Please find attached the likely cover for next month’s issue of our food magazine.

P.S. Our cover model was most cooperative, and took to turmeric particularly well. She, however, fluttered off and never came back when she was told that no, she may not dip her feet into the curry. We cannot stand for such diva behaviour - I’m the photographer - I’m supposed to do that! (At least where this food chain is concerned)

P.P.S. Will be glad to pursue further avian-gastronomic photography when I get my ass to Istanbul in two days. A bird and Turkish delights? A bird peeking into Turkish coffee? A bird smoking shisha? A bird nesting in the arms of my furry Turkish man friend, Alp?

Regards,
Your Photographer

Okay, so this is why I’ve been so busy: I’ve been having a baby. Sort of. With someone five thousand kilometres away. Shortly before leaving for London and Dubai respectively, somewhere between Amsterdam, London and Kuala Lumpur, we decided to try our hand at combining the four things we love: travel, postcards, the web.

And here’s a sneak preview.

In a nutshell: over forty twenty weeks, M. (that’s lola to most of you) and I will be living in London and Dubai, separately. We both happen to travel a lot. KL/Singapore. London/Dubai. Europe/Middle East and India. Geddit? We both meet loads of interesting people.

Our work will take us, over the coming months, to parts of Europe, Middle East, India, possibly even North Africa. Update: What’s wrong with me? It’s twenty weeks Forty weeks, forty videos — twenty each, one per week. They could well be about arms markets in Yemen, or Georgian cooking classes, as they might be about music video travelogues of Dubai set to Sudanese beat poetry, or Perugia graffiti artists, Eurochocolate, and interviews with the little people project. Things like that — the things that keep us travelling. Our artsy friends will draw and photograph postcards of London, Oman, Dubai, wherever we go in the course of fortylove.tv, and our store will sell these home-made (well, Zazzle-made, home-designed) postcards — support local artists and all (these artists are mostly British, Malaysian and Singaporean). Submit your video, and you may just win prizes.

So if you’ve lived and travelled vicariously through the photos and text on either Popagandhi.com or at M’s site, stay tuned to Fortylove.tv — live, play, eat and discover. Coming to a screen near you, mid-December 2008.

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and all that stuff.

And you think I have a job?

P.S. If you work in a tech company, airline, or travel site — and/or have prizes to offer — I want to hear from you!

I’m trying to make sense of why I’m here and what I am doing, not doing a good job at all but you’d have to pardon me: the traffic here is mind-numbing. I spend so much of my time dealing with it, trying to avoid it, trying to get out of a jam, trying to get somewhere on time, trying to find a taxi. Finding it difficult to grapple with such a car-centric society, especially one that loves its cars but drives this badly.

I’m not sure I like it. I’m not sure I hate it either. That’s mostly because it’s hard to put a finger on what Dubai is about — if it is about anything at all. Mostly, it comes across as a schizophrenic mish-mash that isn’t so much about the sum of its parts adding up to make something coherent, as it is about individual parts just appearing together at different times. I have five months to make up my mind about it, which is fine: I don’t think I can stay any longer. All the wrong things are so easy, and all the things that should be, aren’t. It’s easy to buy a hulking car, but not easy to cross a road. It’s easy to build a neighbourhood so pruned, so perfect, it reminds you of the Truman Show, but it’s not easy to live in one. I wear a ring everyday so I can say I’m married, when the wrong people enquire. For now, the incredible air connections and the opportunities still tilt this heavily towards the positive side.

P.S. If you know DXB at the back of your hand — please tell me your food secrets. There’s no shortage of restaurants and cafes of every stripe and cuisine and budget, but I’ve yet to find one I’ve been truly impressed by.

P.P.S. Istanbul and London tips needed, too!

I love the Middle East.

Posted by email from Dubai Unsubbed (posterous)

So this is it. I’m leaving. First to Dubai, various parts of the Middle East, Oman, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, wherever, then… wherever the wind takes me. There were a million things I wanted to say when I got here but I don’t know what good they’d do. Everyone’s used to me going away for weeks or months — I did that too much, but I always came home. That’s it. I always came home.. But this time?

