Sakura may hog the press...


20th March 2010


...but it's worth remembering that plum and peach trees can look like this.















































Winter and spring in the same frame.

Let a hundred coaches zoom


19th March 2010




Sakura season has begun. Here's an earlyish one out of the gate at Kodaiji.

Spring until further notice


24th February 2010


Today was Carry Your Coat Day.

I wasn't aware of it until I went outside and saw people with coats slung over their arms or dangling from their hands.

Some may think that this is what happens when you've dressed for winter and the weather suddenly decides to do spring.

Not true. Carry Your Coat Day actually has its roots in an old custom. In the past, to welcome the arrival of spring - warm weather as opposed to the spring solstice when it was probably still freezing - people would take off a layer of clothing. A sign of their desire to get closer to the new season, as it were.

But spring wouldn't realise what they'd done if they simply took off their coats, jackets, haori or michiyuki and left them at home. Hence the custom of walking around while carrying your outerwear.

If you find yourself in Japan on Carry Your Coat Day, why not engage in an ancient folkway? Take off your coat - only your coat, mind, let's not get law enforcement officers involved - and carry it.

With little effort, you too can be part of Japanese culture.

My pleasure


14th February 2010


First of all, to my Chinese readers and any reader celebrating with the Chinese this new year, gong hei fatt choy, xin nian kuai le, huat ah!

I'm going to do something a little different today: I'm going to explain myself. It's not something I usually do but because this is the new year and I've eaten far more pineapple tarts than someone running a low-grade fever should, I will.

It's the pineapple tarts talking. I may take down this post once they stop.

But for now, this is what they're saying:

I've been writing about Japan for almost three years now and one comment I hear fairly often is that the pieces are...different. Or if the other person's being blunt, strange.

And I don't mind that at all. I would like to know why people feel that way though (if you have any ideas about this, the comment section's all yours).

More than one reader has said that the columns don't seem to fit into the Review section of The Straits Times, which is where they appear every fortnight. The Review pages are for commentaries, where writers put forward an argument - and argue it out.

I've gone over some of the columns I've written and the closest thing some of them have to an argument? "Buses are nice." Or "flowers are nice". Or if I'm on a roll, "Flowers are really nice".

Different and, to be blunt, strange.

So what am I doing?

I'm answering this now to try to make it clearer for myself and to make sure I don't lose my way in easy jokes and easier opinions.

At their best, these pieces do not offer points of view; they are points of view. They do not express argument; they embody it. In the bones of the best of them are ideas that I have jumped on, shaken, dug my nails into when life bit and I would not cry out. The ideas left are those that did not break. As long as they are lived rather than just believed, those pieces can be written.

I do not bring opinions to the table; I build rooms out of them. If you would know what they are, look under the wallpaper, in the wood grain of the table, in the air that stirs when you enter.

I do this not because I believe there's anything wrong with pieces that state and argue with nothing up the writer's sleeve - they're efficient ways of sharing ideas and, done well, offer much pleasure.

But statement and argument and information speak to the mind, to habits - some would say, prejudices - of thought.

And we are more than creatures of mind.

To the part of you not much used to being addressed, I will speak for as long as I can.

I do not seek to change your mind and I know I cannot change you. All I can do is create spaces where you can, if you choose, speak to the self you seldom see - or to the self you're hoping to see though you're a little hazy on what that self looks like.

Making spaces. Making space. That's all.

If you will allow me, let me do this for you.

Toshiya (通し矢) at Sanjusangendo


5th February 2010


Every year in January, an unusual archery competition is held on the grounds of Sanjusangendo, a temple in the south of Kyoto.

The current form of the Toshiya contest is in its 60th year but it dates back to 1609, when archers competed at one end of the temple’s western veranda to send as many arrows as they could into the target 118m away. They shot for 24 hours from six o’clock in the evening, taking a quick break after every 500 arrows. The current record was set in 1686 by a man called Wasa Daihachiro. He fired 13,053 arrows of which 8,133 hit the target.

