Work in progress.

Some things are broken round here.

  • The Manual of Intimacy

    Published on Invalid DateTime

    First, meet a girl for the first time on the lawn in front of her house. Sit very closely by each other. Say hello, I'm a poet. What do you do?

    When she replies, I'm an entrepreneur. But I also run a charity. Laugh, and give her whisky, the same one that you've been nursing.

    She comes and she gives you a cigarette, and it makes you feel like she's looking out for you. But really, she's just gone into her house to meet your mutual friend to ask in all seriousness, so… does she like women… at all?

    That friend laughed a little. And did not have an answer.

    She went back out to the lawn to give you another cigarette. And a bourbon. Woodford Reserve. So good, so smooth, all 72% corn, 18% rye and 10% malt. There was 10% of her that paused and said, this is a very good idea. There was 18% of you that stopped for a second and thought, what is going on?

    There was all 72% of the man sitting across from you, all love and all happiness and all he wants to marry you, now.

    She went away. She came back. She went away again. You told her: you are worried about how much you like her. Because you are going to hurt her. She did not believe you. She said she did not care because this was just going to be fun, that she also wasn't ready for anything more.

    You believed her.

    You met her at a bar when she got home, right after she got off a plane. She waited two hours for you when you sent him off. She was happy to see you. She held your hand, and you said: hey, you're holding my hand. You brought her to the river and showed her your favourite spot. You tried to be chaste. She tried harder. She went away again.

    When you saw each other again, it was the end. It was the start of the end of the beginning. But you already told her that.

    As though telling someone that you're going to break their heart, makes it any better when you do. As if telling someone all the ways in which you are broken, cuts any less when you cut them.

    And then when you have her completely under your spell. Tell her that you love her. Tell her that you care for her. But you care for him more.

    You're sorry, you love her so much. But. You asked her, is there a but? After she said she loved you too? She said-pensively-no. But there really was one.

    Come over one day and find her worried and afraid, at home, alone. Tell her that you haven't stopped thinking about her. Tell her that you love her. Tell her that you love her so much that when you sleep with him, you can't stop thinking about her.

    Then go back to him and tell her, this isn't a competition, Adrianna.

  • Lying on a Sack of Rice

    Published on Invalid DateTime

    I had one of those days today. The day when your to-do list is piled so high that you can't see the end of the tunnel. The day when your caterer cancels your big order a few days before Culture Kitchen. The day when all of your mega business problems are on the verge of getting solved, but almost. The day when you feel your heart pulling in a million directions, but there are no right answers, there never were.

    I find myself having to lie down on a sack of rice quite often these days.

    I work out of an office where the outdoor area has outdoor furniture made out of up-cycled gunny sacks. It's become my favourite place to sit on, to think.

    A lifetime ago I used to travel around India by train. My dad would give me a sack of rice (minus the rice) so that I can lay on it in the sleeper class trains I would travel on, the ones without bedding or sheets or pillows. My backpack as my pillow. My rice sack as my bedsheet.

    Waking up in the morning to find my arms imprinted: 100% Thai Jasmine Rice.

    Today, I didn't have an imprint of anything. But I did sit on my sack for two hours. Trying to breathe.

    Today, I fixed most of the problems, but not all. Maybe the day I fix every problem will be the day I find more to solve.

    Why can't I be superhuman?

  • My Life on a Bike

    Published on Invalid DateTime

    Every morning, I get on a bike to work. Except I don't ride it. I bargain with someone on the street, or use an app to book one at other times. Do you want masker? They ask. It's the Indonesian word for face mask. Gak mau masker, makasih pak. Sekarang pergi ke Jalan Hang Tuah bisa? A string of words that I sometimes don't know I know, come out of my mouth. Every morning, I am on the road at a time when the entire city has already decided to get moving. I am in traffic. A lot. You can't miss it, really. I am not a morning person, but I am always thankful for this. This is being on a bike going to work in one of the world's most exciting cities at the moment for what I am doing. This is not having to stand in an MRT every morning for 30 minutes, packt like sardines in a crushed tin box. This is having difficult problems to solve, every single day. Being able to solve most of them.

    I've never been one for job descriptions, but the only one that would truly work for me would be: "Adrianna Tan, Street Fighter". I find peace and equilibrium on the streets of noisy Asian cities. I know exactly where to find the things I need. I know where they are. If they are in buildings, I am not interested in looking for them anymore. If they are not wrapped up in an impossible puzzle, I don't know how to solve them. Somehow the best place to do any of this is precisely where I am, every morning: on the back of a motorbike, travelling over rubbish, driving by someone's wet laundry, turning out of a tiny alley before merging into the big city again.

    I like this life. I like this bike. I like this city. The rest of it, we'll figure out.

  • Swatow

    Published on Invalid DateTime

    When my people speak of who we are and where we come from
    We do not say, China.

    When my relatives reclaim our collective past,
    Those words—China—dance on our lips, foreign.

    We do not say China.
    We do not say China at all.

    Instead, we are the people of the coast.
    We are the subjects of the Tang Dynasty.
    We are the rejects of the imperial court, cast out into the Nanyang sun where we sweat with the sons of the land.

    My grandfather was an upright man,
    So upright and uptight his wooden backscratcher formed the curve between his back and the rosewood chair.

    My grandmother would only ever wear a two piece Chinese suit
    Made of silk and cotton. I can still see her, smelling like mothballs
    Speaking, summoning, reaching out to me

    in Teochew.

