In a world that feels like it is coming undone, I find a lot of solace in making things with my hands. The biggest breakthrough I developed was when I decided I don't need to be good at everything that I do. I can just.. do things.
That goes against my programming as a competitive over-achiever, but it was ultimately what gave me the mindset I needed to.. do the things I need to feel less shitty about the world.
Things I did:
Attended an intro to pottery class
Started a doodle notebook
Picked up a water brush and a palette of colors
Learned how to develop film (black and white, and color) at home
Learned how to print film negatives of various sizes in a darkroom (black and white, as well as color)
Fold origami
Code this website entirely by hand
Some things stuck more than others. I'd like to learn bookbinding, as well as to go deeper into pottery. Like I love saying: my hobby is having hobbies. I don't want or need to ever hustle with my hobbies.
I think I am just done with hustle, full stop. I enjoy making and building things, whether it is software, or a thingamajig. That is enough for me.
In late April 2025, I had the opportunity to talk about my interesting career trajectory 'From Fintech to Fin Tech'.
If you told me a decade ago that I would be working at an aquarium, I don't think I would know what to think. I hadn't discovered my love for marine life, puns, or marine puns at the time. My life is so much richer now.
In January this year, I wrote this about how I felt being away from 'home' for the Lunar New Year again:
This lunar new year eve, I am usually home in Singapore.
I am seven years old, and I wake up to the smell of roasted chilli, poached chicken, and cabbage soup.
There’s a bustle in the kitchen. My grandpa is stirring a pot, making his signature chilli paste that we all won’t eat our food without. My grandma is fussing over the roast duck, soy sauce chicken and whole fish and prawns.
I walk into the kitchen, in search of a snack. No matter how busy they are, they always have time to feed me.
Have some hae jor, beancurd rolls stuffed with pork, shrimp and chestnuts. Have a bit of everything.
My grandma calls me her ‘little baby mouse’, because I eat so slowly and carefully.
I watch TV until my cousins arrive. I put on my good clothes (but I have to be forced to do it). I greet everyone: first in Teochew, then Mandarin, then English.
Happy new year! Happy new year! Happy new year!
Eat, rub my tummy, smell everything, laugh and poke my grandpa’s tummy. I do that every day, but especially on lunar new year, he is especially jovial and happy. I tell him he looks like a fat Buddha, and he laughs.
If you hold your chopsticks that way, ah girl, you are going to move very far away from home. Very far away from me.
For an all hands meeting at work, I was asked if I wanted to share a story about my life and how I got here.
It has not been the easiest, holding all of these identities and selves, often in places that did not welcome me. I think sometimes of Merantau: of finding a home away from home. All of my parts and intersections make up the messy and glorious bits that I have lived and experienced.
I turn forty this year. I want so much to tell the four year old self: it's going to be fine, you're going to have fun, one day you are going to put up beautiful photos of your life and tell your story to everyone.
I have a new job, which also means new views! Million dollar views, in fact.
I so love this part of the world: when Sabrena and I first moved to California back in 2018, we were so excited to finally be somewhere where we could travel with our dog, Cookie. We booked a trip and came to Monterey for my birthday that year. I wanted to see the aquarium, and I wanted to experience being in a hotel room with Cookie. We got that and so much more.
7 years on, I now work at Monterey Bay Aquarium. How I got to this was pretty fun: I like going on long runs, and I like listening to podcasts on topics I know absolutely nothing about. Back in May, all of my running podcasts were about marine biology, marine science, oceanography and deep sea research. The podcasts often reference Monterey Bay Aquarium and our partner org, MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute). I was obsessed with the stories about deep sea research, and the Into the Deep exhibit. I resolved to visit again, and to see the exhibit.
A view of Monterey Bay.
While looking up information about the exhibit at the aquarium, I noticed that they were hiring a Director of Product Management — which is what I do! I applied, of course.
The rest is history. Never in a million years did I think I would end up with such a cool position. I have an interesting commute where, once a week I take a shuttle from SFO Airport that takes me right into downtown Monterey. While there, I spend a couple of days, in a cute little room I rent. I live with a few other queer people, we like cooking for each other, and watching Interview With the Vampire at night, so it's been quite ideal, actually.
After five years of almost fully remote work, or working two blocks from work, I was ready for a change of scene. I love to travel but can't travel too much internationally at the moment, so this was perfect for me.
Invasive ice plants near the water, right outside Costco in Seaside
Sabrena came to help me setup the IKEA furniture. It was sad not to have Cookie there with us this time, but I'm getting to get familiar with the Monterey, Pacific Grove, Seaside, Marina areas. The coastal trail is my favorite: I can bike or run or walk to work quite easily, without ever coming across a motorized vehicle. Last weekend, I ran to several Korean markets in Marina and Seaside, where I came across the happy 'secret' that Marina / Seaside have tons of great Korean grocery stores with homemade banchan and many types of homemade kimchi.
The produce that we get at San Francisco farmer's markets also all come from here, so the produce is cheap and good and plentiful. It's going to be hard living anywhere else after this. Good vegetables go for '3 for $5', which is a great deal (here in Monterey and in San Francisco).
Some days, I grieve the life I left behind in Singapore, but I also know this for a fact: we've built ourselves a wonderful and beautiful life here.
Even though the world feels like it's too much somes days, I feel unreasonably lucky to be here, to be able to work on things I care about, to be surrounded by people who give a shit about the world. And to be able to eat delicious food.
The main one being, my soulmate, my soul, the love of my life, Cookie pie, passed away. I am bereft, but not afloat.
It feels like a brand new chapter in my life.
Cookie the Cavalier sitting under an airplane seat
Cookie, born 1 October 2009 in Petaling Jaya, died 20 June 2024 in San Francisco.
She was deeply loved through all 14 years and 8 months of her life. There was not a moment where she was not surrounded by tremendous love, warmth and care. She passed, surrounded by people who love her. She was snacking on treats until the end.
Because of her, I learned to love my new home in San Francisco: fog, rain, cold and all. We went everywhere together. We saw everything. We ate: all the time.
I have a thread on Mastodon with more photos and stories about our life together. While I miss her a lot, I am also looking forward to learning more about how to exist without her. She was such a big part of my life that I'm afraid she was almost central to my identity for almost fifteen years.
I have a weird story about scallion pancakes. It goes like this.
Around this time last year, I was walking down my street in San Francisco when a woman waved something at me. I thought she needed help with something, so I went closer. Instead, she clicked something (she was waving a torch, the kind you ignite gas stoves with), and she held the flame in my face.
I had no idea what she was doing.
She said, "I'm going to burn you!"
"Why?" I was really confused.
"Because you're Chinese."
Oh.
That's what was happening. Until that point, I had largely avoided the worst of that stuff. I had no idea what to do. A bus arrived. I got into it.
As I was leaving, she kept pointing it at me, and she said, I'm also going to burn your dog! She is.. also Chinese!
I know she wasn't well.
I know that she needs help.
But I didn't know what I would do when that happened to me, finally.
Not much, maybe other than a lot of crying. I got to take time off work. I had therapy. I talked to a lot of people. I thought often of the moment, of what had happened, and I don't remember anything else about her now (I am face blind, that helps). If I saw her again on the streets (this happened around the corner where I live), I would not recognize her. But I remember the flame that she briefly lit, and how it changed everything about my life and my experience of the city that I had, up until that moment, thought of as home.
I don't think of her very much now. But it comes up when I least expect it. For example, when I took out a package of Trader Joe's Taiwanese Green Onions Pancake.
Now, it's probably a perfectly fine product for most people, but it's going to be forever remembered in my home now as The Time I Had Trader Joe's Scallion Pancakes and Absolutely Lost My Shit.
Somehow, the act of eating a frozen scallion pancake had unearthed all kinds of.. feelings. Mainly, why the hell am I here? There's racism, and there's frozen scallion pancakes! I would never accept frozen pancakes for any meal back home! Least of all scallion pancakes with COCONUT OIL made for WHITE PEOPLE, that aren't even flaky or layered.. or good!!!
I was inconsolable.
My wife never buys them anymore. She calls it my crying pancakes.
(We really like this one. It doesn't make me cry.)
My pancake nervous breakdown, that probably wasn't really about pancakes, but about immigration, identity, immigration, anxiety, concern about the state of the world and my personal safety, led me to book a flight back to Singapore.
More than anything else, I just needed to know that I was going to have the safety and comforts of home in my family house with my parents and with food I like. Where I was never going to have to eat anything frozen, ever. So I did that, shortly after my pancake breakdown.
And the first meal that I had when I got there was a scallion pancake. From here. Freshly made. By hand. Not frozen. Available for breakfast. For a buck or something. It was really good, and I did not cry.
But my parents could not understand why I so desperately wanted to eat a scallion pancake. It was not something I would crave, or ask for. It's not even really... Singaporean at all.
I could not explain how: between two scallion pancakes, one frozen and one fresh, laid the entire spectrum of my sadness and grief as well as my happiness and joy. I get to be queer, autistic, and to be with the person that I love. But I also get fires in my face, and frozen scallion pancakes that make me cry.
The motivation for doing so is, I am noticing an increasing amount of YOLO and FOMO with regards to artificial intelligence. Government is at once trying to regulate, as well as to determine how to engage.
I'm hoping my perspectives as the director of product management at San Francisco Digital Services, the digital arm of the City and County of San Francisco, as well as my personal interest in the ethics of and latest developments in artificial intelligence, can help my fellow public servants around the world make sense of what's happening and how we can meet the moment. Or not.
For now, I'm envisioning the site to be a resource on 'what you can do' / 'how you can think about' AI' and for the newsletter to be on 'state of AI / public sector' (there's a lot of news about AI now, and a lot of hype. Which ones are relevant to you).
Let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, feedback.
I lived the bulk of my life outside the United States, where I have been for only 6 out of nearly four decades. There are many things I appreciate about the U.S.; San Francisco in particular, which gave my wife and I a wonderful place to build our home and welcomed us at every step.
One thing that I am not used to though, is the degree of imperial insularity.
Other than Fahrenheit and imperial units, I think it's the first time I've lived somewhere that is so totally detached from the rest of the world. I feel it in my soul as I realized, with a shock, that bars here play only American sports, American news, and on top of that, hyper-regional versions of all of that.
I realized that I was not hearing about the rest of the world, except in very negative terms: like in wars or in other crises. This, I noted, is new. (I grew up in a city-state and I think I had to learn the exchange rate to all 10 major global currencies as a teenager figuring out eBay)
I know it doesn't come from a place of malice. Most of the time, it just is. As the superpower of the world, that's just the way it is.
To keep myself amused, I have come up with a test that I think reflects my past experience as a non-American, interacting online with Americans who are not aware of their insularity.
When you are on the Internet, and you ask a question about where to get face wash or shampoo, what do people tell you?
The people who say 'Walgreens' even when you've stated that you're not in America, are the winners of my Internet Walgreens Insularity test. The idea that your local drugstore is available elsewhere in the world is a frame of mind that I personally do not understand. The idea that you are surprised that there is no (insert your local business) in another country is one that can only occur in an empire.
Other people had fun ideas too.
'when I talk about wanting to read a book and someone tells me to get it at my local library. but there are no local libraries where i live'
'that Pi Day is 3/14 and only in America'
Personally, I was really surprised when I encountered a very educated person here who had no idea that other countries used other currencies, and that other countries used other electrical outlets. They had never seen an electrical adapter before.
I say all of this not to bash anyone, but to really only note that wow, I live somewhere completely different now.
Two years before I moved to the United States, I wrote something called ‘things I will miss when I have to leave Southeast Asia (because I am queer)’. I predicted that I would be deeply homesick, not for Singapore specifically, but for the entire region.
Even though I was born in Singapore, I lived many years in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
What I could not predict: that even watching videos of people in YouTube documentaries about Southeast Asia, the birdsong is enough to make me bawl.
I have such a deep affection for and attachment to that part of the world. The weather makes sense to me. The languages make sense to me. And oh my god I miss the food.
I’ve been lucky to have such a deep familiarity with so much of it. I went to a hippie run shop in SF the other day and they played ‘mor lam’ on their record player.
It instantly brought me back to long overnight bus rides through Thailand with my mother.
In San Francisco, there’s a neighborhood called the Tenderloin. Looking it up on the Internet will tell you it’s the worst place in the world; apparently a literal war zone.
I live there. There are Thai people, Lao people, Vietnamese people. I walk my dog in my batik pajamas and sandals, just like I would back home. There’s fresh galangal in the grocery store. Sometimes a Vietnamese uncle goes fishing and I’m invited to pick some fish, with other Vietnamese aunties.
Sometimes people ask me why I don’t live in a nicer neighborhood. But I struggle to think of how any neighborhood where I can’t buy fresh galangal, speak my languages, get free soy milk, buy the only tofu I find acceptably good, is possibly nicer in any conceivable way
But mostly I am afraid that if I move, my yearning for home will give way to a bigger hole in my soul. Leaving Southeast Asia is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
My neighbors go to the food pantry every day. They don’t have money. They came here on a scary boat ride, all those decades ago. The trauma of war and that journey still haunts them in many visible ways. They also insist on giving me vegetables that they get from the food pantry. I tell them I am not poor and I feel bad about taking free food. They laugh and say, they just want to give me something. I am the only young person who still speaks to them in their language. They like that about me.
With the benefits of community also comes the downsides. My neighbors nag at me as though they are my relatives. Don’t order food. It’s expensive. Get a house in Hayward. It’s cheaper. I help them set alarms on their phones so they can wake up to get into a shuttle to go to a temple in San Jose for Tết. They are surprised that I don’t know many traditions, like being vegetarian on the 1st day of lunar new year.
I don’t know how to say, ‘my evangelical Christian upbringing robbed me of my cultural traditions’, in either Vietnamese or Teochew or Cantonese.
Every Vietnamese American old person who speaks to me asks me, ‘why did you come here? Isn’t your country better? Cleaner?’
I also don’t know how to say ‘my country doesn’t accept me because of who I love, so I am here’. In any of the languages that I know. Which is, quite a few.
When my wife Sabrena and I first got together in early 2017, she said I was her early birthday gift. Not actually knowing her birthday, I asked her when it was: exactly two months from when we got together.
You must understand, at that time I was a bit of a fuckboi and two months was a very long time for someone like me. I had no idea where I was going to be, who I was going to be with, or what I was going to do even two days ahead of time. Happily, things worked out: we have been together for seven years, and married for six of that.
Happy birthday to the love of my life!
In 2018, she agreed to marry me, and move to San Francisco with me, sight unseen. She'd never even been to the United States at that point.
The life we've built together here is wonderful and comfortable; exciting and engaging; fun and full of laughter. Here's to many more birthdays together.
Chobanicore: the style of natural, soft colors and airy composition in branding popularized by Chobani's 2017 rebrand is also known as 'paperback chic' and 'Chobanicore'.
Spycraft and Statecraft: A new article in Foreign Affairs by William Burns, Director of the US CIA says "China remains the only U.S. rival with both the intent to reshape the international order and the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so. The country’s economic transformation over the past five decades has been extraordinary. It is one for which the Chinese people deserve great credit and one that the rest of the world has broadly supported in the belief that a prosperous China is a global good. The issue is not China’s rise in itself but the threatening actions that increasingly accompany it. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has begun his third presidential term with more power than any of his predecessors since Mao Zedong. Rather than use that power to reinforce and revitalize the international system that enabled China’s transformation, Xi is seeking to rewrite it"
Listening to your body: interoception, or our 'body's sixth sense' is a sense that many autistic people struggle with. I certainly do. But there is now a growing interest in what these signals actually mean, and how they work in the context of brain-body integration.
Lucas Sin shares how Cantonese chefs gauge water temp: shrimp eyes (80C), crab eyes (90C), fish eyes (99C about to go into a rolling boil). The video is also a good instructional resource on how to prepare and cook shrimp, especially Hangzhou style tea shrimp. Good recipe to come back to and try.
Hennepin County, Minneapolis has reduced its chronically homeless population by 80% in just five years via a combination of funding, deep community engagement and a housing-first approach that’s matched with real housing resources. Besides cutting chronic homelessness, Hennepin County has also managed to reduce its unsheltered population by 22% since 2019, while the country’s totals moved in the opposite direction.
Film photography felt like an old friend I was coming back to: I was already shooting film 20 years ago, but dropped off for the digital world
In moving to San Francisco, I also found a community of film photography experts and enthusiasts around whom I could build a creative practice
It's much easier to continue pursuing a hobby when there are events to attend, people to share, and spaces to go to for it
I crossed off the vast majority of items on my learning wishlist for photography: I learned to bulk roll film, I learned to shoot medium format, I learned to develop film in all processes, I learned to scan film and also print (in a darkroom, and digitally)
I'm now reasonably confident in all of those things, enough for me to be able to print photos for art shows
Not sure where I want to go with the printing thing, but it came in handy when I also, in the last two months of the year, started teaching photography at a community space in my neighborhood
I gave disposable film cameras to participants (who are either unhoused or who mostly live in the supportive housing in the area), who then went forth and took photos of their lives and experiences
A local film lab helped us develop the negatives, and I printed out a selection of participants' photos for a small private art show at the community space. I am now working on documenting and showing some of this work online and will share it when I am ready!
In developing a 'creative practice', I've come to see that the work I do in photography or in music (or even meditation) all have similar roots
It's all about establishing a regular practice on something in my life where, maybe I won't ever be a professional, but it's something that I personally really enjoy and can learn from
It's enough joy to be able to work on these hobbies that bring me peace and solitude
When I sit in a completely dark darkroom, that's one of the only times I am away from a screen
The hour or three that I spend in one helps me center my thoughts around creating something beautiful that can bring happiness to someone else (my wife, for example, really likes having prints so she can decorate our home with it. I also love giving prints to friends)
Given that I stepped away from photography for a decade or so because I was burned out by the practice of commercial photography, which killed my love for it and which also made me uninterested in picking up a camera for a very long time, I'm very happy with... this, whatever this is!
I've learned a few new things since I last posted about how other Singaporeans can apply for, and receive, the H1-B1 visa.
In renewing my visa in Singapore this September, I opted for the new-ish interview waiver process (available since 2021).
Although I have never had a rejection, going to the US embassy is always a stressful time. You see so many people (usually non-Singaporeans) getting their work or school dreams dashed at the window. You can hear everything. The high stress, high security: I would very much like to never go there again.
The interview waiver process was made available to me at the last step of the visa application, in the USTravelDocs portal. When scheduling step 6, USTravelDocs will ask you a bunch of questions to determine if you are eligible for the interview waiver.
The main thing to note is that only Singaporeans and permanent residents are likely to be eligible. While the main applicant for H1-B1 has to be a Singapore citizen, if your dependents (spouse or children) are not Singapore citizens, then they will not qualify for the interview waiver. Definitely allow more time for an embassy interview if that's the case.
I was nervous about whether or not to do this, so I consulted a Singaporean immigration attorney in California. Junwen was able to give me very specific advice that I found helpful. Check out his blog here. I highly recommend booking an appointment with Junwen (send him a message on LinkedIn) or use this contact form to email him if you have any specific questions (paid consultation).
He advised that I should use the Chinatown document drop-off point at Bstone Travel, instead of the Changi location. This is because his clients had some challenges with the Changi location recently, which led to delays.
He also informed me that the interview waiver process can take anywhere between 4 and 11 days.
Because I find the USTravelDocs so ridiculously difficult to navigate, I am pasting this information here for anyone who needs it.
Check that the information is still accurate before you rely on it though, I may not be updating this page with new information.
Aramex at Chinatown, located at Bstone Travel, People's Park Centre, 101 Upper Cross Street, #B1-31, Singapore 058357
Opening hours: 10am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday
Closed on Singapore public holidays and weekends
US Embassy contact number: +65 3158 5400
Aramex contact number: +65 6543 0300
The email you will receive about dropping off and collecting your passport / visa says they open at 11am, but they actually open at 10am. At least, they did, as of September 2023.
I dropped off my documents (passport, signed LCA, interview waiver confirmation code generated by USTravelDocs, and passport photo) in Chinatown on a Tuesday afternoon around noon.
I checked the visa status tracker every day and did not see any change until Thursday, when it changed to Approved
On Friday, the status changed to Issued
On late Friday night, I received a text message saying that the passport will be available for collection soon
As all the document collection points are closed on weekends, I didn't hear anything else until Monday
On Monday morning, I got an email that my passport had been sent to the pickup point (the same place I dropped off my passport)
On Monday morning, I joined the line at 10am (although Google Maps, and the email you get, says it only opens at 11am), and got my passport in 15 minutes (there was a line)
Excluding the document pickup and drop-off days, it took 3 working days in all. Maybe dropping off on Monday first thing in the morning would have been faster, but I wasn't in a hurry.
It wound up being almost the same as going to the embassy in the past: if I went on a Tuesday, I would have received my passport on a Monday morning anyway.
So I got to do that, but skipped the anxiety and stress at the embassy. Highly recommended. Just make sure you have ample time in your travel plans.
I have been struggling with my feelings on and about immigration.
Some time in mid 2023, a woman at a bus stop in San Francisco pointed a blow torch flame at me and threatened, I'm going to burn you, because you're Chinese!
Number 1 is possibly related to number 2.
A theme I keep coming back to: why does it feel like this?
The feelings: neither here nor there, a deep sense of longing for 'home', uncertain what 'home' really means, feeling like I'm in two or three places at once, feeling stuck, feeling like I don't know where I fit, feeling like I am two people at once.
That the 'home' I return to, I no longer fully fit into. I left five years ago, and in that time: obviously, it's moved on without me. I no longer know how to exist here in Singapore. I don't have any routines, I don't have places to go, things to do. I'm no different from a tourist. Just that I'm a tourist who knows a lot of details about this country, and who has an intimate knowledge about its food and its politics.
That the 'home' I now exist in: where I have work, family, contemporary friends, hobbies, a home, feels on some days like it's real and solid, and on other days that idea of solidity is completely unraveled, especially when things like number 2 happen.
I've spent the past week in Singapore and Indonesia. It's been splendid to be around friends, food, the weather, environment and culture that I know and love.
A big part of why I suffer from number 1 is that I feel completely estranged from the Southeast Asian bits of my life when I am in California. I can probably fix that by going to do things like, I don't know, play gamelan or learn Balinese dance in Berkeley (both activities that are very popular and established, led by East Bay Indonesians).
Living in the heart of the imperial superpower, I do not hear, see, learn about anything about the outside world outside the US at any time. TVs don't play world news, they play sports: sports that only Americans play. Online discussions tend to veer towards only domestic politics. I feel like I'm at the heart of the world, and totally cut off from it, at the same time.
I've fought it for a while, but I feel the semblance of a nascent Asian American identity forming. Ever since I learned about the Hyphenated Americans discussion, I've been far more open to the idea that without the hyphen, I can be both Asian and American (without necessarily needing citizenship).
As number 11 strengthens and solidifies, number 1 also waxes and wanes. Some days, I am convinced that coming to California was the best idea I ever had. On other days, I cry myself to bed missing tropical weather, my family back in Asia, immigration stability (not having immigration challenges at all), and maybe a romanticized idea of what Singapore means to me.
The past week in Indonesia was transformational. Not only did I get to wake up the part of my brain that had been dormant for a long time, the one that speaks, understands, and exists in Bahasa Indonesia as well as Bahasa Gaul, I also got to reconnect with my friend of 25 years.
Beyond the food, which was amazing (East Java has my favorite Indonesian cuisine and dishes), it also sent me down a rabbit hole of listening to Indonesian music and reading in Indonesian.
I was reading something today that referenced the idea of merantau cino.
I know about merantau: it's the Minang rite of passage where men leave their homes in Sumatra to pursue careers and experiences outside their village. There was even a martial arts movie made about this.
In merantau, the idea is that you leave and then you return to your home.
However, in merantau cino, you leave your home and you never return. Not permanently, anyway.
The term is based on the idea that the southern Chinese diaspora left China, many of them never returning.
Therefore, a person who does merantau cino is doing a rite of passage, embarking on a migration story, where it's unlikely that they will return to their original homes.
I'm not sure whether I am a perantau cino or a merantau cino yet (difference explained here; article in Indonesian), but I'll be damned if this hasn't been a more relevant and insightful observation about my personal immigration journey than anything I have read about in English, in an American context.
When I get 'home' to San Francisco next week, a couple of milestones will happen; things that will set us up for a different phase in our lives there.
I will probably always see myself as someone split down the middle.
Two lives: one here, one there.
But at least I know now that there's a name for it. And maybe it feels a little less lonely, since merantau cino was exactly what my grandfather did, as a teenager.
Citizens of some countries need a visa to enter Singapore. If you have friends or family that belong to those countries, you can do them a huge favor by applying as a local contact.
As long as you are a Singapore citizen or Singapore PR with SingPass, or director of a Singapore-registered business, you can help your friend get a visa. Please make sure that you actually know this person!
I only do this for people I know.
It can save them a lot of time and money. Most of the time, I do this for my friends from India. It's much faster and it also costs less than them going to a visa agent.
The following instructions are for Singapore citizens and PRs who have SingPass.
Before you start, send this PDF form to the person you are applying for the visa for
Ask them to write down the answers to all the questions in a document, and send it to you. Also ask them to attach a passport photo in the right format
Visit this ICA page and click on "Apply for a an entry visa as a local contact (Individual Users)"
Log in with SingPass
Click on "Individual Visa Application" to apply for 1 person, or "Family Visa Application" to apply for more than 1 person (they must be married; children above the age of 21 must have their individual applications)
Fill in the form according to the information your friend provided you. Be sure to get their birthday, passport issue date and passport number correct.
Upload their passport photo
Pay: you can pay with American Express Cards, PayNow, or eNets (internet banking).
Save the application as a PDF. It will take 3 working days to receive a response, but in my experience it has been usually faster than that (next day has been the norm).
An updated, updated guide to the H1-B1 visa process for Singaporeans.
Singaporean citizens (and Chileans) are eligible for the H1-B1, a unique work visa of the US that was negotiated as part of a free trade agreement in 2004. There are 5400 visas set aside for Singaporeans, and 1400 for Chile. From what I know about the program, the 5400 number has never been fully utilized.
Singaporeans who are interested in coming to work in the US should consider a H1-B1. The other main work visa program, H-1B, requires a lottery program and it is getting harder to find sponsorship for companies that want to sponsor foreigners. Many companies simply don't want to spend the money on the H-1B program when they don't know if you'll get it, or when you can start
In this regard, Singaporeans have a bit of a leg up: only other countries like Canada and Australia have similar programs open to them, that are different / more straightforward from the standard H-1B.
The H1-B1 program is so simplified and it is much, much cheaper than the H-1B program. I've been able to get a job, set up an appointment (at the US embassy in Singapore), get my visa within a couple of days, and go back to the US to start or resume a job.
Not many employers know about this possibility, so very often when you hear about 'no visa sponsorship' they usually mean 'no H-1B sponsorship'. Very often, if you reach out to them (especially through a personal connection) to say that you have access to a different type of visa that is much cheaper, more straightforward, easier and faster to get, and that you know how to get it, that can open some doors. In my experience, companies are still willing to interview or hear you out if you mention that; versus automatic rejections at times if you state that you need a new H-1B visa sponsorship.
It's also very fast, cheap and easy to get. I have not heard of Singaporeans getting rejected for it (though I have heard of cases of some foreign-born Singaporeans getting additional scrutiny). It also appears to be easy to renew multiple times, as long as you have not filed for any green card or other paperwork that might make you ineligible for the H1-B1. For example, if you went to the US, found someone to marry, and then filed for a spousal visa, you probably don't qualify for the H1-B1 anymore.
The speed, cheapness and ease of getting this visa is why it is my recommendation for any Singaporean who is coming to the US to work. Especially if you don't know if you actually want to make the move, simplifying the visa situation will make it easier.
Exceptions apply. If you work for a company that also has a US presence, consider getting the L-1 visa instead. This is especially true if you have a spouse. It is, at this point, not easy / possible for a spouse of a H1-B1 visa holder to work in the US (not without having filed for a green card and getting approval, which is a whole other thing). Whereas spouses of L-1 visa holders can apply for work authorization.
For one, it is a non-immigrant visa, unlike a H-1B. If you have plans to apply for a green card, definitely try for a H-1B. However, many Singaporeans I know have also come first on the H1-B1, then tried for the H-1B lottery, then switched to it; if not, they can always get another H1-B1 visa.
Secondly, it is valid for a shorter period of time. It is for 18 months. On arriving in the US, you get stamped in for just 12 months; you have to leave and return to the US to get the remainder of the 18 months.
This was not a problem for me as I anticipated that I would want to go home to see my family, and country where I have deep and strong ties, every 12 months anyway.
The short visa validity can cause some logistical issues. For example, I still don't have my drivers' license, partly out of my Singaporean apathy to car driving, partly because every time I get around to the DMV my visa is about to expire. It made no sense to get a driver's license that would expire in a few months (or weeks, last time I tried to get a driver's license), so I've just sort of kicked that can down the road. It doesn't really matter to me whether I can drive or not. It may, if you live elsewhere in the US with less public transit.
Also, if you have a spouse who would like to work, it is not possible for them to work if you have a H1-B1. Consider a L-1 instead, or other visa type if this is important.
Make sure you are a Singaporean (or Chilean) citizen
Apply for a job, get the job
Get your immigration attorneys to file for a LCA with the Department of Labor. You must have this document certified by the Department of Labor and sent back to you and you must have this in person with you at the US embassy when you go for your appointment. In my experience this has taken around 7 business days to be certified
While waiting for the LCA to be certified, start your DS-160 application. Some advice: expect to take a few days to complete the application. Write down the application number, and your security question. Get your passport photo ready as a digital file in a square format and make sure it is resized to under 240kb, and in jpg format (photo requirements here).
Give yourself plenty of time to fill in the DS-160 form, especially if you are a first-timer. Save it constantly. You have 30 days to complete it. If you think you'll take more than 30 days, return to the application with the application number and security question, and save it or fill in more questions.
Once you have completed the DS-160 form and submitted it, and have your LCA in hand, go to this page and select non-immigrant visa. If you have an immigrant visa, you probably know what you're doing and you can make your own choices from here. Click login, then new user. Create your account. This UStraveldocs account is what will let you schedule embassy appointments and decide how you get your visa delivered or picked up in the country you're applying in. The DS-160 form was a state department thing. You need to do both, but the USTraveldocs part is almost always the last step. And the first time I did it, I didn't know what to do or where to go after I submitted my DS-160!
There are some quirks with this USTravelDocs step, so listen closely (and also seek out updated information as this process is likely to change more to meet local conditions, than the DS-160 or LCA process).
Once you have logged in to US Travel Docs, click New Application / Schedule Appointment. It will prompt you to fill out your passport information. If you have a spouse or children with a H4 visa, you also add them here.
Go through all the screens and fill in the information that only you know (your passport number, expiry date, visa type).
This part is the most important. At some point in the application it will ask you for: Petitioner's Name, Receipt Number, Start Date and End Date. This is confusing and your US immigration attorney is likely to also not know what to do with this. From other posts written by others, I learned: these fields are kind of silly and no one knows what the right answers are / it doesn't really matter, but you have to fill in something anyway. Here's what's always worked for me.
Petitioner's name: I put my employer, which is the City and County of San Francisco
Start Date: I use the start date on my certified LCA
End Date: I use the end date on my certified LCA
Receipt Number: (This is different from receipt number elsewhere in this process. It is a dummy number. The only answer that works is this: ABC1234567890 (thanks to Ashley Lim for figuring this out)
Finally, it will ask you how you want to collect / pick up / have your visa delivered. I always pick Chinatown, but I've been told by people at the US embassy that the fastest way to get your visa back is to select the Aramex at Changi South location, which is available as a 'paid dropoff/pickup'. This location is very far for me, so I almost never do this unless I have a very tight turnaround on my travel plans. I think it's something like a whole day faster than the Chinatown location. Otherwise, I prefer to do Chinatown as it's easier for me to go there, and also easier for me to get food afterwards. I am Singaporean, after all.
On the last screen, you will be prompted to make payment. At the time of writing (September 2023) the options are: VFS Cash / Debit, or Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). VFS is a global company that many embassies outsource their visa work to around the world. EFT means 'bank transfer', as many Singaporeans will be aware of. VFS Cash/ Debit means 'go to the VFS office in Anson Road and pay it at the counter', which is far less convenient than 'log in to DBS banking and make payment'. When you click on either option, you will get the amount to pay in SGD, and a receipt number.
If you select EFT, save the page PDF and copy down the SGD amount AND the receipt number.
Log in to your Singapore internet banking and set up a new payee. The payee name is VFS Singapore, the beneficiary bank is DBS, and the payee's account number is (and this is very important) YOUR RECEIPT NUMBER. Your receipt number functions as a virtual account number so they can match your payment to your application. If you don't have a Singapore bank account but are applying out of Singapore, you will probably have to go to VFS on Anson Road, or get a Singapore friend to do it for you.
Once you have completed your payment, wait until 12pm the next business day in Singapore to return to the USTravelDocs page and add in the receipt number from the payment slip you got, to complete the process. If you try to do it any earlier, you won't be able to proceed. It will just say 'transaction not found'.
Special note about H1-B1 visa for Singaporeans and their non-Singaporean or same-sex spouses
While the H1-B1 visa is only for Singaporeans, your spouse and children don't have to be. This means that if you, like me, are queer and married, your marriage is recognized as long as you have a marriage certificate from a country that performs it.
If you are a same-sex couple that is interested in moving to the US, feel free to email me at adrianna [at] jefritan.com and I can help answer any queer-specific questions you might have.
Should I move to the US? There are guns and stuff!
That's entirely a question for you to answer. As a queer Singaporean, I needed to go somewhere that would give me and my non-Singaporean wife a place to live. We looked everywhere, and the US (California in particular) was still the place that gave us the things that we needed. It also welcomed us with very open arms. We are thankful. But it's not for everyone, certainly.
Anyway, the advice I always tell young Singaporeans is that you don't have to think about this move as a permanent one. You can always go home. Which is a luxury, I've learned, especially in speaking with immigrants from other countries here. The idea that I can return to a country that's my own, without much change to my physical standard of living, is a luxury. Whether or not I can be fully queer and married in Singapore is a whole other thing. For now, I am living the life, and enjoying every moment of it (even if I cry once a week about how much I miss Singapore).
I am trying to read more Chinese books. My Mandarin school teachers are probably having the last laugh, but I am genuinely interested in some of the fiction in the Sinosphere these days. Unfortunately my school-time Mandarin class experience was so poor (old school, traditional, not fun or engaging) that I feel like I am starting from scratch.
Thankfully, technology helps. I no longer have to peruse a large Chinese dictionary by looking up total number of key strokes (even though I'm glad I learned that skill). With a few things in place, I can quickly level up.
Early pandemic, I decided to reconnect with a part of my life that was very important to me: music. I played music, specifically piano, clarinet, trumpet, and other orchestral instruments, for most of my life. Then I stopped. Startup brain worms got to me. I did nothing but work for many years.
The best digital piano in my budget that available at the time was the Yamaha P-125. All I wanted was a piano that was white, had weighted keys, had 88 keys, and that I could use with headphones.
I had a lot of fun with it, but the one problem I had was that I don't really like how it sounds.
There's a particular range of keys (I think in E4 to G4) that sound, to my ears, a bit weird and digital. When I play them together they smoosh into each other and it is noticeable enough that I recoil, every single time.
Instead of getting a new piano, I decided to try to tweak it somehow.
Here's what I did.
Get a printer cable and connect the P-125 from the back (near the power cord) to your computer's USB / USB adapter
Install the USB-Midi Driver so that I can use the P-125 as a Midi keyboard on my Mac
Get decent headphones, I have the Audio-Technica ATH-M50x (you can get them used, for a third of list price, on audiophile forums or subreddits)
The only thing slightly confusing about all this was how to activate the keyboard as a digital piano. Turns out, you need to press the metronome and rhythm key AS WELL AS the C5 key at the same time, in order to switch the audio output to the computer. You know that you've succeed at this when the piano says 'Off' in a slightly robotic voice. This means that the piano will now not output sound on the piano. You can now decide how to hear the music. On Pianoteq on my Mac, I either define the output as 'my nice speakers' if I want to hear the piano through my nice speakers; or 'digital piano' (then I plug in my headphones to the piano directly) if I want to listen through there. I use the headphones when I don't want to disturb my neighbors, like when I'm playing late at night.
You'll know this is working (both on speakers and headphones) when you change the instrument on Pianoteq to something like 'vibraphone' and you can hear that the output.. sounds like a vibraphone. Personally, I really like the Steinway jazz and Grotian instruments. For those who have piano tuning interests, the pro version lets you tune each note. For someone like me who just wants to play a digital piano and have it sound better, the stage version is sufficient.
Pianoteq is not cheap, but it is one of the best ones and it's what I like most.
Next up, I'd like to learn Logic Pro and learn to arrange and record.
1993: I am 8 years old. I am a scared little autistic girl who felt in my bones that there was something strange about me. Was it my obsessive, hyper-fixation on the things that interested me? My intense feelings? Or that I felt I had to lie every time the other girls shared the lists of 'boys they liked'? I often felt like a child who had so much to say, but no words at all. The words that people used with very young female children did not feel right. 'What boy do you like?' 'What kind of man do you think you'll marry?' 'When you grow up and have a family...'
None of that ever felt right. I didn't have the words. Instead, I said things like 'I will never marry!' Which made people laugh. Of course you will, they said, you will meet a nice boy and you will marry him. 'I don't like boys!' That made people laugh even more. No one believes what children have to say unless they fit a script. I didn't have any of the right scripts.
I did not know any queer people; the only time I ever heard about gay folks or trans folks was on the media, in a derogatory manner. I was about to use the Internet for the first time, and that would change my (whole) life. The first thing I do when I go on the Internet is to look up whether or not women lived together abroad. I find a lot of information about not telling anyone in the military that you are queer. I go on IRC and message a stranger and ask, 'how does it work?'
I don't feel guilty in church the next day. I just feel like I know the biggest secret of the universe, like there's a name for people like me, other than pervert. But I worry about the logistics. How will I find a wife? I imagined I would have to fall off the face of the universe and disappear forever to even do that.
I spend the next six years at school writing stories about stowing away, disappearing off the face of the universe, sneaking off to start a new life as someone else.
2003: I am 18 years old. I have dated both boys and girls. Sometimes, at the same time. I give myself an arbitrary deadline. I want to decide at the end of high school which I prefer. I know that 'bi' exists and that's what I thought I was, but it didn't feel like me. I decide I want to start university with.. certainty. All I know is that boys are straightforward and easy, and girls are not. I know deep down I never choose the easy, because that rarely interests me, and I know I am at the fork in the road where nothing is going to be easy from now on.
2013: I am 28 years old. I have a 4 year old dog, Cookie. We live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My first long term girlfriend got her for me, or with me, I'm not sure. 'If we ever break up you're going to have to take her,' she says. I have just been diagnosed with a terrible autoimmune disease, and she has to drive me and Cookie 350 kilometers to take me home. I've had to move home after years of 'gallivanting' all around the world, as my family would say, and I am learning to be at home and be at peace for the first time. I am out. I am going to live in Singapore for the first time as an out queer adult and single person. I am alternately sick and alternately learning how to be single again. I am sicker than I think. I go out with a different woman every week and I feel like I can be more openly queer at home than I ever imagined, but I also feel an impending doom: I was tired.
Tired of running the race with a potato sack tied to my foot). Tired, generally. I do the unthinkable: I move out of my parents' home within months of getting back. You're not supposed to do that until you marry (a man). "You don't want to be here when I am dating all these women, do you?" I imagine myself saying. I think I say something to that effect, but dialed back. I am always dialed back at home. I can be 'a gay', but I should be proper. I can be 'a lesbian', but I should be successful. As long as I am successful, people are fine with me being queer and autistic. But it should always be in that order. I am reckless with the hearts of the women who apparently love me in this time, because I don't feel like I deserve to be loved.
2023: I am 38 years old. I now live in San Francisco with my wife, Sabrena. Our dog Cookie is 14 years old. Mila, the large tortoiseshell cat we adopted when we got here, is 17. I have the queerest, most autistic life I can imagine, here. Three days into Pride month, I've already met and spent time with mostly queer people. They have lives, careers, families. Like me, they also came here from somewhere else to live their queerest, and sometimes most autistic, lives. From Montana. From Sarawak. From Singapore. From Taiwan. From China. For many people like us, California is a refuge. I have been here for five years now. It makes me sad that a country where neither of us have citizenship recognized our marriage, and gave us the ability to exist, survive and thrive, in spite of our sexuality, when our own countries tell us we are broken. And I am proud that our state gives us the opportunity to live our lives, as our most queer, most autistic selves.
But when I brush up against elements of my old life, I am annoyed. I don't believe I should wait for gay men to have their rights first and then advocate for other's. I don't believe trans people should wait their turn in line to stop being discriminated against, especially in this time of trans genocide. I don't find it acceptable to have government officer shout that my marriage is not recognized in Singapore when just last year I helped to review a form for another government that said Person A and Person B instead of "Husband" and "Wife". Friends from home say I am now too loud, too American, too... different. It's probably true. I no longer have it in me to allow another person, institution, organization or government to pretend that I should not exist. I don't have it in me to be okay with not having any rights anymore, either.
We're here and we're queer, we're also very autistic (which is related) and we are very tired. I am very glad, however, that I did not have to disappear off the face of the universe to find a wife. Take that, 1993.
Fatima Ali, a former Top Chef contestant who by had a promising career in food media before suddenly receiving a diagnosis for sarcoma. Co-written by Tarajia Morrell
Lamya H, a religious, Pakistani butch who grew up in Saudi Arabia, navigating faith and love in New York City
Both books are very different. I liked the unapologetic, authentic insights into their lives. Both present aspects of faith and family with intimacy and tenderness.
Fatima Ali's book in particular struck a cord with me: my wife and I have been deep into memoirs and articles that discuss death and grief (Sabrena is currently learning about grief in her college psychology program). What started as a an attempt to document her legacy and bucket list items before she passed turned into one where her condition worsened so much she couldn't travel. Instead, we got a beautiful book about her life told from her and her mother's perspective, that very much left you with a strong sense of who she was. She seemed to have been the sort of person I would have loved as a friend. I wish I followed her career more closely.
Lamya H's book gives us a sense into how confusing and difficult it must have been to be a queer person in Saudi Arabia, especially so as a brown person there in their very classist society. She talks about friendships (or attempts at friendships) with Arab girls, growing up in a girls' school environment there and winning a scholarship to study in the US. Personally, I am usually skeptical / afraid of any ex-Muslim narratives that play to American bigotry; I was relieved to find that Lamya H deftly paints a portrait of who she is as a person and what she believes in, without needing to play off either side. Instead, she manages to weave her story about her life, country of birth, the place she grew up, where she lives now, her sexuality, her faith and family into an impressive, cohesive whole. I am thankful she published such an important book.
Some thoughts on being a gaysian immigrant to California
Two weeks ago, I helped to plan and organize a Lunar New Year dinner for 120 queer and trans Asian people. It's a tradition that has been around for as long as I've been alive: the annual APIQWTC Banquet.
Despite its mouthful of a name (much easier if you read it as API CUTESY Banquet), it was an event that left me feeling extremely raw and emotional at the end of it.
I could not identify why exactly.
Could it be that these events—large format Chinese dinners I've only experienced in the context of societal rejection—were usually events I hated, events that were milestones I can never have because I was gay in a country that had not fully accepted it? I was never going to have the large Chinese wedding dinner. Even if I think those are horrible, it would have been nice to have known that was open to me.
Or they'd be a celebration of some kind of matriarch or patriarch, the sort of thing where your same sex or trans partner was often excluded from, unless things were Very Serious and they had already graduated into the Don't Ask, Don't Tell territory. At some point, people get old and it becomes possible to welcome same sex partners into these events: when you're old enough that you're thoroughly de-sexualized, is my guess.
But there's more, beyond mere social acceptance and the idea that it's possible to have a good time, I keep coming around to the thought: if I had been to such an event, if I had known these people, when I was a teenager struggling with my feelings and my identity, my life would have been different. Visibility in the media is important, and I already didn't really have that back then; but visibility in the form of knowing that it's possible to grow old, screw up, fall in love, get divorced, have children, or not, organize community events and be an advocate, or not, all of that would have been powerful visual indicators to me that it's possible to have any kind of life. That you're going to have a life at all.
Instead, growing up mainly among an older generation that was largely forced into the closet—and I do have strong memories of going to gay bars for the first time as a teenager that had just come of age, and seeing police raids rounding up gay men for 'vice', more than once—where the only people I knew to be gay or queer for sure were the advocates who were willing to put themselves out there to fight for our rights, document our stories, to tell our homophobic society that we exist. Those people served a purpose and they fought bravely. But I did not always want to be an activist. Even though eventually, I guess I sort of did.
By simply refusing to pretend to be straight, at some point I found myself thrust into a position of hypervisiblity in the queer community in Singapore. I did not want to be that person. I simply wanted to write about the heartbreak I had endured as a teenager: I was just the queer equivalent of a teenager anywhere Live-Journaling her heartbreak. But by not changing the pronouns of the person who had apparently broken my heart, I became, I suppose, a queer activist.
I did not know any queer couples or families until I was well into my early 20s. Other than the women I dated, and let's be frank, we were a mess, with no template or model or idea of what any of this was going to become. Information about queer people came into Singapore like a trickle: there were the gender studies books at Borders bookstore, the 'are they or aren't they' gay-guessing games of trying to figure out which celebrities were queer women (hint: it was mostly Angelina Jolie, at that time), I didn't really know what it meant to be queer. And I think I was already an extremely well-connected teenager for my time. (For a time, I ran a queer DVD lending library; I'd distribute movies and documentaries to other queer teens in my high school and elsewhere.)
I did not know what it meant to be a queer adult.
I had no idea what it meant to be in a committed relationship. Or what it meant to not be in one. I didn't know what my life was going to be. It was all a big blank, other than 'I guess I will have to go live overseas some day'. Even though Singapore has, anecdotally, a fairly large queer population, information about queerness is still suppressed by the state. We are still not allowed to see, for example, a reality TV show of a gay couple having their house revamped. It would be against the rules: you simply can't portray queer people in a non-negative manner.
So when I found myself surrounded by a hundred dancing Asian queer aunties, and a few other peers and younger people, I was mad.
I was mad to not have been exposed to the idea that I too, can some day be a dancing Chinese auntie in my 60s, prancing about on stage singing Teresa Teng songs at a karaoke in Oakland. I was mad that I never got to see people like M and her partner, an older interracial East- and South Asian couple, like Sabrena and I: with their children babbling about in several languages, the way it might look for us if we decided to have children some day.
Most of all, I was mad to know that this life wasn't possible for me back home. Not by a long stretch. I hardly knew many queer people in my mid 20s, and I definitely did not know that hundreds of queer people above the age of 60 existed. Nor did I have the chance to meet them in a multi-generational setting, the way I did here.
At the event, I met many people who were also immigrants from Southeast Asia like me. The first decade was hard, they said. They had to figure out how to exist in the US, and it was also at a time when the US didn't even have the laws it now does for same sex marriage. Many of them wouldn't have been able to move here or stay on here even if they had American spouses: not until Edith Windsor did us all a favor and defeated the Defense of Marriage Act, and enabled same sex marriage and other rights at the federal level.
In that regard, I have it a touch easier. I came here for a high paid tech job, I came here when California is already one of the easiest places to live in the world for a queer person, and I was able to bring my spouse with me. But some days are harder than others. Like many of these aunties, I am dealing with my first decade blues: does it ever get better? Why did I give up my life of privileges and comforts in Singapore for.. America? Unlike many other immigrants, I did not come here for economic or material improvements. I came here for far more abstract things, like 'my rights', but also for very concrete things like, 'my wife and I need a third country that recognizes our marriage so that we can actually live together somewhere, anywhere.'
