the seductions of suicide.

(Readers: Please don't worry. Reportergirl is not suicidal. She is possessed of an inherent silliness that cancels out any potential for self-harm or annihilation)

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

Sonnet

By Eugene Tong

I was driving home from a taqueria run when my thoughts turned to photos -- the photo album from 'Up'; that I should take more photos of myself with my first home before the sale closes; treasured photos from happier times I wished I had a copy of -- when my random-tracking car stereo tuned to the Cure's "Pictures of You."

A good friend once mentioned the best photos are in our minds. True -- it's always a pleasure when a pleasant image from the past long buried is dragged to the surface by string of thoughts, one after another in a train of thought that makes sense only to you. But it seems the older I get, the more difficult it is to remember. Memories I once vowed never to forget fade, or are at the very least buried by fresher, maybe equally eventful experiences.

That's why we have photos, without which we may lose sight of who we were in better times; indeed we could be once more.

(And believe me, all my yammering here does relate back to "UP" -- probably Pixar's best offering since, well, their last movie "Ratatouille." But let's stay spoiler-free for now...)

Instead, I offer this lyric from The Verve's Sonnet, perhaps my fav track from Urban Hymns:

My friend and me,

Looking through her red box of memories,

Faded I'm sure,

But love seems to stick in her veins you know...

More here

My Slow Morning

This morning was different,

the air sweet with fatigue, the water

defied laws of physics and stayed cool

under synthetic blue heat.

The molecules stole a few

quiet moments unto themselves.

The leaves still glowed

with last night's rain,

and what they made of it.

I crawled out of that hole

between dreams and awakening.

and broke into myself like a thief,

but left with nothing.

©Reportergirl 7.07.09

The Unbearable Lightness of Waiting

By Eugene Tong

I've been doing a lot of waiting lately.

Waiting for my test scores. Waiting for my body to heal after a few years of neglect at the expense of career. Waiting for someone to buy the home I left behind since moving back to the Bay Area from Southern California. Waiting for school admission, then waiting some more to get off the waitlist when said admission panel had to wait to decide whether to offer me a spot in the incoming class.

Waiting is inaction. It requires patience; discipline to and faith in the favorable outcome you've been waiting for, whatever it may be, will due soon. Recall Penelope from the Odyssey, who waited decades for her husband Odysseus to return from the Trojan War, all the while warding off advances from 108 "odious suitors" (according to the wiki).

But it's much more difficult to pull off in practice, especially living in a society that often emphasizes action over thoughtful, careful contemplation; brawn over brains and the triumph of win-at-all-cost. Yet even I have the pang of restlessness; of disatisfaction with what is, but too unnerved to act if action would ruin the chances of achieving what I seek.

And so I'm waiting, much as I've always had, for good or naught. Acting by not acting, hoping for the best, expecting the worst, haunted by the infinite possiblilities of what may have been and taking solace in the familiar.

It reminds me of Carl, the old protagonist of Pixar's "Up" and the film's heartbreaking first act. But that's a story for next week (after I see the rest of the movie -- the cinema had a blackout during my screening...).

Why Bottle Shock (2008) is a pretty bad movie

Bottle Shock tells the story of two upstart California wines that trumped their more established French counterparts at a supposedly historic blind tasting in Paris in 1976.

The California set are represented by Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman), a San Franciso lawyer turned vinter and his hippy son Bo and their employee Gustavo (his father was a field hand and Gustavo has soil and grapes inscribed deep in his DNA and brain circuitry. I hope they donate his mutant brain to science). They are joined by Sam – an intern who everybody assumed would be a man but she proves to be a bonafide blondie starlet type, wearing what she thinks a 70s person would wear. She also features in the films’s most clichéd scenes.

There are two other key characters: A British wine dealer, Steven Spurrier, who wants to find a way in to the snobby world of French wine expertise and his friend, Maurice, an expat from Milwaukee. Spurrier is the founder of Academie du Vin – an outfit that purports to educate the palate of philistines. He perhaps delivers one of only two convincing lines in the whole film—I’ll get to that later.

Maurice convinces Spurrier that he must try the wines from California and let the Frenchies test them as a way of garnering some publicity for his academie. So Spurrier sets off to California and we next see him with a flat tire on the way to Napa Valley. Quite predictably, Jim Barrett happens to be driving by and they have a brief discussion about wine where Spurrier succeeds in annoying Barrett.

At least their animosity leads to this very convincing exchange later on in the film:

“Jim Barrett: Why don't I like you?

Steven Spurrier: Because you think I'm an arsehole. And I'm not, really. I'm just British and, well... you're not.”

But other than this clever piece of dialogue and many long shots of sun-kissed Napa valley grapes on vine, this film feels like a roughly drawn caricature of a really good story. It has an inherent flakiness from the get-go that flattens even the deep philosophies that it seeks to propagate about wine.