    What is your native place,
    They ask me from Kanyakumari to Rameswaram.
    In Tiruvanamalai, I finally cave. I say,
    It is not China.

    We could have been anywhere.
    Semarang, Sri Lanka, Calcutta.
    These sea routes go unmapped and undiscovered
    From Swatow to the rest of the world.

    I want Swatow to remain a shorthand
    For the mythical land where I can chase demons,
    Exorcise my grandmother,
    Write poetry and wrap myself up in a giant band-aid of ignorance.
    The less I know about Swatow
    The more the idea of China lands with a heavy plod

    This is a language I speak perfectly
    Without my soul.

  • Split Language Disorders

    Published on Invalid DateTime

    It is a well-documented fact: multi-lingual people have multiple personalities. I am no different, though I was only recently cognizant of that. Of how my languages affect the way I perceive myself, present myself to the world. How I trade, make contracts; how I fall in love.

    For as long as I can remember, 'foreign languages' were never foreign to me. They just seemed like perfectly formed words in very different chords. When I started travelling, my language brain and place brain also got inextricably tied up with each other.

    For example,

    When I am home in Singapore, I code-switch. Every ten minutes. English-English. American-English. International-English. Singlish-English. Then I go from that largely English existence to, broken-English-if-I-have-to. Then to Mandarin. China-Mandarin. Taiwanese Mandarin. Singaporean-broken-ass-Mandarin. Then to what I actually consider my mother tongue, which is early 1900s Chaoshan area Teochew language.

    In my 'international English', learned from a decade in a privileged upper-middle class English speaking school setting, I fit in anywhere. My politics are liberal. My passport takes me to any country in the world. I am both privileged and not, in this language. I can become American, Australian, Singaporean. Or I can become this weird hybrid, which is closer to the truth: that I speak in a certain way because I have been everywhere and nowhere.

    But the me that speaks in an affected Singlish accent, that is also all me. It does not come naturally to me, but I have learned its inflections and quirkiness. I have learned how to express anger, despair, annoyance and joy-using the same words-but I have learned to separate my emotions with the ascent or descent of a single tone. With the addition or subtraction of a single suffix. Lah. Lor. Leh.

    Why you so like that leh, means resignation and acceptance that your friend is an asshole.

    Why you you so like that one, means you are still surprised your friend is an asshole, because he isn't often one.

    Why you so like that lor, means you have been an asshole for a while and I know that, but I am still annoyed that you are.

    Why you so like that lah, means I am in equilibrium with your general assholery.

    It's that Singlish that gets stuff done. I pick up the phone and yell at someone in it. No matter the colour of their skin, the understanding is universal. "Eh why you like that can you help me or not bro"

    My Mandarin brain is complicated.

    I literally cannot go to China without having an existential crisis about it. When I was 4, my Chinese teacher in kindergarten yelled at me, saying "why don't you understand Mandarin? What kind of stupid Chinese person are you?" At that point, I decided: not a very good one. I don't want to be a Chinese person, then.

    Eventually, I made peace with it. I learned that my grandparents spoke more Tamil and Malay than they did Mandarin. I learned that the Mandarin that had been plugged into my brain, with all of its accompanying cultural baggage-oh, you should learn Mandarin because you are the daughter of the Yellow Emperor (correct answer: who the fuck is he and why am I his daughter. And why does he speak Mandarin?)-is always going to be a part of my unstable, cultural identity. At this point, the language I keep as my second one is functional. It is sufficient. But that is what it is.

    I can order food in it, and have political conversations. But I do not care about that language-in fact, I hate it. Absolutely detest it.

    Because Mandarin takes a part of me away from who I think I really am, which is, a Teochew in Southeast Asia. The idea that I find no comfort or joy, instead I find downright disgust, at the language I was forced to speak for a decade or more. When the language I dream in, wake up blabbering in, feel happy and loved in, is not even a designated language at all. It is considered a dialect, not a language. Teochew is the dialect of my heart and soul. I live it, love it, breathe it, revel in it. I sound like a fairy with helium in my mouth when I speak in it.

    My English and Mandarin selves are whole identities. My Teochew self is a private, semi-religious self. It is the language I use to tell my grandmother that I love her. It is the language that I use to love, and to be loved in. English feels clumsy in comparison: love in Teochew, is by far a superior experience. Partly because everyone who I have ever loved in this obscure language of mine, has loved me unconditionally.

    It is then difficult to take the language of love in one plane and to try to translate it to another. Especially if it is a language you barely speak. My Indonesian brain is about 3 years old at this point. Half-formed; the other deformed. My Thai brain is a little bit better, but not by much. One time, I tried to date a Thai woman, and I spoke as good Thai as she had good English, which was not at all. It showed me that love, sex and attraction is all about language for me.

    I do not think I could ever love someone who spoke Mandarin to me. Even if I understood it perfectly. It just does not work. It is not my love language; it is my functional language. English, yes. Hindi, somewhat. Indonesian, maybe.

    And as I go off into the big world at large, carrying a pocket full of several languages with different lives, I am also reminded that there is no other language in the world that makes me feel the most love; only the one I speak the least. When I have dreams, more and more it is in that obscure southern Chinese dialect: my dialectical love and life, carried with me in a different passport, in a different time, in multiple other lives and languages.

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