I only know I have to go.

I’m not comfortable with being comfortable. Singapore, as you know, thrives on comfort. This country wouldn’t exist without it, and its people wouldn’t know how to live without it. The air-conditioned schools, buses, malls, air-conditioned everything. The well-manicured city. What little control we seem to have over our lives and fortunes, in a life that was planned out in steps for you, that could be yours for the taking, if you so desired. It terrifies me and for as long as I can remember I have wanted nothing more in life than to do the things that scare me the most. Because I can. Because I choose to. I’d rather be wrong and know I chose to be, than be right and comfortable and not because of my choices.

I love my friends, I love being home, the wonderful family that I have. But if I’m not throwing myself into uncharted territory or crowded buses to nowhere, I don’t know what I am. It’s a big world out there, so how can one possibly be happy with 699 square kilometres of it?

Last night in Haji Lane, close to 40 people I most wanted to see before I go showed up at Going Om to send me off and to celebrate my 23rd birthday.

It didn’t hit me until last night that I was leaving. I’d been so busy with life, love, career, with being everywhere but here, that I don’t think it even once entered my thick skull.

Until my best friends sat there making toasts, giving the world the low-down on the most embarrassing bits of my life circa 17-21.

Until 40 people I loved filled up that room and met each other for the first time.

Until I found the idea of going away semi-permanently jolts people into making peace: my ex outside, lecturing me about writing, life and love as she always does; other people who hadn’t spoken to me in years deciding this was as good a time as any to finally accept my apologies for having behaved terribly towards them, years ago.

Until I sat back and found that D., S. and I have come a long way from messing about skipping economics lectures and running away from Miss K, to being the best friends and beautiful people that they’ve been for the last six years. Through all kinds of drama — a lot of it.

Until I found myself comparing bank accounts to expedite the process of saving, spending and moving money across three countries, and staring intently at a mileage redemption map on Emirates.com, trying to figure out how best to accumulate miles to London, and found myself panicking. I’m turning… twenty three? What the fuck does that mean?

It means I’m fucking scared but that only makes me want to do it even more. It means I’m going to vacation in Yemen even if I need military escorts with machine guns to take me around the supposed capital of the Queen of Sheba.

It means I take with me the good luck to have known and loved all these wonderful people here, and I’d better start packing, even if I’m not taking very much with me.

29 hours, a lifetime, and the big, wondrous world out there.

That it’s not here yet, but I don’t have to worry about it.

That I lead a charmed life, full of travel, a life dictated by and dedicated to travel, and it will be this way for the rest of my life.

That I’m awaiting a life-changing transformation, which starts now, but “Life isn’t bad at all right now right? It’s pretty good? It gets better.” (Yes, and I’m looking forward to it)

That I will go everywhere in the world and see many amazing things.

That I should go to church more.

That I should avoid China.

That I should avoid, as best as I can, the east.

That if I absolutely have to go to China, to absolutely avoid the east of it, because you ren hui hai ni. Sounds like a recipe for a Taiwanese soap opera, so I’m not going to mess with it for a while, especially also since she said hai ni de ren shi yi ge ni ai de ren. I swear the Chinese language makes everything sound poetic, even while you’re having your murder/downfall/coming-down-in-the-world foretold.

That I should avoid the east of Singapore, too.

That my brilliant streak of good luck and charm in life extends itself in every way, BUT in the east. And so to avoid swimming in Pasir Ris, East Coast, Changi, for example. I don’t really swim; I wade. I didn’t know how to say “wade” in Mandarin.

That I need to eat less salty foods. (My sodium intake is… pretty scary.)

That next year I will meet a man who will love me but it will be impossible to be with him. “Probably because he’s married,” she said. (”Probably because it’s a man,” and “probably because I’m not available,” was what I was thinking.) Is this fortune-telling business gender-specific?

That “everybody loves you… but. But.” And she didn’t say anymore. I didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence anyway.