A few months ago, I saw this image again: it was an image of Singaporean and Malaysian queer elders in what is clearly San Francisco, in 1993. I reached out to a few of them in the photo to ask: what was your life like? What did you struggle with? What's your life like now? Many of them said the same thing: the first couple of years are very, very hard. Some days you wonder if you will ever truly feel at home here. But, they said, we now have wives and lives, and that's more than we could have expected of our lives in Singapore and Malaysia.
Wives and lives. I have that too, but I also have had far less time than them in California. I still have one foot in the door; I am still not totally removed from existing in a space where I've had to hide myself, and my life. Even the most hyper-visible ways of being queer back home are just standard, everyday ways here.
One of them said, my wife is organizing this banquet, why don't you get involved? And so I did. I still don't have the answers, but I think I am starting to have the inkling of an idea.
I think it looks like dancing on stage at a Chinese restaurant singing a Teresa Teng song. I think it could be carrying an infant babbling in three languages. I think it might be nice to have the ability to work with younger Asian queer immigrants 25 years from now, who will hopefully have an easier time than all of us did. I think it could be fun. I think I have a life ahead of me of queer joy that I can celebrate.
I can be anyone I want to be. I did not always know that.
(Photo taken on a Minolta Hi-Matic 7S II, shot on Kodak 5222 film, self-developed in Rodinal 1+50 at ISO 800, and scanned on Plustek 8200i. For more film photography shenanigans, check out my film photo blog)
Daido Moriyama is one of the photographers I admire the most. His work (black and white street photography) is an influence on the kind of work I am trying to do in my photography; and his shooting style most resonates with me. He is known to mostly shoot with compact cameras, especially the Ricoh GR series.
This photography book is unique in that it isn’t just a book of his published photos centered around a theme. Sometimes, I get quite bored of those types of books: Western photographers who go to India, for example, and shoot hundred page photo books that feel vaguely exploitative and white-gazey, are an example of the types of photography I very much dislike.
Since I know Asia, and Asian cities quite well, I have a finely tuned nose for that sort of thing. I don’t find Asia exotic because, well, I am from there. So I tend to look to the Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi photographers I admire whose body of work situates them within places they work in, where, they have frankly far more interesting things to say. (Dayanita Singh’s photography, for example, does not need to rely on that pop and shock of India’s color or festivals or ‘weirdness’ to make a point: her long term work embedded in local communities tell me so much more about the place than, “India is so strange and exotic!”)
So it is with Daido Moriyama. There’s no mistaking a Daido Moriyama photograph for someone else’s. No matter where he’s shooting, whether it’s Japan or Argentina. If there is a photographer whose ‘personal vision and style’ I want to learn most, it is his.
This book is written by his collaborator, a Japanese author and photographer who shadowed Moriyama on several trips, all the while asking: what advice do you have? What are you thinking? What message are you trying to make?
And all Moriyama says is:
Just go out and shoot
Shoot as much as you can (he believes in having quantity as a way to get quality photos)
He walks up and down a street both ways and he takes about a roll of film per direction
He thinks there is value in observing the mundane
Some basic tips, like ‘if you shoot a body of water against the light, the contrast is quite nice especially in black and white’ but he refuses to believe there are any specific tips that are applicable to all
He cares about doing the work more than talking about the technique or gear
The book also says that he teaches sometimes, and many of his students are trying to break into fashion or avant garde photography. For those students, he advises that the work is the same as that of someone trying to do photojournalism or documentary photography. Go out and shoot mundane things. Find a building, take a hundred photos of it. Learning to see beauty in the mundane is the most important skill one can develop.
Each part of the book is based in a certain location. So when he goes to Ginza, for example, there is a photo of the contact sheet that he shot. It was actually nice to see that a master has a ton of duds, too. Not that he ever pretended otherwise: but it was still assuring to know that Daido Moriyama isn’t getting 36 book or exhibition worthy photos out of every roll of 36.
Lastly, he advises that the most important thing to do when you take a photograph is that you must have a desire to make that photograph. Not necessarily to tell a story or make a point (in fact, he says that arriving somewhere and having a pre-conceived idea of the location or community’s politics or social message is not a good way to take photos, that he prefers to just witness). But that you must feel that you have to take that photo.
Moriyama also has a lot of things to say about film vs digital. He’s gone digital now, and there’s no going back! Having used both the Ricoh GR film and digital cameras, and also being agnostic to the film vs digital debates (currently, I am shooting more film to learn the darkroom arts specifically, but if I were to go back to working again as a photographer, it would probably make more sense to be digital-first, especially given film costs these days), I think he’s right. The Ricoh GR digital cameras are extremely capable, and they are my favorite film cameras. I do miss the contrasty T-Max grain and quality of his earlier work, but artists are allowed to evolve their vision and tools, and experiment. I appreciate this non-dogmatic quality about Moriyama.
I would highly recommend this book even if you don’t love this type of street photography. It’s a good way to get an insight into how a great photographer works and thinks, beyond gear talk and such. The world has too much of the latter; but books like these are what I appreciate much, much more.
Various things in the last few years have alerted me to the terrifying fact: I don't think I had an attention span at all until, well, now.
That I was able to graduate from college, get married, hold down jobs... privilege, and opportunity.
Most of the time, I was told that I was that way because I was simply careless, lacked attention to detail, and that was just who I was.
Deep down, I disagreed, but I did not have any other data points that would show that all of those terms were incorrect.
My first inkling that something might be wrong was when I found myself utterly insomniac and unable to sleep for months at a a time. That was about a decade ago. The feeling I most remember was, "It feels like I have a million ants under the skin of my body!" But no one believed me. That was probably the precursor to a lifelong struggle with thyroid diseases, that was to come.
Then, I realized that I probably haven't ever had a good night's sleep. Every photograph of me as a baby has my mouth open, as if gasping for breath. I took it to an experienced doctor in the US, who told me I most definitely have had sleep apnea since I was an infant, and that if we were to do a sleep test today he would be surprised if I wasn't in the high moderate or extreme range. He was correct.
Eventually, I got both issues looked at, and mostly sorted. (These things don't fully go away, but can be managed.)
Putting aside the issues of not being heard or believed as a young woman in medical system (something that all minorities face, all over the world), I'm pretty pissed. How was I allowed to live through most of my life in such suboptimal conditions?
Why is it that people were happy to just say 'oh, that person has the attention span of a gnat', but nobody asked why?
It seriously impeded my way of life. It got in the way of living, doing, existing. I could not remember anything. I could not wake up for important tests, meetings, interviews. I could not even reliably put a piece of paper in a folder, keep it there, and remember that I had ever done it.
These days, they call it 'executive dysfunction'. But that's a nice term for 'it's your fault until you find a name for it and figure out how to fix it, and get mad that it could have been a reasonably easy fix'.
Oh, I also have ADHD. But I'm not sure which came first. Am I unable to focus on things because I didn't sleep properly for years, had a severely wonky thyroid gland, or is it a bit of everything? I may never know.
What I'm finding out is that it's wild, what I can do with an attention span!
I can file my taxes well ahead of the deadline, and receive my refund before anyone else!
I can pay rent well ahead of time!
I can figure out what I want to do and actually do it!
I'm relearning CSS and JavaScript right now, because I feel like I did not have enough of an attention span or focus back when I first learned it. It's also useful because so much has changed since—like CSS is actually fun now!—that I don't mind.
I'm learning that I am able to sustain a creative pursuit on the side. I have spent a gargantuan amount of effort consolidating my hard drives from Singapore and Malaysia and the US and everywhere in between that, for the first time I believe I have all the writing, photography, video files, that I ever created, in one place. And actually be able to find them. This was not something I was remotely capable of doing at any point in the past. If something was not immediately before me, it did not exist. I have written entire books that I have forgotten I have ever written!
I can even shoot, develop and scan film on a regular basis, something I was never able to do! (I could not even remember what film I used, or where anything was, until now.)
I think most of the people in my early life were happy to buy into the myth that I was a bumbling, forgetful creative person, or to ascribe some kind of pathological shortcoming or disability to me, but the truth was simply that I was a person who needed help, and didn't know that I did.
As it turns out, being autistic and being not at all in tune with your body or with what's normal or expected, not knowing how to ask for help, has health and other vital implications! If I could do it all over again, I would have learned to pay more attention to my body, and learned to apply my autistic superpowers to all facts of life: by digging deep into why something was, rather than simply accepting that "that's just the way I am".
Maybe some day, I'll think of the years between 2009 and 2019 as a lost decade. It was a decade of development, when I came of age, when I left home, when I made my home in so many different places in the world, where I tried on different ways of being, as if they were seasonal coats, or swimwear.
Things are different now.
When I was least expecting it, king tides subsided and became gentle lakes. The weather is rarely frosty or humid, it's mostly even-tempered, and cool. I have time to sleep, exercise, meditate, and eat well: I am no longer scurrying from here to there. I know how lucky I am.
I got to recover from a chronic illness that not only took away my physical abilities for a long while, I also got to bounce back mentally from it. From insomniac mania, I now have a well-rested, even-keeled, decently-paced life (and personality). When I think back to those years, to 2012 and right after especially, I wonder how anyone ever kept up with me. I barely did. (Autoimmune diseases are a bitch. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)
I have work that is engaging, challenging, and evenly paced. I have the weekends to discover and explore. Surprising to everyone, especially to myself, my new hobbies are fun, slow and old: birding. Cycling slowly. Walking slowly. Hiking. Being in nature. If I'm optimizing for anything (throwback to my startup days!), that's it.
So many weekends spent around the Bay Area wandering about with friends and people I love. Sometimes I look at birds. Sometimes I look at fungi. Many times, I am just happy and so damned pleased to be out and about, and alive.
In line with the theme of 'finding joy in things I have always loved', like playing my piano, saxophone, clarinet for fun, I started picking up my camera again. Over there, on my microblog, I'm documenting all the ways in which my brain gets to have fun. I've forgotten how nice it is to just make things, tell stories, and do things for fun.
I'm done with the hustle.
The hustle that I want to spend time and energy on is the one that's about nourishing my soul. I'm working on some long term writing and photography projects. While it's tempting to think of 2009 - 2019 as the lost years in which I did not do very much creatively, I think it's given me the experiences and time to really become the kind of artist that I want to be. In recovering from chronic illness and hustle-related illnesses, my mind is now clearer than before: I have the headspace now to work and make things the way I want.
It's still too early to share what I'm working on, but know that things I do in this space will always have something to do with one or all of the following: immigrants, California, India, Southeast Asia, food, culture, festivals, climate, nature, mushrooms, birds, queerness, bicycles, music, and maybe more. Those are all of the keywords to my life, these are all of the things that keep me going. Until then, snippets of my creative brain can be found at the microblog, and sometimes also on Mastodon (especially at the #FilmIsNotDead hashtag that I sometimes use).
So instead of focusing on status, success, money, or hustle and grind culture, I'm going to explore all the ways in which I can immerse myself deeply in all of the things that I love, some or all of them at once. And I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to do this.
Sarnath Banerjee's graphic novel "All Quiet in Vikaspuri" is an alt universe / dystopian future story centered on the posh neighborhood of Vikaspuri in South Delhi. An ensemble of colorful characters illuminate this otherwise monochrome book, whose pencil art is sparse, but powerful.
Girish, a psychic plumber tasked with finding the magical river Saraswati. A former army colonel. A former employee of the Delhi Water Board.
For anyone who is vaguely interested in how Asia's mega-cities balance urban planning, growth and ecology (hint: mostly poorly), this is a poignant way to understand some of the issues at stake. Even though the characters and issues are presented as dystopian fantasy, they are very real.
Nowhere more real than Banerjee's quips about Gurgaon, the satellite city just outside New Delhi that was built by private enterprise, and feels like it.
In the graphic novel, he says, "80 per cent of Indian cities will become like Gurgaon". "People think their building provides their water and power."
As part of my new interest in mycology, I read the book by the supposed granddaddy of the field.
If you've watched the documentary on Netflix, this book is what started it all. Lately, I'm trying to read more about the perspectives of Indigenous people on mycology and nature, and their relationships with the mostly settler types who participate in mycology, whether in foraging, creating enterprises, or even in healing. I'm starting to develop a more critical view of some of the more well known faces in mycology.
The book is a little disjointed, in that it presents many different perspectives from all types of people who are in the field, some interested in the healing properties, some in the climate change fixing possibilities, some in the psychedelic aspects. I found myself most interested in the essays written by activists from other parts of the world, like the one from Chile who is working to see how mushrooms can help create interesting solutions for climate change, but am largely meh about an approach that is too psychedelic-focused.
Finished reading: Moyasimon by Masayuki Ishikawa 📚
I spent the latter half of 2022 reading widely on all things microbiome and mycology. I am fascinated by these two related topics, particularly by how little we seem to know about it. I certainly wish I had been exposed to these topics more extensively in school.
From a book about mushrooms, I was introduced to a manga about a boy who can see germs and bacteria. It's certainly a topic I never imagined I would read about in this format. It's very educational but also fun.
It's set in an agriculture university, and through a variety of characters tells you about the different types of bacteria in sake-brewing, bacteria that exists around us, as well as different fermentation practices around the world. It's fun, and quite action-packed for manga that's about something so.. unseen. Highly recommended, and I'm digging into volume 2 as we speak.
David Byrne seems to like the same things I do, having written a book about bicycles, and about music. Or, I like David Byrne and the music he makes and loved seeing his thoughts on music in this book.
Part memoir (about his experience in the Talking Heads), part history and science of music, this book will be something I keep coming back to. A very helpful chapter describes the current state of the music industry and provides a cold hard glimpse into the numbers behind how professional musicians make music and money.
Almost exactly 16 years ago I signed up for Twitter, curious about what it might be. The social web was so young then. I was still in university. The hashtag had barely been invented. Technology seemed like it might change the world, and I was excited to be a part of it.
16 years later, I am midway through my career in technology and I am starting to feel like.. a lot of this was a mistake. Walled gardens were a mistake. Trusting people who wanted to move fast and break things were a mistake.
I can no longer abide narcissistic people who treat people cruelly for fun and profit. I was in Myanmar a lot in the heady days of 2013/2014 where the corporations were so excited about the Next Billion Users coming online in Southeast Asia, but they didn't care if they also inadvertently accelerated genocide. I didn't get a front row seat to that mess, but I knew many civil society activists who were working so hard to try to get Facebook to care.
I cut my use of Facebook and Meta-owned products as a result.
This week, the rocket man unceremoniously let go of many people, many of them people I know. There are no good layoffs or reorgs, but there are too many people who conflate cruel behavior with necessary behavior. Beyond the amorality of it, I am also concerned about security issues if a service like Twitter is left running but everyone's already left the building. As late as a few days ago I still imagined I would 'go down with the ship' or stick around to find out, but after (1) the unethical firings (2) realizing that the new owner was personally censoring things that painted him in an unceremonious light, I decided that I don't need to live that way and I don't owe him anything.
This is how I am going to reboot my social media use.
I am @skinnylatte@mastodon.social@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io on Mastodon. Mastodon is not for everyone. It needs a lot of improvements in UX and it needs to get better at explaining itself to less technical people. But I like what I see right now: if people were falling off the Twitter thermocline (and it feels like that in my own usage of Twitter, as I follow a lot of security and infra and general nerds who are typically at the forefront of the bleeps and bloops of computer work), I've seen a huge wave on Mastodon in the past week alone.
Where before, Mastodon felt lonely, the pace of adoption and follows and responses has picked up so much that it comes close to what I was experiencing on Twitter as a somewhat advanced user.
(Edit. 2 December 2022: I have deactivated Twitter completely. The antisemitism, transphobia and all-around incel-town nature of that community is not something I want to participate in. I downloaded a copy of my archives and I will be hosting a mirror of it here, quite soon. So not all past posts have been lost. BUt I refuse to have any content that one of the people I dislike the most in the world can use for advertising or other purposes. This post has been lightly edited to reflect this change.)
### Cross-post one way to Twitter only
I use moa.party to cross-post. Posting on one platform lets you automatically post the same thing to the other.
I do this solely for archival, and for my 41K Twitter followers to know that I am somewhere else.
I do not intend to originate posts from Twitter after 31 December 2022, but I may sometimes respond to tweets.
For all intents and purposes, my Twitter account will be there, but in cryogenic sleep.
Mastodon scratches my itch for short form text posts, but that it emphasizes intentionality over virality will probably shift my text output into other areas.
Some people say that Twitter was amazing because it was like going into a crowded bar and being able to find the most random people shouting the most random and amazing things.
I was certainly happy to have come across people who baked bread with ancient yeast, the world's foremost lichen experts, people who knew more about pop culture than I can ever hope to in ten lifetimes, and many people who live and learn so differently from me.
My experience with Mastodon has been that once I crossed the 100 follower mark, and I did this by following many people early on and boosting toots, Mastodon became a good enough Twitter replacement for me.
If you're as old as I am, practically deceased like the kids will say at the age of 37, you'll have lived through several iterations of webby things.
I was able to keep all my blog content because I always had text files and never invested too much in a hosted platform. Everything run by someone else feels.. ephemeral. If it means something to you, make a copy. Preferably in plain text format. There will be ways to export content, there usually are, but you must have a copy first. If photos are your thing, don't just rely on Instagram to keep the compressed files. Keep your photos somewhere you can access. Make copies.
Yes, I agree. Read fedi.tips. Ask questions. But don't just complain: I think we all need some time of active learning to un-learn the bad habits that big tech companies foisted upon us.
Will it ever gain mass traction? Maybe not. But maybe, just maybe, we don't need that.
I think I am done with being a consumer, the way I am done with being a product.
I pay for things where I can, I prefer it that way. I no longer use Google, I use DuckDuckGo. I prefer to have Fastmail or Protonmail over Gmail's many conveniences. I'd rather run my own Photoprism server than trust my photos to Google Photos anymore. I gave away all my Echos and Google Nests.
Surveillance technology is not for me, and algorithmic bias and fairness is something that I personally care a lot about, so don't want to be a willing participant of.
I will probably buy non-smart versions of things for as long as I can. I don't want to upgrade firmware on my car or microwave or bicycle.
I'm still excited about technology, but I am not excited about existing business models for it. So in many ways, Twitter's downfall feels like a fascinating, but messy time, to try to participate in social media with full intentionality.
I am done, I think, with the performative cruelty of early social media. No more dunks, no more subtweets, no more yelling. If I am angry about something, and there are many things to be angry about, I plan to log off and count to five and go for a walk and write about it later if I am still angry about it.
I am also noticing that in the three days since I've de-prioritized Twitter as a service, I feel... better. I feel less angry. I look forward to seeing what my friends have tooted at me.
I miss the random coming-across-of-something-great. I have not yet experienced that on Mastodon yet, but it's still early. But I suspect it's similar to what I am now starting to feel about music:
I don't need to listen to the latest and greatest music from artists and genres I don't particularly care for. It's great that Taylor Swift has a new album, but her music isn't for me. If I hear it in a bar one day, maybe I will enjoy it, but I don't need to stream it in lossless formats in many platforms I don't own.
I did recently inherit a used Rega Planar 2 from a very old man, though, and he gave me a bunch of his jazz records that he loved. He bought thousands of records from a jazz store that was closing down, he felt like it he was giving it a home. Now that he was getting old, he wanted me to give them a home too.
So while I still stream music when I go running, or when I am commuting, the music enjoyment I look forward to the most is when I sit down at my record player with the first good speakers I managed to afford, and play Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby. The record sleeve says, this record was recorded at the Village Vanguard, and shortly after, one of the musicians died in a car accident.
Some days, I log in to a private livestream run by some jazz musicians I learn jazz from (I am learning jazz piano and sax), and listen to them play their favorite jazz albums and talk about playing that music and how it's inspired them.
I realise that it is possible to choose to not consume, but to relish and savor.
Much like I have never been to an all you can eat buffet I enjoyed, I won't miss a whole lot of this unnecessary... cruft. But in opting for slow socials, I feel more empowered to share short posts sometimes, longer posts more infrequently, with fewer dopamine hooks to make me feel shitty about the world.
It's also in line with my overall life plan to make more music, eat more delicious food, meet more amazing people online and off, and just really focus on how when everything feels horrible, the most radical thing I can do for myself is to allow myself to enjoy beautiful things in ways which are still meaningful to me. If I can do all that while helping advertisers flee a platform that's become a vector for hate, and help lighten the pockets of a man I greatly disdain, that's even better.
In the meantime, I will listen to records and go bleep bloop sometimes, or infrequently, or perhaps never at all.
Sometimes I think of countries as restaurants. Every country has a different concept. Every country has something to offer. Some have menus, some do not. Some are large multi-concept food halls, others are exclusive white tablecloth places where people have to fight for the scraps—outside.
My country, Singapore, is a prix fixe restaurant where there is a daily special. One soup, one main. You can take it or leave it. If you have more money, you can upgrade some parts. But it's still a fixed menu. You can't change it very much. You can't go anywhere. You can only stand up and sit down. The waiters are quick to shoo you out, or push you back down, whenever you feel like you might want to do something different.
I now live in the US, which feels like a multi-concept sort of place. On level 1, there's food hall like one of those in a mall with funny names. All kinds of things, but nothing that will keep you satiated for long. Just fast food and snacks. Make your way to the top, and you'll find a stuffy dining room. Realistically, most people will spend all of their time between levels 2 and 99. You can take the elevator, climb the stairs, do whatever you want. There are lots of ways to go anywhere and you can go at any time. You can do whatever you want. Some people throw poop into their food, and eat it, and that's fine too.
In the prix fixe restaurant, you eat the same thing everyday and maybe you get bored. You never get food poisoning. Everything is safe. In the food hall for insomniac people, you can eat lying down, shoes off, with your feet if you like. There are no rules, there are no bouncers. But you get food poisoning every other day. Unless you're on the top floor with all of the silver spooners. There, you get proper chicken, not the hormone-filled ones that taste awful. You get real vegetables. Life up there is pretty sweet, nicer than the top floor of any other restaurant in the world.
It's June 2022, and I am in Singapore. I am lying under my blanket feeling angry about the state of America. There are more mass shootings than I can count this week. I can't imagine what parents feel about losing their children to gun violence. I think about how when I walk by the thousands of homeless people in the city I live in, I see glimpses of their past lives. The backpacks they must have carried to work, and how they now store everything they own. The fancy camping tents they probably slept in when camping for leisure, that are now the only shelters over their heads. Why do I keep going back to somewhere where I get food poisoning all the time?
I don't have the answers. I think, though, that after a lifetime of being safe and repressed, it was interesting and novel to live somewhere that was the opposite. The country that always give us food poisoning also has delicious food and incredible experiences on every level between 1 and 99, whereas most other countries only have a few. A few ways of being. A few ways to exist. But the diarrhea is bad and sometimes there are no rest rooms.
That for people like me, who could never fit in the box of that my country demanded of me, I don't know where else I can go. That every time I board the plane between both cities, I am making the choice between physical and psychological safety, rarely both.
You learn to duck under the people flinging poop around. But at home, you can only sit down or shut up. Some people say surely there must be an in-between country that isn't either / or. Maybe. But what I'm afraid of is that many of the in-between countries hide their poop so well, and things look great, until you get there and then you have to sit down or shut up again because you're not from there. Because you should be grateful you no longer live in the other places.
I'm now of the opinion that there are no good countries, the best you can do is try to make a decent life for yourself anywhere. If you have the opportunity to pick, like I do, that's already a huge privilege. If you're queer, multi-national, like us, the number of possible places to live is tiny. You've got to make the most of the ones that work. But as the world turns hard towards authoritarianism and fascism, I don't feel like there are any good places to hide. I don't believe there is a single country worth moving to that is going to be able to avoid that wave. I also don't believe anyone who says, "my country is better than that one": they always come from a position of privilage, and my position as an immigrant to their country is never going to be the same. They also never, ever know what they are talking about, if they're not queer and intersectional in the same way we are.
On this trip home, it was nice to not have to think about food poisoning. I know exactly what my life back home will be, what it will look like, maybe even where I will live and what I will do. It's been tempting to imagine going back to that. But I also know that in a place where I can only sit down and shut up, repress my gayness, hide my photos of my family at work, where I must be gay but not too much, where I can be out but not too loudly, where I can live as a queer person but not have rights, I'm reluctantly crawling back into the place that gives me diarrhea every single day.
My country says: it's hypothetical that you'll ever have food poisoning here, because everything is perfect here, so why are you mad at me, and why do you leave me?
I'm mad that I have to live somewhere that gives me food poisoning. But at least there, my wife and I can be together, as my wife, even if we have to poop more than usual.
Two days after the Supreme Court of the United States took this country backwards, with one of the more extreme justices stating that he wished to also examine the constitutional right to same-sex marriage and contraception, I found myself having the same conversation over and over.
As a newly arrived foreigner, not yet an immigrant, what are my options?
It is natural to map injustice to your personal situation, to see how exactly something impacts you. If it is no longer a constitutional right to be in a same sex marriage, then I cannot be here. I cannot be here. A same sex marriage between two foreigners would have no immigration or other rights; I literally cannot live in a country like that. We are not there yet, though we may be.
Fight or flight kicks in. You look for the exit. If you have a powerful passport, like I do, you have many exits.
It becomes unbearable to listen to the naysayers. Not the people who are working behind the scenes to wreak havoc on others'—no, we should not be listening to those people anyway—but to the people who witness each injustice, and instead of being alarmed or upset, spend all of their energy being upset at our reaction to injustice instead. It won't be that way. It's not so bad. Things are fine. Calm down.
I am never calming down.
I am not leaving either.
This is not a story about how it's important to stay and make the change. The individualistic concept of making change on your own fails to consider the overall systemic power imbalance at play, the same one that breathed life into injustice and turned them into policy.
For many Americans with the privilege to go elsewhere and start anew, whether it's because of jobs that let them work remotely, or because they have documented ancestry in countries that are now able to provide them with second or third passports, leaving is very much a personal decision. If you can manage it, seeing the world outside the US is always rewarding.
Yet as someone who has left multiple countries and homes in search of the next, I will simply say that being far from the problems of home is not the same as those problems not existing. Removing yourself from the epicenter is essential at times to regroup and reframe. Problems compound. No matter how faraway you are, you know they are there. If you have the privilege of deciding that you will never have problems again, that's good for you, too.
What's more likely is you will go somewhere that's simply five years behind the US on the authoritarian timeline. I have no desire to uproot my life to go live somewhere I never wanted to live in, where I am going to be even further from any ability to resist injustice because of linguistic or cultural distance. This is my home, too.
Many methods of resistance are closed to me as a foreigner in this country. While on a visa, I simply cannot risk street protests or deep organizing, knowing that law enforcement and federal authorities do not look too kindly on foreigners who are involved in these things. Nor do they have to, because I don't have the same rights as an American citizen or long term permanent resident.
Writing about the injustice as it happens is one thing I can do. But it is not enough. Not for me. I want to interrogate why they happen, who was responsible, how we can roll it back or fight back. I am inspired by the writers who have been writing about the worst actors of our generation: fascists, authoritarians, misogynists and terrorists of all stripes and inclinations. From Hindutva to Tigray and the Donbas, our world today would be unrecogizable to the young person who traveled through pre-war Syria, pre-housing crisis United States, in 2008, like I did. There was the world before. The one I was told would go on and on forever: forever growth, and forever peace. Now I'm old enough say: growth and peace for whom exactly?
It is important to grieve the end of that era. The post-Cold War era of growth and development at all costs is on its last legs. Everyday in my neighborhood in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, I see the people who lost. Vestiges of their past lives: their expensive camping gear now houses them permanently on the streets, instead of once or twice a year in California's campgrounds. The backpacks that carry everything they own. Four years in this country, all of it in San Francisco, and I am reminded of how desperately alone one can feel here. One misstep, one mistake, a series of unfortunate events, and you are on your own.
That's why I think it would be radical for an individual to build community where they live, and to help everyone thrive. Especially if they are people who are least like you. Not to think of it as charity, because that would be crass, but as an overwhelming need to be the connective tissue that can help heal the scars of the broken world that we we live in. Maybe I have privilege today, as a tech worker with a powerful passport and a disposable income, today I can help to literally feed the hungry. Even when if I don't have those privileges—because existing in this country is so fraught with anxiety about how one mistake or illness can take everything away from you—it would still be an overwhelming duty as a human being to work to improve conditions for the people around me.
I want to bear witness, by writing about the world, particularly about the injustice that authoritarianism and religious fascism is going to cause in the US, in India and in Singapore. But I also want to reduce suffering and cause no harm. That's what my new commitment to Buddhism is helping me understand: every world at every moment in time is endless suffering. The most radical act you can do is to know that you are empowered. Sometimes that means you can help chip away at removing the causes of suffering; but most times, just knowing that you have the power to name and note an injustice is more power than the abusers want you to have.
Right this moment, by writing this, I am committing myself to the work of leaving a better world than the one I existed in.
Figuring out how exactly I'm going to do that is part of the work.
In a previous life, I had to use VPNs extensively. I was traveling all the time and often found myself needing to do online banking tasks in one country while I was in another. I also frequently visited some countries that blocked most commercial VPNs.
For that reason, I have been figuring out how to use different VPN and VPN-like services for a long time.
The latest and greatest stuff in this space, what I default to using more frequently now, is Tailscale.
Today, I will focus on how I use Tailscale to replace VPN-services for me, and ignore the other cool things that Tailscale can do.
This assumes that you have existing hardware and a connection in the country you want to connect to.
The use case for this sort of thing is an endless list:
I have a high speed connection at my home in San Francisco. I want to use my home network from abroad in order to access some banking or enterprise applications
Commercial VPNs can be unreliable or slow
If you have a device you can always keep 'on', such as an old laptop or desktop, or Raspberry Pi, you can ignore commercial VPN services and just use what you have. Just remember to keep your device 'on' and don't let it go to sleep.
On an old desktop or other device that is always plugged in, and always connected to the internet, I install Tailscale.
I log in using my GitHub account (though you can also use your Google account). Tailscale will authenticate you and you should see the name of that device
Go to Tailscale admin console, pick the machine that says Exit Node, click the three dots and make sure 'Use as exit node' is enabled
Install Tailscale on another device. Select the exit node you just setup
Check your external IP address to see that you are routing traffic through your exit node at home
In my case, I went to a cafe near my house, used their wifi, and then connected to my exit node in Tailscale. I was able to verify there that my external IP was the same as the static IP address from my home network
Now, when I travel abroad, it will be much easier for me to access the files and services that I need, as though I never left.
When I was a child, I immersed myself rather deeply into the world of orchestral music, especially in the woodwinds section. But the saxophone always felt too... large, for me.
I am no longer a child, so it is no longer too large. I decided to follow up on my childhood dream to play the sax (as well as every other instrument in the woodwinds section).
In January this year I began alto saxophone lessons at a music school here in San Francisco. I'm quite happy with my progress. I will need to find more time to play it more (currently playing around 2 hours a week), but in two short months I have managed to pick up enough to start playing some music.
If you're reading this and wondering if you should also learn sax, here's my advice:
learn to read music! It really helps
it's never too late for any of this
Many adults are somehow fearful that it's 'too late' to learn to play an instrument. It's never too late. I'm trying to adopt a beginner's mindset and to learn from scratch. Who cares if I'm any good at it? I'm having a lot of fun.
Here's a summary of my post-Spotify exploration of music. I'm still trying to decide how I want to consume music in the future, but what I'm currently thinking about is:
Apple Music for 'all you can eat' music streaming and music discovery
Accompanied by Plex music library and PlexAmp on phone for music that I want to collect and keep
I'm starting to buy interesting music on Bandcamp, especially newer stuff, new music types and collaboration, things that may never get published as a CD or other record.
I'm using the SF Public Library's incredible music collection (vinyl and CD!) to borrow and listen to older music that I may have missed out on, or music that I want to listen to in higher fidelity, on different equipment.
Using services like TuneMyMusic, I was able to easily move my playlists to Apple Music and Tidal. I evaluated both services before deciding on Apple Music. Tidal did not do a good job recognizing or having access to some of my non-English music. Apple Music did not miss a beat. I'm very firmly entrenched in the Apple walled garden, so it was also a good reason to get Apple One (so everyone in my family can also have Apple Music). If you don't use iOS, you may want to evaluate other alternatives.
I decided to pony up the $5 fee on TuneMyMusic to move my music to Apple Music. It was a one-off action that took a few hours to complete. After that, I canceled my subscription as I have no need to keep my playlists in sync.
There are probably ways to do this cheaply or freely with command line tools, but I did not have time to look into it.
I'm lucky to be friends with many music nerds and music lovers who have carefully curated playlists and music collections. Some of them also share their favorite new music on Bandcamp.
I started buying a few albums there. I'm still finding my way around Bandcamp (it looks like I'm buying stuff that I really like, and also experimental stuff I maybe don't like as much, but find interesting enough to keep).
I don't like listening to the albums on the Bandcamp website or app, so it's handy that they let you download lossless files of the music you buy.
Since I already had a Plex media server setup, it was simply a matter of setting up a new folder and library for music files.
I learned that the metadata from Bandcamp files isn't the best: Plex does best when you can organize files in a hierarchical Artist / Album folder structure, and for music that may not exist that way (like a lot of digital-only music on Bandcamp), Plex just doesn't pick up the music metadata neatly.
Using Beets, a command line superpower tool for music lovers
First, I had to set up the config.yaml file. Here's my config file, in case it helps.
Then, I had to install the right plugins. For my use case, the beetcamp, acousticbrainz and discogs plugins were the most useful.
I successfully re-imported all of my music files into my Plex music library like this:
beet import ~/some-path-to-music
After installing the right plugins, I was able to find matches for all of the music, including some very obscure old stuff. You can even set up the PlexUpdate plugin to let Plex know to update the music library every time music gets imported with beets.
I'm very happy with this setup, and will probably continue to grow my music collection in this way.
It feels like not very many years ago that hackathons, free beer and drunken nights out with startups were, for a brief moment in time, cool.
Perhaps it was even normal.
It was in this environment that I came of age, so to speak, in my work. It was therefore no surprise to anybody that I soon developed a drinking problem. Like many in my industry.
I pursued the drinking with the fervor of a person who also threw themselves into the work. Work hard, play hard. All of that. I learned the ins and outs of whisky the way I learned to manage products. I collected the certifications and classes for my outsized interest in alcohol the way I also worked on my tech skills. Many of my friends left the tech industry to distribute or sell alcohol. When I went home briefly to Singapore, people sent me so much alcohol that it lined the walls of the tiny hotel room I was in.
I did not drink much of it.
By then, I was starting to examine why I drank.
I drank, because it was routine.
I drank, because it was expected of me, for a time. To get along with the boys in tech, I should drink as many IPAs as they do.
As I got older, my body could not metabolize the alcohol. Hangovers felt worse. I felt sluggish. Even though the peats of whisky and the hops of craft beer are still things that I love, the drinking lifestyle is completely over for me.
After I moved to San Francisco, I found that the party was over. The San Francisco of free beers at work and boozy networking events that I saw and loved when I first visited in 2012 was not the San Francisco of tamer stuff, the one that I know and love today. Maybe the party moved to Miami. Maybe we all got older and collectively decided to do something else with our lives. Maybe returning as an adult in my 30s with a wife and family made me see that there was more to life than black-out stupor every weekend.
I was also tired of being sick.
A decade plus of round the clock hustle. Startup myths floating through every part of my brain and my soul. Fueled by a lot of craft beer and gin and Scotch. Coffee the rest of the day. At some point, that party had to stop.
I was very sick for a very long time. Not specifically because of alcohol, but it can’t have helped. Autoimmune disease hit me like a truck. I had all of the things: I was a woman, I was getting older, I didn’t sleep much (because hustle culture says to sleep only when you’re dead), every city in the world from Singapore to San Francisco to Seoul was starting to meld together. Every city felt the same. My life was the same. Work. Alcohol. Raise funds. Build things. Do it all over again, thinking you’re a baller, but something had to give.
I was tired of being sick.
It took me almost eight years to get my body back to where I was, before hustle culture and autoimmune disease killed it. In March of 2021, I put my running shoes back on and went for a run. Running had been such a big part of my younger life. It was different then: it was a different hustle. It was also a competition. It was about winning.
I didn’t feel like a winner in 2021. Almost nine years after the day I was sent to the emergency room with my heart rate through the roof, my body mass dropping at an astonishing speed (I was 5 kilos lighter in the evening compared to what I weighed before dinner), I resumed running again. I was slow. But I was happy. I was happy to be able to run at all.
The autoimmune disease wrecked my body for years until I could no longer stand or reliably support my body weight. I would be walking in the streets and then I would fall and not be able to get up. I was not able to feel my legs. Everywhere, from Singapore to Jakarta to Seattle. At first it came in short bursts: a minute at a time. I got up, I resumed my life. Then it came and it stayed for half an hour. Then an hour. It was like I was black out drunk, but I was not. I was fully conscious, but I could not move from the waist up.
Lucky for me, there was a way out of it. It required me to fully change my life. I voluntarily swallowed a pill that had been made at a nuclear plant, blasted my thyroid gland with the full force of radiation, and watched my body and my mind struggle through mania to sluggish slowness. From hyperactivity at 4 in the morning to being unable to move from bed. I watched my weight yo-yo between extremes, as my now-defunct thyroid gland struggled to establish itself in my new body, one without the ability to make its own hormones.
It would be 2 and a half years from that moment when I was able to run with any regularity.
And when I did, I didn’t want anything to hold me back. There was nothing to win. There was just the running, the freedom of being on my feet again. There was the Golden Gate Bridge that I ran towards daily as a symbol of the life that I have found for myself here. There was the weekend bikecamping trips I’d go on with friends: stubbornly and barely pedaling uphill at first, through the hills of Marin county’s many hills, eventually finding my pace. There was the 4-day Yosemite backpacking trip I went on in September 2021, where I surprised myself by climbing nearly ten thousand feet two days in a row. Where I hauled myself over the cables of Half Dome and thought to myself, life is pretty great, I never want to do anything that will stop me from living my best life again.
Gradually the dopamine hits from the alcohol turned to the daily dopamine hits from the exercise. From hitting my goals. From walking twenty thousand steps a day. From going on long walks with my little dog. From running ten miles a week. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Then more. Suddenly, I didn’t want the booze anymore. (Around the same time, I also started talking to people about ADHD. I started recognizing that the impulse I had to drink was indistinguishable from my ADHD need for constant refills of excitement. I worked with an ADHD peer group on goal-setting behavioral change that I wanted to practice so as to improve my life. I started with, ‘well maybe I won’t drink any alcohol other than wine’. But soon I found that I didn’t even want that at all.)
There’s still bits of that lifestyle I miss. It feels shockingly difficult to find a place to meet people and sit down in the evenings without substantial amounts of alcohol. But that’s changing. As I began to document my non-alcoholic journey, I found that I could still go to the places that I enjoyed, I simply had to ask for the non-alcoholic version. I explored the world of non-alcoholic craft beer, and de-alcoholized wine. I turn to those, at times, for what they call in India, ‘time pass’. It’s habit to nurse a drink and do something somewhere; but I do substantially less of it too. They are simply anchors into a past life that help me feel like I haven’t gone ultra cold turkey, because the feeling that I can’t do something also makes me want to do it. After six months though, I simply don’t want to do it at all. But I’m glad the non-alcoholic options exist. Because I truly despise soda.
The last couple of years have been a period of long introspection and learning for me. From learning to work with my neuro-diversity, to picking up new skills (I am currently learning the saxophone!) and more, my life has truly turned around since I gave up the hustle and settled down. It’s hard to overstate the importance of how my supportive and stable marriage helps me grow as a person. In Sabrena, I have a life partner who doesn’t shy away from the hard questions: why do you drink? Instead of saying ‘stop drinking’, she had me question the impulse behind my need. I sought the tools out myself, but I was able to share my progress and growth as a person and in every endeavor, no matter how small, with her. She is my biggest cheerleader.
Just like that, I’m six months sober. I’m running twenty miles a week, going on thirty. I’m planning to backpack and bikecamp. I walk endlessly with my little dog, who also seems to have found a new lease on life here in San Francisco where she is far more active and alert compared to humid, balmy Singapore or KL. We walk for hours. We climb hills. We look at the many, varied views.
Some time ago I read a tweet by a queer Singaporean asking why any queer Singaporean would move to San Francisco, citing the following shortcomings (not verbatim):
San Francisco used to be a place where queer Singaporeans would move to, for safety reasons, but perhaps those safety reasons aren't that dire anymore
San Francisco / the US is the heart of the hegemonic world order / imperialist system
We probably like the white gaze
San Francisco provides the opportunity to be a Joy Luck Club Asian queer
There was a time in my life where those thoughts resonated with me.
This topic has been on my mind since I moved here and, surprisingly, did not hate it as much as I imagined I would (I did not like San Francisco at all when I came as a tourist).
Unlike many other immigrants I've met here, who have left deteriorating and debilitating circumstances, my 'why I moved and how has it been' calculus is different. I did not move for material comfort. I am, daily, reminded of how I left home, away from material comfort, and my support systems, to be here. (Not to mention the tremendous amounts of social privilege I've left behind.)
Some time in 2012, I was pretty satisfied with my life as a queer Singaporean living in Singapore. I was in a high growth industry (tech), I got to date (a lot), I had many opportunities to create and carve out a life for myself as an upper middle class Chinese Singaporean gay woman who'd probably end up in a relationship with someone like me. In fact, when I went home recently we hung out with my ex (as queer women do), I took a photo of their home office in their absurdly beautiful Bukit Timah home and I captioned it in my phone as: "the life I would have had if I stayed home".
Every conversation when I was home revolved around, "when are you coming home?" because it seems unexpected, even among some types of minorities in Singapore, to entertain the idea of leaving the supposedly best place in the world (that we still all complain about anyway).
I found that my connection with Singapore was weakening. Other than family, I don't have anything to do there, or many people to spend time with. I have loads of acquaintances, of course, but many of my friends are.. elsewhere. (Not all of them to the hegemonic core, many of them to many parts of the world, including China, Vietnam, Indonesia.)
Still, every conversation (especially with my family) was around: so are you done yet with San Francisco? Isn't it absolutely terrible, that country? When are you coming back to this superior place? was the underlying question. If you're an always online Singapore leftist, your concerns with my city of choice probably has more to do with the above list of questions. If you're not a leftist, your concerns with my city of choice probably has to do with things like safety, medical bankruptcy, housing, why someone would realistically choose a higher cost of living and physical discomfort (as mentioned, Singapore is far more comfortable, materially, in nearly very way), and give up substantial amounts of socio-economic privilege.
Why people choose to leave home is deeply personal. Every situation is different. I moved here exactly three years ago with my wife and my dog when we suddenly had to make a huge life decision on the spot, when her work visa ran out and we decided to get married. We were lucky to have the option to come here, and to be able to thrive.
I learned quite quickly that I would have survived in Singapore (it's getting harder for queer people there), but I no longer felt like I could thrive. In spite of my immense privilege.
I felt like like the short-lived optimism I had for Singapore expanding queer rights was over. Even if 377A is repealed, I don't feel optimistic. I don't feel like I want to wait for incremental improvements. That's not to say that I don't want to do the work. I did, for a time. And if my circumstances were different, if I had decided to spend my life with another Singaporean person, if I was okay with surviving and not thriving, if I was able to shut up and be okay with the already tiny space around me in Singapore, eroding further and further; perhaps that would have been different.
I don't pretend this city, or this country, is perfect. Far from it. Unlike the home I grew up in though, it lets me say so: even if I am not a citizen. No country is perfect, so for now, we'll enjoy the wide open space of California, where, frankly, life is pretty good (if you can hack it). I feel immensely lucky to be able to grow as a person out here, far from home, while also having the ability to move back to my country, which has given me so much, yet currently exasperates me, whenever I need. I'm certainly cognizant of how this is a huge thing to have. So many of the other people who have moved to where I now am, no longer have a country at all. After three years in San Francisco, I feel like I've finally passed the moment of transience and 'uprootedness' that I've felt for so many years, and that maybe 'home' is always 'small cities surrounded by the sea, that punch above their weight'.
But there isn't a single day where I don't grieve what I left behind.
I used to love winter. Traveling to places in the winter, playing in the winter, winter sports, going out in the winter. Living in the northern hemisphere for the long term, however, has made me enjoy it less. I don't even live in somewhere with a significant winter scene. Northern California has relatively mild winters.
Maybe that's the problem. A clear demarcation between the seasons would be nice. Instead, this region's summer in September followed very quickly by fall and winter makes me quite miserable.
I spent the past weekend hiking. Some of it was on a dried out waterfall, such as this one.
For a long time now I have wanted to lead a wilder life than the one I had. Earlier in my youth, wild meant something else altogether. Today, it means: backpacking, camping, going on long walks in the wilderness, birdwatching, and hiking.
Now that I live in California I have access to tremendously beautiful landscapes, often hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean. Local parks, state parks, national parks and more: there are lots of avenues for weekend exploration. While I didn't always feel fit enough, or brave enough, to join many of these activities, I've finally gotten around to making the most of this access. On foot or by bike, there are lots of outdoorsy options and this past weekend I did my first ever backpacking trip for 2 nights at Wildcat camp in Point Reyes.
I joined a local adventure club that organizes trips and activities and was quickly put into a carpool with one of the organizers. While I didn't know anyone from the trip, we did a Zoom call to say hello and discuss logistics.
The plan was for us to meet at Bear Valley Vistor Center in Point Reyes on Friday afternoon at noon. The drive from San Francisco's Marina district took just over 90 minutes, with a last minute Sports Basement Presidio scramble for camping lights and other forgotten items.
We met the other folks at the visitor center, 12 of us in all, where we enjoyed our last moments of Internet and restroom access.
The hike up the Bear Valley trail was not especially brutal, but for most of us this was our first time carrying full backpacks and walking up any amount of elevation. Carrying tents, sleeping bags and stoves, we slowly meandered up the hills of Point Reyes and nearly 3 hours later, made it to camp.
Wildcat camp was reasonably furnished with two clean toilets and a tap.
As quite a few people on the trip remarked, it's amazing how little you really need until you have to carry it on your back.
We hiked, swam, walked on sand, cooked basic meals on camping stoves, and thankfully nobody got hurt or into any type of accident other than a handful of blisters.
I was lucky to have sought advice from experienced camper friends who told me: do whatever, have fun, but you must have good shoes, good socks, good tents, and a very long spoon.
That advice brought me far. I then supplemented that with more essentials for myself: I brought Indomie, packets of mala fish tofu snacks, Japanese sea urchin cookies (a fave), along with the dire 'dehydrated backpacker meals', and had more of a blast than I thought I would.
I've now been initiated into a group of outdoorsy folks who have the organizational and logistical expertise to make these weekend trips happen, so I'm excited to finally have consistent outdoors plans in my life. Next up: bikepacking at China Camp.
Maybe one day I'll write a quick guide to how to do all of this stuff in the Bay Area without a car. It's time for me to learn how to drive (!!) so I can access more cool spots, but for now, I think I saw a lot of my region without ever knowing how.
Some of you may know that I have spent the last 9 years or so working to support children's education in Jharkhand, India. In better times I visit them 2-3x a year. I want to share something that stuck with me the last time I went: one of the girls we work with showed us their daily schedule.
Tribal Jharkhand girl's daily schedule (24 January 2019):
I am nowhere as organized, or as funny, as this girl.
Going to Jharkhand twice a year has always been the highlight of my year. I'm glad to report that the girls are well, as are their families, which is an amazing outcome in spite of the current COVID-19 situation there. I've seen them grow up over the years: they are absolutely committed to wanting a better life for themselves and their families, and hopefully through the work that I facilitate there I can help to open some doors. If you pay tax in India, you are welcome to make a contribution to the team (other options coming, in the.. future. Overseas contributions are very difficult). The local team is amazing and I am so glad to be able to support this work.
