Surprises in Singapore

Now I'm sure this happens in other countries as well. But it's nice to know that it happens in Singapore. Sometimes, you find not just one but a number of unexpected, richly insightful experiences taking place, clustered together like a bright, beautiful bouquet of wild spring flowers gathered from a most ordinary meadow.

Yesterday, a rather comely, intelligent young man from Nepal told me his life story and the fascinating twists and turns of how he came to be at the very spot he occupies today, sitting across a table as he handed me sheafs of paper to insert into some 350 magazines. Later that same day, an Indonesian manicurist who also cuts hair gave me his take on on the benefits of colonial history with lines like, "You are lucky to be colonised by the Americans or by the British. They do good for the people. Not like the Europeans." And in the early evening, an elderly cabbie lectured me on taking time to think about what I want, and think about what I need. "You must focus, " he said, "on yourself, at least some of the time." At the end of the day, I discovered many more good things about the people I work both with and for as we partied late into the night with champagne and fruitinis, as well as found out that I have come to a point that I can talk to anyone, anywhere about anything - a pretty useful thing in life.

It was a good day and for each and every one that happens, I am always, always grateful.

Best Picture for 2007

Am glad The Departed won. Am glad Martin Scorcese won. I saw this movie for the second time on the plane from Hanoi to Singapore, and it was as riveting as it was when I first saw it. No slow moments. No pacing problems. A great story with plot points that are both unexpected and sensible. What's more, it had some really textured work in terms of performances from practically everyone in the film. It is filmaking at its very finest. Am glad it won the Oscar.

Movie Weekend

There was something very poignant about Dream Girls - at least for me - maybe it was all the motown 70's rhythms and strong female vocals that got me. But even just eight minutes into the film, it did occur to me that Jennifer Hudson deserves every award and accolade she gets for her creation of Effie White. This is an annoying character, but with whatever she has, Hudson manages to locate the sympathy the audience requires to make a connection with her. And then there's her big, brassy voice which is so much bigger tan who she is. And then it is pure joy to hear Eddie Murphy and Beyonce and Jamie Foxx sing. Beside's it's a musicale. Who doesn't love a musical?

Letters from Iwo Jima is a good movie overall, mostly because of performances by Ken Watanabe and the newcomer who created Saigo, the Japanese baker-turned-very-reluctant soldier. Not without flaws, but really, hardly anything is these days. Some of the subplots were a bit old in a you-could-see-it-coming kind of way. I also thought there were pacing problems. Still, Clint Eastwood knows how to tell a story, and we are able to rest confidently in his able hands. When you think about his work - The Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - there is no disputing he is truly a master, for this movie and hopefully more...

Found: Panning Rice in Vietnam

Once upon a time, some sixteen years ago, in the flattest flatlands of Ohio and a small university town of just two main streets, I met A Panning and M Rice. A was in first year fiction to my second year, and M was in the American Culture Studies programme. And apart from being graduate students and writers, we also shared the Philippines in common as they had each been Peace Corp Volounteers there. In fact, that's where they had met.

But in 1991, we all lived in flats in a town called Bowling Green. I was in a studio on N. Main Street, atop a bar called SamB's. Mine was basically just one room with a stove oven, kitchen sink, counter and fridge running alongside one wall, and three small windows along the other side. The heat from the radiator was sometimes excessive, so I always had one window cracked open about six inches, even through the winter months. When it got warmer in the spring, I would leave it gaping wide open, and would frequently wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of some undergrad puking ceremoniously in the parking lot, after having had too much to drink.

A and M's apartment was infinitely more pleasant, the first level of a pretty house on a treelined street, S. Grove I think it might have been. But it was no less strange. They had a large sprawling living room and a separate kitchen. Their bedroom was a little nook off of the kitchen with swinging doors offering very little privacy and just enough space for a queen sized bed. But they were as happy as campers there, and cooked up batches of stew or vegetable soup in their crockpot, often inviting me over to share their supper. We spent a lot of time together, writing, talking about writing, eating, drinking, gossiping, watching cruddy old videos that I rented from a cruddy old video store on South Main. And being intrepid entertainers, they threw many a wild party in that large sprawling living room area. It was a good year.