Today’s competition is held beside the famous veranda and the morning section is for archers who turned 20 in the past year and have achieved at least the level of shodan – the first rung of a 10-step ladder.





Putting on the shooting glove before the contest starts. The thumb is pressed lightly to the first two fingers while the strap is adjusted.






The average Japanese bow used today is 2.2m long. Without a wall or floor bracket, it takes two people to string it: one to hold the tip and the other to loop the string around the other end.




Two arrows are usually fired in one round for kyudo, or traditional Japanese archery.




Waiting to enter the shooting area. Ideally, the bow and arrows extend behind the archer at the same level - rather like unfurling wings.





The moment of full draw. In the background, the veranda where the original Toshiya competition took place.





While most of the male participants wear the practice gear of white gi and black hakama (wide, pleated trousers), some opt for kimono. Men shooting in kimono have to remove their left arm from the sleeve first. In winter, this is not fun.















The first arrow is shot while holding the second at a prescribed angle. It's harder than it looks.





The last of the male entrants with the first of the female competitors waiting behind.





Reason Why People Prefer To Photograph The Girls No.1
















Reason Why People Prefer To Photograph The Girls No.2




In a break from the regular gi and hakama, young female participants wear furisode - colourful kimono with sleeves draping down to the feet. The sleeves have to be tied back with a strip of cloth - tasuki - before the archer can shoot.




And after it's all over...

Herons for you, madam?


4th February 2010


If you have US$980 to spare, you may like to give these herons a good home.

Let's settle this like men


1st February 2010


Another frozen day at the dojo: stiff shoulders, numb hands and breath puffing out white.

But around 7pm, two cheesecakes appeared. They were ceremoniously sliced and everyone was invited to help themselves.

There was a catch though: you couldn't just take a slice from one of the cakes; you had to eat both.

Two boys from the dojo had each baked a cake and after eating, you had to say which you thought was better.

This is the Way of the Warrior - sometimes, you face down your opponent with a sword. Sometimes, with a bow. And sometimes, with cream cheese, double cream, sugar, crushed biscuits and yoghurt.

Of course, some would say that the only opponent you face is yourself but the main thing is to keep the cake coming.

How do you know?


25th January 2010


A friend is wondering if she should quit a steady job to do something different and a little crazy.

Someone who knows us both asked how I knew I was ready to leave when I did the same thing about three years ago.

But the thing is, you'll never be ready. If you're trying to tell stories, you'll end up breaking more things than you build because humanity is huge and anything you make to hold it will crack. Our hands never seem big enough or wise enough. And there never seems to be enough savings in the bank.

So it's not a question of readiness at all. It's a question of whether you want to.

Do you?

Winter weather update


16th January 2010


Just how cold is it in Kyoto right now?

Well, the other night, I took my clothes off to have a shower. And started sneezing.

That cold.

Hatsu haircut


4th January 2010


The first haircut of the year. The hairdresser wasn't young but seemed strangely nervous, dropping the comb twice. Each time, a burst of shaky patter after he picked it up.

When he switched on the razor, I stopped breathing.

But nothing except hair was cut off. So say hello to the new me.
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Wishing you light in dark places


1st January 2010


明けましておめでとうございます。今年もよろしくお願いいたします。











Okera mairi at Yasaka Jinja, a popular shrine in Gion.

Bakumatsu arc: Progress report


26th December, 2009


Finally finished a 4,000-word epic on Sakamoto Ryoma. I now have to cut it down to about 1,000 words so it'll fit in the papers. But not tonight. It's past 3am so I shall just file away the sea of notes, excavate my bed out from under the history books and then fall into it.

Good night.

Falling with grace


Christmas Eve, 2009


I wasn't going to post this but since this is the season of giving, here's a piece about a gift. And one more mystifying than three wise men popping up in a maternity ward. (The companion post is below.)

...

Mukai Kyorai was a poet with a plan.