I have been on a roll of late with my data liberation project.
The last piece in my photo liberation project was to figure out a way to take out all of the data from iCloud. Having been in the Apple walled garden for more than a decade and a half now, I have.. a lot of stuff in there.
Apple's official documentation simply says "log in to icloud.com, select the photos you want and download as a zip". What if you've got tens of thousands, or hundreds of photos like me?
Enter iCloud Photos Downloader, a Python utility that sucks out all of your iCloud photos into wherever you're running it.
In my case, I've already got a Linux server going for my photos so that's where I wanted it. The eventual goal is to put all of the photos into PhotoPrism there, as I like its tagging and deduping functionality. The goal is for all of my photos to eventually live on photos.mydomain.com, which is where all photos are going to.. eventually. Right now, I've only got my Google Photos in there. Time to get my iCloud photos in there as well.
Install iCloud Photos Downloader in your server or other computer
As with any other pip package, there can be errors because of your Python environment. I ran into a problem with having too many Pythons, and I could not run the ./icloudpd.py script, which threw a Python module error.
To fix this, I opened icloudpd.py in a text editor and I edited the first line from: #!/usr/bin/env python to #!/usr/bin/env python3. This tool needs Python 3.6+ to run.
The tool will prompt you to login and authenticate to iCloud.
Note: if you have 2FA enabled, you will most likely have to re-authenticate every 90 days or so.
I got tens of thousands of photos as expected. The tool shows you a nice little progress bar with basic information. It ran for several hours (around 5 or 6?) but it really depends on your connection speeds. You can turn off video downloads by using the --skip-videos option. You can also have it email you when it's done by using the various smtp options, but I did not want to bother with that.
I also have Syncthing set up and I am evaluating which workflow I prefer. I might want to continue keeping a copy of all photos on both iCloud and on PhotoPrism for redundancy.
In any case, I'm glad to have found a non-GUI way to access my iCloud photos. This will make any projects in this category much easier from now on.
In 2018 I decided to leave my home country of Singapore even though I once thought I would lead my queer adult life here because it was not a bad one. I decided to leave because I had met the woman I would marry, and there was simply no path for us to lead the sort of life we wanted in both of our home countries.
Being queer in Singapore is strange because on some level, it's one of the better places to be queer in Asia. And on many other fronts, while it isn't quite the worst, it's also.. not at all fun.
Some time between 2012 (when I returned to Singapore) and 2018 (when I left again) civil society, and the state of queerness in the country, had a certain amount of momentum that made me feel cautiously optimistic. I am now of the opinion that that moment has passed.
The 'fun' bits about being queer here are:
If you have a certain amount of money and class privilege, your life will be virtually indistinguishable from any other queer life you might lead in a major Western city
If you have a partner who is either a professional in the right industries, or also a Singaporean or someone who has the right to reside here regardless of your marital status or sexual orientation, you will have a pretty decent life
If you are important enough and your partner has the 'right background', there are 'case-by-case' ways to continue to lead a life in Singapore in important jobs and special privileges
Homophobia exists at all levels of society but is virtually invisible in the upper echelons of English-speaking, cosmopolitan, world-traveling, Bali-on-the-weekends Singaporean and Singapore expat circles
Dating opportunities, in terms of quantity and quality, is just as good as most major Western cities
If your partner is also Singaporean, and you're both above 35, you can technically purchase a subsidized public housing flat together under the Singles Scheme
The lifestyle is nothing to complain about (but only of course if all of the above apply to you)
The not-so-fun bits:
All of those things have to apply for it to be fun
You will have zero legal rights forever
The state of LGBTQ rights has not only stagnated, it is probably going backwards (significantly)
Every interaction you have with the state as a queer person is an edge case
One in four heterosexual marriages are between a Singaporean and a non-citizen. We are a city-state, an entrepôt city, a trading post, midway between the world and back. It makes sense that would be the case. There aren't any official numbers, since there's no offical recognition of queer relationships, but an anecdotal guess would rate the share of transnational queer relationships in the LGBTQ world to be even higher than the heterosexual one. We're a global-facing city, after all, and upper-middle class queer Singapore's access to a cosmopolitan dating pool would not be surprising.
This is where the problem begins.
Even though the extent of this country's discussion on queer rights at the moment starts with 'should we repeal a Victorian law against sodomy?' and ends with 'what are the gays going to want next? Marriage?', I have been married for 3 years now. I have been leading a regular life in a society where it is so utterly 'normal' that being a cis lesbian is perceived to be regular and boring and not at all revolutionary in any way. I go anywhere, and old Asian ladies talk excitedly about how cute my wife and I are, and express outrage at why we can't lead a regular life in Singapore, where we want to be.
How does one come back to... this?
I miss, so much, the heat, the humidity, the potential Bali weekend trips, the well-paid tech jobs in senior roles with far, far lower taxes, the quality of housing, the presence of a washer in every apartment, the public transit, the.. the everything. Nobody should ever have to leave home just to be able to be who you are. And yet, for queer people, leaving is not only about visas. It's about a place to catch your breath because you're just been sprinting and jumping over hurdles your entire life, only to find out that everyone else got to the finish line without a potato sack tied to their foot.
Being queer in Singapore is about having a potato sack tied to your foot. Some people, people like me, who have the above-mentioned privilege, think for some time that you can get away with whatever life throws at you because you're used to winning the race anyway. But at some point you wonder why you had to win anything at all.
Today, I was reminded of this fact. We were at a government office trying to get something done, something extremely innocuous that is granted to any heterosexual Singaporean married to a foreigner. While I appreciate that we eventually got things done, every moment is one of debilitating terror. Knowing that what's ahead of you is entirely 'case-by-case', that it depends on the beliefs and the feelings of the people you transact with, wondering if.. perhaps I had shown up as the director of a Singapore company (which I am) and not as the spouse of a foreigner (which I also am), I would have gotten this task done much faster without any questions.
On top of questions, there's also the indignity of having your marital status yelled out loud in several languages, as if they'd never heard of such a thing.
I feel like Schrödinger's Lesbian: I am at once a lesbian and not. I am married, there is no question about it, but that marriage does not exist, at the same time. If I were to be hit by a car tomorrow, and die, not only would my wife not be able to come to collect my body, she would also not receive a single cent from me. My sexual orientation matters, because the state does not want me to be visible or loud about it, but it matters as well, because the state also wants you to believe they are the best society in Asia for someone to be queer in, that there is utterly and totally no discrimination at all.
A few years ago I was interviewed by a local newspaper about my 'unconventional marriage'. Not only was the focus of the story that I was so unconventional we had to leave the country, I spent the entire interview talking about insurance. Insurance excited me greatly. Not only because insurance is essential in healthcare-terrible America, but also because the very boring, blasé act of naming a person you're married to as your next-of-kin is so revolutionary where I'm from. Between the quiet moments of our boring life filled with too much fur in our noses, and the indignity of justifying who we are to bureaucrats who think we don't exist because it doesn't say so in the SOP, I'm quite glad to be going back to boring. And fur. Boring fur and furry bores. But there is not a single moment where I wish I did not have to leave my home for it.
'Singapore food' is a difficult term. It's hard to put national wrappers around a smorgasbord of different culinary influences. This is why we keep getting into fights about appropriating others' food. Singapore food is Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Hokchiu, Teochew, Malay, Javanese, Sumatran, Tamil, Kerala, Mamak, Punjabi, Bengali, Kristang, Peranakan, Chetty, and many more.
We simply consume some of them more than others, in public; and some are more widely available commercially. Others are largely consumed at home.
The Singapore food popularized by the tourism board, that appears in movies like Crazy Rich Asians, is only one of many types of Singapore food.
When Malaysians say 'it's better in Malaysia', they are usually right, except for when they are referring to dishes that exist in both northern and southern Malaysia. In that case, the Singapore version, usually held up to be the inferior one, is usually only a mirror of the southern Malaysian, usually Teochew, version of that dish. It is not better or worse, it is just different.
As Singapore / Malaysia food gets more popular abroad, especially in the US, we're going to have to be prepared to see it transform in ways that we may not always appreciate. Like ube, kaya and pandan is going to go on a similar journey. I'm no longer personally invested in the idea of everyone eating exactly the same version of the food that I like; it's fine to let kaya and pandan become its own thing elsewhere.
Gula Melaka (obviously not Singapore food, but used extensively in Singapore) is god tier and will become the next big thing in global pastries and dessert, especially in sweet/salty applications like salted caramel.
One of the best aspects of food in Singapore is that many of the world's top food brands already, or will soon, have an outpost here. Some better than others.
The breadth of vegan and meat alternatives in Singapore currently is breathtaking. It's certainly changed in this department since I left home. While I'm not vegan, and likely will never be, I appreciate the options that are available. While one might need to go to a midrange restaurant in San Francisco to have Impossible burgers, there are Impossible burgers in convenience stores here. There are vegan options in a lot of local food now, a lot more than I remember. Pretty much every major plant-based or meat alternative or lab grown company is here with a product out on the market. Way more than in the US. And all in one tiny city. I'm excited to try the vegan sashimi that I just saw, and the vat-grown chicken. This is definitely related to the next section on 'how come I can get all of my favorite food in one city now?'
South Indian: Murugan, Anjappar, Junior Kuppanna, Ponnusamy, Dindigul Thalappakati
Malaysian Chinese: Go Noodle House, Super chilli pan mee, various Malaysian hawkers at Malaysia Boleh
Taiwan: Sushiro, Mu:, many many boba / bubble tea chains (most of them in fact)
China: too many to name, other than Hai Di Lao there are also Chinese chains for specific regional dishes, like more than two famous chains for say, suancai
Way too many Japanese and Korean chains to list.
Sure, chain food isn't all that exciting and many of them arrive here in a completely bastardized form especially when they are run by a local F&B group that is less good at running franchises. But the ones run by the owners, like most of the Indian and Malaysian chains, make me very glad to have something I love so much all in once place especially in times like these when I don't think I'll be able to travel to those places for longer than I'd like.
So why are there so many chains setting up shop here? I suspect capital flight, and the precarious political situation in Hong Kong as a traditional financial hub. It's also incredibly easy to setup a business in Singapore. While there are some problems with that model, you can definitely draw a direct line from the ease of setting up shop to why we have all of these restaurants.
I love that I can get biryani with seeraga samba rice (the clearly superior rice for biryani) in not just one style, but several: Kongunadu style at Junior Kuppanna, Thalappakati style at Dindugl Thalappakati. I love that I have many, many types of boba to choose from, from hand-brewed tea-forward teas like at Chicha San Sen to black sugar boba abominations with cheese like at Black Sugar or Xing Fu Wang. I love that the noodles I love so much when I lived in KL are mostly here.
Not forgetting individual chefs or restaurant owners who don't have chains, who have simply moved here and are doing what they do best here. I've had very decent Ipoh horfun and Sarawak kolo mee. I'm really liking the boom in Henghua (xing hua) food, after Putien's success. You find these at tiny restaurants (like Yun Heng) and at food courts (like at Malaysia Boleh). We've also recently found a very-close-to-Village-Park style nasi lemak at Uptown Nasi Lemak, Telok Ayer (which is totally different from Singapore nasi lemak).
I hate it when food writers spend too much time talking about how you can get gasp high end food at low end prices. That, I think, is unique to Singapore in some ways because we have a large number of trained chefs and cooks at the many, many hotels and restaurants; and many of them, like chefs and cooks anywhere, want to do their own thing. Our inventory of non-restaurant space, like at hawker stalls or food courts or commercial shop space below public housing, has made it possible. You have always had things like 'Austrian man sets up sausage stand in Chinatown' or 'Japanese couple selling Singaporean Teochew noodles in hawker centre' in the first wave of that. We've also always had stories of 'hotel chef sets up shop in hawker stall'. So I am not, as a food-obsessed Singaporean, surprised by this sort of thing.
What this means in daily life, though, now that I live somewhere with with a well-known but very different food scene, is that you can get fancy dimsum in a place like Yishun. You get French-trained chefs cooking Hokkien mee.
I love that. However, I love more when a new generation of Singaporeans take over, or start, hawker food businesses. It leads to innovations that take the best of our traditions and blends it with our exposure to new things, and makes it entirely new. As a Teochew person, I love braised duck more than.. nearly anything else in the world. A place like Jin Ji where a younger person has started to get involved can now do things like dry duck ramen and still be distinct from when a Japanese ramen master does it. I have never seen duck ramen anywhere else outside of Japan and Singapore and I feel like more people should know that you can have many types of duck ramen in Singapore, including one that is Teochew-inspired.
Does this mean that food in Singapore is not authentic? First, I'd like to banish the idea of authenticity. Nothing is authentic, even in the sourcelands. India, China, and other places we draw inspiration from, have all had food that has come from somewhere else, and no food exists in a vacuum.
But even in the 'authenticity' department we are no slouch. You can get old school Teochew food, you can get traditional East Javanese food (Bebek Goreng Pak Ndut), you can get authentic Kongunadu food (Junior Kuppanna), you can get authentic Chennai style idlis (Murugan). You can get extremely high levels of 'authentic' high end Japanese food for nearly every region, and dish.
When I think about what I miss most about eating in Singapore, especially when I'm cold and hungry at midnight in San Francisco, it looks a little like this:
In my eating-in-Singapore dreams, it is always midnight. I am at Mustafa in June fighting over mangoes with aunties. The cashier asks me what's the big deal anyway about these mangoes. I say it's not just a mango, it's dasheri. After losing at mangoes (the aunties always jab me and they get the best ones), I walk to Desker Road for hot garlic cheese naan, dal fry, palak paneer and kadai chicken. Javid offers me a cigarette. I tell him I don't smoke anymore. He says good, have some elaichi chai. In the morning, my mother has made me a tub of Hokkien chicken wings that her mother used to make, for breakfast. There's at least 2 kilos. I love chicken wings. Love is an understatement. When I've had Filipino food, I can see the Hokkien influence in all of the dark soy sauce and garlic. My Hokkien half is satisfied. Later, for lunch, I want a light Teochew porridge with all of the trimmings: steamed pomfret or rabbit fish. Taucheo. Preserved mustard leaves with olives. I walk around in the heat and sweat it all off. For dinner, I can have great sushi or I can have biryani. With seeraga samba, the clearly superior biryani rice. Then I remember a cocktail costs $25 in this city and I wake up.
So whenever someone not from a major food city moves to San Francisco and says to me, the food scene is so good! I hold my tongue and say... yes, it is, but. I could also be eating in Singapore. In my dreams.
If you, like me and many others, have started to feel uncomfortable about one company knowing everything about you, moving off the Google ecosystem is the natural first step. There are lots of alternatives for the main features: for search, there is DuckDuckGo, which is improving all the time and has now fully replaced Google search for me. There is Fastmail, Proton Mail and many other alternatives for email. For photos, Google Photos and iCloud Photos reign supreme.
I have attempted over the last couple of years to move off Google Photos. Each time, I've been let down by problems in bandwidth and download speeds. If you have vast amounts of data, it can get very difficult to work with the raw data you obtain from Google Photos using a graphical user interface. Each time I've tried to do that I've ended up with corrupted files or incomplete data.
With a reverse proxy into a photos.mydomain.com address and https.
To be honest, while I know my way around servers I don't have a lot of experience with containers, networking or security. I did not want to attempt this project until I succeeded in getting a beginner's version of all that up online.
Choice of self-hosted photo software. I looked mostly at PhotoPrism and PhotoStructure. Both of these projects appeared closest to the sort of self-hosted Google Photos-esque application I was looking for. Many other photo projects are far closer to web 1.0 style web galleries. In my case, I had more than a quarter of a million photos and videos strewn across multiple clouds. I have ADHD, and it has been very difficult for me to organize things.. anything.
Hardware. I decided that I wanted to lease a server in Europe, because there are very good deals to be had there. Hetzner, OVH and an assortment of related companies like SoYouStart, Kimsufi, I've used most of them at various times in the past. It's relatively affordable to get up and running on a server run by any of those companies using used or old parts. For the most part it works out cheaper than trying to own your own hardware right now (in the midst of a global chip and memory shortage). Many people certainly do this sort of work on a NAS or a Raspberry Pi, but I knew I wanted something with many more cores. I got a Xeon E3 server to start, but may upgrade later. $27 a month is not a bad deal at all for a dedicated server with those speces (16GB RAM, relatively decent uplink).
Source of data, and download method. As mentioned previously, I have not had much luck with retrieving my data from Google in the past. This time, I decided to completely avoid downloading my data to local storage, knowing that even with decent desktops and laptops I would still struggle with handling all of this data. I decided to download the backup files directly into my server instead. I decided to do a Google Takeout of all of my Google Photos from my G-Suite domains (several!) and my personal account's Google Photos. You can do the same by going to the Takeout page. I decided to send Takeout data directly into OneDrive, where I have a temporary premium account solely for this purpose. I've noticed I can fetch data from OneDrive at very high speeds using rclone, at least 2-3x faster than from Dropbox or Google Drive.
Rclone, a fantastic tool I can't live without. I have been a huge fan of Rclone for a while now. While it works amazingly well for Google Drive and Dropbox, there are known limitations with rclone for extracting and moving Google Photos that I did not want to deal with. Mainly, using rclone for this purpose strips EXIF data, a known limitation of Google Photos' API.
When my Google Takeout is complete, I rclone to download from OneDrive into my server.
Accessing your photos using a reverse proxy For security, you don't want to access your self-hosted photos at SOME.IP.XX.XX:PORTNO or yourdomain.com:portno. You'll want to access it at a domain, preferably one you own. This was the hardest part for me: there are many ways to get a reverse proxy going, and I didn't know very much about all of that.
I decided to use LSIO's swag container. In a nutshell, LSIO provides very well-maintained Docker images for many popular homelab projects. You can easily stand up a wiki, a PVR, or even niche things like a self-hosted Markdown editor. I've used many of their images in other projects and I love how easy it is, how helpful the community is. The swag container was the one I spent the most time on.
It's helpful to read the docs and initial setup info. Once you figure out the ins and outs of how things are set up in this container, you can easily get https://yourdomain.com, https://anysubdomain.yourdomain.com or even https://yourdomain.com/subfolder up and running. Of all of the 'beginner' methods of learning to set up services with reverse proxies (and there are many: you can use Traefik, Caddy, docker gen, etc), this wound up being the one I felt I learned most quickly.
In summary, you want to:
Set up DNS
Get an SSL certificate for all your domains and subdomains
Edit the proxy configuration files
Read the docs, or ask for help; it took me, someone with not a whole lot of infrastructure experience but who knows a bit of Linux, a couple of days to set it up correctly.
The swag container has many built-in templates that makes this easy, once you learn its quirks.
Photoprism has Tensorflow built in. Their pre-trained model doesn't get everything right (for example, it marked a plate of squid as 'baby'), but it is pretty good. My wife is placing a bet with me that I probably have more than 20 000 photos of Cookie. The moment of truth will probably be in a day or so, when all 200 000 ish photos I've got (over the last 20 years) are finally imported, indexed and tagged.
I was able to set up PhotoPrism in Docker Compose in this manner, and access it at https://photos.mydomain.com. While I'm currently importing and indexing a quarter of a million photos, I've been happy with the speed, performance and features and have decided to sponsor the project. It's nice to see people working on useful software that works well and looks good.
I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made on this. I might make a tutorial for the more complex parts of this project later.
I have some experience cooking in tiny spaces with limited equipment and ingredients, from camping and travel adventures
Food is provided during this quarantine period, but we requested that the hotel change all of our catered meals to 'salads only' since we expected lots of food delivery from friends and family
We got takeout the rest of the time, and very occasionally 'cooked' with the rice cooker and 1.0L electric travel multi-pot
Most often, we made soft-boiled eggs and I've developed a fairly robust recipe for it. I used to make it at home on the stove, but found that with some adjustments it worked out well in the electric multi-pot as well.
You'll need a kettle, and a vessel that holds heat well that has a cover. Or just a travel-sized multi-pot.
Boil water in multi-pot
Turn off the heat when it is boiling vigorously (bubbles are rolling on the surface)
Add 4 large room temperature eggs into the multi-pot. Make sure the eggs are completely submerged in the hot water. Cover.
Set a timer for 8 minutes, get ready to have more boiled water (from the kettle) by the end of 8 minutes
At 8 minutes: add fresh boiling water to the multi-pot
Set a timer for 4 minutes
After 12-13 minutes in total, take out all the eggs and put them in a bowl. Cover with tap water
Crack each one. If they are still too runny, put the rest back in the multi-pot for an additional minute or so
You're basically trying to keep the water temperature at around 165F / 75C that whole time. This takes a bit of trial and error. It really depends on the size of the eggs. And your pot!
Even though I already have a home-based Usenet media server, I was unhappy with the i3 CPU and slow Internet speeds from its data center. I decided to switch my entire setup, prioritizing uplink speeds. I picked a data center that was promising 20Gbit/s speeds. I moved all of my services over to it within the afternoon and was happy with the performance. I'm a fan of the -arrs services for automation and organization.
Chromecast is a nifty little gadget but it has notable issues in networks you don't control. Like in hotel rooms. I was unable to set up the Chromecast on the hotel TV because it can't complete setup. There is a port forwarding issue.
I managed to get around it by using my laptop as a wifi point, but that was somewhat unwieldly. In the process, I learned that tools like Connectify work for this precise purpose. Not having my Win10 laptop on this trip, I used Mac OS X's built-in Internet sharing feature. My hotel room has a weird setup where the TV needs to have the network cabled plugged in to even boot up, and turns off after some time if the network cable isn't there. So in my workaround, I was able to get Chromecast to work but the TV would keep shutting down.
It looks like the company behind Connectify also has a suite of related services like Speedify that would have served me well back in my road-warrior days. Those days are long gone, but I am interested in any and all technology that is travel-adjacent.
Next time I spend extended amounts of time in hotel rooms, I will probably bring my Roku stick instead. It appears Rokus don't have the same setup problems because they create their own temporary networks during the setup process.
Eventually, we went back to basics: a laptop connected to the TV using a HDMI cable. It's not as convenient as other media consumption methods we're used to, but at least it works.
And with the high speed media server setup, we were able to watch things at significantly higher quality and speeds.
Towards the end of my 21 day quarantine period, I started a data liberation project to completely wean myself off Google. I don't think I'll be done before I leave; it's a huge endeavor.
I started by using rclone to mount all of the Google Drives that I have access to. Then I setup a separate server on Hetzner, which will be for my personal cloud only. I selected Hetzner because of the variety of hardware available, friendly price point, and the ability to quickly attach storage through storage box add-ons. Most /r/SelfHosted and /r/HomeLab projects describe DIY projects using hardware that you put together. Having just built a gaming PC at the start of the global chip shortage of 2021, I do not have the desire to acquire any more hardware at this point. Leasing servers is the way to go for me.
My main priority is to move all my files from legacy clouds (mainly, the several G-Suite drives I still pay for because I have been procrastinating at moving my data).
Using rclone, I've managed to send all of the data from different drives into my server, where I then dedupe files using rmlint.
I now plan to setup seafile and use that as my personal cloud, accessing these files on files.mydomain.com using the built-in reverse proxy features from the swag Docker container.
I also have multiple copies of photos from different Google Photos (different accounts), and iCloud (several accounts as well). I am doing the same thing as what I did for my data: pull out all the photos into one location (my server), dedupe, and then make them available through photos.mydomain.com using either PhotoPrism or PhotoStructure.
While my data liberation projects are definitely privacy-driven, I have simply become increasingly unhappy with certain consumer products, even the ones I pay for. Drive is extremely slow once you've got terabytes of data. Transfer speeds are abysmal. As my thoughts on technology and privacy change, I have also begun to take the steps to remove Google from most aspects of my online life. Search, for me, was replaced long ago by DuckDuckGo. Email is now Fastmail, which I am very happy with. At this point, it is important to me to be in control of my data. I also like the idea of being able to directly support the developers who work on the tools listed above, through sponsorship or subscription. I've noticed that my views are not fringe, and many people are likewise interested in taking such steps. Sadly, it won't be an option for everyone because of the barriers involved. (For those, perhaps a solution like Helm might be the way to go)
When I'm out and about in my daily life I only have an hour or two of free time a day, more on the weekends, to work on things like these. Today is day 18 of my isolated quarantine before I'm let out into the general public. I have completed most of the above projects (though photos work is still ongoing..). I will share more specifics about the server work when I can!
I am processing a metric ton of grief this week. I am at once in pain at the violence that the Singaporean state (and many states) is inflicting upon trans people, with the support of transphobic people of all backgrounds, including gays and lesbians who really should know better than to weaponize their own identities towards our trans siblings. I am at a loss for words on how to process the fact that a man shot and killed eight people in Georgia this week, most of them Asian women. That not one, but several, Asian and Southeast Asian elders were randomly targeted and assaulted no more than 15 minutes from where I live.
It's a lot.
Because I am from everywhere and nowhere, sometimes at all at once, I feel the grief of all of these communities simultaneously as a queer Southeast Asian lesbian cis woman of Chinese ethnicity currently now living amongst the Chinese diaspora in America. All of the different shapes of grief simply collapse into one giant mess.
There are many reasons why I don't feel like I get to participate in any of this. I am not the same kind of immigrant, therefore I don't feel like I get to speak for the Asian women of a different background whose lives in America are so different from mine. I am not Asian-American, and I therefore don't carry with me the same degrees of pain that many Asian-Americans have felt since birth or since they got here. I speak English and am not singled out very often for being 'different', where I live here, because "I sound American" (I have different English accents, you should listen to me speak at home or elsewhere in the world. My English accent is a chameleon with of a life of its own that I do not understand). I am Singaporean, and not generally perceived to be a threat by other governments; extremists of most persuasions do not have a specific beef with me.
None of this week's grieving is specifically about me.
I watched with horror as I see a list of victims presented with mangled names. Soon C. Park. Hyun J. Grant. Yong A. Yue. It was a mistake that was quickly corrected, but I could not help but feel the indignity of having their names mispronounced in death on a literal medical examiners' table, after a lifetime of mispronunciations. After already having made the concessions of taking on easier names, of putting your family name at the end of your name, even if it didn't make any sense.
I am ashamed that I paid two hundred and fifty dollars to delete my Asian names from my legal papers, that I kept a hint of the name that my grandfather gave me as initials: L T, just so that I can have an easier time at the DMV. At the time, I did not feel like anybody else needed to know. It would be mangled, anyway.
I am a queer woman who has moved to this country not for more money or more opportunities, I did not move here to escape war or political oppression (well, kind of, but I cannot possibly compare it to the people who have literally fled for their lives). In the grand scheme of things, the math of my intersectionality still works out for me: Queer English-speaking cis women with the right passports working in tech = there aren't many other places that we can call home.
But it doesn't help that some weeks more than others, things don't make sense precisely because of all of the other things. What will my life be like as an Asian elder in this community? Will I have to learn kungfu so that I can beat up my assailant? What will our children's lives here be like, as the mixed children of Singaporean-Malaysian-Chinese-Indian-American lesbians? Will someone make the leap from overt benign racism, into simply overt racism, when I least expect it? Will the person who keeps calling me Chinatown as I walk past him one day, when he's having a bad day, do something a little more? Do I represent the kinds of opportunities he feels I've taken away from him?
I recall a conversation I had in my teens with a teacher. I had written a letter, never sent, to the US ambassador of Singapore. Dear ambassador, it went, I think I am gay and I cannot think of any country I can be myself in other than yours.
A teacher caught wind of it. A teacher who had lived in America, to be clear. For her faults (she was extremely nationalistic, to a fault, and also probably a racist), she explained that I would be giving up one part of myself for another. Sure, you can be gay there, but you're going to be a minority in other ways. At the time, I was outraged. What a thing to say! If anything, I should be ashamed of being a member of the oppressive ethnic majority here in my own country! (I am! Still!)
But it means that I am never really in fear of anything overt or covert back home. That many people trust people who look and sound like me. It also means that I don't really have anything to prove. I don't have to be particularly successful. can be a doctor lawyer engineer if I wanted to. If I wanted to, I can be anything I want to be back home. Or nothing, if I chose. There is no expectation riding on me to represent my community. My community is my society.
Here, even if I feel like many of the struggles of the Asian-American community are not my own, I am starting to be subsumed by it. The things that live in my head: am I Chinese? Am I Southeast Asian? Am I (some very specific group of some ethnicity)? Are really just my struggles. I am reminded me the Singaporean Chinese people like me, who, unlike me, were actually victims of racial assault elsewhere. I am reminded of Vincent Chin, who was killed by people who were angry at perceived Japanese domination in the auto industry in Detroit, despite not being Japanese at all. I am reminded of the Chinese-Filipino Asian elder who was beat up, obviously, because he looked Chinese, even if they might not see themselves that way. I am reminded of all of the micro-aggressions of the ni-haoing crowd directed at all people who look like they should know the term and who sometimes face violence when they do not respond, even if they are Thai, Hmong, Vietnamese, Korean.
Ultimately, we all play our bits in white supremacist structures that overtly support these acts of violence by calling them 'just a bad day'; that covertly support more acts of violence by playing down our grief. If you are grieving this week, and I say this particularly to the people who don't feel Asian enough, who don't feel Asian-American enough, to Black-Asian people who have to hold the grief of all of their communities at once, your grief is valid. I won't pretend there's a single imagined community here that will support all of your grief, but your grief and despair is valid and you can feel whatever you want to feel about any and all of it.
We shouldn't have to be attacked for how we look or who we are; and we shouldn't have to minimize our grieving because of how our cultures are perceived, grossly and inaccurately, by the same people who are the cause of our grief.
Maybe one day I will have more eloquent thoughts on this topic, but for now, this is it.
I don’t remember things like seasons before 2018 (I did not live somewhere with real seasons until 3 years ago). Unless they had to do with travel. In 2004, I was a college freshman in a school in Singapore that was also the only one at the time which followed American semesters, terminology, and that conferred you with things like summa cum laude when you graduated. Accordingly, we were also the only school that used things like, “summer”, “spring”, “fall”, “winter”.
Summer of every year in college was glorious. I knew it at the time, probably, but maybe didn’t know exactly: all four summers would be the best days of my life. Just endless amounts of time to not-study, for I was not a very good student (my undiagnosed autism and ADHD then made it very difficult for me to stay engaged)), and unlimited amounts of time to really just do whatever the hell I wanted.
Like many students in Singapore, it had always been an ambition of mine to study abroad. I wanted to live and study somewhere with... seasons. In hindsight, I probably just wanted the space and bandwidth to figure out things like ‘am I gay’, ’can I do certain things recreationally’, ‘is there a path beyond let’s marry some man at 25 and have babies and live in a HDB flat’, and I probably wanted those things more than I wanted to study abroad.
The realities of a middle class life in Singapore set in quite quickly. The deal I struck with my folks was: ”If I stay and study in Singapore (the economically sensible thing), I guess I can... travel... regionally... with the tens of thousands of dollars that you’d be saving?” (They said yes, but that I still had to pay for those things myself. Years of studying amongst real-life Crazy Rich Asians did not leave me with a reasonable understanding of money.)
Much later, some family friends remarked at Chinese New Year: Mr and Mrs Tan, isn’t it marvelous that you allowed your daughter the space to go out and see the world? To which, they laughed: there is no allowing or disallowing with her. She’s so strong-willed, our options with her have always been: ok do what you think is best. Just remember to tell us about it. As soon as you can.
(Thanks mum, dad! If you’re familiar at all with Singapore, you’ll know that that’s... exceedingly rare. I feel extraordinarily lucky.)
And so I worked two to three jobs all through college in order to fund that life. It helped that I loved a good deal so I made it my goal to get the best prices on everything. If I had $100 in my bank account that was me going off to a nearby country for two weeks. It also helped that I was fine with—perhaps even saw it as a teaching moment, or a story to be written about ten years later—that I really wasn’t bothered by things like creature comforts. I was also not bothered by creatures. $2 rooms in Kolkata and $5 beds in Bangkok. Those felt more free than the small bedroom in a high-rise building I grew up in. Now that I’m a little older, I know those felt liberating because those were different from the comforts I grew up with, that I could always return to. They were novelties. They were stories to tell.
I hope I have better stories to tell now.
—-
In the summer of 2004, I woke up every morning and I got into a little boat. I paddled aimlessly. I tried not to knock my head with the oar. My ex, bless her soul, did most of the paddling. We walked around from bed to beach to estuary lazily with all the time in the world. Of college kids who had April to August to do whatever they wanted. Most of our peers were doing internships, chasing good jobs: I wanted to row boats badly and wear not too much clothing for as long as I could.
The plan was hazy. We would get up from bed a few days from now, whenever we felt like it, and head for Cambodia. We would take several modes of transportation from the beach towards the mainland, where we would board a minibus for a town named Trat. Then we would find a motorbike taxi, and we would tell them to head to the border. There, we would disembark from the motorbike taxi, and then we would find a car, any car, headed for Phnom Penh. That trip involved an overnight stay in a small Cambodian town. We weren’t fazed by it, but we weren’t prepared either. Especially not with the minimal clothing that was the ethos of my travel at the time.
On arriving in this small Cambodian border town, we checked in to a room in a wooden structure that had seen better days. Our budget was $2, so we couldn’t complain. As with all such huts in Southeast Asia, the highlight of the room was the dirty and dusty mosquito net. It’ll only be one night, I told myself.
As we walked around the small Cambodian town the main people we saw who were not working in the hotels, who were not pedaling autorickshaws, were older men from a certain continent with clear persuasions of the nature that would lead them into criminal trouble back home. Being as sheltered as we were, we felt relatively carefree and perhaps even safe. After all, we were... almost 20. We were expired goods for the men who came to this town.
As a person on the spectrum, the true nature of the things that I saw and the sticky situations that I may have been in only revealed themselves later when I was already detached from that moment. Ah, so that’s... what it was. I mention this because I have been frequently guilty of saying that I never ran into any trouble traveling solo; perhaps I was truly lucky. Perhaps I, as an autistic person who has a complete inability to read new social situations, just didn’t see what was right there. This episode comes back to me sometimes as I think of the leering men who said things to me like, I can no longer be with western women, they don’t know how to treat men and they are not attractive. At that time, I simply did not have the context. I certainly found it weird and strange, but today I would have the tools and the experience to have found... disgust, perhaps.
That night was over relatively quickly. The next morning, we climbed into an old Toyota Camry that was bound for Phnom-Penh.
Before I came to this country I led a very different life.
My luggage was never unpacked. My passport was tethered to my body. My weeks often began with breakfasts in Yangon on Mondays and ended with drinks on Jakarta rooftop bars on Fridays. On weekends, I might retreat into a Balinese forest alone or return home.
Home was one of Asia’s most expensive cities. At least, it was where I paid rent and where I have the largest number of relations of all kinds. Home didn’t feel like home since I was never home for more than three days at a time, from the moment I graduated from college. I could never buy a gym membership anywhere. I simply didn’t know where I would... be.
My life here is quite different.
I have not left my neighborhood much in the past year. The longest trips I have taken have been occasional bicycle trips across the Golden Gate Bridge, where I sometimes like to cycle to my favorite bakery and then put my bike on a bus home (just say no to the hills of Sausalito). So many people are writing stories about how other countries are doing pandemics differently. This is mine, except I stayed on and am in it for the long haul, fully cognizant of all of the ‘benefits’ I am missing out on.
My friends are having brunch and cocktails back home and I know in my bones that would be me, if I was in Singapore right now, too. Because I am bougie like that and I know it.
But I am not at brunch. I am huddled at home, like I have, every night this year. My dog is asleep next to me, farting ceaselessly. I have canceled all holiday plans. We are not going anywhere.
During the work days, I work with a team of thirty something brilliant and kind individuals who, together, are trying to make a difference for the city we love during this difficult time. At nights, I put on an apron and trudge to an empty kitchen near my home to churn, literally, batch after batch of ice cream so that I can bring some joy to people in real time.
It feels like exactly where I need to be.
It wasn’t always an easy feeling, though. In conversations with therapists I have learned that the inability to make plans for the future, any future, is causing everyone all kinds of anxiety. For international folks like us with our lives strewn all over the world, it has been a special kind of logistical challenge. When will we ever see our families again? In all these countries?
Back in March just before shelter-in-place came upon us, we already knew the extent of the damage of this virus from news from Asian cities. We semi-seriously considered waiting out the pandemic in Singapore, where a good healthcare system and mollycoddling levels of government support seemed like a good idea. From rumblings from an assortment of compatriots I gathered that nonstop flights might end from San Francisco; that if we went home now, things will be safe; that you really don’t want to be stuck here in this country with its impossible healthcare system and not have any help figuring out something so unprecedented.
Occasionally, I dial in to Zoom conversations hosted for Singaporeans on the west coast. They always kick off these meetings by sharing latest stats. We marvel at the numbers. We laugh at the charts that are made showing how we have significantly less confidence in the American government’s handling of this pandemic compared to our own. We run through the numbers of how many of us have decided to weather it in Singapore or hunker down here in the Bay Area.
Somehow, those of us with not entirely clean cut Singaporean lives are hunkering down. Our partners cannot return with us. Our children cannot. I continue to be frustrated by the inability to plan for the future in any form. So I churn more ice cream.
If I were in Singapore, I would be at brunch. I would be checking in to all the locations I visit throughout the day with the app that every citizen has access to. I might be walking down a quiet residential street like my parents were when I called them a few days ago, and the biggest concern of my day might be that I paid too much ($5) for a bowl of fishball noodles.
But before I get to brunch, I would have to find my way to Los Angeles, the closest city where I can still get on a plane home. I would only be able to board the Singapore Airlines plane if I had my bright red passport, which I do, but that my wife does not. On entering the plane, probably in business class (as I would have upgraded with the miles I have studiously collected over the years), I would sink into the leather seat and feel relieved when I am given a copy of the Straits Times by a person who can pronounce my last name the way it is supposed to be pronounced (Tanh, not tan as in what the President does to get his famous orange color). I would sleep for the entirety of the sixteen hours, because I sleep like the dead in both economy and business class (and at the back of a boat or upper bunk of a train). I would land and I would hear the familiar sounds of Singlish, Malay and Hokkien at the precise moment the plane doors open onto the aerobridge.
Heat and Hokkien always hits me like a wave. I would scan my passport and then be whisked to a five star hotel where I would be strictly quarantined, before I can be released back into the world. Then, depending on the outcome of my tests, I would either be eating fishball noodles with my parents, or declared an ‘imported’ case by state media.
I will not be at brunch for a long, long time.
Instead, I have not cut my hair since January. My dog is so unused to being more than one foot from me that she now wanders to the bathroom if I am there for more than a minute. I am sequestered in my 300 square foot apartment that somehow has space for two humans, two animals, and all of our life’s possessions. My wife has bolted a fold down desk onto a wall. When either of us needs to use the bathroom, we flatten between the chair and the wall, sometimes without appropriate amounts of clothing (usually me). At various points of this pandemic, especially during the combination election and pandemic anxiety weeks, I plot and plan and figure out logistics. I carry bags of laundry to a laundromat at quiet hours, and wish I did research on how there are rarely any washers or dryers inside American apartments.
That is my way of dealing with anxiety. I figure out logistics. Which is an activity that is, in itself, anxiety-inducing. But never mind. I write to the immigration departments of various Caribbean countries. I research golden visas in Taiwan. I look at Estonia. I do all of this first for the animals, and then for us. All the countries that require any amount of animal quarantine are crossed from the world map that is in my mind. So no UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore or Hong Kong. Immigration departments write back and I promise to pay them some time after November 4, 2020. I never do.
I scan the news for information about 45’s latest immigration-busting moves. I realize, for the first time in a while, that we literally have nowhere else to go. I stay up until 7 in the morning to watch a needle tick in one direction or other in an election I cannot vote in. I dabble in more logistics, this time reading in other languages. Reading in my second and third languages will be less anxious, I tell myself, because I won’t understand all of it. It doesn’t work. I freak out again, just in other languages this time.
Seventeen days ago I woke up with needles pointing in not so bad places. I ghost Carribbean immigration officers. My love story with ‘Murica continues. Another tragedy strikes. America crosses 12 million cases; yet more than a million people are expected to fly this week for a holiday that celebrates genocidal activities. 95% of my state is on a 10pm curfew. My city, which has high levels of mask compliance and some levels of official responsibility, might join the rest of the state very soon. Life goes on. All I know is life will not need to be in the Carribbean.
The sun sets at 5pm and I turn on a ten thousand lumen lamp for several hours so I don’t get sad.
From time to time, my wife and I wonder: what will our life be like in Singapore, right now? We think of our beautiful apartment in the forest there. We think of our many brunches. We think of chicken rice. But mostly, we think of how we will not have a life in Singapore at all.
She wouldn’t be allowed in. Right now, because of the pandemic. But also always, because she won’t be allowed to be my wife.
In my younger years, meaning when I was a tween, I became acutely aware that my life would be different. I dated boys because I was supposed to, but whenever they said they loved me or that they wanted to marry me, I just shuddered. I don't like it when men sweat, I told them.
In hindsight, that was a big, red sign. I learned, in quick succession: I don't like it when men sweat. I don't like it when men sweat on me. I don't like the way men smell. I don't like men. Period.
When I was eighteen I felt like I was at a crossroads. "Am I bi? Am I gay? Am I... just a slut?" I could not tell. When you are a teenager, everything is possible. All doors are open. You can live anywhere, be anywhere, sleep with anybody.
And so on and on it went.
Eventually, I did find out: I am lesbian. I am a dyke. I will die on the hill of women-smells and women-sweat forever. I think I found that out when a man asked me to go to IKEA to pick out furniture with him. I told him he was really hot but, I would never go to IKEA with him, or with any man, now and always. It felt far more intimate than whatever we had gotten up to. I don't like man-sweat.
Even with that clarity behind me, I still had no clue what the hell I was supposed to do with that information. I lived in Singapore; I had gone abroad. I had flirted with the idea of going somewhere else. Nothing seemed clear. That sort of clarity, about what I would do and how I would do it, would only come later. (Again, that moment struck me like a thunderbolt, out of nowhere. It just did, and I don't know when it did.)
Yet I clung on to the idea of being thirty five as the day I should have 'figured it out'.
Maybe I did?
I have figured it out, in that I have learned that my sexual orientation, which once defined me as a person, continues to be a political position but it is not the entirety of who I am.
I have figured it out, in that I am married to a woman and we have a dog and a cat, just like I imagined when I was a wee tween, but I came to that very differently as well.
Dating in Singapore was strange, but not unlike being queer in any other major city. I was.. comfortable. I went on a few dates a week. At 35, I feel tired even thinking about the amount of energy I put into dating in my 20s. But it felt like the sort of thing to do a couple of times and get over with.
Love came to me in a way I could have never imagined. I was used to meeting women on the apps, meeting women in queer bars, meeting women everywhere I went, everywhere. But I had not yet done the classic queer woman move: I had not yet dated a woman who had dated the friend of a woman I had dated.
Who knew that would have solved all my problems?
From there, we went: Yishun, to Bali, to Bandung, to Kuala Lumpur, to Jakarta and then to San Francisco.
Our love (and life) here is exciting for the most part. It is also mundane in some ways. Gone are the days when I would stay up till 4 in the morning, excitedly watching soccer or drinking tea or poisoning my body and my brain in some other way. Instead, I run, skip, walk for miles in the beautiful city with my dog, and sleep ten hours a day. It helps.
It also helps, I think, that I finally have a job where my interests (doing good things that help people) with my skills (product management and mucking around with software generally) intersect. It truly makes a difference.
Even if I could not have foreseen that we would live in this country at its most vulnerable, in that it has a narcissistic Anti-Christ-like grifter at its helm, our life in its most expensive coastal city is generally... nice.
I stay up some nights trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Maybe it's nice to note that at 35, the things that will confuse me are external, instead of inside my head. Anything can happen in the next couple of days, weeks, months. There are some challenges relating to being a queer transnational couple and work visas and pets and things like that, but I'm still glad we have what we have.
Being able to live for the last two years, as we have, as a queer family with legal recognition (and insurance!), has been more than I imagined. At eighteen, or at any other time. The world goes on. I am a year older.
But this year, I am way better off than any version of 35 I imagined for myself.
I don't have any commentary other than 'oh shit'. So I grabbed my camera and walked around a bit. Everything is weird and I am going to drink tea and stay calm.
I think I'll truly freak out when work stops along Van Ness. Until then, as long as Van Ness goes on, so will I.
Every overseas Singaporean has the same fear: that when we return, we will not know our way home.
Our city builds and tears down much quicker than most other places. Nothing is safe. The price of progress: everyone's memories. No time for nostalgia, or poetry, when we can have... growth.
When I move between worlds, my words and ideas shift.
Apartments. Flats.
Elevators. Lifts.
Use public transit. Take bus and MRT lor.
Nothing ever stays the same.
Jalan Besar, Singapore. 2019. Public housing and transit.
When we return, there are more towers of glass and steel. Like our displaced accents when abroad, moving between Singlish and that of wherever-the-hell-we-live, our country's buildings now look like they want to be a little bit of everything.
I hate those buildings. I hate that waterfall in the airport, I hate the infinity pool on the top of the world, I hate the overwrought fake plastic trees and every single thing in a tourism board glamor shot. Glamour shot.
Instead, I take long walks along the old civic district. There, old buildings, colonial and brutalist, form my happy path. In a way, I love this part of town because it changes, but it stays the same. Hours of riding on the top level of the meandering bus to the ends of the island and back, sometimes ending in a boat ride to an island or more frequently, noodles.
3 A.M. staggers between hostel and Mustafa, my tummy filled with warm naan, kadai chicken and Punjabi uncles giving me lesbian dating advice (Their advice was usually some variation of "always pick the Indian girl").
Wandering every story (floor) of Sim Lim Tower, looking at batteries, wires, cables. My grandfather worked at a dry goods market that is now a nearby field, probably slated for a new apartment (condo) or hotel.
Memories are a leaky, unprofitable thing.
Jalan Besar, Singapore. 2019. Wholesale electronics and late night food.
But I live here now. Somewhere with giant babies holding weapons.
How did I go from a small city to an even smaller one? I'm living car-less in a pandemic (I don't drive, because, I've always had transit), in a seven by seven mile city. So many things are happening in the world, but this country feels... like a lot.
It is a lot. It's a whole lot.
For now, we're strapped in and waiting with bated breath to see what's in store for the next couple of months. As I write this, there's a man furiously banging on cars and cars driving badly and there's another man yelling stupid bitch at the top of his voice at an imaginary person, but they don't scare me as much as the politicians.
We take long walks in every direction.
To to west, we walk by recently gentrified Hayes Valley, with murals and giant babies.
To the east, we sometimes stock up on Asian snacks and all the Indomie we need from Pang Kee in Chinatown. To the north, a range of outdoorsy options. Chrissy Fields, where you'll eventually see the Golden Gate Bridge; the municipal pier, where I've been known to sprint up and down when I feel like I need to run very fast for no reason at all.
Hayes Valley, San Francisco. 2020. Giant baby mural.
Hayes Valley, San Francisco. 2020. Dog and wife waiting for me to be done taking photos with a manual camera.
Unlike where I'm from, this home of mine barely changes. We recently watched footage of Charles Manson's San Francisco days and... so much of the city is the same. The gurus have left Golden Gate Park, and they've moved online to become productivity deities who preach the gospel of four hour work weeks and cryptocurrency.
It's going to be okay.
Hayes Valley, San Francisco. 2020. Wife in yellow dress waiting for me to be done tweaking my camera settings.
May the next roll of the film not leak light. And this country not go completely to the dogs.
On Twitter, where I live, I posted snippets of the things I have done, the places I have been, the places I have gone. Where they might have felt jumbled up and messy on a blog or Facebook post, the Twitter thread / tweetstorm format seemed to be a natural home for my adventures. I am grateful for the mess that my early adulthood sometimes felt like.