Remember that scene in Sideways where a softly glowing Virginia Marsden tells Paul Giamatti why she loves wine? Well, Bottle Shock tries something similar in the scene where Barrett discovers that Gustavo is secretly making his own wine and fires him. It’s supposed to be moving but it just made me roll my eyes.

“Gustavo Brambila: You people, you think you can just buy your way into this. You cannot do it that way.

Jim Barrett: Alright...

Gustavo Brambila: You have to have it in your blood, you have to grow up with the soil underneath your nails, the smell of the grapes in the air that you breathe. The cultivation of the vine was an art form. The refinement of the vine is a religion that requires pain and desire and sacrifice.”

The refinement of the vine is a religion? No amount of labored handwringing by even poor Freddy Rodriguez, who is actually a very talented actor, could rescue this bit of screenwriting.

I’ve decided to stop my review here and tell you that reading AO Scott’s review of the film in the New York Times was more fun than watching the film itself. I particularly liked his conclusion which borrows from wine-snob terminology. I wish I had thought of reviewing this film in similar terms but I didn’t, so I might as well quote Monsieur Scott.

“The filmmakers struggle to shoehorn a fascinating story about wine into some kind of screen genre or another. But Bottle Shock is unable to figure out what kind of movie it wants to be, and flops around between madcap comedy and rousing drama. To borrow a wine-snob term of art, it lacks structure. Or, to push the idiom a little further, it’s a little too sweet, with some pleasantly nutty notes and a baloney finish.”

Dispatches from the Couch

By Eugene Tong

A feng shui master recently divined what's troubling HSBC, which has seen its stock price tumble by at least 1/3 on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange from a year ago. And it's not overexposure to sub-prime mortgage-backed securities!

Apparently the REAL culprit is the West Kowloon -- a residential and office high-rise office development constructed on reclaimed land jutting out into Victoria Harbor. That project, along with the demolition of the old Hong Kong Star Ferry Terminal two years ago has jacked-up the wealth feng shui around the bank's headquarters. And the bad luck is supposed to last at least two years.

As for Singapore, if you think the economy is bad now, it could've been worse if it weren't for the Merlion! That beacon to millions of tourists looking for the best staged scenic photo in town took one for the home team when it was struck by lightning all those months ago. But it's still standing proud and spewing water into the mouth of the river, despite the slight singe. A good omen in these tough times.

Way to go, Ministry of Tourism!

Wednesdays with We Gang

My good friend Roger Chiaw and I were out one February evening in Little India drinking beer in the dive next to the Prince of Wales, where you get cloudy naans studded with more minced garlic than is civilised.

Ben Harrison of Etcetera joined us and over glasses of strong, cold beer I told them about the Hindustani music I had learned as a child. I was sad I didn’t sing or play an instrument any more when so many of my formative years were immersed in music—in learning, studying or practicing it.

My parents were music-mad and we grew up listening to Bhimsen Joshi and Kishori Amonkar on one of those grand wooden radiograms that looked like a long, ornate sideboard. It was a ritual we all assembled for watching my father as he pushed open the wooden doors to reveal velvet-lined insides.

And then when I was about 10 or 11, I heard pop music for the first time. Abba and Boney M. I remember thinking it was like hearing ice-cream.

Anyway, back to the present. Ben suggested I get in touch with his friend Adrian, who was looking for singers –possibly for back-up vocals. After a couple of text messages and so forth, I finally went to meet Adrian and his gang on a Wednesday evening at their weekly rehearsal space — Bob’s Studio near Lavender MRT.

This studio is in someone’s apartment. It’s a room that is painted blood red and decorated with old mannequins that function as lights and a couple of framed posters of Portishead, Jamiroquai, The Velvet Underground..that sort of thing. There are people going about their lives as you walk in. A cat is also usually circling about looking for a leg to rub its head on.

We Gang and I. It was instant connection at first song. And I haven’t missed a Wednesday since. How can I explain the joy of rolling up at Bob’s studio on Wednesdays, tired from work but bright-eyed about being in a band?

Adrian, Bradley, Grace, Gerry and Goo are warm, funny and about the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met, apart from the fact that they are so hugely talented. I know, I know. I’m gushing but meeting them and being part of their band is the most wonderful thing that’s happened to me lately. They don’t take themselves too seriously, which makes for interesting rehearsals. “Not like that, lah” Adrian will say or simply collapse in laughter when it is like that or we keep getting something wrong.

We meet for a meal earlier if we can, and some of us talk about work, some offer conspiracy theories while Grace usually says something obscene. I ask for a bottle of water and the coffee shop man always tells me with a serious expression that it costs 3,700 singapore dollars. I laugh every time.

If I pull a long face, as is my wont, there are questions, “You kena stress? Your boss kena scold you?” (kena is Singlish for 'something has happened.' I like it. If I got an injection, for instance, I’d say, wah lau, I kena jab”)

The picture you see here is the one Grace took of me during the last week’s rehearsals. I’m barefoot in the studio and I’m happy.

(Sincere thanks to Roger and Ben for making this happen)