In the garden of his cottage on the outskirts of Kyoto city were 40 persimmon trees. Their branches were hung with fruit ripening orange but he couldn’t possibly eat it all. And since fruit preserves had not been discovered in 17th century Japan, he couldn’t make jam either.

So he promised to sell the persimmons to a merchant from the city, receiving payment in advance. But that night, a storm blew up and in the darkness of his cottage, Kyorai heard things smacking the roof and plopping to the ground.

The next day, when the merchant returned, Kyorai was forced to give him his money back because most of the persimmons had fallen in the storm.

Kyorai does not seem to have been upset. He got a poem out of the experience and, because the storm had stripped the tree branches bare, a clear view of a nearby mountain. Some say he even achieved enlightenment.

In any case, he renamed his cottage Rakushisha – House of Fallen Persimmons – and an 18th century reconstruction still stands in the Saga district of Kyoto today. Many of those who visit are drawn by the connection with haiku giant Matsuo Basho: Kyorai was one of his chief disciples and played host to his teacher there.

But the story behind the hut’s name also catches at the mind because it overturns our expectations of how things should play out. The prospect of profit, a sudden storm and a destroyed crop: it should all end badly.

Underlying these expectations is the belief that nothing good can come from a fall. This belief is hardwired in the words we speak: ‘a fallen woman’, ‘fall into enemy hands’, ‘fall in battle’, ‘drop in sales’, ‘plummeting rankings’. To fall is to succumb to temptation or attack, to lose status, popularity or money. To fall is to become less.

Many of these expressions are found in Japanese and English. And they share another one: in both languages, you encounter love by falling in it. You don’t dance, skip or jump into love – you fall. Even if you land safely, the choice of words still betrays dismay at the powerlessness felt.

Our evolution – both as individuals and a species – is geared towards walking upright. If all goes well, we graduate from toddling to walking to running and to riding a bike. Falling is what happens when we fail. If we fall hard enough and in the wrong place, it ends in mud and blood.

This may explain our prejudice against the act, a prejudice revealed in yet another expression: fall from grace – a loss of someone’s good opinion.

Yet there is a different kind of grace though it also involves a fall. This is favour we have not earned, a gift that comes not because of something we have done or are expected to do but entirely because of the nature of the giver.

Landing like a fist in the gut, it knocks us off our feet. We build relationships and societies on ideas of reciprocity and contract. But to grace, our considered balances and agreements, spoken and unspoken, are a house of cards. It smiles – and blows.

So mystifying is grace that it is usually left to the divine. In human hands, giving is something that must be justified. If a present appears at an occasion other than a birthday or holiday, so will these words: ‘What’s this for?’

In human hands, giving must be explained, even if it’s with something as simple as ‘I saw this and thought of you’.

Gifts for no apparent reason terrify: like shopping with a credit card for things without price tags – you can’t relax until you’ve seen the size of the bill.

Not even charity comes close to grace. When you donate money, you expect it to be spent in certain ways rather than on, say, lap dancers. But grace gives much and asks nothing, not even a thank you.

How then to respond? You can always say, no thanks, and walk away. You can take grace for granted, which is accepting with your eyes closed. Or you can keep your eyes open and with hands held steady, receive.


But the last option is also the hardest because it means being prepared to fall. Like a storm that brings down promised persimmons, grace upsets expectations. Will you, like Kyorai the poet, then be able to step off the path of logical action and accustomed thought? Without knowing what lies at the bottom – it could be a poem, a view of a mountain, enlightenment or none of them – could you dive into the dark?

If your foot goes to the edge of the path then hesitates, it may be too soon for that final plunge. Practise with a less demanding tumble, a kind of Grace Lite.

It’s something easily found in the natural world and there’s a particularly nice example in the mountains northwest of Kyoto city. The Iwato Ochiba shrine is tiny, like the remote community it serves, but soaring gingko trees tower over it and in late autumn, they shower the shrine with yellow, fan-shaped leaves.

The moss and flagstones disappear under the gilt and the little wooden stage in the centre of the shrine floats in a sea of yellow.