Growing up in Singapore, my future felt as small as the country of my birth.
A mere 31 by 17 miles, it was the island that was also a city that was also a state that was also, somehow, a country.
When you bought anything online you'd get tired of typing or picking: city, Singapore. State, Singapore. Country, Singapore. Credit card issuance country, Singapore.
Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. Singapore.
Yet when I was in school, it was not the lay of the land that felt suffocating. It was the geography of the mind, the mountains we did not have, never even got the chance to climb, that I could not stand.
At first, it was for a few hours at a time. Age 13, I would grab my passport from my mother's chest of drawers where she kept all of our passports, passport photos, and other important things like that, guessing (correctly) that she would not notice.
School ended at 1.40 P.M. Everyday felt as warm as the next. If you grew up in the tropics you don't describe the weather as 'sweltering' or 'oppressive'. It simply is. In my school uniform, with sweat patches under my armpits, I would board SBS Bus 170 bound for Larkin Terminal, Johor.
It was a trip I had made many times. My grandmother was born there, Johor Bahru was the Teochew homeland outside of Swatow. Johor. It wasn't Bangkok or Phnom Penh, the capital cities with large numbers of Chinese people from the same patch of southern China like I supposedly was from. Johor was more like Pontianak. Sleepy on the surface, but a different world on its own if you knew its secret language.
I did, and I liked that.
In those days, it was not surprising to see children dressed in the school uniforms of another country wandering the streets of Johor Bahru. The city was joined at the hip with mine, except it was tethered to another. Pass all of the rubber plantations, seeing the landscape become more oppressively green and witnessing the heat become even more so, and you'd end up in Kuala Lumpur, three and a half hours later (two if you drive really quickly, like my ex used to).
I made the journey in the reverse. It was the morning I was to pack everything I owned, and a dog, which I now owned, alone, into the Proton Kelisa.
Five years before, that car would speed southwards to say hello, a few times a month.
That day, it sped faster than it ever had, eager to dislodge its contents after a few difficult months. There's never an easy end to a story, even when you try hard to make it so. I moved north with two bags, a vacuum cleaner and an ice cream maker. I moved home with two bags and one dog.
In less than three hours between Bangsar and Tuas, I was ready to present Cookie to animal control. We had to join a line full of chickens, which is maybe my only memory of that hazy, no good day.
What would her life be like in the country of my birth, I wondered. I hoped she would like it. In 2012, I thought I was going home for good.
I have had a life of adventure. I have lived in more cities than most people have visited; I have gone to many, many more.
How did I do it, people often want to know, expecting some kind of secret like "I was an influencer and people paid for my trips".
There isn't one. It didn't feel glamorous, not when I lived in $5 rooms and avoided rats on 30 hour train journeys.
I used to think the secret was that I jumped headlong into anything fun or exciting that I saw, with barely a consideration for the cost or trade-offs.
I now know that I was handed a huge amount of privilege, and that's the secret. I worked two to three jobs all through college, at the same time, so that I could make the hard cash to go on these adventures. That wouldn't work if I wasn't also making Singapore dollars.
I had the luxury of taking off for months at a time, not having to be the caregiver for anyone at home, because everyone was healthy and financially okay, and I could live off the SGD to THB or MYR or INR exchange rate for quite a while.
Eventually I rearranged my life to lead this sort of life. Even before graduating from college, I made GBP and USD and EUR as a freelance writer and photographer, on top of the other two jobs I had in Singapore when I wasn't traveling. And when I was done with the freelance industry, because print media was dying, there was no shortage of even-better-than-SGD-paying tech jobs for me with the skills that I had.
My life has been a series of opportunity after opportunity, of good luck following another, upon layers and layers of privilege.
I turn thirty five this year. When you get to your thirties, you no longer say "in three months", or things like that. You're officially thirty-something.
My wife thinks that I am the luckiest person she's ever met, even after accounting for privilege. Maybe.
I am lucky. If there is a random game of chance, whether it's to win prize money or an inanimate object or a piece of bread (actual thing I won, a few weeks ago), I usually win it.
I was almost in a suicide bomb attack, but I wasn't. I boarded the wrong bus instead.
Coming back to the capital, I was almost in another suicide bomb attack, but it wasn't. It hit the car ten cars down instead.
I was almost in the worst flood to ever hit Nepal, but I couldn't find my train that was going to take me into it.
I was almost in so much shit, all the time, but I wasn't.
I have had a ridiculous combination of luck plus privilege plus little to no trauma, which, now that I am thirty-something, makes me feel like an alien at times. I have, at most, been a spectactor in bad things happening to people, and when I have been in the thick of it, it has been brief.
A combination of pandemic and visa woes means that right this moment is the first moment in time I haven't been constantly on the move.
I thought it would feel more suffocating, but it hasn't.
I've since learned that the contents of the life that I wanted to shape for myself were just as important as the shape it took on. Earlier, the frequency of the travel, the blur of airports and bus stations, were the external symptoms of the why behind why I sought out a life like that.
Now, I know why, I think.
I've always been interested in people, and their stories. Travel gave me the easy stories. Go everywhere, and it was bound to be different. Some places, more than others, feel like stories waiting to happen. Some lives are lived in the open.
I want to know what drives people. On my travels in my early twenties, I would frequently devour every historical book about the country. I wanted to know why a country existed, how it came to be, what their scars and bruises were. When I got there, I would read, or attempt to read (if it was in a foreign language), the lifestyle pages of their local media. I thought I was looking for 'people who do interesting things' and 'things I have never heard of', like poets from Sudan who do spoken word poetry about displacement, like 'sheikhs who race camels using robot camel jockeys'.
The writing, the photography and the videos were just ways of telling other people's stories.
Now I know, however, that what I'm really interested in is in learning new things from people and situations I know very little about.
I don't go anywhere these days, but there will never be a shortage of things I don't know.
I could not believe my eyes when my wife Sabrena put on an Indian movie on Netflix and we saw at least two Northeast Indians at once. On screen. Having lines. Being whole people. Doing something. Something that seemed important.
"Axone" (pronounced Akhuni) - is a Naga speciality dish made with fermented soya beans. It is said that Nagas, especially those from the Sema tribe, know when axone is 'done' simply from smelling it: its smell carries memories of home, which tastes of the umami and salty goodness that any soybean-eating peoples can identify immediately, from smell.
Unfortunately, not everyone in Delhi's Humayunpur neighborhood is a fan. Despite being frequently described as Delhi's "Northeast district", given the abundance of Northeastern and Tibetan people, shops and restaurants, there is a fine line between tolerance and acceptance. Like any other 'ethnic neighborhood' in Delhi, you can have lots of people from one area yet still be divided by thousands of invisible segregating lines.
Axone, by Shillong-raised Nicholas Kharkongor, carries the weight of all of the eight Northeast Indian states on its shoulders.
You are from here - when it makes sense for you to be; but not from here - when it becomes convenient.
The central conceit of the movie, and its title, lies in the idea of a group of mixed Northeast Indian friends who have found community and love among each other, living in the same area. For all intents and purposes they seem to be regular folks with regular lives. Chanbi, performed by Manipuri actress Lin Linshraim, is gregarious and opinionated. When a Delhi boy in the neighborhood mutters the sexual vulgarities they typically reserve for 'Northeast / Nepali sluts', she, like any other Northeast woman who has spent too much time in Delhi, confronts him. Her boyfriend, Bendang, recoils and says he did not hear that comment. Maybe it's a statement about how even a stone's throw from Delhi's most affluent southern neighborhoods, the pecking order is clear: Delhi boys will always be backed up by Delhi fruit-sellers (even those from UP), who will always be backed up by random neighborhood uncles on the street who will demand proof from bystanders before he lends his commentary and judgmental weight towards resolving an untoward situation; then the others, like the 'Chinkys', and even then the smaller in every way Northeastern man cowering behind his authoritative girlfriend will get more of a say than she does.
He does not pull his weight. It's clear from the moment he does this that there is some kind of trauma around being a not-very-large Northeastern man in Delhi and street violence. Everything in his eyes says so. Immediately, I thought this might have something to do with Nido Taniam: the Northeastern man from Arunchal Pradesh who was beaten to death by shopkeepers in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar. His crime: being a chini - who dared break a glass counter in a fit of rage, after they made fun of his blonde, spiky hair. There are many reasons one might want to stand down from a fight that's percolating on the streets of Delhi. Especially so when you are from the Northeast.
Before we find out anything further about this trauma, or even about Bendang as a person, there's a lot of ensuing chaos around the cooking of this dish. We're told it's special, it's for a wedding. We can tell that people don't like it, and the Northeastern crew know that. They go door to door telling those who will maybe grudgingly accept this, like the African neighbor who says that dish smells like shit (but we never find out more about her other than that the 'Nepali' person can't pronounce her name either); but plot to complete this cooking between the time someone's grandma's nap and the Bengali auntie's return. Maybe it makes a point that this part of Delhi is indeed a very large pot of various things, but that melting pot it is not. It's clear who calls the shots: Dolly.
In nearly every multicultural society, a minority group cooking something that looks, tastes, smells, or simply just is - different is an affront. Sukehtu Mehta, who made the journey several times between being 'from here then not then here again but not really', talks about having his native food being made fun of in New York City, then supposedly insulting militant vegetarians in his upmarket South Mumbai home, with his meat-eating. In Singapore, where I am originally from, you can be simultaneously refused an apartment for being of an ethnic background that is most likely to 'stink up the house with the smell of curry' (link) and defended for cooking curry (only if the people who complain are other foreigners, like... newcomers from China).
There is a lot of yelling in this movie. As an autistic woman who hates yelling, it was hard to watch at times. But it also helped me understand why Delhi was such a difficult place for me to be in. All that yelling. There is also a lot of scurrying.
For a slice-of-life dramedy, Axone hits the mark. Things go wrong, things keep going wrong; protagonists try to fix it, they don't; they keep trying, they give up. In between, there is a lot of intra-community anxiety to unpack. She doesn't like you, you're Nepali, not a real Northeastern person. What happened to this once jovial man, now a shadow of his former self? At every turn it feels like an explanation. This is what a Naga person would face in Delhi. This is how a Tibetan person would experience the nation's largest, some would say most unkind, city. - The big reveal about Bendang's past was so thoroughly unsurprisingly, yet so insufficiently explained. I wish the film took more time to explore Bendang's horrific past, than it did to explain how hurt someone felt later when he was called a 'f—king Indian'.
The cast: mostly strong actors all around, representing various parts of the NE, Nepal and Tibet
The anxiety around the cooking of this dish: on top of it being the biggest day of one's life, there is also extreme racism and terror
The true-to-life explanation of the panic-inducing daily life folks in the NE community face in Delhi; how many micro-aggressions they face
All of the cultural moments: anything that zoomed in on the cooking, speaking and rituals of NE traditions. My favorite moments were when all the friends spoke in a different tribal language at once to try to sort out some jugaad
Overtures to the musical and Christian traditions of parts of the Northeast: I suppose it's hard to strike a balance between 'celebrating the musicality of Northeast Indians' and 'extending the stereotype that every Northeastern man simply likes to strum a guitar and sing idly'
Struggles with Hindi: you can never do well enough at it. You either struggle to sing a standard Hindi song, or you yell at people in a market but still get 'translated over' because people think you don't speak Hindi because you are a Chini
The exasperating role of Shiv, despite being grating, was a perfect example of a wannabe liberal Delhi dude who wants to be an ally but ends up missing the plot anyway
Screen time: most of the screen time was devoted to a very good (but also Bengali) actress; and to another Tibetan Indian actor. As others have pointed out, it was odd that the most famous actor of the cast, an actual actor from Assam (Adil Hussain) was relegated to such a minor and somewaht problematic role
Extra attention on Lin Linshraim and Lanuakum Ao's characters (Chanbi and Bendang) would have greatly improved the movie
Too much of the movie was a 'soft' commentary on the racism faced by the NE community. 'You failed to have any Indian friends', someone scolds a partner, who is clearly still recovering from having his life nearly taken from him over the color of his hair
Like any movie that is 'first' with representation, there were big shoes to fill that ultimately led to disappointment. Must every minority movie be a masterpiece? Should every minority movie hit every note without going out of tune? Watching this movie as a Chinese-Singaporean person in America who has been disappointed by most Asian-American outings to Hollywood, I felt similarly about Axone. So much potential, so much talent. So little punching above its weight.
Like many Asian-American movies, this one is not quite clear who its audience is. It's most on shaky ground when it's trying to be both - a statement of NE pride and culture, and - a film that is palatable to a movie-goer in Mumbai or Delhi. It's strongest when it is unabashedly Northeasthern: here is the food, it makes a Sema Naga person happy on the happiest day of her life, and here is the awkward group of other Northeastern friends who will go to these lengths to make her happy. Even if Dolly thinks it's a bloody costume parade, or that all of it smells like shit.
More of this, please. But also with an extra helping of all of the smelliest things that others may not like.
If you are a queer person in Asia, like I was, moving away and starting a family might be top of mind as something you should do. To be fair, I did not feel extremely oppressed, I did not often face homophobia, and I generally felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do as a queer person in Asia. For a long time, that was fine.
I soon learned that was fine because of the following:
I can afford all of the 'hoops' that we are supposed to jump through in order to live a decent queer life back home, literally
At some point, it did not feel viable for much longer.
A big part of that is that I fell in love with a person who, despite being half-Singaporean, despite having been in Singapore for a decade, was never going to be able to get a long term visa there. We could marry, of course, abroad, but... what would that matter, to our life in Singapore? Singapore would not recognize that marriage. They might ignore it, and not actively diss it, but that's not good enough. Especially for people with our privilege.
So, like queer folks with any amount of privilege, we left.
To do that, we had to fly to New Zealand.
Our marriage was solemnized by a Maori woman who ordained our marriage, as our wedding celebrant.
And with that, we were off. Less than six weeks later, we were in our cute little studio in downtown San Francisco, dog in tow.
One of the last photos we took before leaving Singapore, in our favorite place: Golden Mile. Photo by our good friend, Javad Tizmaghz, photographer and woodworker extraordinaire.
I wish we didn't have to leave at all.
Very often, when you move to America, the prevailing thoughts are:
You must really want to come here
For a better life
You must want a green card
You can't wait for a US passport
Things are so much better over here
But in the age of fascism, are those things still... true?
First, decide which country you want to get married in. If you have a good passport, then just select the best ones that will marry you, and whose scenery you enjoy the most. If you don't, then select the country that will admit you without a visa, or with an easy visa, that will also marry foreigners.
Second, ask your beloved if they will marry you. In my case, I asked my wife-to-be to marry me at 5 in the morning at an airport. She said yes, thankfully, despite being sleep-deprived.
Third, make the necessary online reservations. Most cities or counties that will marry you require you to book an appointment online. In our case, we made a booking on NZ Marriages. It was very easy, and affordable, and I highly recommend it. Also, are the Kiwis the last competent people in the English-speaking world? (I think so.)
Fourth, once you have received confirmation, book your trip! In our case, we had plenty of points from Singapore Airlines and we were able to splurge on a business class trip down south.
Fifth, locate marriage witnesses. Thankfully, we had a few of those. One of them was a Finnish journalist I had never met, but had followed on Twitter for years; the other was... I completely forgot this, my ex-girlfriend's girlfriend's... ex. My wife-to-be asked on the morning of our wedding how we knew each other, and we burst out laughing.
Sixth, be happy. Not everyone has the ability to move somewhere where their marriage is going to be recognized. I certainly did not think it was a big deal, until I had that privilege. We have so many friends who live in various parts of Asia, who have fought different battles. Maybe you are Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju, and together as a couple you strike down a Victorian-era homophobic law that has been used as a cudgel against gay men in India. Maybe you will be inspired by my Malaysian lesbian friends, @zhukl, who fights homophobia, misogyny and other bigotry on a daily basis.
We got lucky. I had the opportunity to take my skills somewhere that wanted it; luckily, they wanted my wife too. On so many levels, it's worked out to be a step in the right direction for us. I have a job that I love, that is fulfilling; my wife gets to restart college after a series of mishaps.
It has been a whirlwind. As an international queer couple from so many places, here are some of the things we must consider:
If I die, what visa will my wife have?
Where will she go, if not here?
If we have children, what citizenship will they possess?
If we have children, and I die in Singapore, what inheritance will they receive (when the country does not recognize our... family?)
If 'Murica gets worse than it is (and this is just news from this week), where will we go? Who will want us?
If there is a civil war, what will it be like for us as non-citizens?
How will we move our pets quickly?
If I have to move home to Singapore, how will she stay?
If we have to go to France, where she grew up, how will I ever be able to function at 100% as a person with zero interest in western Europe, its society and its languages?
We're thankful that we are now somewhere that makes some sense to us.
How much longer will it continue to make sense, though? Who knows. Maybe the next seven months will tell.
In 2003, I certainly was, and I had been for a while. I started my blog on Greymatter CMS, then Movable Type. At some point, B2, then Wordpress. Blogger got sold to the Borg (Google); LiveJournal.. what happened to them? They were so cool. Tumblr felt inane to me, an Internet grump by that time. And then we just gave up. I did, anyway.
For a long time, it felt like the ability to post anything online was going to change the world. In so many ways it has. The jury is still out on whether that's a net positive. It certainly isn't the runaway democratic success we all imagined. Big media chased the sexiest things on the web, which instantly made it no longer so. Tech companies we adored grew into gargantuan beasts that disappointed us, more and more. Software ate the world, and then spat it all out, without masticating.
I was certainly not immune.
Sat rapt by the beauty of technology intersecting with a rapidly changing world, brought closer together by low cost airlines and closed quickly by new age fascist dictators, I don't know if I've really had a moment to breathe, or think, in the last decade. Most of the blame falls squarely on my profession of choice: for a while, those of us somewhat proficient in the use of computers believed that we could change the world with... computers. Our children may laugh at that naïveté.
At 35, I care about many different things now. As an immigrant, my ability to say F-everything has reduced by magnitudes. I feel like everything has changed, but I am still the same person. Maybe a little bit emo, maybe a little bit brash.
Most of all, I feel like writing again. So here goes, again.
The last few months have been all about the virus. Having lived through SARS and several other viruses growing up in Singapore, I wasn't particularly worried at first.
Now, it's clear the best way to deal with all of this is too impose extreme social distancing measures. Where I live, in San Francisco, we haven't gone full lockdown the way the European countries and Chinese cities have; we've implemented, instead, a 'shelter in place' policy. Stay home unless you have to do something essential; activities like walking and biking, doing laundry, going to the bank, are still allowed.
There was of course a run on the supermarkets and grocers. Despite many of my cynical compatriots in Singapore originally attributing this behavior to Singaporeanness (after all, 'kiasu-ism' is a known trait of ours, and a way of life), this turned out to be global behavior. Everyone wanted toilet paper, lots and lots of it. Everyone wanted hand sanitizer, masks and disinfectant as well.
We didn't really do any of this prep until a few days ago. After all, my greatest fear is that I might run out of flavor and of Asian cooking ingredients. So I didn't really care, until... I saw that tofu was briefly unavailable. That's when I really started to worry.
As part of my work, I get to be involved in some of the tasks around helping San Franciscans find out more about what's going on (I lead a few teams, and one of them is in charge of SF.gov, the main city website). It has been impactful to know that the work that we do, that we have done everyday, has contributed towards helping people get timely and accurate information in an easily understood manner. I'm so proud of what we've done. In such times (of high stress and anxiety), words really matter: I am a highly anxious person, so I am aware of how sometimes words make all the difference between feeling better and feeling like you're going to meltdown. We've worked to break down complex information, and to ensure that everyone (including those who speak other languages) is able to read this and come away with the sense they know what to expect.
On the home front, being home most of the day with Sabrena and the pets has been fun, although I now wonder if I need a second TV. In times of high anxiety, I binge-play video games to feel better; that's not logistically friendly in a studio with another person.
Not commuting daily, even if my commute is a 20 minute walk, helps me prep and cook fancier meals. In moments of crisis, I need to know that I have nice food. Spending an hour making something quite elaborate helps me calm down. So far, I have been steaming fish with Nyonya spices, making tempeh and pecel vegetables, many types of soups and congees. I expect to have a huge photo album of 'quarantine food' at the end of all this. It is unlikely that album will look anything like quarantine food, as long as I still have access to my butcher, fishmonger and farmer's market.
Meanwhile, I am depleting my supply of good tea, so I must do something about that.
When we first moved to San Francisco, I was excited to have a new environment but I was not sure I would enjoy the city as much. My previous visits to the city had been mostly work/tech related. While I love many of my co-workers and friends in big tech and in startups, parts of San Francisco felt.. like a tech mono-culture.
Consciously going out to things and meeting new people, making friends with people who have interests outside of tech, through sports, volunteering or music activities, has changed my relationship to this city.
In this series of posts, I will write about the events, venues and activities I have enjoyed in San Francisco.
Music used to be a huge part of my life. From the time I was six or seven, I was in band practice or piano lessons a few times a week. Without music, my life might have turned out different. Not having much music in the last decade or so was a terrible idea, so I'm now furiously trying to get it all back. Piano lessons, jazz clarinet lessons, going to shows, meeting new friends who also like music... I have enjoyed the access to top musicians and teachers, and to excellent shows of all genres nearly every single day.
Envelop SF popped up on my radar when I was looking for music events: they were hosting a Flaming Lips listening party for Zaireeka, the band's 1997 experimental album that I'd never heard (mainly because in 1997 you needed to put 4 CDs in 4 players and press play all at once).
At first, I had no idea what these shows were. Were the Flaming Lips in town? Was it a live show? It was actually cooler than that. Envelop is a non-profit that runs an immersive audio venue in the lower Dogpatch (and another one in Salt Lake City, with popups and satellites elsewhere).
I don't know much about audio engineering or sound design, or what 'spatial music performances' are, but as I attended their session for the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka I quickly became a fan.
The venue in San Francisco is in a tiny space in an industrial area near the Dogpatch, with dim lighting, and ambience that reminded me of a yoga studio mashed up with a private DJ set. 32 speakers at the venue are positioned in a sphere, with the audience seated on foldable chairs on the floor, surrouned by said speakers. "The entire room is an instrument" was the experience they promised, and it really did feel that way. This immersive experience is powered by their open source audio software that works with Ableton Live 10.
A trust-based minibar rounded up the experience by providing for the wine, beer, tea and water you might want to sip while listening to music.
While I was initially confused by why I might want to experience 'spatial music', I came away from it a fan. I think it would be a good way for a music lover to experience music they know and love in a totally new way, with audiophile technology that would be difficult to create at home. I plan to listen to Miles Davis, Pink Floyd and Coltrane there as I think their music can be experienced differently in this environment.
Next week, jazz shows with new jazz friends. Jazz hands!
It feels like we all just woke up from a collective dream. The dream of the '10s, where we gave our content, perhaps even our personalities, away for free to Facebook.
No longer.
Not only have I cut that toxic company out of my life, I have also started thinking about how web 1.0 got it right: writing on the web, for yourself, with no ads, for free, with a tech stack you control... really was all that.
I don't have resolutions. I don't have aspirations towards goals I won't reach. I don't have diet-related, or gym-related thoughts; exercise has slowly become part of my life again,and I'm thankful for that.
This year, I am taking the opposite route. Instead of doing new things, and becoming a new person, I am going to get really good at doing things I already know and love. Having dabbled in so many hobbies in the past, there are plenty of options to pick. I've quite enjoyed the heads-down learning over the last couple of months, and am looking forward to more.
The one thing that is new is the city I live in. From 2018 I have been living in a new city, San Francisco. I used to visit often, so it's not new-new, but it's new in that I live here with my wife, Sabrena, and get to experience it somewhat differently as a result. We're exactly where we need to be for now as a newly married queer couple, even though we hadn't planned on coming here. It's too bad we're both from countries that don't recognize our marriage.
I have been preoccupied with trying not to lead a conventional tech worker's life in San Francisco. It's so easy to fall into that trap of always-on, tech-enabled convenience. I find that if you do that, the city becomes much less diverse. I want to meet people, build relationships, be part of communities and be part of scenes outside of tech.
As you know, it's so much harder to make friends as an adult. So old hobbies have come in handy. I have been playing music again, casually, but perhaps later performatively. I have been exploring Tibetan Buddhism. I am pushing myself to do things, like bike camping and hiking, that would force me to meet new people and explore new places.
In many others, this new year is just like many others. But I know now that health, family and happiness comes first.
Growing up in Singapore, I thought I would one day live in San Francisco. It seemed like the things I liked a lot — music, writing, technology — converged in this town. Last year, I made the move here with my wife and dog. We immediately adopted a huge cat, which seemed to show that this was going to be home.
My diverse career has so far seen me either run companies, or work in startups. I love shipping products with remarkable user experience.
I have spent the last five years working in developing markets, focused on Next Billion User products. I now turn to Current Million People software for my adopted city of San Francisco.
I see people left behind everyday where I live in the Tenderloin. It is heartbreaking to see such disparity in one of the richest cities in the world.
This is why I jumped at the opportunity to join the team when I (1) found out they existed, and (2) that they were hiring.
The idea of gov tech is not new. Neither is the concept of using agile methodology in government. As a tech and politics geek, I have observed governments like Estonia and Singapore use technology to improve public services.
The work we do here differs from those countries in several ways, as my boss Carrie Bishop points out. For one, it’s far from “top-down”. I have not been here as long as Carrie has, but I am learning not having centralized control is a feature, not a bug.
The challenge for any product manager is to corral people and resources towards a goal. This goal should preferably overlap with a shared vision for all the people and organizations involved.
All large organizations by definition have some chaos and inertia. Big tech companies and small city governments have more in common with each other than it seems.
Despite significant challenges ahead, I am excited to be part of the team. How do you design for many languages, reflecting our city’s incredible diversity? How do you make sure services are accessible for people regardless of what they have (or do not)?
For many of us, our interaction with gov tech is frustrating. I am a recent immigrant, and I had to use local and national government software to set up my life here.
I now commute daily on foot, bicycle or skates past the San Francisco City Hall. It is usually lit up with different colors for the myriad events we celebrate together. It feels like I have a part to play in this city.
I have spent the past week learning about our work. DAHLIA makes it easier to apply to rent and buy affordable housing. The Office of Cannabis works to enhance fair access to the cannabis business. Accessory Dwelling Units may be one way to increase our housing supply. California as a whole is taking this approach. We are working on tools to support these programs.
Finally, our team led a redesign of the city’s official website. Read more about this ongoing effort.
When I first moved to America nine months ago, I was perplexed by a never-ending list of things. They were not the 'big' ones, like having to learn a scary new language. We already spoke English. We'd seen enough movies. Our accents, we were told, were non-existent! You sound Californian!!! You have no accent! (Didn't that mean we had a Californian accent?) But the little things started to add up.
Nowhere was this clearer than when my wife and I stood in a Bed Bath & Beyond, overwhelmed by nearly everything. Not because we were from developing countries (we were not) and all of this was shiny and new and amazing, but because we just didn't get it. First, we gawked at the escalator that was purpose-built for one's shopping cart to ride up at the same time as you, the person, riding the other escalators. Then, we found ourselves in surrounded by bed-linen, utterly and completely lost.
"What are comforters? What are duvet covers? What is a quilt? What is a flat sheet? Do people in this country really need so many pillows?"
I ran to the nearest human who was not my wife, saying, "Hey I need to buy a bolster, you know the type you cuddle between your body, and I have no idea what it's called in this country." He scratched his head, then his beard, before finally saying, "well I'm from the UK and I just moved here…"
I still don't understand bed-linen in this country. Across our studio (I very nearly said 'flat'), we are treated to full-glass windows into our neighbors' bedrooms. Every last one of them has a bed that looks like a hotel bed; like it would take twenty minutes to peel the multiple layers of ribbons, throws, miscellaneous sheets, and other types of softness, before one could have a good night's sleep. I felt anxious looking at them. I felt more anxious thinking about having to make up such a bed.
Voicemail is another American practice that strikes fear in my heart. Perhaps it's because I have never lived in a society where voicemail was actively used (and I have lived in many countries), or maybe it's due to my general levels of social anxiety relating to being on the autism spectrum, but hearing a chirpy person say "hey leave me a voicemail" makes me want to hang up, even if I originally had something to say.
I came to America after four years in Indonesia. My conversations in Indonesia inevitably ended with "hey, add me on LINE, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, what else do you use?" This was true when I hung out mostly with rural housewives for work; this was also true when female teenagers would come up to me to ask me for my Instagram account because "I want to know a woman who has tattoos". This was true of every motorcycle taxi driver I met, who sent me "what's your closest landmark" in Indonesian short form internet slang to multiple apps and also SMS, in just four or five letters small caps no spaces, even though the pickup location was always on the damned app.
In America, there are just three texting camps. Blue, green, and don't-text. Leave me a voicemail… nope, no, never.
You have no accent, has both been a blessing and a curse. It's certainly perplexing, for everyone around me, when I forget which words are British and which words are American.
It's hard for me to say "restroom", when "toilet" has sufficed in every other context I've lived in. Concepts that exist for me in one English don't seem to exist here. Prepaid-anything, like in phones, are 'pay as you gos', which seem so inefficient. A Clipper card is to be reloaded, or have value added to it, not recharged or topped up. Telling someone you don't know know how to drive, have never driven in your life, is like telling them you're from a different galaxy (I was indeed, from a galaxy with good public infrastructure).
Mostly, I'm so fresh off the boat I don't even know that it's an insult. I'm so far-removed from the pains of the Asian-American community: their pains are not my pains, I have not been a minority for long enough; and nope, I have absolutely no qualms bringing my own chilli sauce to restaurants because I cannot abide sriracha. Team spicy forever, no sour.
I'm still figuring out what it means to be here. Mostly, I like that nobody ever asks where I'm from, because everybody is from somewhere else.
Until I tell them I still don't know how to drive.
I have spent the last six weeks in Reno. There was a point, at some time in my life, when "six weeks in Reno" was something I would eventually do — to atone for some adolescent sins. The sin of believing, as you're in the thick of massive progress for people like you, that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Growing up queer, I was utterly convinced that I would never, ever, be able to find happiness. That everyone else's happiness was not for me.
At age five, I dreamed up insane plans. I would go away, somewhere, and then I would tell my family that I was going to marry a woman. I would have a baby without them knowing about it. In what universe, in my sheltered, evangelical Chinese-Christian-Singaporean triple-barreled identity was the life I thought I would have, possible? It was not.
My home life and my brain, my romantic life and my body, led a separate existence on two completely different planes. I found it easy to date, but not easy to find what was most important to me: the ability to move, generally, towards the arc of the idea that in some universe, somewhere, I can have a family.
In 2013, when DOMA was struck down, Edith Windsor managed to get, for the rest of us, the ability to call the same-sex partners we've had for decades, our wives and / or our husbands. Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were with each other for 40 years: when Thea died, Edith was hit with a $363 000 estate tax that she would not have been hit with had she been in a heterosexual marriage. Don't fuck with a grieving lesbian, I think, is the first thing to remember when you're trying to oppose LGBTQ+ rights. She won, and it felt like a victory for five year old me, too.
Somewhere between five and 28, I discovered that I could be quite popular with the women — and I discovered my political bent, much earlier than women discovered me. From the 'gender studies' bookshelves of Borders bookstore, Wheelock Place Singapore, I and dozens of other young queer kids camped out, daily, devouring all of the books we could not afford; reading everything about feminism, at first, then what it would take to biologically and legally have a wife and a child.
At that time, the idea of all of that was as alien to me as the content on the scifi shelves: how, in any universe, was this going to be possible? I kept reading, anyway.
So when Edith Windsor won for us the ultimate right, that I did not imagine possible in my lifetime (for, in all of my fantasies and estimates, being able to marry a woman was something I thought I would do in secret, and / or when I was dying, which is kind of the same thing) — I was ecstatic.
That is where my problems begin.
For in 2013, I was a muck. I was, so to speak, in the throes of a great many bad, terrible, awful decisions. My political self was not separate, then, from my personal self — in some ways, it still isn't. But I had never seen shit. I had, up until that point, had the luxury of only knowing unconditional, selfless, incredible love. My family was intact, and they loved me in spite of my awful decisions. My romantic life, was, hitherto, messy, but largely positive. I thought I knew everything.
I thought, also, that marriage was a political decision; that everything else would follow. How could I have known any differently? The only queer people I knew who had gotten married had gotten married in secret, without ever telling their families, in acts of what seemed like bravery (in hindsight, all of them had extremely religious families), in unions that were never acknowledged by the countries they lived in, the country I call home. I didn't know any better.
164 weeks later, on a papan in Bali
What are your traumas?
What makes you anxious?
What can I do, when you are anxious or upset, to make you feel better?
Why did you do the thing that you did?
Who do you think you will become?
What drives you?
What are you looking for?
How will we deal with you being in Reno, at some point in the future, to undo the thing that you did back when you had a different perspective on life and love?
A woman, a near stranger to me, asked, never once inserting herself into my story. For the first time, I had answers. For the first time, she wanted to listen, and to be a part of my story, in spite of the deadweight I had shackled myself to.
I had 164 weeks to take a good, hard look at how to be better. In that time, I learned that one should never marry a person who tells you they will hurt themselves and others if you didn't. I learned that if you were to ever be in a situation where someone pulls out a tool that can kill you and puts it to your throat, you walk the fuck away. I learned that if substances are involved, you run as fast as you can. I learned that even if I care very much about mental illness, it's not my fucking problem anymore if you try to kill me. I learned that people don't care about violence if a woman does it. I learned that the police don't care about violence if your country is so patriarchal they think it's the same as just two housemates having an argument about a salad. That even when a woman dies, the newspapers are going to call it the murder of a best friend. I learned that as I'm having my life flashing before me, for the first time, that I didn't want to be the dead
best friend.
Thousands of dollars of therapy later, I am here in Reno, Nevada. I spend my days cycling, drinking coffee, cooking. I ran the fastest miles I've ever run since I left school today, and in a way it was like running to freedom, like running to a younger, more innocent me. I ran the miles to the courier service at the airport, I ran to pickup the documents I will soon file, I ran away from it feeling freer and light, like I haven't, in 164 weeks.
On Monday, I will have the luxury of leaving this city with a document with the words, "it has been decreed.." on it. It will be the best piece of paper in my life, more than the college degree I paid a lot of money for. It will be the start of the rest of my life. It will be the erasure of a brief moment in my life where 'love' felt like pain, where 'devotion' felt like a menial chore, where 'keeping the person you're with alive' felt like a lonely, one way street.
The homophobic among you probably think, oh, all queer relationships are like that — but that would be akin to asking you to imagine yourself married to the sort of person you hear nightmares about at Chinese New Year, then congratulate yourself for not marrying. It's like that, but worse.
The cynical among you may be tempted to think, oh, that's what marriage is about — disappointment. But that would be akin to asking you to marry anyone at all, even the best for you, and having you find it a disappointing venture. I don't need to change your mind, and neither do you.
6 weeks later. I've had a crazy, fun time. I've met the best people. I've met the best dogs. Everyone, from the diner lady to the beer shop I go to to the DHL person is incredibly invested in my freedom. There's not been a moment in the last 164 weeks where I haven't thought, what is life? Love? Marriage? Family? And I am incredibly lucky that I have the opportunity to do it all over again, this time — when I know how to ride a bicycle, the bicycle isn't falling apart and threatening to throw me into a ravine, the tandem rider I've got travels at the same speed and doesn't even mind my farts. And we've got the absolute best bicycle that's ever been built. And the best of pretty much everything. She's my best friend, too, and there's no need for air quotes.
One of the things I've been happiest about, for 2017 / 2018, is that I've rediscovered my love for video games.
It used to be such a big part of my life, and then not, just as suddenly.
In the past year or so, I've been more actively on the lookout for games that would amuse me or make me happy. So far, it's been:
Overcooked, for people with real life friends and / or who remember life before online multiplayers. Some days, I'm tired of shouting into my headset at teenage boys in Russia to please shoot that enemy in front of us, or to heal me. Mostly though, I just have such fond memories of 2P games that are so rare these days we call them "couch co-ops". Overcooked is a fabulous couch co-op. It has very little to do with cooking games like Diner Dash. Instead, it emphasizes teamwork, communication, and makes sure everyone ends up having a good time. Up to 4P. 2P is perfect, 4P is chaotic — but fun chaos, I think, is the point of this game.
Persona 5 — I haven't been one for JRPG (Japanese RPGs) traditionally. Something about the art or the story just hasn't been for me. But in Persona 5, it was refreshing to see a story unfold in modern day Tokyo in a manner that draws you into the landscape. No details are lost in illustrating this ultra modern Japanese city, and the inner lives of the teenager you play in it. Ultimately, while fun and never losing the momentum of fun, the story can be too linear and the details sometimes old-fashioned. Since things occur from the perspective of the Japanese teenage boy you play, there are allusions to soft misogyny that make you go, hang on — did they really say that? But may be the strict gender norms provide authenticity. I'm just no longer used to such blatant "girls do this, boys are like that" ideas in any media, anymore.
Cities: Skylines — If you grew up in the 90s, like I did, SimCity2000 was probably the defining game of your childhood. I spent many hours building my cities, preparing for disasters; they were beautiful moments that I still think of, very fondly. Lately, though, the SimCity series have been a let down. All modern reboots of that franchise have been somewhat lacklustre. The only SimCity game I still actively play is an emulator version of SimCity2000. Nothing surpasses it. Except, perhaps, Cities: Skylines. It's a different beast borne of the same roots. To start with, the Finnish developers of Cities: Skylines did well first on their traffic sim, Cities in Motion. The level of detail they've been able to build into Cities: Skylines, as a result of that prior work, is astounding. Real life city and traffic planners have been hoooked on this game, providing many mods and a lot of great real life advice to wannabe planners like us who play games like these. The public transit aspect is phenomenal; the level of detail — being able to zoom down into individual Skylines citizens, find out their names, follow them as they go about their day; receive live commentary of your work as the mayor / Dear Leader in the in-game Twitter, just like you would as a real life politician — all of this builds layers upon layers into this game. Before long, you become obsessed with making sure every detail of your city is going the way you planned. The one shortcoming of the game, however, is that the UX isn't super intuitive when it comes to what went wrong. Sometimes, you don't even know something's going wrong, until it's too late. I wish it would be more prompt in letting you know that something is going down a slippery slope, or something else is quite literally going to shit. It nags you to death when it happens, but it doesn't warn you or give you many opportunities to pre-empt them, before it happens. Which can really take away from the momentum of the game.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus — This was the game that made my partner go, am I ever going to see you again? Alternate history plots usually fascinate me, but can also go so wrong (such as, the terrible Amazon Prime Video riff on "The Man In The High Castle", ugh). Here, even if you've never played the legacy Wolfenstein games (or even 2014's excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order) — you can dive right in and BJ Blazkowicz your way through the Nazis. Mow them all down, machines and all; kill Hitler himself if you want to (note: it's instant-death, but oh is it sweet and happy fuzzy). The cut scenes, though numerous, layer on many additional moments in-between. The presence of PoC folks in the cutscenes, even if maybe not super historically accurate, is much-needed in these times. Yes, I care about the role feisty black women play in resistance movements in alterate history timelines. I love the tech, the attention to detail with the weapons. I love the writing and great dialogue, even if cheesy at times. I loved — and feared — being introduced to a city that seemed so normal and so like current day America, yet so utterly craven in its Nazi roots: the chapters set in Roswell were bone-chilling. Just have a look and see how hate becomes normalized. My time spent in the in-game Papa Joe's was devastating. The hiding, the stealth, the normalcy of it all (before you have to bash a Nazi in the face). This game is a superb shooter, and an even better story-teller.
XCOM 2 — various expansion packs. I'm a huge fan of the XCOM franchise. The past year has been great for XCOM fans. The handful of expansion packs have extended XCOM 2 in ways that make the base game feel fresh and new, almost like a brand new game. Yet, they're so complex every time you play them that I'm still playing through the recent expansion packs. The base game was a little basic, but the expansion packs add depth and many more hours of intense strategizing. As always, great for gamers who love to wait before pouncing.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about work. Even longer since I’ve gotten on a bicycle.
In so many ways, running a startup is like a race. Some people like to do sprints. Some people like lycra.
More and more, I find myself preferring endurance sports and comfortable clothing — perhaps because that’s the closest sporting analogy I can find for the kind of work that I do.
In 2014, I moved to Indonesia to work on ‘financial inclusion for women’.
In 2015, I completed the ideabox accelerator, worked with no salary for a year and a bit, and worked on finding product / market fit.
In 2016, I finally raised my first tranche of funding. At that time, ‘Indonesia’ / ‘emerging markets’ and ‘social impact’ were three things that didn’t go together.
In 2017, I lost both of my cofounders for personal reasons, and struggled to not burn out myself. I did not succeed.
In 2018, I am still going at it. Wobe is growing everyday. We have great investors. I am supported by a team of hardworking people who are not only great at what they do, but they also believe that we can use tech to bring financial inclusion to emerging markets.
Grit and resilience don’t come naturally to me. I understand them as concepts and I live, to the fullest extent that is possible, with as much as I can muster. I’m also painfully autistic; I simply don’t see risk. Risk is not a discrete concept, nor is it something I can grasp. Therefore, it does not exist.
Early stage startups are hard.
You risk: running out of money, running out of steam, running out of time, running out of energy. Everything needs to be in perfect alignment and timing. You have to fashion a product and a company into existence, and do both really well, in a remarkably short period of time.
All of your flaws are amplified.
Everything needed to be done — yesterday.
Everything is broken. Everything is great.
Like so many startup folks, I decided to work it off. Triathlons are especially popular with us. I suppose if you do what we do for work, weekend competitions that are physically and mentally demanding are just yet another challenge. Another hill to climb. Another bendy road. Another slope to descend.
I did a bit of that, and I’m pretty good at it. But I realised my taste in sports is the same as my taste for business. I need gravel and mud. I need to fly face first into wet muddy terrain. I need to find a hill I’ve never climbed, with the equipment I have, and just pedal furiously.
I feel like I do that everyday at work, and everyday at play.
I’m at home in places where conditions are rough.
I like unpaved roads.
Maybe that’s why I’ve chosen to build a business in a space I care very much about (increasing access to financial services for the unbanked), in a country I love with all of the opportunities and challenges (Indonesia).
The road ahead is bumpy, wet and rocky. That’s when I know it’s time to hit the gravel.
Thank you, friends, family, investors, Wobe team members and our customers, for coming along on this ride. You push me to do better, be better, learn everyday, and do my best. Burn out is not fun. You lose so much time and focus. Growing is so much more fun! I want to share more stories from the trenches, growth, warts and all.
I was asked to speak at a local university's Young Entrepreneur Network event. Sometimes, I say yes to these things.
For anyone interested, here are the slides.
I wanted to share, mostly, my personal journey — how I got here. I also wanted to share some strategies for thinking about creating a startup if you're starting from the absolute beginning, like I was.
Click through to see the notes, which contain slightly more info than what's on the deck.
Happy to receive any feedback or answer any questions. Email address on the last slide.
I've been on the internet for a very long time, but my online self really only found its home when I got this domain in 2003. 14 years: enough to see blogs decline into the mushy wasteland that is Medium articles, video in every website we now load, and a million apps to help me connect with everything that we love. I've led a hectic online life outside of this blog, but at the end I keep wanting to come back to see what I can do with it.
Lately, I've had circumstances that forced some introspection, such as the following:
I want to talk about the unglamorous bits of being a startup founder. 1/many
Two people, suspended between heartbreak and fury, met on Hong Kong Street after almost 2 years without each other.
Their hearts, recently broken by others, found each other agreeable — even safe.
They made a plan. The universe attempted to foil it. To no avail.
Through long public holidays, expensive flights, an expiring passport and the logistics of homes, broken and renewed, no unfortunate event stood in the way.
I stood behind the multitudes to wait for you: the many sweaty, smelly men waving flags awaiting their Chinese tourists. Me, in my shorts with holes, a top that's much too big and my hair that's floppy and flat after an hour on a motorbike to come to see you.
Even on arrival, the universe was determined to place one last obstacle before us: the long amble, actually scramble, along the railing, past the sweaty tour guides, into some tourists, around the ATMs, and then you, there in the flesh.
As with the start of new things, my pulse sped up mostly in not knowing how close I could be. It had just been a few days since I had been with you, and here I was furiously making plans to cancel all of my plans.
There's a curse on this island for couples who come here together, they say.
What they didn't say: come as a not-couple, leave as a couple, uncursed?
I hoped.
In the most improbable places, we found fireplaces and each other.
Before long, you would say, coming to Munduk to see me was one of the biggest gambles you had ever taken. Next to Bosnia.
In the first week we travelled many towns, lakes, forests and hills; sat in many cars and planes together, discovered how a plane aisle was much too jauh, so soon.
The odds were long, but our odds are good. And I don't even like Bali, not one bit. I love us in it.
Like so many people who grew up with the Internet, there have been many incarnations of my online self. To some, I will forever be the queer blogger who started writing about the lesbian experience as a teenager in Singapore in the early 2000s. Some find that courageous; I found it much more difficult to change pronouns than to pretend to be someone I was not. To others, I am a travel blogger who enjoys hiking across Asia on trains, bikes and boats. That is made possible by a blend of courage and stupidity, and it has served me well.
When you work at Wobe, you’re bound to have conversations like these at some point:
“Can you check on this transaction for me in dumplings?”
“Let’s make some changes to kaya.”
“This PR removes the confirmation code from diplomatico request”
This is a feature, not a bug.
We’re a company founded by foodies, but our engineering team is the foodiest of all.
Deep within our repos you can find things like:
Coconut makes the world, and our infra, go round.
Dark, golden and distilled beauty. Just like our microservices.
Since we’re a multi-cultural team, with 2 engineers from Venezuela, we were also happy to christen one of our most important packages after Venezuela’s most famous product, Diplomatico.
One of our internal web apps we call, lovingly, Dumplings. That’s because all of us love dumplings of all kinds. Chinese dumplings, momos, gyozas, manti, mantou, har gow, ravioli, tortellini, xiao long bao, samosa, wantons. If you don’t love dumplings, you can’t work for us. (JK!!)
As our infrastructure and services expand, we’re going to need many more food and drink names for them.
We crowdsourced some ideas within the team:
sushi
rendang
cokelat
pempek palembang
siomay
jeruk panas
gulai kambing
dendeng balado
martabak manis
dosa (the South Indian breakfast, I like this especially also because it means ‘sin’ in Indonesian, which it is.. with all the ghee)
cumi
negroni
ramos gin fizz
arepa
pav
My personal vote, however, would go to Ramos gin fizz. With just a few simple ingredients, vigorous shaking either renders a masterpiece — or a flop. Like bad code, and bad engineering practices, a bad Ramos gin fizz doesn’t even resemble the real thing.
As the cofounder and CEO of a tech startup working to improve financial inclusion in one of the world’s largest countries that is also one of the largest cash economies, I have amassed a wealth of odd knowledge on how cash works. How it works, specifically, at the intersection of people and connectivity. It always excites me so that there is a world of difference in how different places have different assumptions about payments.
My first world assumptions already went out of the window when I spent a year in Myanmarbefore SIM cards went down in price from $2000 to $1. There, bags of cash were king. Bags of cash under a desk, even better.
Here in Indonesia, we faced the same challenges as most other companies: how do we accept payment from the average person? For our customers to start selling pulsa (airtime), internet packages and other products with Wobe app, we need them to first pay us for their prepaid account. (Here, you can also buy a cigarette by the stick when you want to smoke it, instead of buying an entire pack. The same is true of phones.)
Happily, this is why we do what we do. Before you can improve on something, you first need to know it well.
Not reinventing the wheel
It helps to examine the prevalent norm.