And then I finished the program, left Ohio, got married, as did they. And but for a few emails back and forth over the years, we had just about lost touch - though I knew they were both faculty at SUNY in Brockport. And I think they were aware we were.

But for some reason, out of the blue, two nights ago, I decided to write Anne again and say, what's up. Turns out this semester, the Panning Rice family is in Asia. More specifically, in Vietnam, three hours away from Saigon to be exact and with their two little kids in tow. The emails came lie rapid-fire and Bim Bam Boom - we're seeing them in April when they come visit.

It is wonderful how, sometimes, the world can be small and cosy for so long as you let it.

Post Ash Wednesday mass reflection and a dead Jesuit

Five minutes after Ash Wednesday mass at 7:30pm, I found myself standing in line to pay my respects to a dead Jesuit named Fr. Desmond Reid. I don't think I have ever met Fr. Reid, and certainly did not recognise him from his picture. But M, who was responsible for getting me in the queue, said he was such a wonderful person, a friendly man, who had led many of her bible discussion groups. So I said, okay, I would accompany her to the wake. It was also, conveniently, on the way to where I had parked the car, so there was that, too - a heavy flow of traffic that would have prevented me from leaving anyway. I was quite taken aback by the crowd of people who had gathered in the hall that for these past three nights had become a funeral gathering. It seemed there were more than two hundred people there, and more outside. Amazing and wonderful and to my mind, rather unexpected.

As we were shuffled, waiting for our turn, I found myself telling M, who I feel very friendly and homey toward (for the simple reason that she is/was a good friend of my cousin's in college), how it was only in Singapore that I started going to mass regularly again. That actually, once I stopped living in my parents' house, mass was only an every now and then thing. As and when. Now and then. And that I had no other reason for my return other than an inexplicable, indescribable need for it...you might even say a hunger. Also, I was worried for my kids, for my family. If I was not going to give faith to them, who was? They would be left bereft, without a choice simply because they did not know. I received it. I chose to leave it a little, and I chose to return. I pictured my kids as adults and realised that if they never had it, they might possibly never want it to return to.

M, who I see at mass sometimes with her children, rarely with her husband, seemed to understand what I meant. That night, for Ash Wednesday mass, we were both alone, and there was no need to speculate on the reasons.

As we shuffled closer to the open casket, I caught a glimpse of Fr. Reid. All of a sudden I remembered a story T had told me of a time when he was maybe in the third grade at the Ateneo. Some Jesuit, then as now, had also passed away. And all the students in all the classes were made to line up and pay their respects in pairs. T was paired with a school mate and as they looked down at the face of the dead Jesuit, T felt a mad uncontrollable impulse to laugh. Something about the man's face. Something off in a funny way. His eyes met with those of his friend's, and almost as if by understanding, they shared that wild desire for laughter. Biting their lips, they ran like mad, pell mell to the outside of the chapel. Only when they got there did they burst into spasms of gut-wrenching mirth.

Recalling this, I squelched a similar impulse of my own to laugh. I closed my eyes, bit my lower lip and said a silent prayer. For Fr. Ried and for my family and for our faith.

Of course.

A scene from the birthday picnic

If you blur your eyes

...Hanoi is an amalgam of many European cities. Tree lined boulevards and cafes recall Paris. The houses along green canals evoke Amsterdam. And if you look out onto the West Lake, and blur your eyes, it's like your looking at the Arno in Florence. And then parts of the teeming city are a little like old Manila and a little like Bangkok.

A little piece of Europe in Southeast Asia

Funny

They took it off its frame and rolled it up. They almost forgot about the certificate of authentification. When they brought out the file, there was no signature.

"No problem. We'll take it to his house for his signature...and bring it to your hotel room by nine o'clock tonight," Ms. Lan assured me. Alright, I agreed absently, distracted by the rather novel idea that Dao Hai Phong himself lived in a house in Hanoi, that there he worked, and gallery owners came to take his signature. How strange. Dao Hai Phong himself, working in his studio.
It was mind boggling.

"What if he's not home?" T asked.
"It's the lunar new year. He's probably at home with friends and family. Maybe he's entertaining. Maybe he's working."

But at nine o'clock sharp, the certificate came, signed, sealed and delivered.