I try to leave a donation but the access to the main building is closed off and the shrine deserted. Asked for nothing, giving nothing, I still walk on gold.

The wind breathes out and more gold leaf drifts down. It’s a fall that comes from grace – a fall, if you like, from grace.

極落、極落: House of fallen persimmons, shrine of fallen leaves


18th December 2009


Rakushisha (落柿舎) is one of those attractions where people hover at the threshold, wondering if the place will be worth the entrance fee.

This is what you can see of the hermitage from the outside in autumn: persimmon trees, maple leaves and a thatched roof.





Fans of Matsuo Basho don't hesitate. Even if the current Rakushisha is a reconstruction, the original was visited by the poet three times and that connection is enough for them.

You may not be able to read the poems on the wooden plaques hung in the garden or carved on the stones. But lines in wood need no translation.





And sunlight is a universal language.





If you feel like writing a haiku, there is paper for you.





The owner of Rakushisha, poet Mukai Kyorai, probably won't read it seeing as he died in 1704. But a raincoat and hat are hung from a wall to show that the owner is in.



















So you never know.



On the other hand, there is no entrance fee for Iwato Ochiba Jinja　(岩戸落葉神社), a tiny mountain shrine northwest of Kyoto city. Some say that the shrine used to be called Ochikawa shrine but became known as Ochiba Jinja - the fallen leaves shrine.

In late autumn, the gingko trees soaring over the shrine shed gold leaf all over the grounds.








The leaves fill the stone basin where worshippers purify their hands and mouth.







And among the gingko, some maple too. Autumn in Kyoto wouldn't be the same without it.

Photos for the Tooth Fairy crowd


15th December 2009


People may be coming to this site. I can't tell because the gnome whose job it is to track blog visitors has not showed up for work for a few days. I suspect that it's because I did Something Technological.

So the presence of site visitors has become hard to prove - rather like verifying the existence of the Tooth Fairy. But here are some photos for those who may or may not be here.

Before the Arashiyama Hanatouro light-up, I found a pyramid of turnip outside a pickle shop.



Then the lights came on in the bamboo forest.













It was cold enough to see my own breath, which meant that this hawker did a brisk trade in hot sweet potato snacks, mitarashi dango and other things on sticks. Cocoa, as the sign says, costs 200 yen a cup. There didn't seem to be any turnips on sticks though.

Lights in the mountain, lights in the bamboo


7th December 2009


If you're in Kyoto this week or the next, don't miss the Arashiyama Hanatouro. The light-up in the west of the city covers about 5.2km of waterfront, bamboo forest and ikebana-lined trails.

The place will probably be heaving with people if you go on the weekends but at least the crowds will keep you warm.

A word from the blogger


4th December 2009


I, er, appear to have done Something Technological. Er.

You may notice that the blog is looking a little different. Believe me, I'm surprised too and I was the one doing the clicking.

And if you like to click on buttons, there's a new one here for you. Look for the word 'Follow' at the top of the blog then finger + mouse.

Good things may happen. If nothing else, there's safety in numbers.

A walk in the woods


3rd December 2009


The road in to Shimogamo Jinja runs through a forest. It runs long and straight: long enough so you do not approach lightly and straight enough for you to gather arrow intent as you move to the shrine.























Through the gateway after the place of purification.





And inside:











Autumn left in glorious tatters.

Autumn leaves and not-urinals


28th November 2009


Kyoto's November is lovely but Kyoto has been around for centuries and news of that loveliness has got out.

Kyoto's November is crowds and coach buses.

Still, there are a few spots left where you can find autumn colours and take a picture of them without the population of Greater Tokyo - last seen in your sakura photos - appearing as well.

Seiryo-ji, better known as Saga Shakado, in the west of Kyoto is not on the list of famous momiji temples so it doesn't have the profusion of maples that, say, Tofukuji does.

But it has a great garden, intriguing angles and enough quiet for you to think (or not think, if you practise Zen) even in the height of the fall frenzy.





