In Indonesia, you commonly see what can be described as “hacks for the cash economy”. These are necessary ‘hacks’ through a set of circumstances entirely unique to Indonesia; with more than 17 000 islands and a sparse population outside of Java, cash is still king here, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Distribution and reach (of ATMs, banks, etc) is only one part of it.
Other than cash-on-delivery, it is quite common to pay for things online in any of the following ways:
Asking a friend with a bank account to transfer the payment for you
Standing in line at a bank, where you do not have an account, to make a manual transfer
Going to a convenience store to tell them you want to pay for say, a flight ticket; waiting 40 min for their payment system to boot up, then finally making a cash payment
As you can see, large companies have armies of people just staring at internet banking screens to verify each and other transaction in real time.
What has emerged as the de facto way of taking manual cash payments is so unique and elegant, and so characteristically Indonesian: randomized unique codes that almost function as convenience fees, cheaper than credit or debit card percentages.
In many ways, Tokopedia has been at the forefront of Indonesian ecommerce. As one of the pioneers of the 3 digit unique code method, we were impressed at how simple yet effective it was — for both the consumer and the company.
Assuming I want to buy a USB-powered electric fan, or kipas, which costs IDR 52 050 (USD 3.91).
If I were to select the cash / manual bank transfer method, I would see this screen:
My total, with the unique code (+032) added to the final bill.
All Tokopedia would have to do would be to verify that they had indeed received a transfer of IDR 52 082 on that day.
It would not matter from whom, the payment came from, or whether it was successful or pending (manual payments can be seen as pending after a certain time in the afternoon, depending on the bank and only available the next business day—which makes Fridays and weekends particularly difficult). The existence of that exact amount would suffice.
How that inspired us
It would be easy to wish that every market was exactly the same as where you are familiar: but that mentality would not take you far. Anywhere, but specifically in Indonesia.
As a company that has betted its entire future on the 4th most populous country, it has always been in our DNA to operate within the frame of what works here, and to never once claim to know it better.
We believe that the future will be a mix of unique ‘hacks’ like these, along with a substantial push towards the digitization of payments (more on that in a bit).
I’m proud to announce that the next feature we will have in the Wobe app, will be our very own version of the randomized unique code. We are currently testing it but it appears to be a huge improvement to our top-up mechanism. All of our product and business decisions are driven by the simple question: how does this improve the lives of the people we claim to work for? In this case, we will be able to easily take payments from individuals who may live as far as one to five hours away from a bank, an ATM or a convenience store.
What is the way forward?
How does one reconcile the two Indonesias, then: with one foot so violently in the future, with its obsessive love of mobile phones and social networks, and the other so virulently enamoured by the ease of cash?
Short of pushing the country towards bank accounts and debit and credit cards, what looks likely is this: there will be a peaceful coexistence of cash and digital payments. In some ways, Indonesia will lead the way in Next Billion tech, ecommerce and payments. If India’s PayTM and China’s Alipay are any indicators of how a hinterland with a large population and a unique set of infrastructural and geographical challenges are anything to go by, I believe that in 3 years Indonesia will find its own beat. Which is why we do what we do at Wobe: we believe that if we build a product that helps the average person participate in the digital economy, we will be able to find innovative ways to make a difference.
What we do best is to empower women to be the missing link between their communities and the world of online opportunity. Be it in small features, like randomized topups, or in the big ones—like creating financial independence sessions for the women we work with—we are driven by our mission to do well and to do good.
Perhaps one day there will be a new school of thought on product design and enterprise: how to create and design with empathy, as if our lives depended on it.
Our next build will feature the randomized topup feature.
Nearly everyone wants to cash in on emerging markets. Facebook wants to fly drones to deliver internet connectivity over rural areas. They may or may not collide, in scale, ambition and delivery, with Google’s balloons (link). Whoever you are, emerging markets are hard.
Every time you see a Singaporean or Malaysian startup raising a fund, you see them want to expand to Indonesia, like it was a mere thought_._ How do you make apps, websites or any kind of media for a market so different from anywhere else in the world?
In our case, coming to Indonesia to create a product aimed at the last mile in a country of 17, 508 islands has been some of the most challenging work we have ever done.
As a cofounder and first product owner, here is what we did.
Listen. It is not possible to parachute into a place so fundamentally different, so unique, with a suitcase full of tips and tricks that have worked elsewhere. We listened extensively. Who you listen to can be just as important as how you listen. We went right to the source: we literally had listening parties where our target customers, who are Indonesian housewives and students, had fried food and sweetened tea with us as we studiously thought about how our product could work for them. Before writing a single line of code.
Iterate. Anyone who has put an app or a website together knows that constant iteration, improvement, is key. From our paper prototypes to our app version 3.7.5, our iterations have come a long way. There comes a point where iteration has to be backed up by metrics, though when you are just starting out, flexibility and rapid adaptability is more important.
Speak their language. Literally and figuratively. We found, for example, that in some locations it is not wise to send out young men into conservative neighbourhoods. From the early days of visiting homes and communities as a merry band of random people with clip boards (and fried bananas), we now have community leaders who are respected and respectful. It is sometimes still funny to trot out my Singaporeanized Indonesian as a joke, but when work has to be done we always get so much more accomplished by reducing cultural, linguistic and other kinds of friction.
Consider all assumptions. Thinking on the intersection of product and business is hard enough. Thinking about it without assumptions can be very difficult. Somehow, it seems even harder for some to do this without being condescending. If your starting point in building a product is, “Indonesians like X”, you are on the wrong track.
Conduct ethnographic research. This may be extreme, but I consider it very important to live in the same environment as the people who are likely to use Wobe. Paying for my (prepaid) electricity just like everyone else in my kos-kosan, standing in line to pay for my online purchases including air tickets with cash, all of those things were essential for our product. Very soon we will be able to pay for all that with Wobe. Extreme ethnographic research helped us begin our journey from idea to product, from the same starting point as our customers: in cash, in line, in wait.
Consider your stack and architecture. Where we are it is still PHP-land. Services are massive, not micro. Hosting is local, rarely in the cloud. Bandwidth can be narrow and coverage can be spotty. We knew we had to avoid building a traditionally synchronous app to have any chance of Wobe working well outside of the cities. More than ideology, our micro-services architecture is supplemented by the concurrency of Go, the ease of native mobile development with React Native, and a team-wide obsession with improving performance and cost savings for our customers (every byte counts..).
There was scarce literature for us when we started out on this journey, so we hope in the months to come we can share what worked for us. If you’ve built something for an emerging market, what worked for you!
If you’re a founder too, technical or not, you’ll know all about the struggle.
The struggle: late nights, being poor, having everything go well and then not, the very same minute.
For me as a non-technical founder, and I’m sure for many others, the struggle is also: how do you build things? and other assorted questions.
If you build it, will they come? (Customers)
How will you build it? (Teams, product, culture)
What, indeed, do you build?
I’m always perplexed by founders who want to only move fast and break things without knowing themselves what they’re moving or breaking. If you ran a furniture company, had aspirations for it to be the best in the world, wouldn’t you want to at least know how to wield a hammer?
This post documents the who, what, why, how of our year-long journey building technology in the emergi-est of emerging markets: Indonesia.
Wobe works to improve access to payments and utilities at the last mile: our unique application and its surrounding ecosystems of microservices and tools let us offer regular people the opportunity of running their own business. They can sell recharge (of phone airtime, data, electricity, water and other vouchers); their communities benefit from cheaper and more efficient ways of topping up, without having to travel. We work with grassroots organisations to bring about greater benefits for low income women who come into our networks.
Who we build for
More than how you build or what you build, is the question: who do you build. This is tied to the mission of the company, and resonates through the company. It also has to do with what the founding team, not just founders, cares deeply about.
I had the amazing opportunity to spend a year in Myanmar, right about the time it was ‘opening up’.
Despite the $1500 SIM cards and the bureaucracy, Myanmar helped me fall in love not just with a country or a region, but with the idea of very hard problems. How will Southeast Asia go from our cash-only economies to online, digital payments? Will women and minorities be left behind? Wobe seeks to answer these questions through the tech we build, via the business relationships we build, and within our team.
We build for them:
(Above, Wobe growth activities in Sumbawa, eastern Indonesia.)
Nothing is constant in emerging markets, except for how things change all the time.
Our community anchors us:
Empathise: we carry out internal and external research activity to help us make product and business decisions and know our customers
Understand: we do not assume everyone has a fast internet connection. We know from our research that our customers are price-sensitive, and cautious about data consumption. For this reason, our product (a) has a tiny footprint (b) performs better than most other apps in lower connectivity
Prioritise: it would be far simpler to use established payment gateways and accept credit cards in-app. Our customers do not have credit cards. It would not make sense to make product decisions that work for only a small percentage of our total addressable market.
For every founder, the quality of technical team and your technical decisions has a ripple effect. I can’t emphasise this enough. Even when you’re a one-person team, what you decide on this front will have long-lasting impact.
Your main options, pre-funding, are to either find a technical co-founder (a unicorn; stop searching, but more on this later), outsource, or to do it yourself.
Unless you’ve already built products at great scale, and / or run a team to do that, doing it yourself may not be the best use of your time.
For many, the likely choice will be to outsource. All types of dev shops and individuals will be happy to build you an MVP for anything from US$500 to US$100 000. Your mileage will vary greatly. Whatever decision you make on this, do not establish mediocrity as a standard. The quality of your future incoming team, if there is one, will be pegged to the ones who came before. Nobody wants to work with a Z team. Nobody wants to clean up Z-team level excretion.
Wobe’s technical journey was a long one. In the next few posts, I will be happy to share what that was like, how we built a product with very little money, how we thought about technical hiring, how non-technical founders can improve their technical hiring pipeline.
It has a lot to do with first acknowledging you don’t know all the answers. Even if you are a technical cofounder yourself, you don’t know all the answers. Then assemble the best* people who care deeply about your mission.
Our mission is to build tech that works for the people who need to rely on us. We succeed when they are able to increase their family’s income level by a dollar, or a few hundred, because of what we do.
Given the many questions we’ve had to ask, and impossible mountains we’ve had to scale, I want to set a clear path for us as a company. Wobe will be an open company, right down to our core: our code.
In the coming months, my team and I will share how we write Go, how we hire; how we work cross-culturally from Mexico to India and Indonesia; how open source will be a pillar in our company. What is culture?
Culture is not free beer and beer pong. I doubt that anybody really knows what it is.
It is to be able to do wonderfully complex and abstract things, at the speed of light, yet to be stumped at how to give straightforward directions to others.
To be diagnosed after the age of 30 is to learn quite resolutely: the weirdest feature in my being is not who I am, but what I do not understand. I do not understand what is easily understood by most. But I have done a good job pretending I do.
People expect me to understand because I manage to pass for somebody I am not: well put together. In charge of my mind and body. Able to hold a conversation, fill rooms with hundreds of people. Capable of making inferences and deductions based on fact and feeling. Able to pass for 'neurotypical'.
In recent conversations like the ones I've had to pay a lot of money to have some obvious things pointed out to me, I've had to dig into the recesses of my psyche. Things I thought I'd scrubbed out of my brain and consciousness. I did not have to go back very far:
I live in my head, suspended between my thoughts and reality. In my head, I have already raced through the day's tasks elegantly, solving one interesting problem after another. In reality, I struggle to put on my shoes. Five year old me's daily problem: no matter how hard I try, I cannot will my fingers to arrange my shoelaces and straps in a manner that makes sense. This still happens to me. In my head, I may have made spreadsheets upon spreadsheets to address every question I have thought of while showering in the morning. In reality, I cannot will an arrangement of words and numbers to show up without brute force. This tires me.
At social events it would be nice, of course, to finally understand how to moderate my speech or behaviour to match what is expected of polite company. But I am interested only in a very tiny set of topics. It helps then to not know what it feels like to pass for social; I have only ever managed to wager a guess. Since I do not know how that feels like, I do not know how to want those things, which is often mistaken for apathy.
It was to have made mathematical calculations of my romantic odds instead of caring for people on an individual level. For that, I am sorry. All of those times people asked me on OkCupid or Tinder what I was looking for and I said 'an algorithmic match', I thought it was the only thing to say. And if we actually dated, I was still looking for the algorithms and my mainframe was out of date.
Being on the spectrum means I grapple with simple questions: the one which terrifies me most, even to this day is — how are you? There is a five second delay in which I think, how, am, wait, what does that mean and who am I? Am I good today? Is that the truth? Am I more good than the last time I was asked this weird question? It feels like an infinite loop. Asking me how I am or how I feel, is no different from being asked to reach into the bottom of my soul and finding no difference between one abyss and another. How am I? How do I feel? I don't know.
In place of feelings, there are patterns.
There is the pattern of 'everybody is smiling am I more convincing at making eye contact now or am I still failing'. This sometimes looks like I have too many feelings, or that I have none.
There are the patterns of 'this looks like something which has happened before which leads me to conclude... Something' and 'oh shit I got it terribly wrong'. There are few patterns in-between.
I have been lucky to find my feet in a career that skews unfairly towards people on the spectrum, but the parts of it: the speaking at conferences, the socializing and networking, the parties, the world of people talking to and understanding each other, that I shudder at.
To be on the spectrum is to have few tools for anger and other emotional processes. How is someone else feeling? I can only wager a guess. It is to disproportionately over-emphathise (because it seems like that's what people do), or to do too little of it. For me, it is also to be completely incapacitated in the in-betweens: what is not said. Even then, what is said can also have the same effect when it is said in a different way — that matches another pattern.
It feels like living in a bad torrent. It is a blockbuster movie to everyone else who somehow always finds a way to watch the IMAX version. But yours resembles a pirated movie torrent with an audio track that is 10 seconds out of sync — ahead. It all sounds like gibberish, and there are somehow no subs of the right language and container size and codec. You have to watch it anyway.
Slowly, the other movie is coming into focus.
Maybe I'll never be able to see all of it in high fidelity, but — I'm told it is up to people like us to find new standards of definition.
World-changing and domestic, depending on the day.
Upwards trajectory but sometimes down.
31 is about being happy in my own skin: that it's really okay to have greasy hair and over-sized T-shirts, when you have your dog and your friends by your side.
Thank you for the most wonderful year, to everyone who has played a role in it. I am lucky and grateful to have all of you by my side.
Update: I wrote this piece before we learned more about what happened. I'm sorry about misgendering or mis-identifying the victims.
I'm 31 in a few months. Not old, but old enough to remember how coming out was not on Tumblr, it was at Taboo.
I would go with my best friends, all of us so drawn to each other (boys and girls) because we saw a spark of — what was it? We thought it was weirdness at the time — in each other. It was a badge nobody gave us, but we saw on ourselves anyway.
If only someone could have told us: this badge, it is a badge of queerness. Use it well, do not sleep with worthless people, and you'll be okay. One day.
Why did the Orlando shootings reverberate across the world as I knew it — on the walls, timelines, of every queer person I know, and their allies?
The idea of safe spaces, and sanctity, kept coming up. Weird, perhaps to consider something like a sweaty, sweltering gay club sacred. But it was. And will always be.
Even if I never felt like I was of the scene (there was literally nothing for me there), being a woman, outnumbered with my persuasions out-persuaded, it was, in so many ways, where I found myself.
I'm a terrible dancer, but some alcohol with the encouragement of men who don't care about sleeping with me, made gay clubs the only place I felt safe. I didn't have to worry about men, even if I went alone. And most times, I did. In Singapore, in Bangkok, in Helsinki, in every place I have called home or visited for longer than a day. A gay club had always found itself on my itinerary. It was my window into the pulse of the rebels, the misfits, the mostly straight but didn't want to be fag hags I could sometimes persuade.
Most of all, the complete sense of belonging and the unadulterated self. There, I could be myself, long before I could be that person at school, at home, in my places of worship.
When Omar Mateen went into a gay club halfway across the world, spraying bullets and quite literally hunting down gay people, my memories merged into one, as it did for many queer people everywhere. He didn't kill 50 gays in one club, he reached into, placed himself in, and ripped up the safe space we have all found.
But how to explain a safe space to people who have never needed one?
18, venturing out timidly with my best friends. Seeing educators; kissing each other (of the opposite gender) to pretend, badly, that we were all straight.
20, between life milestones, trembling and swooning every time an older women picked me (hahaha, I was very young and very hot; they should have been swooning instead).
More recently in life, being protected and cared for by wonderful gay men in cities all over the world. From Istanbul to Helsinki and San Francisco.
It was not just 50 gay men that Omar Mateen killed.
It was all of us on the dance floor. The veteran gays who go to see friends and dance with them. The young man peeking out from his closet, having to hide his queer clothes in his bag. His career as a hot young stud, vanished. The fag hags who love the gay men they cannot have. The old couples who go because they want to believe they still got it. The amazing dancers. The not so good ones. The long lines for the men's toilets; the lack of one, of the lack of a toilet, for women. The bad vodka. The cheap rum. The smell of leather and sweat. The promise of darkness and kink — but is it really that dark or kinky if you were the one getting it? The camaraderie. The cliquey lesbians who think anyone talking to their girlfriends is infidelity, even when gay men do it. The stolen kisses once outside. The sobering effect of a greasy meal early in the morning when you didn't meet someone interesting or you made the right choices in life. Kebabs and Chinese food. Drunk friends you send home vowing to never let them drink again. The sullen faces that sometimes harbour disgust the moment you walk out of the door knowing you will not be accepted outside.
That's where Omar Mateen took us all. He sprayed his evil bullets into our sanctuary, hiding his last minutes in the toilet of a gay club. Let that sink in for a minute. Possibly the worst homophobe the world has seen since the Holocaust. And he hides out in a gay club toilet before he dies?
All across the world violent acts are performed on minorities every day. Queer people are persecuted. Women are beaten. Trans people are murdered. Immigrants are hunted. Other ethnic and religious groups including atheists are tortured, hated, cussed at. What you think is casual racism, homophobia, transphobia, funny jokes that won't hurt anyone, magnifies with a weapon in its hands.
So if you've ever stopped to say, why are you people demanding your rights? It's a playbook from Western activists wanting to erode our culture! What next, marriage?
Yes. We are demanding to not be massacred. To not be spat on and beaten in Albania. To be not pistol-whipped and left to die on a fence in Wyoming. To be not raped — correctively and incorrectly — in South Africa. To not be kidnapped by your parents and sent to pray the gay away camps, all over the world where evangelical Christians have found money and warped theology. We are here and we are queer. Do not kill us like deer.
12 years ago I came to Kolkata for the same time. At the time it was still mostly referred to as Calcutta.
The city doesn't change; but you do.
Every picture I have of it from 12 years ago still looks like it could have been from December, when I last visited. Perhaps even today. When I land at midnight later, there will not be the crisp, muddled air of the winters I love in that city, just the night time counterpart to the heat that I know will pound on my face, and the ground, sometime in the morning.
All that I know, all that I do, I owe it to this city, even if it will never know it.
When my school friends were road-tripping across European cities for summer breaks, or perhaps even the big cities of China and America for work and school, I found solace here. It can be hard to see, but Kolkata is a hard act to beat. It's the ultimate summer. Followed by monsoon. And the sounds of:
It's a monsoon and the rain lifts lids off cars /
Spinning buses like toys, stripping them to chrome /
Across the bay, the waves are turning into something else /
Picking up fishing boats and spewing them on the shore — James, Sometimes (which somehow always comes to mind when I think of this place
How to beat it?
The start, really, of empire. The fall, or rather the fading away, of one. The majesty of India's cricketing hopes and dreams, and occasionally the dashing of, projected unto Eden Gardens even when the matches aren't in season. The death of Marxism, available for the world to see at every adda and every failing piece of infrastructure. Tagore's poetry. Indian Coffee House. The children of Tollygunge, who taught me so much, 12 years ago. Sandesh.
On hot afternoons when the sun hits the ground and meets engine oil, the smell reminds me of my first love among the many other putrid Asian cities I have come to love:
“So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger to really see which drives people to travel to strange places.” — Tagore, My Reminiscences
Not for the first time, I found myself in a tiny room on a hot day, the youngest among old women. Each with a different thing to say to me, also the only person not from around these parts.
You're so old now! And unmarried!
Your hair is too white! Eat more soy beans!
One woman rubbed my tattoos, making a screechy sound with her teeth, before announcing to all the other old women around her: these are real.
No judgement, no scorn – I was local enough to be in a place like that, but not local enough to be judged.
Can you bring me some white chocolate next time you come, girl? I had them once and only in your country (Singapore). I've never had them since. She rubbed my back some more.
At places like these old women collectively talk, soothe each other's tired or injured muscles, and together not give a damn about anything outside of those doors. At least for an hour.
I went often to places like these, my severe back pains often needing urgent attention from anything that would give them rest. In Jakarta, I am a frequent visitor to Haji Naim – a group of famed healers in the Betawi community. I figured that if it didn't work there was at least delicious soto Betawi to be had next door. Now that I come here so often, a massage almost always precedes a lovely bowl of soup and beef.
I've always been glad to have the ability and opportunity to bond with old women anywhere in the world – their wisdom and unlikely sorority is what I look forward to, whether in Yemen or India or Singapore. Here, the Betawi women took turns rubbing my tattoos, shrieking when they discovered (repeatedly) that they were real.
Most of my time in this city has been about discovering, for the first time, scenes that played such a large part in my youth. Hot afternoons with old Indonesian women. Dusk on the street with teenagers singing with their guitars. Children begging. Families living under bridges. The Indonesian movies that used to play so often in my tiny, hot Singaporean shoebox apartment, now alive in parts of the city.
And yet the other parts of it are real, too. Large gleaming buildings. New shiny things. Cocktails as expensive as Singapore's. Malls full of only imported things. My feet in both worlds: one in the village and one in Pacific Place. One in meetings with fancy people, another under the firm thumbing of extremely old women.
It's a difficult balance to keep up, but I enjoy each moment. White chocolate in Betawi houses; going home to my $5 room after a day out in $5 coffee houses. Improbable things and inevitable places. As I chug along at work and in life, I'm relieved to have the opportunity to make things work again.
I'm seated now by the side of an old vending machine in Jakarta airport, with power sockets so dirty and old I had to think twice about plugging my cables in. Yet in all of Terminal 1, one of the oldest airport terminals in a country not known for modern aviation facilities, there was only this one socket free. Confined to my fate of temporarily sharing power with a giant Teh Botol (not Coke!) machine with no seat within range of my Macbook charger, I am, obviously, on the floor yet again.
Sitting on floors: a practice cultivated in many countries across the world. Sometimes involuntary, most of the time because my inner hippie wants me to. The difference between now and then — I am now at the kind of age where you would, if you did not know me, expect some kind of manners from me. Wear proper clothes, wear proper shoes. Sit on proper surfaces. I imagined I would too! That one day, I would finally learn how to be proper. How wrong I was on that, and many other fronts! I am happy to still-sitting-on-dirty-floors. No — I am overjoyed. Overjoyed to be still a chapalang, anyhow and anyhowly chapalang person.
So much has happened since the last real post of any substance here. Mid, early 2014 perhaps. I started a company. It still lives. I have teams, collaborators, all across my different endeavours. The foundation I started in 2012 is still alive, too. I am relieved and grateful for all of the opportunities thrown my way, all of the paths revealed and then some.
Why did I not write? I did not write, because life overwhelmed me and kept me away and sometimes light-headed. I did not write, because I forgot how to. It isn't like riding a bicycle — it's more of riding a unicycle where you know eventually you'll find your balance but only after falling flat on your face anyway, no matter how many times you've ridden one. In my pursuit of achievements, exceptional or otherwise, prizes, awards, Silicon Valley-style work yourself to the bone for some big undefined payoff (emotional or otherwise); I lost myself in the race. I lost myself, too, in the unclear idea of what it meant to be an adult.
An adult, I was told, lived in a proper house with a proper bed with a proper pillow (for all of the neck pains you're bound to have). I have neck pains, indeed, but realise I can do without all of the rest. I haven't sat on dirty airport floors for years. I haven't gone somewhere with nothing in my bag other than the clothes currently on me, in years. I haven't gone somewhere without a plan, without a place to stay, without any idea of what i was going to do. I don't know how else to live, and forcing myself into being the opposite of those things brought me further and further away from who I really was.
Maybe this year, after learning to like myself again, I'll finally get my groove back again. I'm proud to be an anyhowly person. I'm proud to extreme and spontaneous. I will no longer knead the image of who I truly am into the uninspiring ideas of what some people had wanted me to become. I don't want to achieve things for the sake of doing that — I want to learn to be alive, again. Let's see how we go on this journey, I'm excited but also shit-scared about it.
But as I once believed (when I was much younger) — if it doesn't scare me like hell, it probably isn't worth doing.
I have had enough of their terrible user interface, narrow writing experience, and the empty platitudes of ‘recs' and comments from people looking to improve their lives by reading inspiring content from people they don't care about. Worst of all? I hate people whining about Millennials more than Millennials themselves.
I started this site precisely so that I could tinker around under the hood, and that's what I've missed — tinkering. Writing. Slapping together bits of random code you find on the internet (now forking random folks' code on Github) and hoping it would work. I know a lot more about code and development processes now, but I still gain a huge amount of happiness from tinkering with things I don't know.
My archives are in a mess. I stopped writing here some time circa 2010. I don't know why. Life took over. I got lazy. I got fed up trying to do everything at once.
It might take some time to gather the things I posted on different parts of the web. But it should be worth it 🙂
When I came home (to Singapore) a couple of days ago, I instructed the taxi driver to go to the Caltex station at East Coast. Most cabbies know this place, but he didn't. He's 74 years old, so he only knew this spot as "Tan Boon Chye & Co" (brain GPS never update firmware). Tan Boon Chye & Co was the 3rd Caltex station in Singapore, and that was its original name — in 1961.
Growing up in Singapore and spending most of my childhood (and teen-hood) around grandparents who spoke mostly Teochew (and more Malay than Mandarin, really), I'd always felt intimately connected to their brain GPS. If I was to tell them where I had spent all my time (and money — they can't believe anything costs more than 50 cents in Singapore), I'd have to cross-reference the 1940s street directory that exists only in our minds, among the people of a certain stripe.
If I went to the jazz club at SouthBridge (way back when there was a jazz club), I'd have to tell them I was in 大坡大马路 in Teochew, dua pou dua beh lou (or tua po tua beh lou depending on your romanization preference, or if you said it with a Hokkien inflection). If I had to change money for my travels, I'd have gone to "ang teng" reminiscent of the red lights that once lit up Collyer Quay from Johnston's lighthouse. My fave — instead of going to Cecil Street to work in the CBD, I've have gone to the "opium company", where opium dens once stood instead of buttoned up, stuffy suits. Because corporate life is a different kind of opiate of the masses.
Years after the passing of the two people I'd spent so much time with, existing in a different language and setting, I find myself grasping at anything that lets me learn a little bit more about the lives of people I loved but did not know fully. In part because I never had the language of their lives in full — I could order food, talk to them, talk to old people, even give speeches in this language they bestowed on me, but I could never have had the tools to create legends for their maps, their history, their worlds filled with poverty, civil war and world war.
I'm learning as much of their language as I can. Instead of being merely conversational, wet market level conversant, I've started to learn how to write it, read it, romanize it, and exist in this other plane of my life I've always inhabited but never occupied.
The taxi driver took me to Tan Boon Chye. From the way he pronounced the Tan, the same one that is present in my own name (pretty much like a surprised sound effect), I switched to it for the rest of the ride.
"Where did you return from?"
I don't say Jakarta, as in 雅加达 (ya jia da).
I say I've just returned from 巴斜, pah sia, and he knew it. I wonder what destinations my grand dad saw at the port. 巴斜 (Jakarta), 金塔 (ghim tahp, Phnom Penh), or 坤甸 (khun diang, Pontianak)? Yet somehow he ended up here, the land of red lights and big horse carriage roads and small ones, so that when I go off into the world I feel I'm merely following the same sense of adventure (and need) from more than 80 years ago.
12 years ago this time I was deciding where I should go, what I should study, at university. I was also four months away from deciding I would try to be happy in spite of my newfound queerness.
11 years ago this time I was in Kolkata, volunteering with an organization, not knowing I would go on to do that in the future. I was awful at painting walls, and not much better now.
10 to 8 years ago this time on the road learning Southeast Asia out of backpacks I still carried, before my back went bad.
7 years ago this time I got back to Dubai from Istanbul to find beetles had infested everything that I owned in the world. It was the first time I learned you could be truly alone in the world.
6 years ago on the Syria/Turkey border with no money and no clothes. Auto-rickshaws. My first businesses. An annoyingly debilitating illness. Recovery.
Three years ago I was back in Singapore feeling lost and forlorn when I left someone and a city that had spanned half a decade. Two years ago my life of endless pitching had just begun.
Today, 30 and in Indonesia on the cusp of everything. Bring it on!
I do quite a few things. Run a startup. Run two non-profits. Mentor queer kids. Spend a lot of time with my family, partner and our dog. Play video games. Paint the house. Cook for friends. Take my dog on long walks. Even, gasp, sleep!
A lifetime ago on my first entrepreneurial rodeo, I did not know many of the things that I know now.
I know now, that:
Sleep is the most important, ‘sleep for the weak, no sleep till I’m dead’ is just pointless and unhealthy bravado – because I got so close to the edge
Health is important. Many of my peers have now had a few attempts at entrepreneurship, and many of us have worked ourselves to the bone and back
Focus is everything, and time management is better. There’s no value to working insane long hours when you’re not focused. I have better awareness of my attention span and focus patterns now (short bursts, varied, always have to be doing something insanely fun or difficult, preferably both)
Neglecting friends and family isn’t ideal, they’re worth a lot more than most business. You also get better at navigating friendships vs acquaintances
Saying no is okay
Saying yes to things that matter is also
Getting something done imperfectly is better than waiting for perfection
Being busy is a state of mind
Some people are perpetually busy. Maybe some people really are genuinely busy. I try to be un-busy, which is not the same as being unproductive. Even if I’m really busy, I want to never say I am. I will always have time to chat with a suicidal friend who calls me at 4am. I will always have time for anyone. I will always have time for my dad, mum, girlfriend, siblings, nieces. I want to always have the head space to be actively learning new things, instead of blocking anything being of a mistakenly diagnosed case of busy.
There’s a difference between being consciously un-busy and being frivolous. I suspect I might have some kind of attention deficiency disorder, so I need to be juggling three things at a time. I did not know that before – so felt unproductive, sad, and bored most of my life when shoved into the do-one-thing religion, which never fit. I also got very, very ill when I was busy, in a previous life.
Now I do lots of things, but I am not busy. I am occupied, but I’ll always have time for sleep, health, and happiness.
I am awful at calendaring, so I’ve hired a PA to help me do that. Calendaring makes me busy and sad, so I need to outsource that.
Today, there are a ton of things I’d like to do. There are always things to do. But I would rather focus on the meaningfulness of the things I have to do, rather than on the having to do in and of its own.
My to-do list might be massive, but I want to never close off my heart.
If I have to be insanely busy, which is a state I am getting to very rapidly, I want to be purposefully occupied, not and never too busy for anyone.
It seemed like a good idea to quad-bike around parts of Turkey, 2009.
The difference between travelling alone, which I’ve done plenty of, and exploring possibilities alone, which I’ve done less of (but gotten more from), lies in how much of a sucker punch those decisions give me, specifically in my gut. I don’t follow my gut as much as let my gut punch out a path for me in the metaphorical jungle of life’s decision trees.
Sometimes, they are very bad ideas. Most times they are good ideas — after a while. With these things, you really never know until you are knee-deep in the slush.
I was 19 when I set off to explore the world for the first time on my own. I had a one way ticket and 60 days in India. I had nothing other than the promise of 3 large freelance (and then lucrative) writing gigs from Northeast India to Bangladesh. I knew exactly what the next 60 days would be: take a 36 hour train to Calcutta. Locate my contact. Procure a ticket to Dhaka. Follow certain contacts into the far north. Live in a leprosy hospital. Be denied entry into India at its border with Bangladesh; circle back to Calcutta, take a 18 hour train to Guwahati, find a jeep, go to Shillong, find another jeep to take me to Cherrapunjee.
I remember what it was like to be sitting in the waiting room just before getting on the plane. I looked at my shoes a lot and thought about failure. I got on the plane.
Those lessons lasted me all through college (which I somehow completed).
On the eve of my 23rd birthday, I moved alone to the Middle East. No plan, no money, just a crazy idea that I had to be in this part of the world for a year. I wanted to have it all, you see: I wanted to be closer to my then girlfriend, who had just moved to London. Dubai was closer to London than Singapore, and we could meet in Istanbul. All I needed was my backpack, camera and passport.
What I did not know was how the whirlwind journey through Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey would touch me in ways I haven’t even begun to be able to fully articulate, 6 years on.
On the eve of my 29th birthday, I found myself wandering along a street in Jakarta as the sky set. The visual of a sunset in Jakarta made me feel terribly alone in a vast universe, on the cusp of the rest of my life. I had come to Indonesia to seek success and wealth, that was the first 10 hours of that journey and I forgot to pack a bath towel.
None of those stories are winning stories. They should not elicit any feelings of warmth or happiness. They are not tales of conquest meant to provide an origin story for any autobiographical data points. For me, as I lived it, all of those stories were stories of immense loneliness and fear.
You see, despite the happy reassurances of ‘it turned out okay’, I remember all of those three moments specifically as defining moments in which the dominant emotion was melancholy. Yes, I was happy to have had certain career and life opportunities. Yes, those were the things I had dreamed of since I was a little girl. Yes, I love adventure and wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. But I had never felt more alone in the universe than when I literally stood crying in a phone booth in the world’s wettest place, learning that maybe I cannot have it all, after all.
Or that I rocked up in Dubai knowing no one, with the love of my life five thousand miles away, spending my birthday nearly alone in a stupid tiki bar thinking maybe I should have thought about this a little bit more. (I celebrated my 23rd birthday with a beautiful Palestinian couple I’d known for two hours. Great people, but I missed home.)
That I have spent most of my adult life feeling very far away from the people I love, suspended between here and there, utterly incapable of keeping any real connections alive because I always had to be somewhere else at the wrong times.
I still let my gut punch me about: it rules me. I no longer have to listen to it or follow it — it is me. It has been automated. It keeps me alive! I am quite literally alive today because I did not board a bus or a train for certain locations, because my gut told me so. Suicide bombs (multiple) and the worst floods in history ensued. I was not in them, unlike some of my travel companions.
My gut is automated to tune in to natural disasters, terrorism and business decisions all at once. My heart structurally resembles cotton candy.
My gut is never wrong. My heart almost always is.
My gut keeps me alive. My heart appears to want the opposite.
On the eve of the third decade of life I will be surrounded by loved ones, friends and family. I am not on a plane this week, which is a welcome change. I am no longer the person who wanders around Gaziantep in the wee hours of the morning. But I am still the same person who could wing it to the moon and back with nothing more than the shirt on my back.
I was always shit scared. You just get better at turning fear into currency for a life well-lived.
I’ve been publishing on the web for the last 12 years. It was because I wanted to write and publish on the web that I learned to look under the hood and build things. Which is why I do what I do now.
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be somewhere else. In all of my childhood day dreams, of which I had many, daily, and often, I imagined being an explorer out at sea. Being a pilot about to set off for yonder. Even the short stories I scribbled all had to do with stowing away, seeing new lands, discovering curious and wondrous foods.
Reading about Robinson Crusoe made me wonder what the natives ate, and why he never tried to just fit in (rescue seemed like a horrible ending, I hated it); Gulliver's Travels only made me wonder how the Lillputians lived with their neighbours before he came around. In my imagination, if I shipwrecked, stowed away, or was kidnapped to a foreign land, I would quite enjoy the adventure.
My parents travel in ways few other Asian parents do: cheaply and adventurously. The first time I ever left Singapore, we went to Sarawak. It wasn't a 'cool' story to tell your friends in primary school - no, you didn't go to Disneyland in Hong Kong, you didn't even live in a real hotel, you went to… Borneo.
Every day we walked for miles and miles. We never took taxis or cars, only buses, trains and boats. No matter how much you sweat, my parents don't care: they've got a backpack full of iced water so you have no reason to be sad! Just keep walking.
I don't remember much else about those times. Just that they were fun. That they made me. That when my parents wanted to take a bus four hours into the interiors, you learn to sleep anywhere. That when they want you to stop complaining about the hygiene of the food you're eating, even when insects of all kinds have landed on your food, you shut up and eat it and discover the best food in the world, or you go hungry.
There's a funny picture of me from this era, age 7. I had just showered. My mum had combed my hair in the way she always has: like a nerd. I'm sitting at the table of our 'hotel', looking straight at the camera like the little nerd that I was. I was writing. Writing about the blowpipe I just had the chance to blow! About the shaky tooth that fell out of my mouth on the four hour bus ride out from the interiors. About how my parents calmly put my tooth into their pocket, said nothing, alighted and fed me the most delicious noodles I'd ever had.
How much of my life is still exactly like that, and how lucky I am to be able to still have these adventures with the two people who taught me adventure and love.
If you were to look into the ISD/STD phone booth in Park Street, when it was flooding in Kolkata one year, I was there. My heartbreak was metered: sixteen paisa per second. Whatever they were saying on the phone, I can’t remember. I just know it was raining and that the men were shouting very loudly outside on the street.
I was also there, in the little hut in Meghalaya, when you told me you cheated on me with my friend. My heartbreak was still 10 rupees per minute. What do you say to that? I’m sorry, I choose to chase my dreams even if it means being away from you for four months? I hope you liked it?
When I was still young and living at home I felt the sudden need to live with you. We made plans. We saw the house. We tried to pretend we were 17 and falling in love with each other again. I have the unfortunate luck to only be able to make money or anything of value five thousand miles away. Like some old Bollywood movie on loop, it happened again. Phone booth. Rain in an Indian city. Unsure if the person I loved was fading away, or if the phone line was. Whatever it was, it always cost 600 rupees.
I am always somewhere else and never here.
From Madras to Hong Kong, I sipped whiskies furiously, and sadly.
Today I sat in a car travelling through the mountains of Java, hurtling into the unknown. I was worried about the state of the global capital markets, and about my heart.
It’s been 11 years since Park Street. I now have a world of communication gadgets and connectivity devices in my pocket. Every sim card, every operator, every spectrum. But my heart is still where it’s always been: firmly on my sleeve. This time it was (almost) free, but it felt just as broken. I have never learned how to reconcile my life on the road with my heart. Turns out nobody likes it when you are away from home 300 days in a year. But I don’t know how else to live. The stock markets tanked, as did my heart.
The mountains of West Java were a welcome change. I’m happy to never have to step into a phone booth again. One day, just to mix things up, I’d like to be here, not there. But I don’t know where here is.
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.
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.
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.
If it has ever occurred to you to start something, you know how lonely that can get. If you do that chronically, you probably over-estimate your abilities, have a high threshold for pain, or you're downright insane. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Welcome Drew Graham. Let's kick some ass.
For almost a year, I did this alone. I started a company in a foreign country, in a language I barely speak (getting better at it), in the city of traffic jams.
It was hell. I would not recommend the 'sole founder' approach to anyone.
(Insert ten months' worth of whinging)
Yet every time someone asked, 'why are you a sole founder?'
I found my answer to be somewhere between 'because I haven't met the right person' and resignation. Singapore is not the Valley. Singapore is a land of risk-averse people who would pick a prestigious-sounding multi-national over plucky little companies, even if they paid them more. Singapore is a land of highly paid jobs, insanely high rentals and cost of living, so there's no wonder that few of us choose to make that leap. (Why do I do it? I started early, and there's no going back.)
Meeting the right co-founder is possibly harder than meeting the right life partner. You pull late nights, need to know you can count on them, eat with them, fly with them, drink with them, hustle with them, and generally spend more time with them than you would with your family. You even get haircuts with them (see pic above for co-founders' co-haircuts).
That person seemed, for a time, unattainable. :)
I'm happy to announce that today my friend and fellow hustler Drew Graham has joined me on my journey at Wobe, as my co-founder and all around hustler companion. Our plates are scarily stacked to the ceiling at the moment, possibly beyond, which can only mean great things are afoot.
Thank you for coming on this crazy adventure with me. I promise I'll pack two pairs of pants, maybe even a map.
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.
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.
When I was growing up, I thought all families had the same weekend lunches as mine: a giant cauldron of yellow noodles, simmered so long in an anchovy broth that they fell apart when you picked up your noodles with chopsticks. You had to use a spoon.
Ah ma made them every Sunday, but ah gong made the chilli. Even today, I have difficulty accepting anyone else's roasted chilli in my soupy noodles. Kin Kin's legendary chilli pan mee comes close, but nowhere close to my grandparents'.
We'd all go for seconds, thirds, and Ah ma would not touch the noodles until she was satisfied we'd all had enough. "I don't like chicken wings and drumsticks, ew. I much prefer the tips." Her life was one of sacrifice, and of idiot grandchildren who ate all the chicken wings because we believed she only liked the tips.
In love and life, when you have been loved so fiercely, quietly, and sacrificially, it takes years of learning to learn not everyone will love you like that.
Thank you, Ah ma, for all the mee lay, chicken wings, kiam chye ark tng and pomfrets you made me have. I will be here with you even if you don't know it. I hope in heaven they have people cooking noodles for you, and I'm fairly sure it has an endless supply of pomfret eyeballs and soya sauce. Thank you for teaching me how to love.
In all of my 29 years, my grandparents had been such a big part of my life that I could have never conceived of a life without them. Like the 1128-episode TV serials they watched, Ah Gong and Ah Ma just went on and on.
In the background, their voices blended in with the voices of the Chinese TV stars I loved in the 1980s. In our tiny little flat where my parents, grandparents, brother and I lived, my grandparents and I drank tea, ate porridge, watched bad TV and forged a home together on stuffy Singapore afternoons so humid that the air wore thin. My parents were young parents; their parents even younger. My grandmother became a grandmother at the age of 44. She was also my defender, provider of tasty hot drinks, and full-time worrier: the act of not eating rice, at any time (even after lunch), was grounds to bring on DEFCON 1. No possibility of relenting until I had eaten another bowl of rice. This would repeat every hour.
I was the weird, silent, brooding grandchild, who said little and spent more time in my head than on the playground.
"I love you, ah girl," she said. "You are my little mouse. So soft, so quiet. I never know what's in that head."
What was in my head was any of the following things:
"I'm going to live in a hut on a farm and make cheese, Ah Ma!" (Much further than going to the moon, for a kid from a country with nowhere to go but the sea and large buildings)
"That sounds fun. Will you make me some?" Ah Ma smiled. She smiled kindly all the time, at everyone, but especially to her grandchildren.
"When I grow up I'm going to travel the world, Ah Ma!"
"That's nice, the world has many people for you to help."
She indulged my fantasies, and believed I could and would do all the things I said I would.
Everything my brother and I did, no matter how small or mundane, made her wide-eyed in wonder.
"Wow! You took a bus home successfully without getting kidnapped! Good job!"
"Wow! You managed to cook instant noodles without causing a fire! Amazing!"
"Wow! The both of you managed to go a week without arguing! Great job, kids!"
If you have kids, I hope you believe unconditionally in everything that they dream of. We do too little of that in spite of our modern accomplishments.
There are certain places where life seems to go on in the way one's forefathers have always lived. Singapore of the '80s was not one of them. My grandparents held different paperwork and nationalities in their lifetimes. My grandfather was a Chinese subject in Sun Yat-Sen's Republic, an illegal immigrant to then-Malaya where he may or may not have been a British subject. He was then, in the 1940s, a Japanese subject in occupied Malaya. With every decade he seemed to switch papers, though not by choice. In the late 1950s, a citizen of newly formed Malaysia, before finally arriving at the citizenship he would take to the grave: a Singaporean, finally, in 1965, at the dawn of the country's birth. Even as a child, I had a vague notion of this: the distance between my parents' lives and mine, was nothing compared to the one between theirs and their parents'.
My grandparents' world was, and still is, a black hole to me. Ah Gong did not like talking about his childhood in China: he did not appear to like it much. Ah Ma did not talk about her younger days in Malaya much; she did not appear to know that modern Singapore and Malaysia are now different countries. To her, home was Clementi, in the western parts of Singapore. Then there was her old home-in Johor, in another country. She just somehow needed a passport now to see her family. Theirs was a life of the tragedies of war, the chaos of a great fire, the unending struggle with poverty. The fear of unknown elements hiding out in dark corners: Ah Gong was attacked on the head with a cleaver once. He survived and did not seem to think much of it, for he never spoke of it. Their world was foreign to me.
To all who came to see me at the home I shared with my grandparents well into my early 20s, my grandparents were a constant presence. No one understood a word of what they were saying. They spoke a specific strain of Teochew with a perfect high pitch, in tones so song-like they seemed to have never left Swatow. If you had come to my house to work on a school project or to eat a meal, you would have only known of my Ah Ma as the kindly lady with a glint of generosity in her eyes, who often chattered at you in a language you had never heard.
I would have translated, "she asks if you would like Milo or coffee? If you'd like to have porridge? What about pork ribs? Noodles?"
It was as though I shared a secret language with my grandparents, the language of Chinese elves (so high-pitched, so strange, so song-like, most of my friends would say I sound like a fairy whenever I spoke to her). In our world, the one I inhabited whenever I spoke this language of elves and fairies with her, it was a world of love, kindness and happiness. I cannot be angry or upset at someone in Teochew, because the only people who spoke it to me taught me only the words of love.
Two weeks ago, my beloved Ah Ma left us after a long battle with dementia in which she degenerated and atrophied tremendously.
When I first learned of the concept of death as a child, I interviewed my family members about their thoughts on death. To my horror, Ah Gong said he hoped, wished, desperately, that Ah Ma would die first.
"How can you be so mean?" I poked his singlet-covered beer belly, before running into my room to cry secretly. The idea of my grandmother dying, even at 5 years old, even as a passing remark, was too much for me to bear. To me, grandma and grandpa just went on and on. They woke up every morning at the same time. They walked for the same amount of time at the same place every morning. They ordered the same food after the same walk. They took the same route home. They peppered their lives of sameness with jokes and tenderness.
When I stood in front of her coffin two weeks ago to say a few words about her, I, of course, broke down. Ah Gong, who once said he hoped she died before he did, had in fact been astute and well-prepared. She slipped away, never to return, after he died a few years ago. He made sure to prepare her funeral portrait, as one of the last things he would do for her.
My grandmother had few friends, I recalled, but she had a world of fans. People came from Malaysia to tell us how she had, as a teenager, refused to let her nephews and nieces go homeless. Despite having not very much, she found them a home. My dad spoke of how, as a child with her as a mother, he was acutely aware of how poor they were. Yet she would make it a point to feed the neighbours' 11 children because their mother had eloped and left home. She had a kind word for everybody, and kinder acts for anyone who needed it.
After gathering myself, I managed to squeak out a few things about her.
I used to be ashamed of my full name, I said. My grandparents gave it to me. It's the sort of name that's so full-on Teochew, so obviously old school, that once you saw it you would immediately know where my family came from.
You're a Teochew girl, aren't you. You sound like you never left the homeland-every time you ask me for fried shallots, I wonder why a little girl like you talks in such a funny, old school way.
That made me hate my name and my accent, but I no longer do.
I did not know my grandparents' names for most of my childhood, I said. I honestly thought their names were Tan Ah Gong and Tan Ah Ma.
Many of my peers in Singapore can barely communicate with their grandparents: the Speak Mandarin campaign coupled with the English-first policy made sure to eradicate any ability to speak the Chinese dialects. I was lucky to have had a window into the world, into my past, through the both of them.
I don't even need a map to know that Swatow's cemetaries were probably on mountains or hills. The language gives it away. The act of taking the body to its final resting place, be it a crematorium or a burial site, is known as chuk sua. Going to the mountain.
So to the mountain, we went. You're supposed to follow the hearse, dressed in white and black, and you're supposed to beat your chest and cry and weep loudly all the way to the mountain. But in super urban Singapore, all that we could do was to follow her for 50 metres to the edge of the carpark, before hopping into a bus to the crematorium.