Philosophising the search of Dao Hai Phong

It was much more difficult than we thought. Due to the limits of wall space as well as the limits of our pocketbook, we had to confine ourselves to certain parameters. But even then, even within those, it was not a cut and dry decision that was easy to make from the very outset.

For one, almost every painting I saw, I felt I would love and be proud to own. Amazingly, each and every one. It was further complicated by Phong's titles - all of which are pleasingly poetic, pleasantly provocative. "Quiet Evening" was a fishing boat, docked into a house on stilts, lit from within. "Twilight Moment" was a small village nestled behind a grove of three trees on a hill, the houses reflected in the still waters of the lake. "Countryside" was a row of houses on red. In his recent work, the artist seemed to be responding to more modern inspirations, the walls of his houses had graffiti - not a bad, there was something there.

"But what do you want most? What do you want to look at every day?" All of them, I thought greedily. I'd like to look at all of them. But T was right, I knew. We are not the kind of people to buy any number of work by one artist. You buy one. The one you like best; the one that likes you. And then you stop.

Being perhaps more existentialist than we needed to be, we asked ourselves, what makes a Dao Hai Phong truly Dao Hai Phong, without which it would not be a Dao Hai Phong? We locked upon his trees like clouds of cotton candy, we liked hills and churches. True, his fishing villages were charming - the house on stilts with the light emanating from it, bouncing of the surface of the water - a rhapsody in deep blue that is at once the sky, at once the sea. Beautiful, without a doubt, but there was just something different about those billowing trees.

"It's not like the fishing scenes are not powerful, they are. But we're not fishing people as much as we are tree people," I said, testing out my theory out loud to see if it held any water. T agreed. Fishing and the sea are great. But we are more about hills and trees and houses.

Finally there was the issue of colour. To make the choice between Phong's blueness or redness or yellowness was tough, as each had its merits. K hazarded her rather mature opinion that red was too hot, and that she preferred the serene of deep blue or the calm of the yellow. But I pointed out to her that because of the way Phong paints, even the red, as bright as it is, is calm and quiet and placid...some kind of magic that he is able to achieve, a gentle message from the eye to the brush, spelt out in the canvas.

In a red one called "New town" there is a cluster of houses on a hill and two trees. There is also the unexpected gift of falling yellow leaves, like the season of autumn.

"New town" had real hope and it grew in all of us. On our final day in Hanoi, we decided to
take it home.

Visions of Vietnam

Apparently, the fairly advanced development of the art scene in Vietnam took place largely because of the French occupation and such institutions as Ecole des Beaux Arts d'Indochine, set up by the colonialists in 1925, the harbinger for schools like the Hanoi Institute of Fine Art. Techniques like painting and sculpture were taught intensively, and later, indigenous art forms were added to the curriculum like lacquer painting and silk painting.

As it happens with all colonial histories in which one more powerful country actively takes over one weaker one, there were a few good things that happened amid the bad. And for Vietnam, visual art is one of them. Walking through the galleries in Hanoi alone, one finds many artistic voices worthy of attention - each with a personal vision, a particular discipline, an eye for meaning that is unique, powerful, and beautiful.

Years before we visited the city, I had spent many hours journeying through the websites of various galleries, visiting and revisting my favourites - the pure simplicity of Nguyen Thanh Binh (b. 1954), his serene, creamy spaces, elegantly singular compositions and the colour white which he expertly makes use of as a colour, as opposed to a non-colour. The subtle, single-hued panoramas of Hong Viet Dung (b. 1962)and the joyful street scenes of Le Than Son (b. 1962)

And then there are the poignant, surreal storybook visions of Dao Hai Phong (b. 1965) that never fail to elicit my wordless satisfaction. Most of his paintings enchant, because they deftly achieve the rare but keen pleasure located in the intersection where brightness and quietness meet and sometimes fall in love.

See http://www.thavibu.com/vietnam/dao_hai_phong

So when at last we paid the city of Hanoi a visit, it was my heartfelt wish, my intent to find a Dao Hai Phong that called my name. I wanted to find one and take it home that I might escape into it everyday, if I so chose. Not merely to look at it and admire it as a possession. But to actually engage in it, enter it, be one with it.

In the end, this, is what art is ultimately about.