An Edo-period stone garden (karesansui). Not, as you may first think, a urinal that fell over.


But some of the best sights are not to be found at your destination but along the way. Like this gentleman looking out at the world from the walls of his garden.
























And these friendly faces near an Arashiyama bus stop.

Land of the small and cute


19th November 2009


As I left a mall today, a man was wheeling his bike out to the road. In the child seat was a little girl in pink.

Our eyes met. Large eyes, rosy cheeks, runny nose. I smiled. Most toddlers take a little time to consider you - animal, vegetable or mineral? - before deciding whether or not to smile back but this kid just grinned.

Her father wheeled her away. In the front basket was stuffed a new pillow wrapped in plastic. It was as big as she was.

My smile lasted all the way to the supermarket, where I had to put it away because if you smile for no apparent reason, people look at you funny.

Though I bet they wouldn't if I had rosy cheeks and a runny nose and was no bigger than a pillow.

The Lazy Gaijin: Fairly Edible Meals Made With Ingredients From A Japanese Supermarket And A Minimum Of Fuss

Recipe No.1: Onion and sweet potato soup


8th November 2009


There are lots of things I'd like to do this lifetime. Some are one-off events, like seeing the Northern Lights, while others are more in the line of ongoing missions. This is one of the latter: making good soup without messing around with bones or resorting to stock cubes and powders.

I invented a fairly edible soup on Saturday which fulfils these two requirements. Here's the recipe. (The measurements will be approximate because life's an adventure and sometimes cooking is too.)


Makes 3 servings
Ingredients:

Water, 1 litre

Pasta water, around 250 cc (left over from cooking lunch. Probably doesn't make much difference if you leave it out)

Big onions, 3 (because they came in bags of 3)

Small Japanese sweet potatoes, 3 (ditto)

Konbu, 1 piece (Pronounced kombu but spelled konbu. I was aiming to use a 10 cm square piece but the one I pulled out of the bag was bigger and I couldn't be bothered to cut it so... I've been wondering why konbu is used so much in Japanese stocks. I believe it's added for umami. And perhaps for luck)

Tofu (however much you want to eat)

Chicken (As above. I got enough to cover my hand because a packet with that much was going for 30 per cent off at the supermarket)

Soya sauce or salt (I ended up using both)

Sake (Probably optional but I used it to marinade the chicken. You can also drink it if you get thirsty. No one will check if you're old enough to)


Here we go:

1. Wipe the konbu (pronounced kombu but spelled konbu) with a wet cloth. I'm not sure why this is necessary but Harumi Kurihara says to and I don't argue with her. At least, not very loudly).

2. Put the konbu in a pot with the water and pasta water that you may or may not be using. Leave for 10 minutes then light a fire under the lot. Harumi-sensei says to take the konbu out when the water becomes warm, whatever that means. I interpreted this to be that stage before serious bubbles appear in the water.

3. While the konbu was doing its 10 minutes in the pot, you should have cut the chicken up into pieces that will fit into your mouth and marinaded them with soya sauce and optional sake. I used however much came out when I poured in one circular motion over the bowl.

4. Cut up the onions. The smaller the pieces, the less boiling time but on the other hand, you'll suffer onion fumes for longer while dicing with death. If the water is boiling, dump in the onion as quickly as you can.

5. Cut up the sweet potatoes. Again, the smaller the better. And this time, there are no fumes, hurray!

6. Oh, and add the sweet potatoes to the pot.

7. Keep the boil going until the onions and sweet potatoes almost dissolve. If you've finished the washing-up and start to get bored, you can speed up the process by hitting them with a ladle or something.

8. When you add the chicken is up to you. I dumped it in when I couldn't stand the suspense any longer. And anyway, I wanted to wash the bowl it was in.

9. At some point, put in the tofu. You can dice it first or just toss it in and hit it with your ladle. Tofu rarely fights back.

10. The timing of the spinach addition - oh bugger, I forgot to put spinach in the ingredients list - is far more important. Spinach does not seem to be one of those things that take kindly to boiling so throw it in only when you're ready to serve.