After the fire.
When Ah Ma was 26 years old, there was a Great Fire near the house. She, along with tens of thousands of people, would run from their homes in search of safety on a hot, infernal afternoon. Ah Gong came scurrying back to the house from por doi to look for them, panicking when he found nothing but ashes. He thought his young bride unprepared and ill-equipped for the dangers of the world. Yet she had demonstrated uncharacteristic resourcefulness: she had been hiding in a temple with their children for hours, picking that place as it was one of the few landmarks left standing after the fire.
After. All that was left of her was a box of bones and ash. We took turns moving her bone fragments into an urn. Parts of her bone fragments had the pigmentation of the various medicines administered to her late in life; they were frail and brittle, just as she had been.
We put her on her shelf. We stared helplessly at her marble engraving. We vacillated between the loving, silly moments with our adorable nieces, and the hopeless sadness that filled us.
My grandma lived 80 years of her life in poverty and in fear. Her hope and her love overcame all of it. All I can hope for is for all of us who have received her unconditional love to carry her with us in the rest of our lives.
That our hearts are large enough to carry the world, because she showed us how.
I've been selling and hustling for much of my young life. I've learned loads from each part of it, no matter how small or insignificant it may have been at the time. I sold cable car tickets. iPod cases. DVDs. Button badges. Most things, really. In hindsight, they've come together to define what I do today. It's amusing to think of it, really.
Bookmarks
In my teenage years, I spent most of my vacation months hanging out in the Central Business District. Each day, I would sell (under the 34 deg C sun and extreme Singapore humidity) various items, ostensibly for a charitable organization that worked with destitute elderly people in Singapore.
I was 15. It seemed like a great way to spend my days{, and I made them between $10 000 and $15 000 a day, selling bookmarks to disgruntled bankers and lawyers (I was very good at it). Years later, we found out that the founder bought fast cars with the cash, which is why I now have a bullet point in my own charitable organization (we send girls to school in India)-"we travel by bus, train and economy class, and the only people who get paid are the people who work on the field".
Lessons learned: it was the first time I learned to sell the hell out of anything, and if you stand in the heat and sweat long enough (12 hours), eventually people will buy stuff from you.
Button Badges
With my brother Adrian Tan's help, I designed and made button badges. We ordered a button badge machine from eBay. We had different themes (his was punk music), I specialized in ironic and weird businessy/political/tech buttons.
People in Kansas seemed to like my buttons. A lot.
Lessons learned: there is great value in making. I wish I did more of that, and I will be trying to do more of it. Making something with your hands was the best experience ever for a kid of 15, and eBay at the time was revolutionary. It opened up a world of global commerce to me.
Etsy before Etsy
Whenever we went on family vacations, I would convince my parents to loan me a small sum ($100?) so that I could buy a bunch of 'craft' items from Bali, Bangkok etc.
I sold them on eBay for ungodly amounts of money because I would write beautiful copy about "handmade" and "artisan". In 2000. I truly believed it at the time.
I still have some of those photo frames, notebooks and paintings in my parents' house. When I discovered at the tender age of 16 that all of this stuff was mass produced, I felt I could not see them anymore.
Lessons Learned: having a product that people want is basic, but having a product people want and can easily access, is essential. eBay and PayPal opened that window, but good old copywriting was the secret sauce, and it continues to be for me in most of my businesses.
DVDs
At 17, I came to terms with the fact that I am indisputably queer. I did not panic. I did not freak out too much. I was not bullied. But I also had no idea what it meant to be a queer adult: I did not know any such people, and I did not see them on TV or in movies. It was 2002. I ran a "DVD ring" which distributed queer video content (not pornography!) to other teens who wanted to see people like us on screen. There was no Tumblr. The idea that queer people existed on screen was something that saved my life.
The movies were horrible, and I don't believe that queer movies have improved since. It was something I needed to do at the time.
Lessons learned: I cannot do the things that I don't love. I don't love queer movies, and I don't love incremental tech that aims to solve first world or Silicon Valley problems.
iPod skins and cases
In the first year of college (2004), I imported iPod skins and cases. I was loads cheaper than anything available on the market-I seemed to know what people wanted, and built the connections to make that happen.
Emboldened by my marginal success as a 19 year old, I wrote to Waterfield Bags telling them I would like to be their sole Singapore distributor. I had no capital, of course. They wrote back with a very encouraging note and walked me through the process of what I should have if I wanted to do that. I of course, could not garner the resources. But it was the first time that someone had ever spoken to me like an adult. As a young Singaporean kid at the time, most of my life experiences (outside of the home, which was a very progressive environment for me in every way) had been about the things I could never ever do because I am a kid and I am a girl and not rich. 10 years on, just a year ago, I would get on a motorbike and travel a distance to a tiny office in a Jakarta suburb, to bug somebody to give me the rights to sell rather hard to get. He would say yes, and it would become the basis of all of the work I am doing today.
Lessons learned: Don't pre-judge yourself. You are not weak, inferior, poor, or incapable because someone of where you come from or what you are. Action, like the act of reaching out and saying I will do this, does.
Macs
In 2004, I started selling Macs at one of the Apple retailers, and did so well I was featured in Cult of Mac and Scoble's blog, which brought me a certain degree of international / tech 'fame'. There are many people I know, still talk to, or have met, especially in the US and in Europe, because of these early international tech links. In many ways, every aspect of my adult life has changed because of the years I put in selling computers and iPods. That I run around doing crazy businesses, Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement speech. Learning to sell the shit out of anything, standing on my feet for 8 hours a day. And I mean anything.
Through my time walking the fertile grounds of Mac stores selling thousands of dollars of hardware a day, often to the extent of forgetting to eat, I developed a loyal clientele of high net worth individuals to whom I became their personal technician. That put me through 4 years of relentless backpacking throughout and after college. I encrypted emails for mining tycoons. I backed up data (there was no 'cloud' back then!), retrieved data from corrupted hard disks, ran around with bootable flash disks with installable OSes and data retrieval utilities in my wallet. I had a FireWire cable in my pocket most of the time. I took apart hardware, put it together, and somehow never had enough screwdrivers. They paid me well for it, and they taught me about charging for what clients should think I am worth, rather than what I thought I was worth, which at the time was, not very much. I got to see every single Southeast Asian market extensively, traveling on $200 for a month (how did I do that?), learning to stretch my dollar. Being a part of the Jobesian / Apple meteoric rise and return in that period changed everything about my professional and personal trajectories.
Lessons Learned: hustle hard, and do it well; people in general will not take advantage of you. "How much will it cost for the 7 hours you just spent taking stuff apart for me and saving my data?" "Maybe $100?" (Remember, I was 19…) They would laugh and say, here you go. And hand me $1000. It taught me that when I am in a position to reward a young hustler, either financially or in terms of opportunities given, I most definitely will to pay it forward.
When I was in the middle of all of that, people constantly asked: why? What good does it do? Why are you travelling around India or Indonesia for weeks and months and living like a hobo, instead of taking multiple prestigious bank internships?
Somehow, I had the weird feeling that it would all make sense. It has only just started to (and it's not like I did shabbily in the time before). I quite simply chose a different path, not because I had so much conviction and talent, but because to me those paths were the only ones open to me.
I'm so excited to see what the next 10 years will bring. I've spent the last 6 months living in Jakarta, building Wobe and getting to learn every single day about the wonderful place that is Indonesia. What I have now, which I did not have before in my formative entrepreneurial years making buttons and selling DVDs, is a team of hugely amazing, talented, and most importantly, good people, who I have the privilege to lead. Teams are everything.
I've come to see that these insane plans of mine did not come out from a vacuum. I did not just sit in an office one day and decide, "I should get into (insert generic type of) business". They came from sitting in a 36 hour bus rides talking to people in languages I don't understand (Turkish and Arabic, for example), building and making all kinds of crazy products with all types of crazy people (I once built a website for a West African airline, but they never flew because their leader was deposed to Burkina Faso).
They came from being told several times a day that I could not have something because I am a girl, a foreigner, or just plain unlucky. A train, a bus, a business opportunity, but having to figure it out anyway because sometimes… you just have to.
One morning in 2010 I got out of a train from Aleppo, and found myself in Gaziantep, a border town between Syria and Turkey. The problem, as I soon found, was that I had no euros or Turkish lira. I did not have any money except worthless Syrian money. There was no ATM at the train station. I was, in short, screwed. Experiences like that have been far more difficult than anything hard about the hard in "it's so hard to do business in Asia".
(I managed to barter a ride to the next city.. I think I traded a Turkish kid some notes and coins 'from the Far East' so that he would buy me a $1 bus ticket!)
Experiences shape you. My formative entrepreneurship taught me about payments, exchange rates, marketing, making, selling and most importantly, customer service.
The time I had to sleep on the dust outside Trichy airport (long story), when the auto-rickshaw I was driving around South India broke down on an unlit hill. The many times on the road in which I've had to deftly worm my way out of extreme sexual harassment. All of those experiences are starting to make sense to me now.
I probably spent less on all of that over the past decade than I did on getting a degree. As a child, the stuffy classrooms in Singapore that I sat in and the theoretical problems I worked on, may have formed the foundation for many other things. I learned about hard work, and I also learned about dogged persistence there. But if you told me that all of my childhood dreams, inside those classrooms, looking out into the world and dreaming of a life on the road, doing things in the world, outside of a four-walled environment, that all of it would come true and that reality would be even better, I would not have believed you.
Thank you to all the crazy ones who believed in me enough, some of you even enough to come along on the ride with me. I pack snacks and biscuits, and two pairs of pants.
Holding hands with your girlfriend in public is either an act of defiance or shame.
The world is years away from The L Word: nobody knows yet that it sucks, that lesbian life does not have to be "like that". (Bette Porter is bad for you; Jenny is worse.) No one has ever met a married queer couple. The idea did not exist. You're supposed to aspire to cohabitation, no kids, and two sets of power suits. But you don't.
You are never going to meet the woman of your dreams at the smoking section of the weekly queer party. Definitely not on the dance floor. They can't hear a single word you're saying, and they don't care. They don't care that you've found your major and the internship of your dreams. They won't even remember your name after they've fucked you (badly).
But it's not 2000, and no one really cares who you hold hands with anymore. Kinda. Sorta. We've made a ton of progress-there are now women married to each other! And you know them, because they write about it on Facebook! Ha!-yet for all the progress in the world, the music never improves at these parties. One day, maybe in 2040, we will have driverless cars and queer clubs which play jazz. I'm putting all my money on the driverless cars.
I just want to tell you that it's ok if you're badly dressed, somewhat awkward, and a bag of nerves. That your nerdy hair cut is OK, too. The makeup you don't have-you can always YouTube it later. Or not. Someone out there likes badly dressed nerdy girls who don't know how to put on makeup. They'll even listen to you talk about linguistics or Burmese history or app development, too. You'll meet her.
It's ok to screw up. It's ok to be messy. Nobody expects you to "grow up" any faster than you should. Your friends who are so 'sorted out'? They're all pretending.
That older woman you love is going to break your heart.
You're going to let her. Often.
That's okay, too. We learn.
Drink good whisky. Toss the vodka orange shit. If you have to drink rum and coke, make sure it's good rum. One day you'll learn that drinking is fun only when it tastes good, and you might even learn to stop just before you are no longer in control of your body, or your thoughts. Two is a good place to start taking stock. Zero if you are driving.
If the booze makes you want to call or text your ex / the love of your life (who doesn't feel the same way anymore, or ever), give your phone to your friends and tell them to never give it back to you until two hours after a sausage McMuffin.
It's okay to use an alias until you're comfortable that the girl you're talking to isn't an axe murderer. With girls, that can take anything from two minutes to never.
Don't stay over unless you want to see her again. Or unless she lives near a cool breakfast place, and it opens early.
One night stands are boring. But if you have to, and there are seasons for that kind of thing, you need to be ok with learning to ask and to answer uncomfortable but important questions. It's the right thing to do.
Avoid hyphenated relationships you're not really involved in, like the bubonic plague. They're worse than that. For example, avoid dating your ex-girlfriend's ex-girlfriend. Also avoid accidents: do not sleep with your ex-ex girlfriend's on-off girlfriend. Hyphens are trouble. There are hot, single women out there. You just have to look outside your phone book. No hyphens. No exceptions.
Eventually, you'll learn to identify the toxic ones before they even come close to you, and your heart won't be needlessly broken anymore.
Is there a type you're drawn to? Do they break your heart? Maybe it's the hapless artist whose broken spirit you want to save. You need to let her know she's not going to set your life on fire, just for the heck of it, ever again. Perhaps it's the stoic, powerful women in your life who don't appreciate your struggle for parity. It's ok-you're going to be more powerful than them someday. Without stoicism.
They're going to make you think that it's your fault. It's your fault that you're a slut. It's your fault that there's a string of broken hearts. Sometimes, it is your fault. Own up to them when you can. It might take years before you are sorry enough for everybody. But you tried. And no one cares.
Quite often, you will meet women who want you to travel halfway around the world to prove that you are really into them. They don't mean it. Don't go, unless you have other things to do there. Or unless you have a fire for her which isn't just in your loins.
If she wants to marry him, and still see you on the side, leave.
The world tells you it gets better. It does, and then it doesn't.
People-and this can be family, insurance companies, government bodies-are not going to take your love seriously. Especially if you are a woman who loves another woman. If you are feminine enough, nobody will like your 'rejection' of masculinity. If you are not, nobody will like your 'attempt' to threaten theirs, a threat which you've made just by merely existing. If you are a woman who loves a woman who was not born one, it's going to be that much harder for you. You will not be invisible for much longer.
Your family is much more resilient and loving than you imagine.
Love them back.
Be young. Be queer. Be the nerd that you are. When you get older, it's the algorithms that will get you laid.
There's a wealth of literature out there about this, but it can never be said enough. Too many people work with assholes.
You see them everywhere.
The cafe owner that takes a shortcut by hiring an asshole barista? The barista plays shit music at your cafe and nobody wants to go there.
The startup founder who values talent over attitude? The asshole co-founder or top exec, no matter how good they are at their jobs, is going to screw you over.
Eventually you realize that you're losing money and that nobody wants to talk to you at industry events anymore. Or perhaps investors or future team members take you aside to say they want to be a part of your dream team, but… that guy is an asshole.
Assholes don't inspire trust.
Assholes can sometimes be nice, too.
People often make the mistake of assuming that the opposite of an asshole is a push-over. It is not. The opposite of an asshole is a decent business-person or partner who brings net positives to the table. An asshole, no matter how occasionally nice, perhaps to certain people, or to most people, has certain characteristics which breed mistrust and disdain.
At my first startup, I worked with a guy who was a really nice person, and very good at his job-to me.
I was new to the scene. I had no idea.
He had ideas, he got things done, he was a good person-to me.
But he was not a good person to people who could not give him something.
There will always be people like that.
I'm talking to a handful of investors at the moment and what I do for each one is to see who has worked with said people before. I call them, no matter how tenuous the link, and say: "What do you think of ____?"
You don't really have to get more specific than that.
You can, of course, to clarify some of the assumptions that people might have made, or to get more details on deals gone sour, etc, so that you can make up your own mind.
But I've found most often that if I am going to be met with silence or awkwardness or worse, with hemming and hawing which can seem unjustified, it's a red flag for me.
This applies to people I hire and to people I date, too.
You need to be sure that this person doesn't kick old ladies or torture pets when you're not looking. A good way is to see how they treat waiters and how they respond to the homeless or the poor.
I don't need you to be a bleeding heart old lady hugger (please don't), but life's too short for anything that isn't "fuck yes, yes and yes".
No amount of money is ever worth it. That's not idealistic-it's the most practical advice I was ever given.
Some time ago, some people (read: entrepreneurs) I follow on Twitter posed a seemingly innocuous question. What drives us, as so-called entrepreneurs, to do what we do? Is it hubris? Ego? Is it an out-sized and unrealistic view of one's abilities? For most of us, choosing this life also means the opportunity cost we left behind, often reluctantly: decently-paid jobs with career growth at startups, VC firms, tech companies, banks, even… bars. There has been no better time to be a tech exec. My friends, and I am sometimes envious of them, clearly smash through the income and lifestyle brackets in the top 1% of the cities they live in, even the world-what we do is such a upwardly mobile trajectory. The lifestyle, with the stock options in soon-to-IPO companies, global travel as part of international "launch teams" in the most successful tech startups, fuelled by the globalizing of venture capital and focus of said capital in my part of the world, is certainly tantalizing. No longer do you need to work in finance, it seems to say, with each job offer and recruitment mail, in order to eke out a nice life for yourself and your family. The stock options certainly don't hurt.
So what can it possibly be that some of us choose to do this? Even though it's easier than ever before to raise money and do your thing, the fact is no matter where in the world you do this, building a business is just terrible. It's fun, otherwise we wouldn't be drawn to it. It can also be rewarding, otherwise we wouldn't try. But. It's hard.
I'm torn:
Between the deluge of entrepreneur porn articles and this shit is hard articles (like this, but 10x more pity): I'm torn.
On the one hand, having the ability and the opportunity to start and run your own business, even to try, is a damn privilege. It really is.
On the other, there are so many moving parts. Skill sets you need to suddenly and abruptly become a ninja at. As a founder, from HR (super important) to project development to technical skills to payroll to accounting to taxes to… whatever challenges it throws at you, really.
The last couple of weeks have super hard.
Stressful.
Energizing.
Insane.
Gut-wrenching.
Incredibly amazing.
Many startup founders come across founder depression at some point, and I think it's a real risk you expose yourself to when you put so much of yourself on the line. No matter how well-adjusted you think you are, you need all the help you can get.
This is my second company. My first, right out of school, was a dev house that specialized in creating innovative marketing projects for advertising and FCMG companies through the then-new mobile and social platforms.
Pushing 30 this year, doing this at 30 is a world apart from how it was like to do this at 22. I'm sure there are many young startup founders who learn and grow on the job, or perhaps possess a certain self-awareness and ability which I did not have. But. I find myself, this week, making dozens of decisions daily-on the sorts of things which would have caused me a lot of grief, time, money or existential angst, back in the day.
I have the opportunity, the right teams, and the business partnerships to push through with the sort of tech business I have always want to do: tech, finance and social good.
Now?
Now, we ship. And learn. And ship again. And learn again.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a bit of both, really.
I'm not one for the mumbo-jumbo of the Myers-Briggs test, but I suppose it was striking that when I did it before my startup I rated very strongly as INFP, and yet now I'm very much on the ENTJ spectrum. It appears that having to do shit in a prompt, aggressive way does bring out very different approaches.
So, startups are hard. You already know that.
In my case, every attempt to think that through inevitably ends up being a little self-pitying.
How and why did I decide that leaving my family, and puppy, coming to a foreign place, to work on some problems involving the silos of payments, mobile, commerce and gender equity, was the best life and career decision of all?
Yet… I wouldn't have it any other way.
Yes, I know the rates of failure are high, in any startup. Not to mention one with foreign laws, language, culture, and way of life/business.
Yes, I know that there's only so much hustle can bring you. There's also the regulations and expectations of archaic industries and economies in certain countries.
But man, it's exhilarating. If shit hits the fan and nothing goes the way we intend despite the best laid plans of man (and woman), then at the least we can say that I now have very specific knowledge and connections in some fairly obscure Asian markets.
It was a brutal week.
I lost a kid in the community my foundation does a lot of work in. She was 14. She had dreams. She was vivacious. Perhaps, her undoing, in an unforgiving climate.
I lost a key team member. To the same brew of inexperience and lack of discipline and foresight. But team before product, and it's never going to be easy.
Also, some huge gains. Solved some massive business obstacles. Created some solid partnerships. Brought in many valuable individuals to build the team. Net-net, a good week, if a little brutal.
There's shit to do and a world of problems to solve. A glut of solutions we can create and design, and hopefully do so beautifully, with elegance, sensitivity and impact.
In late 2012 as I stood on a similar crossroad contemplating major life decisions, mostly relating to the geography and type of work I wanted to surround myself with, I found tremendous opportunities, but I also found my heart had already decided.
My 30s are to be spent in my backyard. In Asia. In the emerging markets of Asia. Doing as much insane and crazy shit as I can possibly throw at it. I feel honoured to even have a single shot at it.
I am.
It was the best of times, and the worst of times. Ask me again some weeks from now. Months. Years.
I think I will say that there's nothing else I would rather do, and nowhere else I would rather be, than here in the heart of Java, toiling for a dream.
I was just telling someone tonight: I force myself to meet a different stranger in Jakarta every single day that I'm here.
Even if I'm exhausted after work (which I usually am), I try to meet a new person, or eat a new food. Go to a new area.
The first time I lived outside of Singapore was when I moved to Dubai in 2007 right out of university. Then, without the metro or a usable public transport system, I was lost, angry and disoriented (I don't drive). I hear it's different now, but I'll never know.
Jakarta, despite the terrible traffic (and I don't think I'll ever stop saying that; I certainly haven't heard any locals stop complaining), works for me.
Between the ojek (motorbike taxi) and plentiful and good taxis, I'm pretty much covered.
I try to practise my Indonesian with total strangers, too.
Tonight's conversation went a little bit like this.
Cabbie: Why did you not get into the cab earlier! Is it because I am black?
Me: No!
Cabbie: Okay!
Me: How long have you lived in Jakarta!
Cabbie: 20 years! I'm from Timor! I play in a band! Check it out on YouTube! T-I-B-E-T B-A-N-D G-O-M-B-A-L
Me:Tay- ee- bay- aa- tay… fuck, what's this G in Indonesian?
Cabbie: Watch my videos! I'm singing! Let me put on some of my other music for you!
Me:(recognizes words like… cintamu, denganmu… JIWANG ALERT GOES UP)
Cabbie: Do you know about the galau?
Moments like these.
Rockstar cabbie in ridiculous YouTube video.
Nus Bany, is his name. He's the one in the insane costume. He also arranged and composed most of the music.
Nus Bany is now my regular taxi driver contact.
I intend to unleash him on all of my unsuspecting business visitors.
Yes, I know about the galau.
And it might be a sign that I'm moving further away from my Peninsular Southeast Asian roots when I now say galau over jiwang.
I've moved to Jakarta to take part in Ideabox with my startup, WoBe
I'm writing more on Medium these days. The blog format is unsatisfactory to me at the moment
Over there, I've started two collections which may be interesting to some of you. In The Java Diaries, I obsessively track my time in Jakarta in the name of learning. In Myanmar's Second Wind, I write about my year in Yangon and the people I've met there, from the tech entrepreneur's point of view
Know someone fun or interesting in Jakarta? I would love to meet them
Call it what you will - if there are some among us in Singapore who fashion ourselves the conservative majority, the silent majority, the moral majority - that line, and its consequent political implementation, is bound to fail. It is not enough to view what we are currently witnessing as a 'culture war', as 'us vs them', or even as a fundamentalist Christian vs secularism issue within a solely Singaporean prism. We need to view this as an extension of a larger, global struggle for rights on the one hand, and for bigotry masquerading as 'religious liberty' on the other, then be appropriately alarmed by what the future holds if this so-called faith-based oppression of minorities goes unchecked.
Like its theological counterparts in other parts of the world, namely the United States' very own 'pro-family' Moral Majority lobby, our evangelicals' are on a march to frantically reclaim the "family" from the "majority" and the "morality" from the "society" they claim to represent. Unfortunately, our very own culture warriors have neither the numbers to form the majority, nor the authenticity of 'morality' whichever way they swing it. On top of Christians forming no more than 18% of the population, the number of Christians of the fundamentalist stripe is even smaller, making them the minority within the minority. These numbers would not be a question at all if they didn't also try to style themselves as the so-called majority whose 'norms' must be accepted as gospel.
To their minds, the imagined enemies are the "LGBT activists" who apparently have "militant agendas". There are calls across the land by their activist pastors to alternately wage "spiritual warfare", or to wear shirts of a certain colour on one specific weekend each year. Their defence, they claim, lies in how "if the minority fights them, they have to fight back, to defend God / home / family / their children / the future / the moral fabric of society".
It is not necessary to establish who started it (even though there is plenty of evidence contrary to their claims). It is sufficient to merely look at some of the 'demands' by the so-called moral police. What do they want?
to protect their children - and everyone else's children - from the corrupting influence of books with themes they are uncomfortable with (today: gay penguins and alternative families, tomorrow… anything they feel opposed to as well?)
to pushback the perceived invasion of 'community norms' by a perceived minority (today: LGBT issues, tomorrow… what minority rights will they oppose?)
to establish faith-based alternatives to 'controversial topics', such as sex education, often at the expense of scientific proof - look at our abstinence-only sex education, for one
to reinforce the superiority of the 'majority' and its 'norms'. To date I have not yet heard a definition of what either term refers to. Is it a racial majority? Religious majority? Some conflation thereof of a minority within the racial majority which has the majority of socio-economic-political privileges? A reinforcement of the importance of 'family', hetero-normativity, compulsory heterosexuality, and the necessary rejection of all other narratives which do not fit the One Man One Woman Two and a Half Children and a HDB Flat Grand Singapore Plan?
above all, they want the State to affirm their special status as heterosexuals whose 'majority' opinion matters; they have always wanted no less than a theocratic state
It is the last demand which is the most worrisome.
Have Dominionists Hijacked the Christian Conversation in Singapore?
Throughout the entire saga the truly terrifying thing has been to hear again and again, the chest-thumping of the so-called majority. I do not know what they stand for, and 'pro-family' is just highly politicised polemics borrowed whole from the American Right, and we all know how well that's gone. They've run the whole gamut from political action (LoveSingapore's 'write to your MP!' circular) to political hijacking (Lawrence Khong's cornering of former Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong); to the steeplejacking of secular organisations, to religious outfits masquerading as secular organisations providing scientifically dangerous sex education (Liberty League), the concerted effort to remove books from the National Library -as the hypothetical ground is ceded and Singaporeans, they sense, are becoming more secular and liberal, the louder the chest-thumping gets.
Some well-informed and extremely educated detractors of the LGBT movement (including the downright homophobic and bigoted), justify their oppression and discrimination by saying the more rights the LGBT community receives, the fewer rights the people of faith are going to have. Just as the 'pro-family' lobby here imitates their American counterparts as if by mimicry (no surprise, their theology and world view is exactly the same, and imported whole), what we are witnessing here in Singapore is the leap from outright anti-gay lobbying to the sort of political action which tries to define their bigotry as "religious liberty" (just as it happened here). As the cogs of progress turn, there is bound to be widespread panic among the fundamentalists - Jonathan Rauch describes this group in the United States to be gradually turning towards some form of Social Secession, and I think we see some form of this behaviour here in Singapore as well. This frantic pushback arrives in the form of political action to 'take back' these lost rights of theirs, ostensibly by denying others access to any of their own; as well as in the start of an ideological pontification on what it truly means to be religious and to live in the developed world. We can't take lightly the threat that these fundamentalists pose to our secular society: from withdrawing their children from the school system in order to shield them from the evils of the world, now apparently popular among certain types of evangelicals in Singapore, to actual political action in the form of what we have seen Lawrence Khong try to do - the main struggle Singapore faces today, is who gets to decide, especially in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society such as ours?
The difference between privilege and rights is sometimes a tough one to navigate. When those with a lack of rights, such as the LGBT community (or any other less privileged community in the world), asks for more of what they did not have before, it is said that we are infringing upon the rights of the Majority, the Faithful, or some conflation of the two. The erosion of privilege is not the same as the gaining of rights. The latter arrives at some indeterminate point in each developed society's lifespan, eventually, and this is going to be an interesting 'battle' to watch. Some people like to call it the culture wars. That would indicate there are clearly demarcated camps, but there aren't. There are issues we fight over: abortion, sex education, homosexuality, 'alternative parenting'. But who forms either side of the camps?
It is interesting to note that here in Singapore just as it is in the United States, the clear flag-bearers of the culture wars who take it upon themselves to 'sound the trumpet for spiritual warfare' come from very similar religious backgrounds: they are a minority even within their faith. By and large they come from a group of Dominionists who have around the world emerged among mainline Protestantism as a force to be reckoned with - and one with actionable political aspirations. To summarise present day American-influenced evangelical Protestantism, these Dominionists represented by the likes of Lawrence Khong, Derek Hong and every pastor who has ever 'sounded the trumpet', are Biblical literalists with the sort of theological training which might make raise the eyebrows of some classical theologists and Bible scholars and clergymen. There are also those who belong to the "C3" school of thought, yet those groups seem less interested in the struggles of ideology and more keen to see to the financial development of their congregation (and their own coffers). Lawrence Khong's entire crusade - no, his entire ministry - appears to be based on C Peter Wagner's apostolic movement which has severe theocratic overtones. Like his mentor, he believes the faithful are called to 'retake' seven domains, or the Seven Cultural Mountains, with frightening prospects: Arts/Entertainment, Business, Education, Family, Government, Media, Religion. His wife also seems to believe that God sends HIV as punishment because, gays (screenshot here), though Nina Khong has since deleted her post).
What drives the Dominionists to wage crusades in Singapore, of all places, against perceived slights in a supposed Culture War? The Seven Cultural Mountains are supposed to be moved by Dominionist Christians, everywhere they go. Before the arrival of the end times, they are supposed to exert the Church's influence in all of the above-mentioned fields. A cursory glance at some of the key members of the anti-gay Facebook pages suggests affiliations to churches and groups which preach this line of thought. This is important because whenever their assumptions are challenged, they are quick to claim their opponents are anti-God and anti-Christian and otherwise unfaithful heathens, yet nothing can be further from the truth. There is a difference between opposing an entire faith and theology - and opposing a specific cult-like subset of that faith with demonstrably questionable ethics in political arenas. Today their battle is about homosexuality and 'alternative sexuality'. What will it be tomorrow?
It is important for all other types of Christians to be bold in criticising the political overtures of these cultists with political aspirations. Holding your tongue from politeness, reserving your judgement until it affects you - all of those approaches only serve to distrust your religious moderation, and play into the camps of those who would claim your faith. Even if it does not affect you on a personal level - think about what this means for your faith. Even if you are unsure of where you stand theologically on homosexuality, think about what you feel about using the name of your God to justify the propagation of hatred. You can call that out, at the least.
The Myth of the Rich Gay
Underneath all of this, I suspect there is a strain of homophobia and ignorance entwined with class envy.
A quick scan of the 'debates' people are currently having on the actively anti-gay Facebook pages and groups set up to fight against Pink Dot / propagate the wearing of the shirts of the colour white / establish solidarity against penguin- themed library books, shows a train of thought arise time and again: gays have it good. Gays are rich. Gays go to the gym. Gays are promiscuous. Gays drink. Gays don't have the responsibility of a wife and two kids and family to look after. Gays can do anything they want (because they have money, education and are affluent).
Not only is that line of thinking untrue, it's also dangerous (and somewhat patriarchal). I've also heard some politicians remark, privately, that they don't have to do anything to 'fix housing for gay people because they are rich enough to buy condominiums so they're OK'. Caricatures cannot and should not affect policy-making,
No doubt these people have barely met any real LGBT people, and have believed that the only group that is visible to them - caricatures of limp-wristed and/or well-toned gym-going gay men - are the only ones they are waving their flags against. Not the overweight butch with an over-sized shirt who was beaten up by a group of men for just walking down a street and offending their masculinity by holding her girlfriend's hand. Not the trans-man who lives in fear of being 'found out' when he uses the men's toilet, no matter how long it's been since surgery. Not the straight-acting gay man who hides a part of his identity from a large number of his social contacts and family, because they will never understand and coming out takes just too much courage, something he doesn't have at the moment but may have in the near future. Not the twenty-something year old young man who secretly wants to become a woman, but doesn't fit the bill of someone you would think wants to become a woman (he loves playing football, barbecues and makeup - at the same time). Not the majority of everyone on the LGBTQ spectrum - lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, and un-categorizable - who are really just regular people living in Singapore who have to fight to get ahead at work and in life, find someone incredible to spend their lives with, make decisions on whether they should live 'at home' or 'move out' and struggle to make rent if it's the latter. Sometimes, they even go to the church (or the mosque). And they love your God every bit as much as you do.
Discrimination vs 'Religious Liberty'
I keep coming back to this.
Whenever I read a stupid internet comment saying, 'but gay people are not discriminated against', what am I supposed to feel?
Am I supposed to feel like we've taken one step forward and two steps back, that when companies like Goldman Sachs and Barclays have openly affirmative policies, bigots perceive it to be discrimination against… them?
Am I supposed to feel that as a tax-paying citizen of this country, my value is not worth quite as much as a heterosexual version of myself?
Am I supposed to feel sorry that when I have children in the near future, I don't know what kinds of books people want to keep my own children from - and I don't know what these people would do to them? (Will my children be bullied by intolerant classmates bred by intolerant parents, the kind that tell their kids it is okay to laugh at their classmates who have no fathers?)
There is an underlying rhetoric among the anti-gay lobby: do not rub your sexuality in our faces, and we will not hate you.
On paper, that sounds like a reasonable request. In practice, not only is it not practical, it is also unfair. It is this line of thinking which leads to uproar over openly gay football players kissing their boyfriends (like in the case of NFL player, Michael Sam). Apparently, kissing our partners in a public manner is just too much 'rubbing in your faces', even if heterosexual sporting stars do that all the time. We're also supposed to not host picnics like Pink Dot, because when 26 000 people of varying sexual orientations show up, it means we are being disrespectful to society's norms. As a woman, all of these requests for 'civility' and 'respect' make me nauseous - it is these same requests which dictate that women should never be heard unless she is being respectful, womanly and 'nice enough'. Nobody would ever make that request of someone in a position of any privilege.
Every single day I read the newspapers, the Internet comments, the commentary on all of these topics, and I sigh a little.
The Media Development Authority of Singapore would rather reject a comic book because its eponymous character has a gay best friend who had a gay wedding; ignoring completely that said character had performed a valiant act also to save his best friend from assassination.
The National Library Board, in its flip-flop over gay penguins, sends the message that stories about love take the backseat to the sexualities and identities of who exactly is doing the loving - be it adopted families or gay families.
You can defend your homophobia as much as you like, even pulling the "but I have a gay friend / sibling / relative" card, but at the end of the day know this: your gay friend / sibling / relative has to withhold an important part of who he or she is from you, and you will never truly know him or her - not until you demonstrate a willingness to accept their whole identities (which isn't necessarily the same thing as accepting their sexual expression, though that ought to be a natural progression in any form of acceptance).
According to Singapore mainstream media, we're never just gay, we are "The Gays" and "A Gay". We lead a "gay lifestyle". Today, my gay lifestyle involved waking up too early, kissing my gay girlfriend (thankfully she's gay) goodbye, and boarding my gay plane to go do my gay work to eke out a gay living just like everyone else, gay or not.
I was brought up within a Dominionist church environment, which is why I think I speak out so harshly against it. I refuse to let both my faith and my person be usurped; and most of all I refuse to stand idly by while my secular country is being assaulted by people who claim to speak for the majority.
Sometimes, I ask myself why I live here. I think of all the times I have met gay and lesbian Singaporean couples who have said their farewells to Singapore, not because they wanted to leave, but because they are never going to be able to lead a life they want for themselves. In a way, the bigots are right - we can lead a mostly unrestricted life, which can be comfortable, even meaningful. Yet think about this for a second: what kind of life is it if all you can aspire towards is some form of co-habitation, and a life full of legal grey areas in everything from property to taxes to children? Whenever I speak to these gay Singaporeans abroad, who had tried so hard to make a life for themselves in New York or Stockholm or anywhere the liberal winds blow, there is always a tinge of sadness. If only.
As I get closer to the age where the thoughts of joint ownership of pets and property invade your mind, I too am worried. My gay lifestyle surely does not fit in here; it goes contrary to the 'community norms'. I am worried that we will never take a strong stand against those who wish to impose their values on the rest of us. I am worried that my children will never get to read a book about themselves in their national library. I am worried that the trumpets sounded by those who are quick to claim 'religious liberty' and trample upon the downtrodden, without ever once ceding any of their privileges, will sound louder than the trumpets that sound for justice and equality, as our pledge says.
That as we reinvent ourselves a nation at 50, we will all have planks in our eyes while decrying the splinters in others' shortcomings - yet what room is there for debate when one camp sees itself as the divinely appointed?
As the country turns 50 next year, I turn 30 - significant milestones for country and individual. Everyday I try to do my partin the struggle for justice, in the way I know how - through technology and social activism. Everyday I ask myself why I live here.
I have to remind myself that I am here because this is home, and that if we don't stand up to the theocrats, they will be pose a greater threat than any threats of the militant variety. In the struggle for Singapore's next fifty years, it is time to draw a line in the sand and to stand up for secularism, now more than ever. As the global debate on social issues shifts and fundamentalists, of any religion, attempt to shape their concerns as issues of 'religious liberty', it is important to note this: when minorities, whether sexual, racial, ethnic or otherwise, receive more rights, it does not in any way take away from the rights of the so-called 'majority' - those are privileges. If spirited arguments are going to be had on these topics, at least have the gumption to call it what it is: a privilege you are trying to defend, by the majority, for the majority. Then substitute "LGBT" for anything else - women, Muslims, migrant workers - and see how much water that holds.
It's often said that Singapore's next fifty years is going to be an interesting battle, and I agree. Bring out the knuckle-dusters, as the old man would say.
Ten years ago the Internet was a different place. Singapore was a different place. While it wasn't exactly the sort of pitchfork-wielding, gay-vilifying environment you would imagine, you certainly did not feel like people understood. You felt, at that time, at odds with large swathes of society, as though it would never accept you. Worst of all, you felt doomed to forever be avoiding the marriage question at Chinese New Year. It did not seem like your Asian relations would ever stop asking you intrusive questions about your personal life, when there was none to share because your chosen pronoun would cause you to be thrown out of the house, ostracised, prayed for, or otherwise politely ignored.
This year, the climate cannot be more different. The hate groups have openly stepped forward to identify themselves. They even have their own colours. Like in the US, and anywhere else this theatre of cultural war is being waged, they've chosen to usurp the word, family, for themselves. No matter.
Each year the dot gets bigger and bigger. Each year the LGBTQ community gains strength in multitudes; and its allies, even more. Each year I see more and more families; each familiar face is not the girl I last slept with in a club, unlike what they think, it is a friend, ally, collaborator, or all around interesting person.
Challenges abound. Hatred reeks. Certain religionists (that's really what they are, and I won't even sully the term religious by associating that with them) desperately hope to roll back the tide. In 20 years I will be happy to never have to hear a squeak from them ever again, for their present struggles against demographic and cultural sea change will seem as bizarre, absurd and archaic as opponents of interracial, inter-religious love a couple of decades ago.
Here are a couple of things I've written in the past decade. My sexuality has been a big and defining part of life; but love itself comes through, above all. Hope to see you at Pink Dot, and say hi if you see me.
P.S. Also, a friend and I are hosting Rabbithole, a brand new party for queer women who like good drinks and older company. 🙂 Come by at Life Is Beautiful, 99 Duxton Road, from 10.30PM on 28 June 2014.
I’ve spent the last couple of nights binge-playing through the Mass Effect trilogy, which reminds me a little bit too much of the late nights I’ve pulled work- ing on political campaigns and social causes in the past. The setup is about the same: all of the above require a single-minded approach to The Goal. Total dedication is best. Showers can be skipped. So can sustenance. The Goal can be anything: win an election, stay out of trouble, vanquish aliens or make some connections. All other objectives, like rescuing civilians or being a decent person, are often secondary. The joy you feel from completing a mission on a planet feels as real as any real life political victory you’ve ever thrown your weight behind.
One day you’re editing a speech for a politician, the next you’re fighting a fire — in the hull of the ship, or on Twitter. It’s all interconnected. I’m an avid gamer, political otaku and all around nerd, so perhaps I feel that way because my favourite games are the ones that in- clude, even combine, some elements of all of the above. Just like history, games — and their plotlines and char- acters — are written by the victors: those who control the battlefield. Some gamers like to believe that the game worlds we so love are or should be free of the in- fluence of politics and ideology; that they exist as works of art alone in a vacuum and should be appreciated as such. Others have written volumes about identity poli- tics and video games (and indeed there are many prob- lematic aspects associated with being a female, Asian and gay gamer).
Political capital is often spent by the ones who don’t know they possess it. Games are often presented as being mere works of fiction. Some of them, like Assassin’s Creed, even tell you as much, by starting off with a disclaimer calling it a work of fiction inspired by historical events. Yet being the nerdy amateur writer and political historian that I am, I’m more keen to line up the story they don’t tell you — in-between the cutscenes, behind the sto- ryboard and everywhere except onscreen. When you make a decision to assume a character or interact with one, how much of it was already made for you?
I turn 29 in a couple of months. T-W-E-N-T-Y-N-I-NE. This is doubly a shock because in my head I feel forever young, partly as a function of always having been the youngest person in every single circle I have run in, from friends to career to everything else really. I started blogging when I was 15 — nearly 15 years ago! — at a time when Tripod.com was a hosting provider, content management systems transmitted your passwords in plain text, and leaving a message on a ShoutBox was a valid way of engaging on the Internet.
That young life and everything that encompassed feels as faraway as the era in which I packed 30 Compact Discs to school in a metallic CD holder, and my music skipped — as I skipped — on the way to school through the deserted carpark of my housing estate at six in the morning, every morning. My peers are entrepreneurs and CEOs (being a high-flying lot), my friends are married and/or engaged, my contemporaries have published books, plural, and I show up in magazines occasionally as the Older Role Model For Younger Women. Wow, that's old.
All of that just means it's great fun. It's more fun when you're of age. At least that's how it's been for me. When it seemed dire — sometime around the final year of university, panicking, wondering: what do I do with my life? — when it seemed as though all that life had in store was some dead end office job and an indeterminate life (growing up gay in 1990s Singapore: hard), it's been hard to really envision the sort of life I wanted to carve out for myself. For the most part it was even difficult to articulate what that life would be. At almost-29, having seen a bit of the world, having that much more clarity, I have to say Fuck Yeah, It's Great. Anything is better than the black holes and the black spots that so terrify you when the alternatives aren't immediately obvious.
A hundred and seven weeks ago I left this city (KL) in a mad haste. I didn't know how to ship a puppy three hundred and seventy kilometres back to the city I was born and bred in. I didn't know how to step away from that comfortable but middling life I had built for myself over a couple of years. I didn't know how it was going to be. I'd set up a company at the tender age of twenty three, in an industry I knew nothing about. I learned more in those years than in all my years of education put together; I grew to love the hustle. That hustle was addictive, but I didn't know measure, and I didn't know the upper limits of my ambition and my ability. I got very, very ill. In a way, I had to lose it all in order to be a better person along the way.
I've now carved out a life for myself in the city I grew up in. The city I rebelled against and hated with every inch of my being (it was a much different place, then). It has been surprisingly good for me. Chalk it down to the stability of home and a rock-solid support network I'm lucky to have back here; to the incredible opportunities I get from being here; there's hardly a week which passes without the ability to reinvent myself in any of three or more amazing ways.
A decade ago I was a wimpy teenager with nothing but a half-baked sense of the general direction I wanted to move towards. The hardest part, it felt at the time, was to learn how to leapfrog the various handicaps I felt I had then: the curse of being female, gay, and opinionated. These days all of those things feel like strengths.
In the decade since, I've relentlessly pursued every single one of my goals in life and in love. It hasn't been an easy journey, but at least I can say this: I failed, I stumbled, I felt I could not recover from some of those setbacks; I bounced back, even if it took a very long time in some of them. I've managed to create a life for myself across continents which appears charmed and easy and privileged and opportunistic to some, but which I've worked really hard for.
A few months ago while having a bit of an existential crisis, I'd written in my (paper) journal: I'm ambitious and a perfectionist in my career, so why not in happiness? That's what drives me at the end of it all: the seemingly elusive happiness, defined by you and you alone. It was clear I could never be happy pushing paper behind a desk, so I ran from it. It was evident I could pretend to be happy in the sort of middling arrangement in which I had all of the trappings of comfort but none of the excitement of an inspirational love, so I had to learn to be happy on my own before I could hazard such risks again. I've spent the past hundred and seven weeks figuring stuff out, which is perhaps as self-indulgent as it comes, but I learned I just wasn't ready. You grow up a ton when you have bills and thousands of dollars in taxes to pay for your youthful mistakes.
This is what I do differently now:
Write clear, concise emails. I wish I knew it earlier, but learning to ask for things clearly and briefly is a life skill.
Talk about money without feeling weird. I don't know about you, but I used to find it difficult to talk about money. Expected compensation, ballpark estimates, money you will render for a good or a service — maybe girls aren't really brought up to be OK asking for what you think you're worth? I don't know. But ever since learning to do this, things get done faster, and more importantly expectations are met — or not — in a more efficient manner.
Say no. I believe it's a trait of many a person's younger life that saying no is just the most difficult thing you can do, next to talking about money, often together. A month ago I was at the cusp of a huge career development: I had three major opportunities, each better than the other. At the end of it I realized (a) you already know what the best option is, if you trust your gut (b) but that takes time and experience to learn to trust. I said no to the first two opportunities, and I'm happier for it.
Having to prove yourself is bullshit. There's a difference between establishing credibility and having to again and again prove your worth — and that's true in business and in love. With age I've also become more comfortable with the big idea of Who I Am and What I Stand for, and it's (related to the previous point) been easier to move towards what you really want as a result. For example, social media contests for popularity in order to Win Something — that's all bullshit. You have better ways to expend your time and energy.
Pay It Forward. Your mileage may vary, but I truly believe that paying it forward is one of the best things you can do. I run an NGO, organize community events for causes I Give A Shit About, and mentor some younger gay and trans kids because: why wouldn't you? It's so much more fulfilling that way. You get back in spades what you give, and not solely in the monetary sense.
Give A Shit, Or Don't. This part was hard to figure out. I've had some arguments and lost some friends over this. My version of it: in general, I try to be a nice person, and perhaps succeed at it. But I feel I've come to that point in my life where I'm aware of the limitations — of myself, more than anything else. And when I don't feel like it, or when someone or something has a negative impact on my happiness or that of a loved one's, not giving a shit is the only way I know how to deal with it these days. Anything else — the awkward pretense? the song and dance of adolescent and young adult social niceties? Fuck that. My only rule is if a person or organization or thing has a nett positive effect on the things I care most about — that's great. Life's way too short for people who tire you out and worse still, people who subtract from the world.
Sleep More. I'm late to the party, but I'm a new convert to the Sleep Is Really Important school of thought. It's related to aging, but damn, it's magic. Not sleeping, however, is toxic. No matter for what ends.
Do What You Love. I'm not a fan of this pithy statement. It's almost too slick. But there's some truth to it. What I prefer, though, is a combination of that with Change What You Don't. I love a lot of things — aviation, gin, India, travel, and so much more — but I'm not about to run out and eke out a living out of every single one of them. What helps me keep balance (and sanity) is the other part. What bothers me so much that I cannot sit idly by? For now, it's girls' education in India. Xenophobia in Singapore. In a couple of years it might be religious fundamentalism in Singapore. Or something else which will surprise me.
Learn Something New. It wasn't always so, but of late I've had a strict personal rule. That I should learn something I don't know anything about, whenever it feels like I'm stagnating. Last year, it was diving. And swimming. This month, it's classical guitar and gardening.
Know Thyself. Then Adjust Accordingly. As I previously mentioned, I set up my own company at age twenty three knowing fuck-all about tech and business. I now know how important it is to have strict accounting and paper-filing standards. When I was ill in KL it felt like the sort of health-related traffic red light which made me stop to take stock of my life, health and my abilities. I have always known I'm not temperamentally suited to conventional employment, yet I did not feel ready enough — financially or mentally, since I was for a long time at that point in my life where I could not even remember passwords or how to populate spreadsheets, so I could not.
