Popagandhi

Quick one before I jump into a plane –

I was just at a small wedding in Manila. One of my oldest friends in the world got hitched to a lovely Pinoy girl here, and will soon whisk her away to Australia and all that. Great, very happy for the couple; very pleased to see him too, because I only get to see him every few years.

But then I was stuck for a few hours in a small room with two tables (I told you it was a small wedding) in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Manila. At one table was the Filipino family, full of wonderful and lovely people I spent some time with. Present at the other table: the family friends and relations, mostly Hokkien-speaking Chinese people originally from Singapore. The Hokkien-speaking drove me mad (because I speak and understand it quite well and why is it that these conversations are always so inane?), but what really got me was the chauvinistic Chinese Singaporean men and their distasteful ways.

They saw fit to use me as an example of a ‘young Singaporean woman who’s picky about men and who puts her career first and won’t stop until I’m 30 and then by then it’s too late I can’t have a family because I’ve missed the boat’. All that, in the context of how Singaporean women are so picky and Filipino women are not, which is why they prefer Filipino women. For being more submissive.

Wow, that’s a lot of assumption for people who have only met me for 20 minutes. And a lot of gall for people who are guests in someone else’s country to dare to speak of its women in that fashion, with those very women present. Especially when it isn’t true (Pinoy women are FAR from submissive!!). Saying it in a different language doesn’t make it better. It’s not about being picky; it’s that I have taste, career, and choice. It’s not like people who thoughtlessly refer to the entire female species as the “weaker gender” (how old-fashioned) would ever get it.

I spent a lot of time being angry — I know people are stupid, I know it’s pointless arguing. The gall! The cheek! The hypocrisy! (All the MCPs who were going on about female submissiveness were also, in the same breath, discussing the finer points of having more than one family, one in a different country. And then also lecturing me, somewhat, on family values.)

But I’m just reminded of how the reason I never have to tolerate people like that, what more marry men like that, is that I get to choose. And I get to infuriate men like that whenever they appear, because I can.

As the incisive @illyrica puts it: “picky” = “insufficiently grateful that an actual man is willing to bestow validation upon your worthless life by choosing you”

I thank God every moment for the empowerment that is not needing this validation, not needing men, not needing to pick through this garbage, and indeed for not needing to pick. At all.

for more angry feminist ranting: why i am still a feminist

Bah. Manila was great fun (five days so far; more on that city soon), jumping into a plane to Singapore, and then into another one to Bangalore.

Everything starts and ends with India.

I am always coming and going to India.

Every post of significance here, these days, seems to have to do with the going and returning and yearning for India.

I spent all of 2008 yearning for adventure, 2009 living it, 2010 wanting a bed, a pillow and a bedfellow. 2010 is here and I find I’m leading the life I wanted in 2005 (a good thing). Now I am (still) a writer, (still) a photographer, but also business owner, ice cream professional, and more.

Responsibility is a hard game to play; I no longer live for myself but for others, and it is increasingly harder to leave. I’ve traded up from chappals and hobo attire to (sometimes) proper business shirts and name cards. ‘Carefree’ is no longer an applicable word when you’ve started to build a family. “Home” is a state of mind, not the state of your possessions. My “home” is Singapore but it is not my home. My home is India but it is not “home”. Malaysia is where my wardrobe, room, cutlery, dog, cat and heart are — and yet it will never give me legal abode.

A recent feature article about me in our Chinese papers was oddly poignant, and ended on a pensive note. They called me a nomad, but instead used the Chinese equivalent, “you mu ren”. It is not the same yurts, tents or gypsies that are conveyed from the English “nomad”, nor the electronic nomadism of the “digital nomad” I pretend to be. In Chinese, the language I continue to learn and be amazed by as I grow with it, “you mu ren” is a person who travels and herds, instantly conjuring up ideas of plains and steppes, mountains and forests. The article ends, “I only know I have to go./ To leave, is sometimes to come home./ To come home, is sometimes for leaving again.”

5 days in Manila, followed immediately by a month in the motherland — racing autorickshaws all around the South. I keep saying the country gives me perspective.

I sometimes forget it is the ground beneath my feet.

Slides from my barcamp presentation:

BarCamp Singapore 4 is on tomorrow at Suntec Tower 3, 14th Floor, at IDA Singapore, from 9am to 6pm. Looks like there will be lots of interesting presentations.

I’m on at 1.30pm, with “How to hack your own travel channel life”. I’ll be sharing about travel, writing, photography, the internet, and well, stuff. Sorry I can’t be more specific (I’m still preparing the presentation). If you haven’t already registered, it looks like they’re over-subscribed. See you tomorrow if you are coming, and come say hi!

P.S. there’s an afterparty at Hackerspace, sponsored by Yahoo Southeast Asia. I hope we’ll have something like Hackerspace in Malaysia soon — I would love to have a co-working space there!

A surprising thing about Singapore that few people know about, other than those of us who live/lived here, is how much great ice cream there is. Or to be more specific: how much great ice cream there is that isn’t international chain ice cream. Those can be lovely too, but you get the same stuff all over the world. Something happened in the last 5-7 years when the ‘homemade local premium ice cream’ trend took off and really came into its own. I’m proud to say that we have great local ice cream wizards doing great things with local flavours and ingredients. Some of it is highly innovative. Most of it is just tasty and… a hell lot cheaper than the inferior stuff produced by ice cream chains. They’re usually free from additives and preservatives (for that reason, they don’t last more than 3 days when you take them home) too. Some are even egg or gluten-free.

The local flavours available are tremendous: these days, Horlicks and Teh Tarik flavours are regular ice cream flavours Singaporeans know and love, largely (I think) due to the efforts of the pioneering stores like Island Creamery and Tom’s Palette. They’re two of my absolute favourites.

Our latest craze: we’ve been trying to replicate some of these flavours at home with our cheapo Cuisinart home ice cream machines. Next week we’re driving 400 kilometres back to Singapore to attend an ice cream class run by the ice cream genius maniacs at Tom’s Palette. To help the Malaysian ice cream making entourage I’m heading south with, I’ve put together a little ice cream map.

Did I miss anything?

Note: I’m only adding local and homemade ice cream shops here so don’t ask why I left out Ben and Jerry’s. None of us are fans of the “Coldstone-style” of ice cream: the icky super sweet kinds that get all kinds of rubbish mixed into them. Not big on gelato either unless they’re done very very well, which very few Singapore places manage to (are there any!?).., so I’ve left out one or two obvious places because of this… peculiar ice cream preference.

Have fun, go nuts, eat more ice cream, and remember to use GoThere to figure out how to get to these places by public transport.