11. When are you ready to serve? When the water level in the pot goes down, the onions and sweet potatoes have turned into a kind of sludge and your stomach starts to make socially unacceptable noises, it's time to add the spinach and wrap up this gig. First aid measures involving soya sauce or salt will probably be necessary. And a little prayer never hurts.


Verdict:

It doesn't taste half-bad. The yellowish-grey colour of the soup is regrettable but you can always close your eyes. It also explains why there are no photos in this post. The main thing is, the stuff is edible and the flavour didn't come from roasting bones or stuff that will make your hair fall out. This is an experiment I plan to repeat.



(I also posted this in the other blog but no one seems to go there. Which is fair enough, seeing as I hardly post in it.)

What I did during my vacation


Eve of All Hallows, 2009


I queued. I didn’t really mean to. When I packed to leave Kyoto for Singapore, I didn’t plan to do much more than catch up with people and books I hadn’t seen in months.

But avoiding crowds was high on my list of things to do. So was staying out of any kind of queue because there are only so many people you can go on holiday with.

Then it was announced that Neil Gaiman would be appearing at the Singapore Writers Festival at the end of October.

Are introductions in order? Neil Gaiman: author of The Sandman, a fantasy series that has become so much of a hit that the comic books are now called graphic novels, and writer of short stories, novels, poems, film scripts and children’s books. Of these, The Graveyard Book has spent over a year on the children’s best-seller list of the New York Times though everyone I know who loves the work is old enough to drive.

It’s a reimagining of The Jungle Book; instead of a boy being brought up in a jungle by animals, he’s brought up in a cemetery by dead people. And a vampire.

The novel may well turn out to be one of those books you keep returning to and measuring yourself against, like standing beside a mark scratched on a wall to show how tall you were at nine because you want to see how much you’ve grown.

So great that the author would be coming to town, yes? There was only one snag: all the tickets for his three events were gone on the first day of distribution, even though it was announced only via Twitter.

To accommodate the demand from everyone not on the Twitter feed, the festival staff increased the venue capacity and announced that they would release a ‘VERY VERY LIMITED number of tickets’ on Sept 26.

When I read this on the festival website, I began to see visions of queues. There’s one thing I haven’t mentioned about Mr Gaiman. Yes, he’s versatile, yes, he’s prolific and yes, he wins all those awards but what he really is, is a queue-maker (like a rain dancer but more horizontal).

The mere hint of his presence is enough to draw previously unconnected people out of the great mass of humanity and assemble them into a line. This happens all over the world – at literary festivals, bookstores and conventions – and I knew it would happen on Sept 26 at The Arts House because of the promise of tickets to see He Who Brings Queues.

The question was, how early would I have to turn up before the distribution time of 11am if I wanted to be sure of a pair of those VERY VERY LIMITED tickets?

It didn’t help that I work late and go to bed even later. But after crashing out for five hours and hitting the alarm clock’s snooze button for half an hour more, I stumbled into the kitchen at 7.30am.

My mother was there. ‘You mean you haven’t gone to bed yet?’ she said.

Then again, she might not have been my mother. Since I’m technically not awake between the hours of 6am and 9am, anyone I see then must be a figment of my imagination.

The taxi-driver looked pretty real though. I asked him to take me to Parliament House – near The Arts House but not in the area closed off for the F1 races that weekend. He frowned. I held my breath: was he going to refuse to go anywhere near the barricades?

It turned out that he just didn’t know where Parliament was.

But between the both of us, we got there. It was almost 9.30am – one and a half hours before the box office’s opening time – when I made my way past the F1 barricades and security personnel to The Arts House.

Two girls in short shorts were approaching from the venue. ‘…queuing since 6.40!’ said one of them as she went past.

I stopped. What if the line had reached such epic proportions that those two had given up and were on their way home?

I kept on walking. Even if I didn’t get the tickets, there might be a story in it. To be a writer is to slink up to life with a scavenger’s optimism.