Lastly, this: Jump On The Train When It Pulls Into The Station. In my industry there are various ways to convey this. One of it is, when the rocketship arrives, get on and don't ask which seat you're on. The other one is, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water? In that respect, I've just had my metaphorical train pull up into the station. So I'm going all in.
In a month and a bit, I get to pick up where I left off and call this past 107 weeks officially over. It wasn't possible without a lot of hustling, but here I finally am. I'm starting a new company which combines the two things I Give A Shit most about, tech and female empowerment in Asia. I have a great team, enlightened investors, and nothing to prove this time but to see how far technology can improve lives (tech solutionism? perhaps.) in that part of the world I care the most about. We get started — first in Jakarta, then in Yangon, which also brings me back to how everything comes full circles and all the dots connect if you let it, that I spent the better part of my youth aimlessly wandering around these parts finding things to do. When things happen, you grab them by the bloody balls.
None of this would have been possible if it wasn't for the incredible people in my life, especially my family. They keep me grounded, in all of the best ways. My dad, because he's never once flinched at being the rock of my life; my circle of best friends, because they never let me get too arrogant or too hurt, all at once. Mostly, because I have a home to come back to, in the literal and the figurative sense.
I'm excited to embark on the next phase of my life with the sum of every single goddamn part, and so much more.
As you may know, I set up The Gyanada Foundation last year. We've spent the past year building the organisation and learning as much as we can.
Last year, we supported 150 girls in India. This year we hope to raise that number to 350, including the existing students we have onboard currently; also expanding geographical reach alongside enrolment numbers at the same time.
Yesterday evening we had a great event at Artistry where we talked about what we've done so far and what we hope to accomplish in the near future.
Two years ago I found out I have an autoimmune disease. I will always have it. It changed everything about my life from what I do for money to where I live. It prompted a reinvention of myself which was at turns painful, but ultimately necessary. This is what I learned.
Never forego sleep. "You'll sleep more over the weekend" is bullshit. Not sleeping is bullshit. There is no amount of money in the world anymore that can make me sleep less, even if I grumble about it: I'm convinced sleep is the single most important thing I will never, ever give up again.
Make your own destiny. The single best thing I have done in my 20s was to grab every damn opportunity that came my way. And there were plenty. Even if people can't see the method in the madness, every little thing adds up. I truly believe that.
Be nice to your family. At least for me, they've been the foundation upon which I've been able to build a life. Through illness and in health.
Home is home. There are many reasons to not want to live in Singapore, but returning here to build my adult life here in my late 20s was the best decision. There are a ton of opportunities and we are in the centre of exciting things, at least for what I do in tech and business.
Surround yourself with smart people who care about people. I've been lucky to have some of the smartest people in the world in my direct orbit. I've learned an immeasurable amount from them. It's the only way to be better. If they're douchebags, nothing you learn can ever be of use.
If you need anything, just ask. There's a longish essay in this that I need to write sometime. If you don't know anything, ask as well. Only good things can ever come out of asking.
Don't date people who want to hold you back. Or down. Ever.
Do date someone who inspires you to get up every morning and change the world. Who won't laugh when you say that. Who will ask you what part of the world you would like to change today, and how she can help.
Milestones are a sham. You're expected to check certain boxes by a certain time: degree, first job, first apartment, blah blah. It's not that they're not important, but following someone else's timetable for your life is the biggest lie we've all been told.
Corporate conferences are never worth any amount of money you are asked to pay. Ever. If there is a giant billboard and a roomful of suits, go to the bar and do some real work instead.
At the hotel I had the receptionist scribble the name of my lunch spot in Burmese. Lunch that day was to be outside my sphere of Yangon familiarity: I had never been there, but I had been told by some locals that I must have a typical Burmese lunch at Aung Thu Kha.
So to Aung Thu Kha I went.
After gesticulating at each other for a while, my taxi driver stared at the piece of paper, looked up at my face and laughed: you speak Mandarin, don't you?
I speak Mandarin, don't I? I think I do.
I have always been perturbed at how people seem to be able to deduce secrets about me just by peering at my face. This happens at alarming frequency whenever I travel. Some days, I'm told I must be Burmese of Chinese origin. Other days, I'm Thai. In northeast India I am accepted by all of their tribes; my linguistic inability explained away for me by what must be my probable fluency in some another tribal language. Yet in China, the country of my grandparents' birth and heritage, I am too Southeast Asian. Too dark. Too English-speaking. I am the colour of the sun beating the earth, and China is a distant, lost memory a long way away from the sun.
So yes, I speak Mandarin. The ability to converse in it has followed me throughout the world, sometimes paying handsomely with access few other languages can offer.
He asks the inevitable. "How do you find Myanmar?"
Like everyone else who has asked that before me, before I have a chance to reply he gripes, "It must be terrible for you. It's terrible. All of it."
"I love the city and its people - surely all signs point to improvement!"
"Yes. Improvement also leads to traffic jams," honking angrily as a car tried to cut our place in a jam in a tiny residential lane.
In our brief conversation I learned he was the grandson of Yunnanese immigrants, economic refugees in their time. In the thirties, Rangoon was the shining light of Asia. Its opulent hotels filled with important people. Its white-only clubs invented cocktails such as the Pegu Club. The Yunnanese of China's deep south fled south to seek their fortune. Some have done exceedingly well; they have assimilated, in a way, taking on Burmese names and speaking Burmese fluently on top of their Chinese identities, preserved and left the way it was when they left in the thirties.
I wanted to know what languages they spoke at home, what they ate. He indulged me.
"My parents made us speak Mandarin at home when we were kids. If we slipped into Burmese, we got fined. They were born here, but they wanted us to stay connected to our Chinese identities as well. Oh, and Burmese food is way too oily," he shook his head as he dropped me off. "Let me know if you want Yunnanese or Dai food when you're back in town. It's better."
When 1962 happened, among the many atrocities that ensued: Chinese schools closed. Burmese citizens not from the Barma ethnic group were banned from attending certain institutions of higher learning. Just like that the lights went out in Asia's leading metropolis, and stayed off for a very long time.
In 2014, some of those lights have come back on. And with them, traffic jams. The unpaven road outside a bank near my hotel was, two days later, a pavement. For some, it's a clear sign Burma is going to be the gold rush of the east of this century: five star hotels' bars and Chinatown noodle stalls are similarly filled with businessmen from mainland China seeking fortune and glory.
"Perhaps I'll buy factory equipment from back home and ship it here," an enthusiastic new arrival announced loudly at a Cantonese-run noodle stall on the streets of Chinatown, rattling off his entire business plan in Mandarin while the other customers looked on uninterested.
Maung Maung, a middle-aged Cantonese-Burmese man jumped up with an oversized Chinese phone and pulled out a floor plan. They looked at it intently. Maung Maung went back to his noodles, slurping. (Maung Maung of just a few moments ago: "My Chinese name, lady, is Jin Bo. Jin for GOLD!")
"We'll make plans. See what help you need. I can help," Maung Maung told the newcomer.
"Do you have my phone number? I still don't remember what it is," the young mainlander said in a way that sounded like a plea for help. He'd either just gotten here or still hadn't shaken off his "overwhelmed by Burma" look.
"Of course I do," Maung Maung laughed as he perked up. "I sold it to you."
If you are anything like me, you've walked by Peninsula Plaza all the time and perhaps even entered it when you've needed to buy cameras and stuff. You've probably also wondered about all the wondrous things there. What is the paste they are mixing, what is this delicious-looking food and how can I have some of it, if only I knew what to order?
I've had the luck to spend more time in Myanmar in recent times, and I absolutely adore the country. I figured it would be only fitting to feature the community in Singapore for the next Culture Kitchen, seeing as that there's an entire building in downtown Singapore that caters to that community.
With a bunch of intrepid volunteers' help, I'm happy to announce Culture Kitchen 2: Little Myanmar. We'll have lunch featuring the best-of Burmese cuisine, you'll get to meet and mingle with the Burmese community, we'll also screen "The City Where They Live", a documentary about Meiktila's community and youth leaders and how they worked to heal the city after the horrific communal violence of 2013. We'll then do a Q&A with the filmmakers live from Yangon before kicking off a walking tour of Little Myanmar.
Sound good? Get your tickets here, there are just 19 seats left.
At 18 I certainly believed I knew everything. I did not know just how much it'd hurt this boy's heart if I told him the inevitable: that I was in love with someone he could never be-a woman. We went to our favourite bar and sat glumly while he tried to drink away his pain and anger.
At that time it felt as though life simply led me into various unforeseen encounters, at turns dramatic and at others explosive, as if I were but a mere spectator. The woman I loved walked into the bar. I stole a glimpse. I could not look away. Even without saying anything at all, he knew it was her.
She met the man she was to marry that evening after I left.
There was a girl I noticed at the campus coffee shop.
I liked her pants. And her hair. It helped that I sat at that coffee shop every day nursing a cigarette because that's what I did when I was young and stupid. She would walk by, and I would try to find out who she was.
Every day we passed each other in that little corridor or at the coffee shop. I don't remember how, but she agreed to come on a date with me.
We went to a place I still go to, then on a 46-day backpacking trip to India. I bravely led the way. By the second week we were at the Taj Mahal. We had waited to see the sunset because I thought it might be good to attempt romantic gestures sometimes. As the sun set over Agra I reached for her hand. She pushed it away.
We broke up at the Taj Mahal, which was fitting because we had also fallen in love at the Angkor Wat. From one wonder to another, she still could not erase the shame she felt from being with a woman. Even in a country where no one knew her name.
The next 30 days were epic and vengeful, full of sadness and train schedules.
The woman I loved four years ago did not marry the man she met at the bar. I may or may not have had anything to do with it.
The truth was that the more I sunk into the sadness, the more I elevated our mythology. It was not the great love which never was. We were not star-crossed lovers. Not only had I not grown from that point, I had even regressed. Waking up with her every morning made me feel I would lose her any time now. I was a little bit older now but really I was still the awestruck girl in my school uniform and my tie, wanting to know how I could punch above my weight because I can, and God she's hot.
We were the cartographers of silence which began with a lie, later snowballing into a mountain of mythology and characters with their own CliffsNotes and paths strewn with sad poetry and despair and sadness.
When you throw yourself at a wall repeatedly, it's okay not to know when to stop, especially if you enjoy feeling sorry for yourself.
But I had adventures to go on and mythology was too heavy to come along for that ride. I threw it away.
I don't dream very much, but that year I had a vivid dream: I dreamed of a tall, slender woman with a soft voice who captivated me completely in that dream. I felt happy in that dream. I was a new person in that dream. I grew to be a better person with this figment of my dream, in my dream.
When I awoke from that dream I was with such a woman barrelling down the River Skrang in Borneo on a hare-brained plan to see tattoos and drink moonshine with the tribal elders of the tattoo artists we knew in the big city. We hit a rock and the river rushed around us as if it wanted to have us whole.
We went places without names on maps. Places without maps. We were apart a lot, but she drove 300 miles to meet me all the time and we travelled tens of thousands of miles together when we could. I ended up travelling tens of thousands of miles each time I needed to see her, which was all the time. We met in Istanbul. We made video postcards about the places we were in without each other, and we sent them to each other every other week.
Eventually we decided it was time to try to steer our way home.
I don't even remember what home means any more. I had wandered a few hundred thousand kilometres, some of it by foot. Mostly by bus, train or taxi. Even boat.
Home was where she was. Some days it was London. Others, it was Kuala Lumpur.
I found a little house I thought we could be happy in, got a dog, and perhaps for a time we were. It feels as faraway as all of my 18-year-old memories.
I don't remember when I stopped trying. I was back at the Taj Mahal again, and everything about that monument still fills me with despair. I'm never going back there ever again. I looked at her. I felt despair. I didn't know how to fix us. I just stopped trying. Or talking. I held her hand on a cold New Year's Eve in Jodhpur. I felt nothing. I kissed her. She did not want to kiss me back. I fell asleep with my back turned, full of anger and secret tears. It had been that way for a while now.
A few months earlier I asked her to marry me. I was met with nervous laughter and panic. In hindsight, it was a bad idea. Everyone knew she would say no.
Except me. Ever the optimist.
The computer says no.
Everybody knows it. But I didn't get the memo. It was always no.
--
I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a lesbian in this society, and it all comes down to this: other people. It's that I have to automatically assume that all of the following are bonuses, not expectations: having my love recognized for the purposes of property, tax and inheritance; attending a partner's family functions without unnecessary outcry and suspicion; knowing that if I were to be in a medical emergency, my life partner would be legally allowed to make decisions on my behalf. In other words, to even hope for my future life partner to be perceived as anything other than a complete stranger, is going to have to be taken on other people's good faith.
As outsiders, that's all we have to go on: the goodwill of other people. The readiness of other people to stop thinking of us as criminals, sexual deviants and perverts. If I hold hands with a woman I love, I am rubbing it in a conservative society's face and being too declarative about my sexual orientation; if I walk side by side with one, the man who catcalls and makes lewd comments at us bordering on sexual harassment, is just, after all, being a man and is entitled to his opinions about my body and hers.
As for someone who generally feels like there is nothing in the world I cannot do, all I can do is to keep on doing what I do best-live my life as best as I know how, be kind to old people and animals, donate to charity sometimes, avoid premature death-and dream about the day I hope to see in my lifetime: when our lovers will be our equals, and our love as deserving.
In peninsular Southeast Asia there is a word of Malay origin, bastardized by Chinese pronunciation that perhaps best describes the prevalent mindset of the middle class in everything from career to politics: lugi.
More than the losing of face and the losing of status, our collective great fear is the fear of losing out. What of? Anything and everything. A recent history of imperialism, colonialism, authoritarianism and other forms of oppression have perhaps conditioned our brains into a state of perpetual loss. And need for perpetual validation.
Our toddlers go for a dozen classes, academic and non-academic, before they even learn to independently put on their pants. Other people's kids may win, you see.
It is not enough to get a perfect score at the "O" Levels, scoring a total of 6 points (the fewer the better, 6 being the lowest); to qualify for the top three schools one must have enough point deductions from higher second language, sports and activities, and alumni affiliation, so you're really aiming for 0 points.
To what end, paper pushers and PowerPoint warriors?
The most successful people I know who have emerged from this Matrix ask a different set of questions.
They do not ask, "what can I lose by doing this?"
They ask, "what can I gain?" Then proceed to minimize the risks through calculated steps and methodologies.
They do not ask, "how can this help me be seen to be more successful by my peers?"
They ask, "how does this help me learn, build, make a life I want for myself, help others, and can it also afford the life that I want such that my peers can see economic success attained through healthy, self-deterministic ways?"
They do not understand the politics of lugi and perhaps it is because some of us do not understand fear; every challenge is a learning curve to be conquered.
Of course this is a privilege of a certain socio-economic class, perhaps an indulgence, but for anyone of an aspirational mindset the fear of losing out is the biggest death knell you can sound. It's not a competition, but even if it was you'd better be competing because you love it, not because you're trapped in a race whose rules you don't understand and whose finish line offers an indeterminate prize you'll figure out later. Life's too short to be afraid.
Almost exactly two years ago I was, too, on a flight to India.
Only then I did not know exactly how drastic a turn my life would take on when I returned.
More and more of my friends are getting diagnosed with diseases similar to mine. Autoimmune diseases are the new black.
Across all of these experiences the one we've all had has been the extreme upheaval in all of our emotional lives.
Sometimes I wonder if the person who made those decisions at the time was me, or the severely impaired bodily part that's wreaked havoc in my head and my heart.
Even if the conclusions are the same in the end, I would still like to know that I had some control. But I did not.
There is nothing I hate more than feeling like my self-determinism, even if it doesn't really exist, has been impinged upon.
Even if the other person making decisions for me was just a temporarily damaged version of myself.
I've spent almost two years rebuilding my life.
I've subjected it to some pretty extreme versions of what it could have been and can be, and now I've chosen the version I like best.
I like this one.
This one:
This one is happy and confident, pushing 30.
This one is writing more, and better.
This one has had a handful of career highlights and is working harder to create the sorts of situations and opportunities that will define the next decade; it's within grasp.
This one has an incredible support system in Singapore, Malaysia, India and all around the world and feels like the luckiest person in the world to experience such love.
This one has a loving family. A beautiful dog. A lovely house in a magical part of the city that she loves more and more. A slew of projects taking shape.
This one is learning to finish what she's started.
I've struggled to articulate what I feel whenever I return to the city I once lived in.
It is a living museum of my loves and losses.
It is a diptych where one side is the city that I once knew and the other is the one I no longer do.
Time has stopped for me in that city. But I am learning to love it again after.
The city that is a living museum of love and loss merely preserves them so I can learn to love again.
The streets I walked in in them will never be the same.
Just as it should be possible to hold two opposing positions at once so as to form a better informed opinion, so too should it be possible to hold multiple feelings simultaneously so that we can love better.
For now I pick: terrifying, amazing.
Life's too short for compromises. I'm too fond of jumping off boats then learning to swim, anyway.
I've been coming and going from India for the last ten years.
In 2004 I started to hatch the first plans to flee the terrifying life laid out for me - that of a student in a Singapore university, doomed for the corporate world or for the civil service - into the wide open arms of India, which changed everything, and who I have grown to love unconditionally. Those early escape plans evolved into a lifestyle I would not trade for anything in the world, one which has given me ample global career and life opportunities simply because I could not sit still when I was 19.
I've written a lot about India in various forms, but here are some posts previously posted here about India:
Speak of India and its great cities, and someone is bound to correct you.
Mumbai, they say, offended, as though you didn't know any better. In other situations, Chennai. Yet I do say and I do like saying Bombay and Madras because those were the names we had for those cities, growing up a sea away from the subcontinent, and nostalgia counts for something, nationalist political correctness be damned.
It's a weird question I cannot answer whenever someone asks the inevitable, why do you love India so?
Where do I begin?
Do I begin with the story of how hearing my China-born grandparents conversing in market-Tamil with our Tamil neighbours as a child mesmerised me whole, leading me to watch Tamil movies endlessly wondering why I could not understand the dialogue?
Or perhaps it has something to do with how I was born a stone's throw away from Little India, how my parents were wed on Diwali, and for the astrologically-minded - of which I am not - that made perfect sense to explain away my identity confusion? My solo walks around Little India as a teenager led me into informal Tamil lessons I can no longer remember, and spice shop tastings that made me feel, for once, that this is a home I understand? _
_
Or that nearly all of my early mentors in childhood and adolescence were Tamil-Teochew poets and Sanskrit scholars who imparted in me a love for rhyme and meter and an irrational fear of booming voices; that later in life, nearly all of my friends, lovers, business mentors and collaborators would also be connected to India in some way or other?
None of that matters.
What does is that in 2004 I walked out of the airport in Calcutta and felt immediately that I had come home, through no other prior connection; and that every year ever since I have returned, twice, thrice, and more each year, sometimes staying for months.
Whenever I read travelogues about India I am often unable to understand why the authors keep writing about the Indian Arrival Syndrome: something about throngs of humanity and masses of people and rotting flesh and cow dung and about needing to flee. The only time I have ever felt that way upon arriving anywhere has been in the great cities of America and Europe, where I have arrived and thought: oh my god, where are all the people? I need to leave. (Eventually, I got over it. But I certainly don't write travelogues about arriving at places I don't know and wanting to leave.)
I love that I am at home in Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta and Bombay (I'm only just learning to like Delhi). That I have my secret places, amazing friends, and a world of possibilities. If I want to drop in on a film set, I can; if I want to organise a great conference, I can; if I want to do business, I can too; if I want to set up a foundation and educate a hundred and fifty girls, it's possible as well. I am aware everyone's mileage varies, including that of the people who actually live there - but that's just how it's been for me: it gives me an imagination. Mostly by showing me the extremities of the world.
After every breakup, illness, death in the family or other assorted tragedy large and small, my first instinct is to go to India - anywhere in India. It works. It's been called my Prozac, but what it is is really far simpler. India is where I go to make sense of the world when the world no longer makes sense for me. That arrangement has worked so far, this past decade.
I'm excited about what the next five or so Indian decades will bring.
When I think of the 1980s, I think of the news. In English and Mandarin, both brought to you by Raymond Weil.
When I think of the 1990s, I think of Michael Stipe's sonic-drenched wailing about his religion, or his lack thereof. And about the one sorry period of global history when everyone wondered too much about yellow lemon trees. Dookie.
If anything happened at all between those decades and now, they were these: the news was broadcast again two minutes afterwards, in a different language (the stories were the same). We flung playing cards at each other in school. We were told in many languages that New Zealand has nearly no people at all, and millions of cows, a fun fact all of us would remember for the rest of our lives. Between 10 and 11 many mornings, children stood by a very large (at the time) drain, brushing our teeth in unison. We rubbed our eyes to relaxing music to prevent the onset of myopia (too late for most of us). I carried a backpack from ages 7 to 13, which I know today to be nearly as large as the travel bag I would carry for the rest of my life, perhaps even as heavy. A battery of life-defining examinations - with as much relevance to my life as other acronyms like WITS and ACES - were survived, even surpassed, before I was deemed fit to be released into the world at large. In quick succession there were also the people I loved, the ones who left, the ones who migrated, or quite simply died. Raymond Weil faded into our collective memories like the playgrounds I never went to until they covered all the sand with foam so our children would no longer bleed when they fell. Perhaps they needed the sand to fill the new lands beyond our shorelines.
Sometimes, I moved one chess piece while my China-born grandfather brewed a pot of tea and filled out his little notebook with calligraphic scrawls I could not read.
We pretended, all the time, that I was winning.
I'd been acutely aware there were two worlds, even within this tiny country - I was born into one, and pulled into the second, kicking and screaming. Growing up I spoke no Mandarin, some English, but I spoke the sort of Teochew which made hawkers giggle as they scooped extra fishballs and minced pork into my noodles. "Girl ah," they loved to say, beaming at me. "You speak this language like an old woman from Swatow." My other grandmother brought me to the wet market and showed off my encyclopaedic knowledge of Hokkien classics, the kinds which sound like war cries and power ballads at the same time. "Sing", she said. "Sing the song about what you'd do if you had a million dollars."
I would sing. There would be more fishballs, more minced pork, more noodles for the little girl who could speak and sing the languages of her forefathers, but not say a word in Mandarin. I now speak Mandarin but I have forgotten the songs of my childhood.
The world I was pulled into was the one I entered against my free will when I turned 12. I had done well enough, they said, so I should go to the type of school which would improve my station in the world. My new classmates lived in large houses and apartments five minutes from campus, not 45 minutes away in a HDB flat as I did. They were chauffeured to school in Bentleys, Audis, and Jaguars; I took two buses to get there. Their mothers and grandmothers and even their father's grandmothers had come to this school, which was proud of its secular, elite heritage spanning more than a hundred years. It took pleasure in taking in young, scruffy girls like me, and slowly it turned us all into the same people: young women with poise, education, and class. "I've never been to a hawker centre in my life," my new classmate confessed. "I don't think I ever will."
In one English literature class, and we were the school known for producing writers and lawyers, there had been a discussion on the theme of protagonists who'd lost it all. "I imagine if my family lost everything we had, we might have to live in a HDB flat," a classmate said in horror. "In Clementi. Or Toa Payoh. Or one of those places." I lived in Clementi; I was pretty certain she had never been to any of those places.
For the most part, the school succeeded in turning me into the archetype. My Mandarin shaky, my English accented, my grades stellar, my sights turned not to Raffles Place and the local universities, but to Wall Street and Ivy League. I would be one of them. It was written.
What was also written: the writing on the wall. The boy in the boy's school next door who'd gotten a public caning for writing my name on his school walls. I was to be the heterosexual young lady with poise and education and a District 10 lifestyle ahead of her, but that was never my world. I shuffled in my feet when the boy I dated brought me home, and home to him was a grand dining room with a painter mother, several Lamborghinis, and uniformed servants - all ten of them. I balked when I realized I did not have, nor want, a walk-in wardrobe filled with the spoils of shopping trips to Paris and New York. Or at least Hong Kong. Straddling two worlds: one foot in the Clementi hawker centre, delighted by my $0.60 chwee kueh, the other learning to like $6 lattes and $60 set lunches. I must be a communist, they said, because they'd found a copy of the Communist Manifesto in my bag. My father was summoned. He said he was glad I was considering the vast spectrum of political opinions. I am not a communist.
The social mobility that afforded me, with all its trappings of 'station' and 'opportunity', propelled me to anywhere I wanted to be. London. New York. San Francisco. Sydney. Dubai. Delhi. Bangalore. Beirut. Helsinki. It was all there for the taking. I flirted with other cities, angered by my city-country's small-ness. Beware small states, the title of a book reads. I was afraid my city's smallness would close in on me like a beast of the sea, its tentacles firm around my neck. I was afraid I would never learn to breathe, much less fly.
I sought flight: I flew, and still fly, 250 000 kilometres a year. I sought breakup sex with Bombay and Bangalore: my lover, my city, would never be as free and uninhibited as you are, I told my Indian dalliance. I sought space: the vast expanse of the Empty Quarter, the ancient civilizations, the churches which stand on precisely where Cain slew Abel. Then when I was done I sought adventure. I raced tuk-tuks, I washed my hair in the river Skrang upstream from where the entrails of dead boars lay before they were to be cooked. I boarded the modern-day successor to Agatha Christie's Orient Express, after drinking bad Syrian beer at the Baron Hotel where she and Lawrence of Arabia had once lived. I donned burqahs and boarded the public bus to Aden, drinking tea with pirates real and imaginary, seeking refuge in hotels I associated with the James Bond movies I had come to love as a little girl in Clementi. I went to London and Kuala Lumpur in the pursuit of love. I flew too much in those years.
Then I came home.
I came home, road-weary, wanting to sleep in the bed I'd slept in as a child. The Sundays with 'mee lay', soggy yellow noodles simmered in pork and anchovy soup, boiled together for hours, helped. I came home, exhausted, wanting nothing more than to hold my grandmother's hand for as long as I can, which is, not very much longer. I lost my grandfather to sudden disease when I was gone on one of my adventures, and I don't know what I would do if that happened again. I came home to walk the streets of Jalan Sultan to talk to garbage-scavenging, tissue-selling old women who will never recall my name, but whose names and faces have been etched into my mind: Madam Chua. There are many Madam Chuas in this city. Madam Chua who walks with a limp, Madam Chua whose disabled children cannot work, Madam Chua whose family lives in two-room government rental flat, who makes a few dollars a day selling tissue to yuppies like me who most of the time turn our faces away and say, sorry auntie I already got tissue no need already thankyew. I can only speak to Madam Chua because my grandmothers made me sing Hokkien songs on demand. I can only speak to Madam Tan who swoops in on our beer cans because my grandmothers taught me to talk like the girl fresh off the boat from Swatow. That world is at once my world, and it is not. I came home to learn more about the Singapore I forgot.
At the Queen Street bus station at 6am one morning, I stood on the grass patch waiting for a bus to Johor. I imagined my grandparents making that same journey: the Johore Express, or whatever they called it back then. The decades-old ticketing office certainly still used tickets which looked just like they would have, when ah gong and ah ma boarded the bus in the opposite direction, to make a new life in Singapore after they got married. After they were match-made on a hill whose name they cannot remember. By way of Swatow, by way of Johor, here I am now, boarding the $2 bus to my grandmother's city, the one she doesn't even know anymore because she has dementia.
We build so quickly in this city, such that if I didn't have personal geography here I would have never known what stood here before: on this very spot between Queen Street and Victoria Street, the tiny man that was my ah gong carried gunny sacks many times his body weight, every single day, gambling it all away, making the little boy who would become my father the most determined person I'd ever met, hell-bent on giving his children a life better than this.
When I experience other cities even as an insider, even as someone who has lived somewhere else for a long time, there is curiosity, and there is joy, in exploring their streets, in learning their names anew. When I walk these streets I know them by their old names. The ones on which there had been the stunted walk of my gunny sack carrying grandfather, once attacked on the head by a cleaver on these streets, lined with the washer-boards his wife had used to wash the laundry of the rich women who did not have to wash their own. The old names and the new overlap: I was born in the 'bull pen', not in the gleaming women's hospital down the road. The policemen of my memories still wore shorts, and had their fearsome batons for the troublesome Chinese gangsters. The nurses were known as the white shirts, and the Hotel New World wasn't just something I saw on TV, but experienced through my mother, a white shirt who happened to be there looking for something to eat after a shift, but spent hours attending to people who had been picked out of the rubble just like in the movies.
Then there are the landmarks, some of which no longer exist: on that grass patch and its adjoining streets, near the wholesale market which no longer exists, my grandfather carried spices and dried goods for decades. Five decades later, memories of bittersweet happiness would be formed just around the corner: of being shy and 17, stumbling out of a movie theatre, holding tightly the hands of the first woman I'd ever come to love. They were the neighbourhoods we came to know, and the places we'd called home.
The other cities will always be there. The bright lights of our imagined better places will always be on. I can build a life anywhere I want, whenever I want. For now, perhaps it is nostalgia, perhaps it is misplaced political optimism, but I choose to build my life in my late twenties, right here where it all began. Even if I can never call my wife my wife, even if I have to adopt my own children before the state will let me call myself her mother, it is the home which was set into motion for me: sixty five years and a bit ago.
Even though people like us live a life on the move, we still need a place to call our own. I choose to walk these streets, to call them by their old names, and to remember the reason I love this home is because I have one foot in this Singapore, and the other in the one that will only get better.
"If you are really a lesbian, proveeeeittt! Kiss me NOW!"
A giggly girl shrieked, rather loudly, flapping her long, luscious hair about as well. She also had the Arabic equivalent of a Valley Girl accent.
In most situations, this might have been a proposition to consider.
Except we were in Syria. And I don't like giggly girls who shriek, anywhere in the world.
I fumbled uncomfortably, and looked at the television with all the men, pretending to have taken a sudden interest in Syrian football.
I really do have the strangest experiences on my travels.
"Wanna see something cool?"
Before I could reply or enquire further, S stepped on the accelerator and brought his little Fiat car across five lanes on the road at a deathly angle, chuckling the way only a Russian-Arab person can in the face of extremities. "Damascus," he proclaimed, "is kind of like a real life Grand Theft Auto." I agreed, once I collected my breath.
Everything he took me to confounded me.
"I have a drive-thru liquor store!" - okay.
We stocked up.
"Let's go drinking and dancing! On the mountain!" - okay.
We went.
We go-karted - drunk. I may have crashed.
His friends pulled out an old Nokia phone packed with classic Syrian tunes. All of them were Russian-Arab, the offspring of the Syrian men and the Russian women they married when they studied in the former Soviet Union. For that moment we all linked arms and fell about our sides laughing as we attempted our best impersonations of Arab Village Dancing.
The next spring some of them would be dead.
Stranger experiences followed me everywhere I went in that country.
I found myself in a farmhouse in the outskirts of Damascus, sitting by a large wooden oven in a garden. It had been purpose-built to cater to the roasting (or proasting) tendencies of the proprietor and his Russian-Arab friends.
My mother made this vodka, someone started, from the potatoes in her backyard. It was delicious.
I cured all of this Baltic herring and other fish myself, another Russian in Damascus announced. It was delicious.
Somewhere between eating cured herring and drinking homemade vodka I found myself in the middle of a large field. When I awoke a middle-aged Russian lady of the cougar variety was hovering over me, massaging my back.
But damn if I knew what she was saying for I had herring on my mind.
For the fourth time this year, I am sitting at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Colombo airport drinking the world's worst coffee and the worst food.
I am also strutting around in heels. Here. Also in Indonesia. In the Philippines. Everywhere. I walked into a TASMAC in dodgy neighbourhood in Madras in my Asian office lady dress and in my heels. Everybody stared. The truth is I have misplaced my flip flops and the hippie that was wearing them along with it.
The heels make my friends laugh. A, who hasn't lived in Singapore for the last five years, literally dropped her cocktail all over our bags as she stood there marvelling at how I was wearing proper shoes.
Here I am now in a designer top, hippie pants, heels and uncombed hair. I have lost my hairbrush, too.
My life these days is at once more stable and at once more colourful. The opportunities get larger and more varied. The opportunity costs increase. There is clarity. I say "epic" and "amazeballs" a lot. I also say "let's jam" when talking about meetings because I work with so many Americans and call so many of them my friends.
I've had the chance to pursue some incredible opportunities at work (in tech), for play (in writing), for causes I care about; I am pleased.
My dog goes to doggie kindergarten and camping trips, and I go to meetings. Sometimes I remember to comb my hair. I pay rent in one of the world's most expensive cities and I travel once a week, sometimes more. I get to see my lovely family all the time now, which is a vast improvement from 2008-2013.
We ringed in the new year in an apartment overlooking the Singapore River. The fireworks were beautiful but the best part was the good friends I love. Years ago in the back room of a tiny political party's office - an episode we will probably laugh about for the rest of our lives - I met N and S, and they have been exactly what one Facebook caption said, "together through good and bad, politics, broken hearts and unwritten novels." The all-nighters will come to something. The elections were our becoming. The friends to whose sides you flee to for refuge and for pineapple tarts and gin when you've had your heart broken are the ones to keep.
Last night I attended a beautiful wedding in Sri Lanka. Normally weddings make me want to cry with how trite and awful they are, yet despite the rituals and the chaos, this one was full of love and light. It was clear every single soul that made it out there came because we truly loved these guys. From Johannesburg to New York to Singapore, guests were family to the couple, jointly and separately, at various points of lives led in Sri Lanka, Singapore, New York City and elsewhere. Here were two souls who had withstood trials of such intensity and magnitude, who had moved mountains to be with each other. Though the guests fumbled, we eventually managed to let loose a flurry of wishing lights into the sky over Pannupitiya.
That's what all this is about, the bride not so tearfully (compared to her best friend) told us. Family, friends that are family, and love.
In the balmy Sri Lankan heat I felt at home in the tropics, my heart full of love and happiness for the first time in a long while.
Never again will I settle for second best, nor for anything short of extraordinary, unconditional love.
I still remember the day you drove me across the Causeway with our dog and all of my life's belongings in your little car. We made that journey many times, usually in the other direction. Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Happiness, not desperate anger. We were even talking back then.
I held Cookie's paw in my hand while you silently, angrily, stepped on the accelerator and brought me home - to my other life, the one I hadn't known for five years - in record time. Bangsar to Johor in an hour and a half. I used to wait up as you drove your little car to see me, at the start.
In the end, Cookie slept. My laundry basket swayed. Your little car rattled. I wrapped her in our blanket and told her it would be okay. Some day.
2. Brooklyn
If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere; everyone should live in New York at least once in their lives. This city is a city of clichés, but it deserves every single one of them. I rented a crazy/beautiful place where nothing was as it seemed. I was in San Francisco just before, where everyone said I would find the life I wanted, the work I loved, the woman I would fall in love with. But I felt nothing for San Francisco and it felt nothing for me. The moment I walked out of the bus into Manhattan, I knew I had fallen hard: there was poetry in its streets, birdsong in its buildings. Possibilities. New York was a dream, and not a permanent one, not even a very long one I could savour. And yet but she taught me everything I needed to know about being fearless.
3. Cherrapunjee
From the world's wettest place I called you, wanting a glimpse into your life from over there. Over there and up there in the mountains, everywhere but here. You could not let me in but you could not tell me why.
In my younger days I did not know how to straddle my worlds. By day and for most of the year we were just college girls, in love with each other. We went to class. Wrote essays. Went home to our suburban apartments with our families and worried about our GPA. Then I stumbled into a world of an accidental nomadism that pulled me away completely.
In the years to come I would get better at leading multiple existences across different cities around the world. I would have a different life in Dubai, Delhi, Singapore and Bangkok. My life in Bangalore would not be discernible to someone who claimed to love me in Singapore, and eventually I would learn to be okay with that. What I would also get better at: discerning the silent pauses on the phone and the "I'm seeing someone else" crack in your voices, miles away from home. I would get better at not having a home.
But not before I learned the sound of a heart breaking in a monsoon in the world's wettest place could be soothed by the warmth of a real fireplace roasting my fish from the marketplace.
4. Dubai
A fortune teller told me I would meet you, and that you would love me, and that you would - and could - but can't - be one of the great loves of my life. Maybe this person is married. Maybe he's a man?
When I tried to call this desert my home, briefly, you drove me down Sheikh Zayed Road into the old city and it seemed we both knew we had known each other for a long time, even if we had only just met. You and your bald head and your Russian grin and your checkered shirt and the life we would never have. You were my phenomenon of unknown quantities, and I will never know you. Nor you me.
5. Shanghai
I came in the cold to a country I do not like, to see you in a city I do not love, because you had become important to me - unexpectedly. You wanted to know when we first met if I wanted a relationship with you at all, if I wanted to explore alternative arrangements, but if I wasn't ready that was okay too. That's why it worked when it did - even if just for a blip of time on the rest of our lives, we shared moments of brutal honesty and open love. You were, and we were, what we both needed at the time, and yet I could not scale the wall of hurt which had existed before us, one I had no stomach or place to attempt to cross. But for that moment in the French Quarter, when we were eating dumplings, when I was shivering in the cold, none of that mattered except that I was right there with you.
6. Haji Lane
When I was 20, I was a different kid then. I was the sort of kid who wrote things like: "When people kiss in dark alleyways they are usually making promises. When we do, we break a thousand of them, including the ones we have been hanging on to for any semblance of survival." (from "Art & Lies, And")
In hindsight they were not broken promises, they weren't promises at all, and we weren't dying. But at that moment, and for many years before and after, you were all I ever wanted. My kryptonite. We wrote - and we wrote. We rewrote our story repeatedly until it became a myth, but we never found a happy ending, nor in fact any kind of an ending at all. Years later I would sit at that exact spot as an outsider to someone I tried to love with her kryptonite beside her, just marvelling at how life and love comes full circle and the best I can do is walk away from anyone who doesn't want this right now or ever. Or can't.
7. Elsternwick
A week ago you said, "I want to build a nest with you." A week later you wanted to flee it. A lot happened in Melbourne, it's true, but I wanted you to be my greatest adventure and you just did not believe me.
You fell in love with the woman who brought you flowers, who made you the centre of my universe. I brought you flowers until the end. At some point you stopped noticing. Love on its own was never going to be enough, but I didn't believe it was all we had to keep going.
You and me will probably move on quickly enough to never get a chance to think about what really happened there, but as for me I will let my last memory of you be the moment you stepped off the plane, when for a minute you let yourself be there. That was the last glimpse of you I recognised, and the last time you noticed. I wish I never went to Melbourne. There is nothing I like at all about it except the coffee.
A year and a half ago, my friends sent me to a local emergency ward in Singapore when I moved in and out of delirium in the middle of dinner. I had been unwell for a long time, but there had been no suitable diagnosis or treatment. I lost nearly 20 kilograms, had the shakes, became insomniac, and most of all, emotionally and mentally unstable. Once diagnosed, it isn't a terribly awful disease; but the number of adjustments one has to make is astounding. Friends and loved ones too, struggle with dealing with the external impact of your disease, and will have to do so for a very long time.
To say it can have a dramatic effect on your life may not be an understatement. Nearly every Graves' patient I know personally has experienced one or all of the above: unplanned career changes, closure or reorganization of business enterprises and any other financial responsibilities, breakdowns of relationships including marriages, and the list doesn't stop there. Some of your partners or friends will think it is not a big deal and that you are overreacting: after all, it's just that a tiny butterfly-shaped gland near your throat has elected to produce hormones at a different rate, right?
It could not be more wrong.
That tiny butterfly-shaped gland near your throat is also inscrutable, and controls many aspects of your life and health that you take for granted. One of the key things it affects is your mood, if untreated or treated inadequately. If you've always been cheerful, optimistic and bubbly, imagine becoming a different person for hours with no warning whatsoever; breaking down crying when your bus doesn't arrive, or when your toast is burnt. If you've always been confident and dominant, imagine becoming daunted by small tasks you do routinely - and being confused as hell about it. If you've always had a superb memory to the point you've never had to write anything down to remember them - imagine forgetting, every single time, the door code to get into your office. Every time you go to the bathroom you get locked out from work because your brain just isn't keeping pace with your body.
Scariest of all: nothing else seems to matter. The business you've built for years. The career you've devoted your life to. The partner you've made plans for life with. It's so necessary to walk away from all of that, when you aren't yourself. It's tempting to think about leaving everything and everyone because nothing's working anymore and you want no part of it. It's easier to quit. Which is also weird, especially if you've never been a quitter.
I tried, and still try, to lead a normal life. I take my meds everyday, but am constantly thinking about what more I can do. Should I drink radioactive iodine? Remove my thyroid gland completely? I don't particularly want to do either especially since neither of them have a sure shot or even a good shot at curing me, and may potentially work out even worse. I want to eat my meds daily and eventually come to a point when I don't need them anymore. Most days, a year and a half on, I'm back to being myself - by that meaning a completely different person from when I got diagnosed. A different person from the one that made bad decisions because I did not know the extent of my disease or what it does to me, when I did not know I had the disease at all. Now that I know how it affects my cognitive processes, my emotional lability, my physical body when the symptoms return when in remission - I try not to notice. Most days, I succeed. Yet it never feels like it's enough.
We still haven't gotten it right. The meds work and then they don't. My body, through no input from me, suddenly decides it loves making my heart jump out of my chest when all I'm doing is sitting in a car. My mind decides it wants to react in entirely unwarranted ways: I'm the life of a party one mind and the next moment I can't even hold a conversation with anyone.
I'm seeking all the best medical help I can get but it's still an incurable disease that affects everyone differently and in different ways at every stage in your life. I don't know if I'll ever be done: all I can do is manage my expectations, and other people's. I know my limits: if I can't work, socialize or be normal, I have to make sure people know it isn't me, it's just this dumb disease. Sometimes I don't even know who I am or what's happening. I've come close enough to get to a point where my levels are supposed to be normal, normal enough to get off the meds completely to see what happens next. But even before we can try that, I'm relapsing - like a damned yo yo - and I have no idea what will happen next. It's a dumb disease.
This is a project which has been on my mind for some time now. We've been planning it for a while. A part of this is a response to a worrying trend of anti-foreigner sentiment (c.f. the responses to a drive to raise funds for victims of last year's Downtown Line accident: here and here).
The other part — which I believe to be more important — is the need for us as a nation and as a society to come around to the idea that we are not alone in this. Immigration is a touchy issue everywhere. How we choose to deal with this now will be something which has repercussions in the future. Evidently there are many schools of thought on this.
Personally, I believe the day people stop wanting to come here to live or work will be the day we should worry. That would only happen when we become verifiably a land with no opportunities whatsoever, which cannot afford our people, and our guests and newcomers, a better life.
When I was in university, my closest friends were in the Indian/ Nepali/ Pakistani (i.e. desi) contingent. Homesick, they sought out food which reminded them of home. Usman Restaurant at 238 Serangoon Road, near Mustafa/Desker Road, was one such place. It opened late, and most nights we would walk there from school or from the SMU hostel to tuck into comforting, always hot naan, roti, dal fry, haleem and other delicious Pakistani/North Indian dishes.
Anil, my university buddy from Kathmandu, and I were big fans: pretty soon, we got to that point of patronage where we had our own tab, and the workers and owner of the restaurant were on our speed dial and Facebook. We made friends.
When I went abroad for about five years, every time I returned I had to come back here. I started bringing other people there: my parents, other family members, family friends. One incident which stood out for me was in how I had brought a younger friend from China to Usman. She had barely eaten Indian food in her life, and now she was in Singapore, about to start at another local university. I saw her go from trepidation (from not knowing anything about the food nor what to order), to familiarity. It turned out that while I was away, she would return religiously with other friends from China, and also from Singapore, and she would order the food that I had ordered for her because she loved it. Eventually she began to have friends from India, too, and this was something that she now had in common with them: she really loved the cheese naan and the chicken kadai there.
Something struck me, and has stayed there ever since. When I read about Conflict Kitchen, something clicked. I realized we could synthesize — and borrow — some of the food and art as dialogue aspects, and localize it for our own context.
There were plenty of challenges. What came up often was: how do you know you're not already preaching to the choir? The bleeding heart liberal wing, the English-speaking, the people like us, already believe in migrant rights and all of those things. What good would it do to tell these people again about diversity and inclusivity, when they already believe in them too?
The second challenge was place. We wanted to do it in a public place, and Little India was top on my list. But this is Singapore, and there are a thousand permits… so that was off the table.
Eventually we came up with a first Culture Kitchen which is, I think, simple in its objectives and easy to understand. The main premise is, quite simply, come have dinner with our migrant workers. We sold out tickets in two and a half days. We went to Little India last Sunday, and distributed free dinner invitations. (Singaporeans/expats/residents pay $5.)
Dinner invitations for migrant workers.
The response was enthusiastic, and we were fully subscribed. I am delighted to announce that we have an pretty balanced mix of Singaporeans/expats/residents and migrant workers.
What's the objective?
I'm doing this because I'd like to help facilitate more of those moments. Moments like when a Singaporean-Chinese and a Nepali student like myself and Anil, are able to make great, lasting friendships with people from various parts of Pakistan who have chosen to make this place their home, and with each other. Moments like when the mainland Chinese friend is able to glean a closer understanding of a completely foreign culture, only by way of her time here in Singapore. All of us have just this in common: we live here. Some of us, like me, were born and brought up here. Others come for a short while for study or work. Others will do that and choose to make this place home, when the time comes. I don't think we need to split any hairs over who is a ‘true blue Singaporean' and who isn't: I truly believe that.
Bangladeshi workers in Little India signing up to Culture Kitchen.
I may be idealistic in that respect. Some of the undercurrents of Singapore politics disappoints me greatly. I believe that we can be welcoming of foreigners, and I also believe that we should be able to have mature political dialogue over our immigration policies. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game. A few days ago I posted that I disliked the term, "Singapore for Singaporeans". I think that if you were to replace either term with any other race, nationality, religion — it would be unacceptable. It is, to me, fascist, loaded, designed to exclude. This is not the Singapore I want. Immediately I received a torrent of online feedback, wanting to know if I would be happier with being a second class citizen in my own country. Again, this is not a zero sum game.
What would be detrimental is if we were to continue tolerating the racist and xenophobic sentiments and never call them out for fear of being termed a traitor (or an SPG, as I have been called many times in this context). What is already detrimental is agitations of the vocal minority which wants to see no foreigners here at all, or only the ‘right kinds' of foreigners. What is already detrimental is the unfortunate lack of gumption in the political establishment, which seems too bothered by the vocal minority, in dealing with the push back not by doubling down on better policy, but by apparently taking an iron-fisted approach. Closing the doors every time someone stages a protest is not the way forward.
What is the way forward? I don't have a specific answer.
I can, however, build communities and movements. This is one of the things I know I can do well, and I want to lend my technological and organisational skills to building a movement which will stand up for a Singapore which includes. The Singapore we want to see. While I will continue to call out the xenophobes every time they emerge from the hills, I will also spend twice as much time on helping to create a counter movement which is positive in nature. I don't have an ROI, I don't have an end goal, I just want to bring people together.
The first Culture Kitchen will feature biryani. You will realize from the name itself that the event is titled Biryani/Beriani, for good reason. One dish, many stories, many geographical and cultural interpretations. But still a tasty dish which everybody can get behind. There will be dum biryani from Pakistan, and there will be Malay-style chicken briyani. All of it is halal. There will be peas pulao, for the vegetarians among us. I'm not sure what can happen over biryani, but I think if I don't try, I'll never know.
So let's rock up on Sunday, keep calm and eat a ton of biryani, and make new friends. Thanks for the overwhelming support.
Once or twice in your life, something, or someone, gets under your skin and stays there. Most of the time it's because you have let them. It does not need to be tragic; it can even be, at times, up-lifting. All of the time it changes your life in some big, unalterable way. Then you learn to deal.