That West Asia, “The Middle”, and “South Asia”, is where I need to be right now, not China; apparently that’s where I’m going to trip all over myself while I’m there by the sheer choice of wonderful things waiting for me while my career peaks, while if I went to China I’d be stuck in a rut I can’t get out of. (I didn’t say anything at all about travelling, or about going to the Middle East, so the fact it popped up — and so much — was pretty amazing. That’s what she does for a living, right?)

She then let me know she was done by taking out a cotton bud to dig her ear with, and yawning a bit. (This woman has a reputation for being very ling; there was an endless queue of people after me!)

I’ve never really believed in any of this, but now I’m curious. Especially since The Plan, all along, was to build my independent photojournalism career in China. It hasn’t happened, time and time again, it just didn’t work out every time I tried to go. And I ended up deciding to base myself in a part of the world I’d never, ever thought of.

In about eight days I will get on that flight to the Middle East, and the plan is to pop into India often, take bus trips to Oman over the weekend, travel all over the seven emirates, and head west… to Syria and the likes of it. West Asia, the Middle East, South Asia.

So I’d better be tripping all over myself getting there, and it’d better be gold. Because this is where I want to be, on weekends: Suqutra, Yemen.

It’s still too early to be feeling butterflies in my stomach, and there isn’t much to pack. But you know that feeling you get when the stars are all beginning to connect? That’s sort of where I am right now, and it’s pretty nice.

P.S. Twitter is awesome. Two nights ago I’d twittered about how I was reading the Lonely Planet UAE, Oman and Arabian Peninsula, and a few minutes later the author of the UAE section twittered back! She runs a very cool blog, and I’m glad I found her: she makes it sound like I’m going to feel right at home in that city. That edition was the rare Lonely Planet that I liked, though I’m sure I’ll like the LP Vietnam when Tym finishes with it.

P.P.S. I don’t think I’m going to a fortune teller ever again — that was my first time, probably last. I don’t think I want to know that much. Takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?

Profession: REPORT MAKER
Accompanied by
Wife: NONE

I immediately sent out an email asking somebody if she’d consider being the wife of a maker of reports. (Profession: The Report Maker’s Wife. Sounds like a bad war-time movie.)

The ever rude Mumbaikar suggested using liquid paper to delete the first ‘n’ from ‘none’, so it reads better:

Profession: REPORT MAKER
Accompanied by
Wife: ONE

So I’m working on it. The acquisition of the wife liquid paper. Perhaps the sheikhs will let me take four? (Or not.) This also means it’s time to go. I don’t really know what to feel about it except to make plans to turn 23 in my first days in a place I’ve never been to. Sounds alright to me.

Some can’t spare the time or the effort. Others can’t be bothered. Some refuse because they think of the potential heartbreak the distance will cause: the time difference will compound the distance, the new social environment will open up possibilities that exclude you, or worse, what if they cheat — as we’re told they will, since that’s happened to all our friends who’ve tried?

Or in the words of male friends, in characteristic male bluntness: “What do you mean you need to travel hundreds of kilometres just to fuck?”

(Some people are worth it.)

Not too long ago the idea of having to travel any distance for anybody was a foreign concept, having secretly ruled out relationships with dates who professed to live in the wrong parts of my island, one that’s 42 kilometres long. Too far north? Too far east? Too far northeast? East, at all? No go.

One year on. I surprised myself, but I’ve been seriously dating somebody and have the phone bills to show for it. And it’s incredible.

My girlfriend and I possibly run through more country codes in a month than some people do in years. We’ve practiced to high art the art of putting the other person (and/or ourselves) into various modes of transportation on various continents. For over a year I’ve had a weekly ritual of rushing to get into buses, almost missing them each time, and missing several on different occasions. Or I’m sitting in my balcony tapping my foot awaiting the arrival of a small car after a long drive. More frequently, I’m counting the trees on the North-South Highway and predicting which billboard will come next in each state. Her entry in the address book on my phone has the four latest phone numbers from the most recent countries she’s in. I have in my head, a running list of the best international calling cards and how many minutes each one buys me to the country she’s in that week; my Jajah.com account perpetually refills itself . Our friends have stopped trying to keep up with where we are and turn to our blogs, Facebook and Twitter for hints. Between us, we… need a shared Google Calendar to keep track of our activities.