The queue began at the locked front door and snaked out of the portico. Since each person was eligible for two tickets, the line was actually twice as long as it appeared. Was I too late?

I left my bag at the end of the queue to stake a spot in that fine Singaporean tradition of chopeing and went to talk to the people up ahead. The first person in the line said she’d been there since 6.40am. She beamed at me, her smile and light green tudung unwilted despite the heat. No. 2 clocked in ‘just past 7’ and No.3 and No.4, at around 7.30am.

Humbled, I went back to do some proper queuing. I’d brought two books but a conversation was starting up in my neck of the queue, mainly about the tickets. One woman confessed that she was hoping that the F1 road closures would deter fans from coming. I had the same thought; devious minds think alike.

To pass the time, we reminisced about other occasions when Singaporeans had gotten into line and stayed there for hours. But the girl behind me was from the Philippines and knew nothing about the Great Hello Kitty Scuffles of 2000.

In the January of that year, McDonald’s launched a promotion offering customers Hello Kitty toys with each Extra Value Meal they bought. Lines sprang up, tempers grew short, fights broke out and people were arrested. At one outlet, a glass door broke against the press of the crowd, injuring seven.

You can think of a queue as a social microcosm. In one line, you’re told what a society values, how much it wants it, how much trust there is in the system to provide it and whether people will resist the urge to jump the queue.

Almost 10 years on from the Hello Kitty Scuffles, how was Singapore doing? The line outside The Arts House that Saturday morning presented the country as orderly and international.

But the nature of the queue might have had something to do with the fact that it was there for Neil Gaiman. For a start, more people were reading than fiddling with their phones.



Still, there was no guarantee of what would happen if there weren’t enough tickets to go round. Some of the books people were holding looked pretty heavy. If the situation turned Hello Kitty, things could get ugly.

For now though, everything was calm. A trio went past, wheeling a trolley of equipment – probably for an F1 event. They seemed surprised to see so many people sitting in a line on the ground and reading.

10.05am – an hour to go and the sun was weighing down. Anybody want to share life stories?

So I talked to the five people around me in the queue. There was Kim, a student from the Philippines, Xuemei, a civil servant, Eldred, who draws, Wanida, who works for Apple and had come with a laptop, and Pat, who handles administration at a polytechnic, has five children aged three to 14, takes all of them on holiday, teaches women to give birth and is on the fast track to a medal.

She said that if she got a pair of tickets, one would go to her 13-year-old son, also a fan.

‘And where is he?’ I asked.

‘At home,’ she said and laughed. ‘Sleeping.’

There was a collective intake of breath as we considered the likelihood of our mothers queuing up for Neil Gaiman tickets for us while we stayed in bed.

‘I don’t think my mother even knows who Neil Gaiman is,’ said one woman who will remain anonymous in case her parents read this.

On his blog, he describes himself as the ‘guy you’ve never heard of’ who ‘gets more people in his book-signing line than anyone else’. This line has been known to stretch to about 600 people.

Our queue was nothing along those lines but everyone in it was competing for a fixed number of tickets. The conversation flowed, snagging at times on the uneasiness underneath.

Two people ahead in the line stood up and shook out their groundsheet. ‘Do you think they’re giving up?’ someone asked hopefully.

‘They came with a mat – they’re not going to give up,’ someone else growled.

Sure enough, the two rearranged their sheet and sat down again.

I looked away to see an old man staring at us. A cap of flashing pink sequins on his head, he shuffled past, a smile crinkling his face. ‘Ni men hao!’ he bellowed. Hello to you too. Perhaps it takes a lunatic to acknowledge a whole line of them.

People were still arriving. They would do a double-take at the queue which now stretched along the front of the building and onto the grass at the other side. Then they would go to the end, their shoulders slumped.

11am – my queue buddies and I stood up. We paused only to get each other’s contact details then faced forward as if we could see through the bodies to the number of tickets left. Were people still talking? I don’t know; I couldn’t hear them any more.