A house in Hanoi

High Tea at the Metropole

As we wait for our vittels, K studies the Apricot Gallery brochure intently while C checks out what we should do the tomorrow...

Salin 'ko PO ng Nakapagtataka (Apo Hiking Society)

Thanks to my sis, I now have the tribute to the Apo Hiking Society album. Which means I have Nakapagtataka on loop. My colleagues asked what does it mean. So I tried my hand at translation. Sing it in English to the same heart-haunting strain...

A never ending whirl
Keeps swirling through my mind
The moment we agreed to go our separate ways
Decided we can't get along the way it stays
It's hard to figure out, what's it all about...

How strange it comes to this
The way it's all turned out
The countless times that we keep saying our goodbyes
And each and every time, regret is in our eyes
It's hard to figure out, what's it all about?

REF
Aren't you tired of all the pain
All the anger and disdain
So many times we fight it out
The ugly words, the hurt, the doubt

And when it's done, the tears, they fall
Our hearts are breaking after all
There's nothing left to do or say
And only sadness to convey

If we were truly meant to be lovers
Why can't we get along with each other
woooh wooh

The rain keeps pelting down
And where have you gone, sunshine?
What happened to the love that once was ours to share?
There's only emptiness and heartache and despair
It's hard to figure out, why do we even care...

(Back to refrain)

Hanoi holiday

Such a pretty city. Little houses in pastel colours. Stately streets lined with trees. Quiet green lakes and canals. French colonial buildings. And don't you just love all that zany traffic -- the complete craziness of cars, bicycles, motorbikes, cyclos - and by some miracle, everyone avoids a collision. It's the beauty of lunacy.

Balentymes

Remember, while it's just a day like any other day, you can make it special for those you love and consequently in turn, for yourself. Which is not a bad way to treat any other day, actually.

A girl after my own heart

" For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"
-Jane Austen

Monday meetings

I ran off to have a quality Japanese food and much needed quality time with M today. That was meeting one. Then in the afternoon meeting 2 with Dapper Y. I call him Yoda in my mind - He took me aside to make sure I was back on track.

He is Yoda for his wisdom and for the great force that he emanates. To my mind, he is the best of the Dappers. What's more, we have affinity, which is a good thing I think, and should serve me well in the long run.

In the meantime, closing goes on. Will there be a CNY break? Could be. Who knows.

Something's coming. I don't know what it is but it is gonna be great...
Or that could be wishful thinking. No workout today. But tomorrow, I hit the track again - literally.

Excesses

It's my own fault. Nobody asked me to stay out till 3am. Nobody insisted that I sing ABBA or Joan Jett or Billy Joel or Madonna or The Corrs. I did it to myself. So if today seemed like a longer day than it actually was, I have no one to blame but myself. I have to say though, it was great fun while it lasted.

But today was fun, too. We had perfect weather to manage 8 eight year olds rambling through an old historic park on a green hill with wide expanses of grass and gigantic trees. There was a scavenger hunt and a game of tag and lots and lots of water gun fights. Our menu of vampire blood muffins (pizza pan de sal), mud sludge pies (chocolate cup cakes) and lady witch fingers (cheese sticks) went over well, along with the goober alien flow (apple and grape juice packs).

The wind blew and the little boys played, dragging the adults in. Even K who was on duty as assistant game master was seen madly tearing after a boy who had open fired on her. She caught him, too. At one point, I was being chased by two litte twer-- er little boys...as they shot me with what can only be described as a water bazooka. Finally, I changed my tack and chased them, grabbed their weapons from their hands and blasted them full on on the face till they yelled in surrender. The birthday boy was properly pleased, and his sister got her reward for doing such good work - developing a pop quiz as one of the major games.

Now, as I contemplate the crafting of a relationship piece when all I really want to do is crawl into bed, I think, this day went pretty well, actually. If only work happens to suffer, that should be a small and unimportant thing in the long run that is life.

What are eight year old boys made of

Sunday picnics and water guns and eight other eight year old boys in the park, whooping and zipping around and being there own paradoxical selves. We've got the cup cakes, the mini pizzas, the cheese sticks and the juice packs. Not to mention ten well-packed goodie bags. Please don't let it rain.