One thing I didn’t count on was dating someone who sleeps as deeply as I do, seeing as that this was an impossible feat and that my girlfriend strives to exceed my expectations in every imaginable way. This means we find ourselves springing out of bed at 5 am in Borneo one week, late as hell for our boat ride into the dense interiors, and two weeks later we’re jumping out of bed in a fancy room by Trafalgar Square, about to miss a flight to Barcelona. She’s the only person I’ve met who can dress and get ready faster than I can when we’re desperately trying to catch yet another mode of transportation, which is no small feat either. Before I’m out of bed I’m sliding into my clothes, putting on my watch, combing my hair. This woman beats me by two whole minutes. (Being a woman with a woman also means you can use toilets together at the same time, anywhere in the world.)

As recently as six years ago I was sneaking out of my house to go on dates. This past year made sneaking out of my country for lunch or dinner, or both, a fairly regular occurrence. I’d be having dinner with friends and then getting into buses to travel a few hundred kilometres northwards, then heading back the next morning to make it in time to get a book deal signed. The coming year might see that upgraded to the enterprise of sneaking out of continents. Not that we haven’t had any practice: I’ve put her into planes in random Spanish airports so she can fly back to London to fly back to Southeast Asia. Just last week I travelled 400 kilometres to drink a milkshake and a bottle of wine, took off for Jakarta that evening, and from a couch in Jakarta watched a live feed of her packing her life’s belongings to get ready to move to London — the next morning. I’m now packing my bags for my Middle Eastern adventure, and something about the idea of going on dates in any of the exotic locations in between us is rather enticing, particularly the one starting +90.

It all began with +65, and the hot, balmy night in my city. We were strangers with impossible situations, yet hardly a month later in +60 you were mine. Every other week since that one, somewhere between +65 and +60 i find myself wishing: if only half the state of Johor would disappear you would be so much closer to me. One week I’m punching +27 to call you in Stellenbosch, and the next you’re telling me silly jokes about St Francis from a +55 number from your hotel room in Porto Alegre. With a surprise 6 hours with you in Singapore since it’s supposedly partway between Brazil and South Africa, and since you do seem to like popping into my city to surprise me.

I squatted by toilets each night in +88 to talk to you on Skype, when trying to win your trust, continued the next week from +62, but it was the country codes I didn’t have to dial that did it for us. Not needing to dial a prefix means you are here. Not needing a country code means you are next to me. The country codes I haven’t had to dial made, and shaped, us; they were those times we were finally alone, those times we were going somewhere together, those times I was waiting for yet another delayed flight and you were by my side. It was those magical times in various parts of +66, in deserted islands or in bustling cities, between +66 and +60 in a cabin on a 15 hour ride, that we found each other’s place and pace in our lives. Other times, intoxicated with too much tuak, asleep with half the village in our bilik: you were always next to me, on that tilam in +6083. Then of course, cycling adventures in +34, after +33, +44.

To put things into perspective the 10 000 kilometres between us means we you are only 20 times further from me than you usually are, and soon that will half to merely 5000. I can’t talk to you without shouting into a computer or pressing a million calling card digits followed by # followed by country code#city code#yournumber#, and you’re not here for dinner 95% of the time. Why this works, I think, is because the 5% of the time in which we are having dinner, in which there are no country codes needed, no matter where in the world dinner or conversation is for that particular date, we are a hundred and twenty percent about the big things. What life brings, what careers we build, the places we will travel to, and the future; our place, in all of this, the things we will do and places we will go together. Why this works is we actually end up doing these things, and going to these places, even when we least expect it. In the other 95% of the time I sometimes potter to my telephone forgetting I’ve run out of phone credit to call you at your latest prefix, but know anyway it doesn’t matter where we are or what you’re doing at that exact moment in time. Because when it’s time to get into planes it’s to come home to you.

Because this works, with or without a country code, and it’s one of those improbable things and combinations you never think of but that work out to be the best idea. Like chocolate and potato chips, peanut butter and ice cream, you and me. Us, the world, and all these possibilities.