And then I finally reached the table where the festival staff were handing out tickets from three dwindling stacks.

Maybe I was sunstroked out but I couldn’t quite believe it, not even when two tickets were in my (newly tanned) hand. The five who queued with me had their tickets too and all of us had picked the same event. ‘Let’s meet for lunch or something before that,’ said Kim.

Outside the portico, a burly, long-haired man in black was taking a photo of his tickets.

But not everyone was happy – about 20 people had to go away empty-handed. Amid the cries of disappointment, one young girl looked stricken. A few people exchanged words with the festival staff but as far as I could tell, they were polite. Perhaps we’d come out from under the shadow of Hello Kitty.

I couldn’t leave without seeing how it all ended because the conditions that give rise to a queue are also those that create a community: people with the same purpose come together, demanding attention through presence. But there is also envy of those ahead and a gnawing anxiety that you won’t get what they will. The factors are always the same yet the manner in which similar desires are balanced against competing interests is different each time.

So I stayed because I wanted to see what kind of queue, what kind of community we’d made. And when I left at last, I took more than tickets away with me.

When I got home, I headed straight for the shower, relieved that for this at least, I didn’t have to line up.

Because you know what I said about queues and community-building and all that stuff? When it comes to the bathroom, none of it applies.

Egmont and the seventh


20th October 2009


A concert again after so long away and the NY Philharmonic after even longer. This time, Beethoven was the one singing in the dark.

The brass was a little...startling but the strings alone were worth the (nosebleed) price of admission.

I'd have heard more of them if the audience hadn't been so quick to clap. An orchestra doesn't stop playing even after the fingers lift away and the bow leaves the strings. When the sound is gone, sound remains - an echo encore drifting in a space where no wind blows.

But applause slaps the sound away.

Wait, won't you wait a little longer? Only the first of the snowflake sound has fallen on my tongue.

Undead 101


13th October 2009


So I was working on a column today and for reasons I'll make up later, it suddenly veered off into the subject of zombie killing.

At which point I realised that I had no idea what to do if a zombie came through the door. I didn't think that the Internet, wide and Wikified as it is, would have any information on it either but I typed "zombie kill" into the Google search field anyway and hit enter.

Oh me of little faith.

Pages and pages of information. Whether the suggestions have been field-tested is another question but at least they're there - with brain diagrams and everything. There's even a game where you can kill zombie squirrels.

I wonder if virtual undead rodents come under the SPCA's purview.

Paths we have not known


21st September 2009


Sometimes, it is the road more travelled that haunts us.

'Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension...

'Some of my married friends may envy my freedom in an abstract, daydreamy way, misremembering single life as some sort of pornographic smorgasbord, but I doubt many of them would actually choose to trade places with me. Although they may miss the thrill of sexual novelty, absolutely nobody misses dating...

'Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.'

- Tim Kreider, The New York Times' Happy Days blog


Then there is novelist Guy Gavriel Kay, writing in Tigana: 'There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.'

A comforting belief but one which - and I know this from long years of trying - takes work.

For all you kids who want to be writers...


4th September 2009


...I should disclose the amount on my latest royalty cheque. After a year of sales, the figure came to a grand total of $3.95.

Well, that should give the taxman heart palpitations.

So...time for a commercial?

Time for a commercial.

"Singapore. Malaysia. Brunei. We share a region and now we share a book. Punched Lines: Sit-down Comedy From Southeast Asia - already at a bookshop near you!"*

I wrote this in 2001: "In a country with four major races, English has become the neutral linguistic ground and that neutrality has crystallised in the form of the acronym. Other countries use it too of course - for companies, transport systems, rebel groups - but Singapore is umbilically attached to it. Hospitals, schools, banks, expressways - we are born in collections of letters to travel on them, study in them and give them our money."

It's still true. And thanks to Punched Lines, I'll be giving my bank $3.95 this year.






Let's shoot for $4.95 in 2010!




*Assuming that you're near Select Books in Tanglin Shopping Centre.