Seventy four weeks ago (I only know this because Instagram tells me so) I made a decision about how I wanted to live the next twenty years of my life, and I'm learning everyday that breaking up costs more, the older you get.
ecause at 22, you don't really know what kind of life you want for yourself. The best you can do is learn from what you run away from.
Running away used to be my only currency for dealing. These days I over-compensate. Twelve months ago I was in Helsinki going on San Francisco, running away from life and lost love.
Say what you will about the system and its shortcomings, but nowhere else in the world do you get an efficient, fast-moving court system which settles commercial matters: after office hours. So the GDP won't take a hit, I suppose.
74 weeks ago, in running away I also ran away from the filing of company papers.
So I now owe the Singapore government $$$.
Some older, wiser people have this to say:
fuck it
date widely
have as much fun as you can
fuck everything, really.
I'm coming around to the point of view that they are right.
Life is funny and always, always takes me on these amazing, unexpected journeys.
Some days ago, a boy I used to date as a wee teenager (yes, a boy!) reached out to me on Facebook. It's funny where we are now: he's now a hotshot international banker, I'm now an international vagrant (I don't really know how else to describe myself), instead of the awkward, school-uniformed boy and girl we once were. I found this episode especially funny because (1) I used to date boys! Which amuses me (2) exactly 14 years have passed since we used to 'go out'; we were 14 when we started going out. These days I am more acutely aware of how much older I am getting, and the fact that Class 95 now plays the songs I grew up with when they play "the classics" doesn't make it any better. In a couple of days we'll probably meet for steak and wine with some mutual friends. He's found some photos of us, circa 1999, and thinks it will be funny to laugh at our younger, hotter selves. It will.
Everyone's getting married. Well, not everyone, but lots of people are. In a couple of weeks my best friend D will walk down the aisle with a really lovely boy, and I will try not to burst out of the tiny green dress I am supposed to wear. The one I still haven't bought. Everything changes, but nothing does — she's still more mature, more put together, more likely to worry about her friend who has been all over the place since we met as adolescents. I've read a lot about what 'growing up' is supposed to mean — the only consistent point everyone's made is, the older you get the less of a flying fuck you give, and you just have your key group of friends who stick by you no matter what. At the time of writing, D's just texted to slightly threaten emphasize the urgent need for me to do something about my hair so that it isn't in my face in all of her wedding photos, which I actually think was a scenario we must have discussed ten years ago. "YOUR HAIR AH." My hair. My hair does get in the way.
I just downloaded one of those time machine apps which scour your social media networks to show you what you were up to a year, two years, three years ago. It tells me I was staring at a giant fake swan in Hungary, with these Hungarian and Czech developers. We were building something in a house by a lake. We may have gotten a slight case of cabin fever. We went swimming, paddling, and we found a giant swan which was also a boat. We christened her Gloria.
The exact circumstances which got me to this very moment are meandering, long-winded ones. It began in south India, in an autorickshaw, and then to Kuala Lumpur, Bombay, and then to hospitals in Singapore, then to northern Europe, then to KL, Singapore, and then finally to Zamárdi and to this swan we called Gloria. They were fun times. They taught me that never again should I allow myself to be photographed in a half-wet t-shirt, anywhere in the world.
I am acutely aware of just how much change there's been in my life in the past 70+ weeks. I've switched entire cities and countries. I haven't been able to keep myself grounded, in the physical and mental and personal and professional sense. Beyond the appearances of someone who's 'got it figured out', I'm really grappling with the basic questions I never did have to answer before. Where do I want to live? What do I want to achieve? How should I get there? For the most part, I am 'home' now. The home that I left was the city I was born and brought up in; the home that I came home to late last year, is the one I prefer. It is also the city I now pay rent in. Last week I went up onstage at FORK4 and gave a little talk about my side projects. I met all these incredible people doing great projects, like Dream Syntax, State of Buildings, Another Beautiful Story, and more. A few days later, I went to Pizza X II, the second instalment of a back alley artisan party, with great food and drinks (Spit roast! Karelian pastries! Artisan rum and new growth wines!) and some of the best people in this island. Then there's stuff like this, and this. It matters a great deal to me to be amongst a people that want to do things. Make something better. It keeps me going. At times I wonder if I made a mistake when I made the call to stay, but most of the time I am surer than ever that I made the right decision to come home. Because I just haven't been home for a while and I needed to be.
I'm writing. I'm dating. One of those is coming along better than the other. At least writing is free. When it comes to dating, and the occasionally terrible, mostly funny in hindsight moments I've had in that field, I am reminded of how one of the smartest people who ever lived once defined insanity to be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Without going into too much detail: I am done with that. I am writing a whole lot more, trying to follow some kind of writerly routine. It is working. When I opened Reminders.app, an app I never use, I found the one Reminder I had on it: remember to tell doc about my memory loss problem. I never remembered to. Something about it captured how weird and heartbreaking that entire period of my life was. The fear of not knowing what was happening to my body or to my mind. The inability to control anything about where my life was going. The heartbreak of losing everything I had. Everything at once. The seeming insanity of having chosen to lose those things of my own accord, but nothing really was. Life got better, but it will never be the same again. I don't want it to, but I don't want to lose it all again, again. I don't think I will. That would be insane.
If you were to meet me on the streets of Singapore, you probably would not peg me for ‘gay’. Apparently, ‘gay woman’ or ‘lesbian’ has to be one or several of the following: short-haired, oddball, butch-like; a flaming dyke. You would expect me to show up in a flannel shirt and in Birkenstock sandals to business meetings. If I am aggressive in them, that’s because I’m an ‘angry lesbian’ who probably doesn’t get enough, and if I’m not, then it’s just such a terrible ‘waste’.
I am not angry. Not nearly enough. My hair reaches my shoulders, and a little more. I am as much of a dyke as you’ll ever meet, but you wouldn’t be able to tell. I may not be a princess — I don’t even know how to paint my nails — but I ‘pass’ for straight. Not because I try or want to, not because I have anything to hide, but because I don’t know how else to style my hair, and this is the only way I’ve ever known to look.
You see, I am a 27 year old lesbian who has always been amused by how much that means to other people, instead of to myself. Classmates and teachers wanted to know, and said so in hushed whispers: “they must be dating.” (I would never assume two large people were dating just because they were both large and walking next to each other, so I do not understand this popular train of thought.)
Men with inquiring minds want to know, always: have I tried a man? If not, perhaps they could help me make an informed decision? Even the Social Development Unit has stopped sending me letters and brochures urging the benefits of marriage and procreation. I am, as you may say, not in a ‘phase’. (I did have a ‘straight phase’ though, but that fad did not last.) In eight years, I may be able to purchase a HDB flat of my own.
In about ten years of gay-ness, I’ve had a two serious relationships, the last which came as close to ‘settling down’ and ‘divorce’ as I may ever get. I have no trouble finding interesting lesbian and bisexual women to go out with in this city, or anywhere else I may be; in Singapore, I have rarely — perhaps never — experienced forthright discrimination in the physical way. But more on that later.
I am out to everybody, and I’d be surprised if anybody really cared (except for the religious). It has never stood in the way of career, money, social standing, power; it is irrelevant to most other parts of my life, but it informs my decisions. I no longer have any religious or conservative friends, for example; I don’t need them in my life. We would fundamentally disagree on everything anyway, from politics to Palestine to Republicans and Democrats and reproductive rights, and my gayness would have nothing to do with their bigotry. My sexual identity is as irrelevant to me as my race (Chinese) and nationality (Singaporean), or the fact that I have a head of rapidly graying hair (hereditary). All of those things are the parts which make up the sum of who I am, but on their own are insignificant — to me.
But I also know my Singaporean lesbian existence is not representative: I am a 27 year old lesbian with opportunities which have exceeded many of my peers’, straight or gay or otherwise. I have the luxury of travelling most of the time on business and leisure. I have the privilege of living on my own in this city — it’s difficult to lead an active dating life while living at home with your parents, like unmarried Singaporeans like us are supposed to do. I have a great day job, an active social life, no kids, no debt; I don’t even have to answer the regular Chinese New Year questions anymore. I have never worked in a place, or with people who cared about the fact that I am an out gay woman. In short, I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want.
Whether or not I can have it all is quite a different thing.
Some people have the rather odd idea that all gay people — men and women — are promiscuous, that we shag like rabbits, that we want nothing more than to get into each other’s pants, and anyone will do.
The lesbian cliché which comes a lot closer to the truth goes something like this: we meet in bookstores / poetry readings / book clubs. On our second date, we move in; we proceed to have a monogamous relationship for the rest of our lives, sometimes resulting in offspring, all the time resulting in cats (and dogs).
The reason why there isn’t, and will never be a lesbian Grindr is you’d have to change all the fields to ‘Looking for: long walks on the beach, someone to adopt a cat with. Available tonight in Pasir Ris — I have a toothbrush, let’s talk about our feelings.’
Singapore is a great city for young lesbians like me. There is a large dating scene, at least three lesbian parties a week, there is even the space to live a ‘normal’ life together, perhaps for a while; perhaps after a dramatic reduction of expectations. Because this is where it stops. Once you’re done with the partying, where do you go here? The only life that is known to me to be possible is a life of co-habitation with two dogs and a cat and perhaps a non-legally binding commitment ceremony with your best friends. If you’re really lucky, your parents might come too.
For some, that’s more than enough. The journey of finding someone special is difficult enough, not just for gay people, but for everybody with a pulse.
For others — that never will be enough. We have lost so many of our own, among them our brightest and best, to other cities and countries, and we’ll probably never get them back. When the time came for them to settle down, the idea that the place we call home wants us for nothing more than our pink dollars, perhaps even for our contribution to the fertility rate (with limits), but will not recognize our love, is more than they can bear.
So what I can have, and continue to have, is my young professional’s yuppie lifestyle with dates in amazing restaurants and bars; I can go to these parties, sometimes meet interesting women; I can continue to function as an economically active member of this society, pay my taxes on time and give money to my parents; I can go to Chinese New Year dinners without having to answer to anyone about my marriage plans (they don’t want to know).
I can certainly walk from Raffles Place MRT to Tanjong Pagar without anybody stopping to make a value judgment that I must be lesbian, and therefore something else as well.
What I cannot do, is I cannot walk the same distance with a beautiful woman on my arm, without someone else wanting to know about this terrible waste of a woman, for a woman to be with a woman, and I cannot know for certain that if I were to meet with an accident on this same walk, the beautiful woman who may be my life partner will have any more of a say in my medical and legal future, than any stranger who helps me at the scene or at a hospital.
What I can’t have, therefore, is immaterial. It’s not about the HDB flats I can or cannot buy. It’s that as a lesbian woman in this society, I have to automatically assume that all of the following are bonuses, not expectations: having my love recognized for the purposes of property, tax and inheritance; attending a partner’s family functions without unnecessary outcry and suspicion; knowing that if I were to be in a medical emergency, my life partner would be legally allowed to make decisions on my behalf. In other words, to even hope for my future life partner to be perceived as anything other than a complete stranger, is going to have to be taken on other people’s good faith. As outsiders, that’s all we have to go on: the goodwill of other people. The readiness of other people to stop thinking of us as criminals, sexual deviants and perverts. If I hold hands with a woman I love, I am rubbing it in conservative Singapore’s face and being too declarative about my sexual orientation; if I walk side by side with one, the man who catcalls and makes lewd comments at us bordering on sexual harassment, is just, after all, being a man and entitled to his opinions about my body and hers.
For someone who generally feels like there is nothing in the world I cannot do, all I can do is to keep on doing what I do best — live my life as best as I know how, be kind to old people and animals, donate to charity sometimes, avoid premature death — and dream about the day I hope to see in my lifetime: when our lovers will be as our equals, and our love as deserving.
I wrote a small piece for Elle Singapore (Sept 2013) about what it's like to be lesbian in Singapore. Available on the newsstands now, page 147.
Mention to someone in passing that you're lesbian and one or all of the following are bound to happen: intrigue ("tell me more"), surprise ("You don't look it!"), curiosity ("how exactly does it work?"); very often too, the burning question — how do I meet women who are, and they always fumble here, "similarly inclined"?
I always want to say — the same way you meet your boy- and girlfriends, husbands and wives. "We" meet in school, at work, at business events, we sometimes also experiment with online dating (like everyone else), or meet through friends and relations. We meet when we play sports. We meet at religious institutions, support groups, at school camps, we meet at dinner parties or we are introduced by well-meaning friends. Other times, coincidence intervenes: you see each other for the first time, somewhere, and you just know.
All of the above answers are true, and this causes great frustration to those who were hoping to hear about lesbian dating rituals from an alternate universe, far removed from their own. They also can't seem to fathom that you can, quite simply, "just know" (or make a very educated guess). The only secret here is there are many of us.
For gay women, the stereotype of promiscuity and endless partying is as far from lesbian dating realities as it gets.
Sure, I go to the lesbian parties once in a while (there are at least two per week), mostly just for a night out without needing to come up against potential male harassment. When I tell people about lesbian parties they also seem to expect hot women having orgies in the door way. Like everyone else's parties, some parties are fun, others are not. Some people are hot, others are not. There are no orgies. There are just people dancing with each other, chatting up each other, people spectacularly failing at all of the above.
Women seeking out the great loves of their lives across the dance-floor. Never quite finding it. Not too different from any party, really.
What really happens is this: lesbians are the first to want to nest, and be with each other forever and ever. That's why you almost never meet eligible lesbians at a lesbian party — before you can even put on your party clothes, they've already found partners and are at home with their girlfriends, throwing dinner parties, decorating their dog's socks, watching Grey's Anatomy together for the third time and still weeping hopelessly.
Being a single twenty-something of any orientation is hard enough —everyone's getting married, the good ones have been taken, what the hell are you going to do?
Being a single lesbian in your mid-20s in Singapore adds another layer of complexity. Do you move out? Tell your family before or after you've "found someone"? Where will you live, if not in Holland Village or Tiong Bahru, now that rent is so crazy? When will I meet someone who loves Battlestar Galactica? Or get to date someone in this country who hasn't already dated someone else I know (proximity, not promiscuity)?
So many questions, too little time. I am a busy world-travelling young professional who spends most of my time up in the air, and finding someone has been quite low on my list of things to do (other things on it: attain world domination or cult leader status. Buy dog food). So you can imagine how well my dating life is going.
Just the other day I met the first woman to pique my interest in a long time, the traditional way — through a friend. It wasn't expected, it just happened, and like every other kind of date that exists in the universe, straight, gay or otherwise — I don't know yet, I don't want to rush it, I have all these burning questions, I don't know if she likes me, I don't know anything at all.
But if I am really a lesbian cliché after all, by the time you read this she would have moved in, adopted my dog, and I would have faded away from public memory, never to be seen again on Thursdays or Saturdays, for something resembling a century and a half.
Hoping they won't be suay again. They have no money.
The news coming from the sole television set. Children peeping for a glimpse of world affairs. Condensed milk cans
filled with coffee. Ah Ba will have to go to the office.
The office is also a shed. He carries sacks to and fro sheds
All day. Sometimes all night too. Last week someone tried to chop him in the head. He doesn't care. A bowl of porridge a day makes Ah Ba strong. Insulates him from the world. Protects him from things such as emotions. And cleavers.
If there had been rain yesterday, everything could have been saved. There was no rain. Now there is no television set. No neighbours. No sex. No house. Ah Ma ran everywhere with his two youngest children. They were at the provision shop looking at candy they could not afford. When it happened they ran into temple. Stayed there. Crouched in a corner. Waiting. Shaking. It did not rain. The firemen worked all day. Ah Ba ran from the office shed but he could not find them. He almost cried, but, porridge.
He found them in the temple. Waiting. Shaking. Crouching. Ah Ba held his children tight. But he never found the words.
As many of you will know by now, I have spent a substantial part of the past decade travelling through India. I still feel like I'm barely done with scratching the surface. There's just so much to see in that vast, amazing country that I call my second home.
For some time now I've wanted to go to Coorg.
Coorg, also known as Kodagu, is a hill area in the state of Karnataka, in the Western Ghats. Its people are known as Kodavas (not Coorgis!) and all I knew about the place was that it had coffee, beautiful people, and pork curry. All that was sufficient to inspire me to plan a trip there.
From Chennai, I took a quick overnight train to Mysore Junction (book early, book ahead — this route is headed towards Bangalore, and therefore sells out early), but you can also take a bus. At Mysore Junction, I arranged for a car to pick me up for breakfast and to my resort of choice.
An acquaintance from Mysore highly recommended Travelparkz, and he was right: they were a very reliable car and driver service, and it was good value. I hired them for a pickup from Mysore Junction railway station to the resort in Coorg that I was headed to; and for a drop-off from the resort to Bangalore city a couple of days later. I highly recommend these guys, though it's best to reach them via phone. They speak English.
I had heard about The Tamara from friends in Bangalore, so I decided I would give it a shot. It's a very new place and it gets most things right. My only complaint is it didn't have as much pork as I would have liked.
You can wander about the grounds of The Tamara on your own, or sign up for one of their daily walks with their on-site naturalist. I did none of the above as I was too busy resting after a long week at work in India!
Highly recommended. I will be returning to Coorg shortly, although I may want to check out Victory Home next, since I've just met these guys in Bangalore.
Admittedly I have posted very little on the everyday occurrences in my travel. Here are some snippets, culled from Facebook.
Day 1: Two sleep-deprived people board a plane full of evangelical missionaries offering ‘free healing' in the plane (true story), dinner in the streets and accidental romantic date at a blacksmith-themed cocktail bar with a toilet that was so awesomely creepy it freaked out the one half of us that actually writes horror fiction as a profession. Shai halip in Little Arabia, 24-hour tacos and the latest episode of Scandal.
Street vendors selling holographic pictures of puppies, kittens, Jesus and Mary, naked women and ferocious tigers, across from a fake Viagra/Cialis/ made-in-China sex toy shops.
Bangkok is my happy place. Tomorrow: at least two massages.
Day 2: In no particular order: grilled chicken hearts, the breakfast of champions; flashing at passengers on the Khlong San Saeb river taxi each time (not me, btw), having random thai men cat-calling us coz Sam is in a very sessy dress (they called us ‘black and white girls'. Um. Brown and yellow is more accurate); beef boat noodle carnage, talking security guards into letting us trespass private property so we can take a shortcut, Gibson-esque massive overhead bridges, stalker pandas and mushrooms, great crackling massages, pork cracklings;
Pork satay, dogs and teddy bears and dogs in frilly clothes; hanging out with exes, discussing whether one's Portuguese ancestry is to blame for epic marine vessel conquering flag-planting fantasies (no: it's just Sam); ominous Elliott Smith songs in hotel toilets, streetside mobile bars. Pork tacos in the fridge.
A swim is on the menu tomorrow. Pandas are everywhere.
Off my rockers/tits high on chilli padi. It was a beautiful yum poo dong – raw blue swimmer crab salad smothered in beautiful chilli – the cold raw crab tastes like crab ice cream. But so off my rockers chilli high coz I am so clever I ordered it extra extra spicy. I love chilli padi highs. So beautiful, this world
Day 3: Looking for soi Polo chicken and seeing random chickens and people wearing I ♥ Chicken T-shirts everywhere (surreal), having a crab-gasm over the raw blue swimmer crab in a yum poo dong, coffee in random little sheds in Lumpini, more great massages, Phra Athit jazz and beer and evil plotting, a knock-out pad thai.
Home tomorrow!
Sam and I are at a girlie bar on Nana, showing bar girls pictures of fried crickets. We are looking for the Nana Cricket & Grasshopper street vendor. I don't know how to say "where are the edible crickets" in Thai. Yet.
Apparently I accidentally cock-blocked an Italian dude at a bar in Bangkok. All I did was drink whisky and talk about apps and their project timelines. A thai MILF then decided to tell me she thinks I must be gay, and proceeded to tell me she used to be butch with many girlfriends until a guy drugged and raped her and she got pregnant. (all this happened in thai)
The Italian dude left, very sadly.
Must. Stop. Accidentally. Fang dian-ing at people. Even sideways in my peripheral vision while eating potato chips and drinking whisky.
Note: 'fang dian' = a Mandarin term made up by some friends, meaning ‘to put electricity'. It refers to my track record of accidentally attracting unwanted attention through what they suspect is the sheer Cyclops-like, err, traits in my… eyes.
Day 4: jok moo! Pork porridge with salted egg, century egg, innards! Flip-flops and Hello Kitty (don't ask) and cable shopping! Skyfall! Prawn bisque! Accidentally fang-dian-ing: me at people, Sam at buildings! Giant sea creatures! Girlie bars! Mobile bars! No crickets!
New Bangkok Notes
I still love Bangkok as much now, as I did when I first started frequenting it… circa 2004?
Oh gawd I feel old these days.
That's directly related to how all I want to do these day is have massages. My back creaks; my body creaks along with it. My new go-to place for a massage is at Ruen Nad massage studio on 42 Convent Road, off Silom. It really is one of the best massages you can have for that little money (1 hour goes for 350 THB). It's a little pricier than the less fancy places but the masseuses are uniformly great, and the ambience — in a restored old house in a fancy part of Bangkok — is really unbeatable. Also, Convent Road has some of the best street food in that city.
The row of street stalls next to Sala Daeng BTS station still has a curious mix of gay p0rn and pirated DVDs. The latter tend to be arthouse (non-p0rnographic) movies, including a great many films which are simply just not available online… or in your local video store. The range of movies is quite breathtaking. I love Silom.
If you are ever in Bangkok, do yourself a favour and eat a meal — go for the degustation — at Bo.lan. Chefs Bo and Dylan create exquisite food — slow food — and are rather experimental whilst strongly grounded in the traditions. Every meal I have had there, which is still too few, has been revelatory.
I like the northern neighbourhoods. Victory Monument is home not just to impoverished foreigners/English-teachers, it's also home to Boat Noodle Alley, a massive Gibson-esque skywalk/pedestrian bridge, as well as to Saxophone jazz bar, which is a reliable spot to kick back with a beer and listen to some great music. I also like the neighbourhood of Ari, which has too many pleasures to name.
If you like jazz with some fairy dust, Iron Fairies is a Dickensian blacksmith workshop restaurant and pub (seriously). It's beautiful. Think Steampunk meets Dickens meets jazz meets industrial chic. There's great live jazz featuring local musicians, some nights. We were there on a Monday and it was going strong. The Thonglor neighbourhood that it's in is also chock-a-block full of great little spots. They tend to tend to lean quite heavily towards ‘hiso' (the Thai equiv of the Singaporean ‘atas', with regards to class).
Hiso/atas is totally fine by me. I like my upper-middle class hipsterism in strong doses. I also need a bit more down low to counteract too much hipsterism, though, and Thonglor does dish out the down low in appropriate amounts too. soi 38 on the other side of the station is packed with great street food, but one of my favourite meals on this trip was at Jok Moo. Like the name suggests it specializes in pork congee. It was quite a battle ordering two bowls of pork congee in the specific configurations we wanted (salted egg and century eggs, one with innards and one without)… in my limited Thai, but my hunger prevailed and we succeeded. The porridge held its own against some of the best Chinese congees in Singapore/Malaysia. They also seem to have solved the age-old problem of never having hot-enough fritters: they have these little packets of fried fritters resembling you tiao but not really, and they're always cripsy. There is nothing more disgusting than soggy you tiao in your congee, and nothing more wonderful than having congee with fresh, hot fritters as well. It's one of the biggest conundrums I think I face as a Chinese person: would I rather eat soggy fritters or not eat any at all?
Jok Moo is at the start of Sukh soi 38. Alight at Thonglor station and head for the even-numbered side. Locate soi 38. Jok Moo is the first corner shop on the right at the start of the soi, after some watch or hardware shops. It only has Thai words written on its signage. There's some seating at the back. Have the lemongrass drink. Basic English is understood here. Pointing helps, if all else fails.
The pad thai at Thipsamai on Mahachai Road really is what it's cracked up to be. A tip: don't order the version with the shrimp oil. I love my calories and I love my oily fried noodles in all shapes and sizes, but the shrimp oil really kicked me in the guts… after. They also have a new dish: pad thai without the noodles. If Mos Burger can do burgers with lettuce instead of buns, I guess Thipsamai can do pad thai without the noodles. Although both food concepts totally go against every fibre of my being.
The fried chicken at Soi Polo, off Wireless Road near Lumpini. Run, don't walk. Also order the yum poo dong — the cold crab salad that gave me the chilli high described above. Both are beautiful. The Star Trek movie dubbed in Thai, not so much.
One day I will find the fabled coconut ice cream at Sam Yan.
Did I do anything other than eat in Bangkok? We watched James Bond. Took photos with giant sea creatures. Introduced Sam to grilled chicken heart breakfasts, and to the river boat experience I love (the commuter Klong San Saeb, not the one on the tourist trail).
Bangkok is still one of my favourite Asian cities and I don't understand how anybody can ever hate it. Well, I do — it's not for everyone. But if you like hulking, in-your-face Asian metropolises like I do, Bangkok is It.
One day I will make a concerted effort to get better at my Thai.
I've thrown myself headlong into work — real work, and then foundation work.
India is an important part of my life and I owe everything to her. Over the past couple of months, my friends and I have been busy putting a little NGO together, the Gyanada Foundation.
Today (Tues, 12 March) between 7 and 9 in the evening, I'll be hosting our soft launch at Artistry, 17 Jalan Pinang.
I've had more thoughts on the anti-white paper protest since the weekend, I'll need to write it down into a slightly longer piece. But here's what I posted on Facebook that got passed around a fair bit.
Point is, Singapore is at an interesting stage in our politics and civil society and it's going to take a while to smooth out the kinks. Where I stand is, I don't think, extreme in any way — but the values of race and inclusion are very, very important to me, and sometimes that is perceived to be too pro-immigration.
I was told today that I lacked moral courage for not going to the protest; that I was merely a keyboard warrior. I was also told: 'see? no racist or xenophobic speeches!'
Hmm, let's see:
I have volunteered for years with the opposition and I have been on the frontline of elections. What have you done for your country except to happily throw it into the dustbin of nativist trope?
The political figures and figures on the political periphery (cannot confuse the two as there were too many political also-rans and wannabes best kept out of Parliament) involved should know what associating with Gilbert Goh means. I am especially heartbroken because some of these figures also purport to be the only party to stand for 'human rights'; the other because it was inaccurately portrayed to be THE xenophobic party due to the unfortunate former membership and candidacy of said event organizer.
There has been a lot of moral relativism around today's protest. There should be none. Someone said Gilbert's stance is a lesser boo boo than the PAP's bigger boo boos. Or something similarly puerile to that effect. The only boo boo there is is that there should be any moral relativism at all. The racial profiling of the foreigners among us is vile and must be condemned unequivocally. There is no intellectual or high brow anything to this. It is basic human dignity. Associating with someone like Gilbert Goh, a mere demagogue and an opportunistic one at that, merely cheapens the cause you and I both care very much for: how we can find an alternative to the White Paper which we believe will spell disaster for Singapore.
Some of you attended and said you needed to be there to (1) express your disagreement against the White Paper (2) shout down the xenophobes. It is regretful we have an impaired democracy in which a citizen finds he or she cannot sufficiently be heard except by gathering in one sanctioned park. It is even more regretful this democracy is so impaired that bright men and women consider the right to assembly and to be heard more valuable than the demagoguery involved.
My allegiance to The Cause has been questioned because I refuse to toe the ‘us vs them' line of reasoning. I am old enough to remember the extreme political repression of the generation before us, but not old enough or idealistic enough to buy into the 'anything, anyone but the PAP' school of thought. I am a patriot first and an opposition supporter second. I am worried by the perception that not buying into the lock stock and barrel of all anti-PAP rhetoric necessarily means one is a traitor, spy, mole or PAP agent (I have been accused of all of the above).
Addendum: the more I do this stuff the more I think we need to grow the opposition not because I hate the ruling party. But because when they stop being the best guys for the job (and they're starting to seriously show signs of that), I don't want this country to descend into the mob. It's capacity and the long game we need to build, not the Tan Jee Say REJECT EVERYTHING model. I will now actively seek out an organization which better fits this worldview.
I have a tattoo on my lower back. It was given to me by the grandson of a tribal village chief. I grimaced for hours on the floor as he used the primitive tools and ingredients that had tattooed his Iban people for centuries, on me, a girl from a big city.
I'd always wanted a tattoo, but didn't know what; this one crept up on me. Like the girl I was there with (we had a crazy idea: we would visit and live with an Iban community in a longhouse and celebrate Hari Gawai with them), I wasn't expecting any of this. The girl, the tattoo, or that I would have such a story to tell many years after the fact. I chose a bunch of tribal motifs from an album and told him to make it up. I got lucky: I like my tattoo very much, even if it is what some people would call a tramp stamp. I'm proud of it. There's a story to tell each time anyone asks about it.
The girl is no more in my life but the tattoo remains, defiantly representing all of the new beginnings I will embrace in life. Tomorrow, I start a new life and more and more I feel as though the year of grieving and floating, which so profoundly altered my path and direction in life as well as my livelihood and future plans, is finally about to draw to a conclusive close.
I am finally ready for another tattoo. This time, I know exactly where it should be, what it should say and what it should look like. I would not have known this without the pain of my first tattoo. It will be a beautiful Sanskrit verse from the Bhagavad Gita and I intend to have it inscribed on my upper left shoulder. This time, I will harbour no plans or illusions about the permanence of anything other than that of the Sanskrit verse on my shoulder; this time, I will learn to love without needing to know the world.
Some songs I cannot hear again. Some songs make me think of you. Not of you in the general sense one does of missing one another. Not even in the way one thinks of losing a loved one or saying goodbye.
Worse? Far worse? The songs of dread. The songs of the silence between us gnawing ever more loudly until we could no longer ignore it. The songs that dig deep into your soul and gives it a little twist with every word and chord.
Did you not hear it die? It fell with a little thud.
In your car. In the rain. In the house. In the routine. Your impatience. Leaping out at me from behind the telephone.
Everybody is a different person with different people. It would be a lie to say otherwise.
With you I was young and hot-headed. A boat without a plan. I was perfectly happy to let you captain it. But we never knew where or how to dock.
Sweet Disposition.
I was a person without a home in those lost days. A wanderer without a country. From bus to plane to taxi to your car. To a home which was never ours. And an us I'm growing increasingly unclear of. Is this a dream? Or is this reality?
Seven Wells.
1825 days. Half of them spent on planes. Half of them ten thousand miles apart. If not literally, then as some impenetrable chasm I never learned to cross.
I hate those songs.
You wanted to know how it came so easily to me. How I moved on. I did not. Did you know of all those nights I drank myself to imbecilic stupor to write poetry in languages I don't speak? It looks like I walked away from our life with scarcely a moment's thought. But it was a burden I could not bear.
The thought of loving forever a woman who did not want to marry me. The idea that I had to banish all hope for a family. That, when I left you, tethering on the edge of madness, you loved me tremendously but not enough, seemed to be what you were saying. My hopes. My dreams. It was all you. It was madness that made me circumnavigate the globe to win your heart. And it was madness that made me travel the world to lose it. We never wanted to be the people who stayed together from not having a good reason to leave. Better now than at 35, or something like it. In the end I could not bear the thought of not being enough.
I can never go back to that city and not feel quite desperately breathless again. Not for a long time at least. Waiters who want to know why I've disappeared. Friends who I haven't and won't see. That city, at the start, was all you and all us and all our secret nooks and our very own places and special people and our house and our dog. That city then grew into a nightmare that was all broken dreams as they fell apart and things that could never be and places I could not find and things I could never be. I tried to hide it and blamed your taxi drivers and horrible traffic and the pollution and the inbred circles and the wanky artists but in the end it was all us, falling to pieces and me doing the only thing I knew how to which was run very far away from responsibilities and rent because like I said I was a different person then.
The good thing about falling to pieces and putting yourself back again is you do it so many times you get faster at it, if you remember how. I ran as far away from that city as I could and hurried to build a new life for myself, it was selfish of me to. I ran and I ran and I buried myself in a dozen women's pillows and I walked home from their darkened kitchens like a zombie every morning mortified that my life as I knew it had ceased to exist and that I had swung a fairly giant axe in its direction.
I never want to have to run again from the woman I love. I never want to turn the other way in silence biting my tongue letting an argument fester until we no longer speak. I never want to hide who I love or have to be hidden.
The seventh well can't be found.
I'm sorry you loved me I'm sorry you wasted five years I'm sorry you gave up so much I'm sorry I hate KL I'm sorry I'm not a private person at all I'm sorry I moved on so quickly I'm sorry I loved you too damn much I'm sorry my disease made me an emotional basket case I'm sorry I never learned to stop crying I'm sorry you hate crying I'm sorry I wanted my girlfriend to also want me as much as I wanted her I'm sorry I don't know how to be older and better I'm sorry I wish I'd done a little better
Leaving Hungary thinking fröccs is the best idea in the world
Arriving in frosty Helsinki once again
The cute studio in Apila
That Finnish rapper in a Tiki bar
Being miserable, cold and desperately wanting you
More palinka, Timo's flat, tiny spaces and uncrossable chasms
Red-heads in the rain
Remembering that karaoke in northern Europe is pretty damn weird
Mushroom-picking, mushroom-cooking
Cycling on a Jopo through the rain
Beautiful Finnish brunches on Sunday mornings
A lot of fish
Tactical Nuclear Penguin
American Airlines, truly a terrible way to fly
Arriving in America for the first time
Pacific Heights. Not having change for the bus to Market Street.
Speaking badly in Cantonese.
Father of my future children showing me a iBaby monitor in the Apple Store
Brilliant people all over San Francisco.
Being chased up a flight of stairs by a bouncer in the Castro for not having an ID.
Losing my ID. And my credit cards. And my iPhone. In a bar. In the Tenderloin.
Being stupid.
Being on a work call with Sydney while sitting next to a painting called The Chronological Wall of Dicks and Cunts. Ah, San Francisco.
Staff at the Singapore consulate giving me cup noodles and soya bean milk from their personal stashes.
Buying a bright yellow Fuji Finest on my second day in San Francisco.
Toning my ass, cycling uphill everywhere
Excellent vegetarian Japanese food in Valencia followed by a free meditation class down the road.
Folsom Street Fair. Many things cannot be unseen, once seen.
Ethiopian with Jiten and Family.
Family of four sitting in a hipster coffeeshop in San Jose, each with a parrot on their heads.
Watching The Nationals vs the Phillies at the Nats Stadium.
You never forget your first Shake Shack.
America is so great because you can order beer and hot dogs online, and expect to have them arrive at your seat in a baseball stadium in three minutes.
One day I will understand more of this great nation, the same one that invented SPAM and Chicken in a Biskit. These inventions speak more about a national character than any other great invention.
Rolling my eyes at groupies of ‘famous tech people'.
Walking to the Lincoln Memorial, wishing I had seen it earlier because all I see now in that statue is Abraham Lincoln (Vampire Killer)
Eating fish tacos with Jason Scott Jones, who knows more about Brooklyn than anybody else
Having the cashier ask me why I want to pay US$12 for a can of tuna. Not having a good answer other than ‘it's very good tuna. Spanish.'
My crazy/beautiful Crown Heights pad.
Being in love with New York, like they all said I would.
Talking to my aunt at JFK for longer than we have ever spoken to each other, all our lives.
My 27th birthday party in Crown Heights.
The Met Museum with Michael Ruby and Dave Gurien.
Leaving New York, loving New York.
New York to Budapest via London, Budapest to Singapore via Doha, 12 hours apart
Those miserable long layovers in Doha.
Wanton mee
Having everything fall into place the moment I got home
The first day Cookie got home
Cooking a delicious spare ribs pasta
IKEA, burgers, Thai supermarkets and Mustafa
Finally getting my diving license
Doing the Gangnam Style at 10m underwater
The corner store in Tioman
Thinking that learning to dive in the middle of the monsoon was probably not too clever
Floating upwards uncontrollably before learning to trust my own buoyancy
Recently, a friend from Bangalore messaged me on Facebook and asked me for some help. Her family friend, who was not very educated, had paid a lot of money to an agent in Bangalore to get work in Singapore. He had his work permit issued, and was told to leave for Singapore as soon as possible. There was a gap of a week: he had to leave immediately, they told him. She found this a little dubious, and asked me to help verify if the work permit was real, if he was being taken for a ride.
As we suspected, the entire thing was a scam. He did not leave for Singapore, and narrowly avoided what I can only imagine was a low paying, illegal job for a shady employer. I doubt he will ever get his money back, but I still think that is a better fate than coming here without even fewer rights than a legit foreign worker.
In the process, I learned a bit about how one can verify the authenticity of a work permit. I hope this can be translated into different languages, especially in Indian languages. Feel free to post this in as many places as you like. As long as it helps somebody.
Scroll down to: Work Permit Validity Check Via Work Permit Online. Click it. Note: This service is only available Monday to Saturdays from 8am to 10pm, and unavailable at other times and on Sundays and public holidays.
If it's within the time frame that the WPOL service is online, this is the screen you will see: a lot of legalese. Click Agree.
In the main WPOL screen (which looks like this), click the third item on the left which says "Work Permit Validity/Application Status".
You'll be prompted to enter your details. If you are a foreigner or currently not residing in Singapore, check Passport and enter your passport number.
You'll see many boxes. Go to Option 3 and key in: "Worker's Work Permit" and "Date of Application of Work Permit". Both details will be on your IPA letter.
If it is an invalid or forged work permit, you'll see: Error.
Follow up by calling the Ministry of Manpower at +65 64385122 during working hours in Singapore.
National Day came and went. I haven't written any of those essays I promised to. Sheepish. I will write them, I just need a little bit more time.
I did, however, contribute a piece to the Straits Times after PM Lee's National Day Rally speech, which I streamed from a house by the lake in… Hungary. I know, I'm still waiting for my life this year to get less random. I don't think that's going to happen.
If you're interested, you can read it here: link (opens a jpg image).
Speaking of random, and Hungary, I am currently hiding out in a secret location there.
What am I doing?
Huddling in a house with a team of talented designers and developers, and we are building an ambitious app in a little over two and a half weeks. It's called Photogotchi and it will be available in mid-September. Yet another example of how the little dots connect for me over and over again, one of the contestants on the autorickshaw rally that I went on a few years ago runs this amazing program where he sends a group of people from all over the world to go to a location in Hungary and live, work and eat together for three weeks, and basically live and breathe tech for that period. You learn a lot: how to work in a group, how to work non-stop fuelled by Hungarian energy drinks (burn, baby, burn..!), how to play hard and even cook for your team and do your laundry like your life depended on it (my current dilemma every couple of days). Most importantly you get to be a part of a motivated team that breathes code, design and ships product — every aspect of it. I'm getting a lot out of this, and if you're interested you should definitely apply next year to the App Campus program. It helps that Hungary is as amazing as I thought it would be.
When I'm done here, I move on to Finland. Yep, Finland yet again, even if it was only six months ago that I was there. I'm in love with that country, its people, and I've made so many wonderful friends that I just had to go again just because I was going to be on the same continent! Finnair, my new favourite airline, takes me there for an affordable price.
When I'm finished with Finland (if I ever do), I'll move on to San Francisco, where I'll get to see new friends and old, visit companies I deeply admire, and learn as much as I can from the best brains in my industry. Then I'll head to Washington DC to see a very dear friend who currently works at the embassy there. Then it'll be my birthday, and it'll happen in New York City. This sounds cheesy but I feel like I have been waiting my whole life to finally make it there (just like the song), and I have an incredible schedule lined up already, mostly comprising of meeting people who have inspired me, having a superb 27th birthday party surrounded by some dear friends, going to classes, and doing new things.
If it isn't already obvious, I am on a mission. I have to sort out myself, reconfigure my life and priorities, and two weeks into my travels and challenges I am already halfway there: I'm closing off bits of a past best left behind, bravely — some say foolhardily — navigating new, unseen waters. I'm in a different headspace from the one I was in six months, a year ago.
Even though it looks like, and God knows it felt like, I was wading in a cloud of randomness for the past six months, my method to this madness has been simple: figure shit out, get stuff done. Fix what wasn't working, improve my skills.
What I did (God help me if I sound like a pop self-help type now) was easy enough for anybody to do. The main tenets: Ask. Do. Give.
It amazes me how far one can get just by asking. It opens doors you previously didn't know existed. When I made some of the very big decisions I had to make, on business, love and others, I was temporarily frozen by the fear — what happens next? I didn't know. The fear was crippling. But eventually I came to see that if I didn't let fear cripple me in so many other aspects of my life, I certainly wasn't going to let it win in the most important areas, the ones that affected me directly. I made decisions, some of which I'm not particularly proud or happy to have made, but that were necessary — to me — with less collateral damage now than if I make them years from now. I didn't know what was going to happen, in terms of work, money, life. But I've come to think that maybe I really am one of the luckiest people ever — everything fell into place, and got going, pretty much with a life of its own in which I was a mere spectator who occasionally hit a ‘yes' or ‘no' or ‘let's move on' button. None of that would have happened if I hadn't developed the shameless ability to ask. The right people at the right places. What's the worst that could happen? A no? So I did, and I'm all the better for it.
I actively identified a few key areas in my life that needed to be fixed, and tried to find inspiration on how to go about fixing them.
I knew that I had boundless energy when it came to starting things up, but not when it came to completing things — to running the race through to the end. The tedium and minutiae of everyday life bored the hell out of me. So I learned to delegate, and I learned to separate the important from the less so.
I knew that I had no trouble making a lot of money, but plenty of trouble understanding the flow of money, so I went to a handful of trusted older acquaintances and friends and basically said to them: here I am, this is where I am at, this is the situation, this is where I want to be in 5 years, 10 years — in your shoes. Teach me what to do with money in beneficial ways, and not only to myself. One day I'll write a ridiculous self-help finance book on this process.
I knew that I had no shortage of ideas, all of which excited me and made me jump out of bed — but I needed to make them show for something. That tied in with how I previously and historically always ran out of steam and had no ability to see things through to their full potential. I threw a couple of things at it to try to fix it — mostly through consistency and coffee-fuelled attempts at hard work — but seen through the perspective of what I need to achieve within the next year, there are always creative ways to fix any problems, and in the next few months I will be able to hold actual things in my hands and say: I made this, and I finished it.
Doing stuff has never been difficult for me. I'm the crazy friend who gets sent these emails saying "I have this great idea. What should I do?" And my only answer is: do it. Or if I can afford to, let me help you. This quarter, whatever stars are aligned (if you believe in that hufflepuff), they're certainly all pointing at how I'm learning to pick my battles and to keep doing stuff, but only the stuff that really matters in the end. Steve Jobs' famous line to Sculley rings true in my mind at every milestone: do I want to sell sugared water? Or do the important stuff? In some truly funny ways I think I'd let my grip on reality cripple my ability to see the big picture. Being bogged down by the small stuff, the details — I stopped being able to dream. Of course the dreamer in me now at 27 versus the one at 17 is a very different one: I already know the small stuff and I won't sweat it. But I don't ignore them or wish them away. So now, I do, with the tempered mania of a recovering hyperthyroid patient on metaphoric and literal energy drinks (but properly medicated, don't worry, mum) — banging away at my keyboard, and the world, and all these things I am going to do in it.
This is the point where I say with an Austrian bodybuilder's accent, I think — I am back. Bitches.
A theme that has persisted in my mind recently is that of how I need to give back. To my community. To the people who made me. My family, my country, my adopted country (India). I have launched or am launching initiatives in all of these. These are battles that are worth it. One project is Culture Kitchen, a food and art project that aims to connect Singapore to the rest of the world through delicious food and intriguing, sometimes edible art. Is Singapore becoming more xenophobic? Maybe. Is there any justification for it? Never. It becomes xenophobia when it stops being about the policies, and when it starts being about the people — anybody. The guy in the train speaking in a foreign language you don't understand. The waitress who doesn't speak the correct language. But how can we undo this? I don't know. What I do know is that I think saying "you are xenophobic", even when truly well-deserved, already splits the people in camps. In its own ironic way, that also puts people into defensive modes — us versus them, all over again. We must always, always call out xenophobia and never tolerate it. But we must also stem its growth with a light touch. Just as how I will always call out homophobia when I see it, whether it is directed at me or not, on a personal level when I meet somebody from a background that hasn't given him or her any opportunities to meet real gay people, I would rather give him a chance and be the living example of the gay person he could never hate, than flat out deny him the ability to re-evaluate his opinion. I also have the kumbayah belief — hope? pipe dream? — that Singaporeans, and our electorate, are by and large rational beings who are averse to extremism on either side of the spectrum. Yes, there is some danger that we are following the global trend of slipping towards unfounded nationalism based on birth and race. But I think we can avoid that by starting to have open, honest conversations. Do I think Culture Kitchen will be able to fix anything? I wouldn't dare be so self-important. I think my job is done not when I change the mind of somebody who is already anti-immigration and/or xenophobic (is there a difference?), but it is when it inspires other citizen-led projects, and when it plants the seed in the mind of just one person — hey, I never knew that about this country. We actually have these things in common. Let me find out more.
In addition to Culture Kitchen I will also have a host of other small mini-projects at ThisIs.sg, which is currently not ready but the basics are there: small island, big heart. Quirky projects celebrating the Singapore spirit.. As a young Singaporean who has chosen a somewhat different path, I am always asked by even younger Singaporeans, "how did you do this?" Since I know so many other kindred spirits who are doing likewise, in their own fields, across a spectrum of various industries and activities, I thought I would collect them all in one place and have them answer such questions in a publicly accessible database. It is my hope that with these, others will see that it's actually not that scary, not that hard, to follow their dreams, to do stuff, to start first by figuring out what matters to them. God knows I could have done with something like that myself when I was younger and clueless.
So. Giving back. There are tons of other initiatives that we've dreamed up, and that we're laying the groundwork on, but for now there's all of this. And then some. I wish I started an active giving process much earlier, but here we are.
In between all these projects, shuttling back and forth between various countries, and other things, I haven't had very much time to sort out the homefront. My dog is now in Singapore, and will be out of quarantine soon. When she does get out and come home to live with me in my family home, I think it will be my first real shot at real life this year.
It's been a crazy year but at least you can't call it uninteresting in the slightest way.
Perhaps the biggest discovery this year may be that I possibly and probably have an attention deficit disorder too?
Thank you, mad world, for giving me all the shots I have. I am having a ball of a time. And I have to go away to figure out where I'm going to live. I said that to a friend, two decades older, and she simply laughed and said "that's so Millennial of you." I'm glad I'm a Millennial (even ChannelNewsAsia thinks so) — it's damn confusing, but it's a damn awesome time to be doing all these things with the world as your oyster, baked, fried or freshly shucked.
The donation drive for last week's #downtownlinetragedy victims will close tonight, Friday, 27 July, at 2359hrs.
If donations marked “Bugis MRT accident” arrive by cheque after the deadline and includes contact information, TWC2 will email the donor to ask whether he/she would like a refund or if the donation should be put towards the organization’s general fund. Refunds, should you select that option, will be made promptly.
If however the donation is received after the deadline marked “Bugis MRT accident” but without any contact information, the donation will be accepted into the organization’s general fund.
Thank you so much, kind souls in Singapore, for showing all of us that Singapore still has plenty of compassion, empathy and dignity.
Closure of donation drive: TWC2 will stop collecting donations for the victims of the #downtownlinetragedy tonight (Friday 27 July 2012, 2359hrs). For more information please read this link
Edit: The Paypal link we previously posted isn't working. To donate via Paypal, please to go the donate page on TWC's website, and click the Paypal icon there.
Clarification: Questions have been raised in various comments about the commission we mention here. Just to be clear, the commissions are charged by the various online payment platforms. We do not receive a single cent or even come close to looking at it. It's all run through a registered non-profit.
It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. This morning, we awoke to tragic news that two workers had died while building the Downtown Line in Bugis. They were buried alive by cement while pouring wet concrete into a mould. The scaffolding collapsed. They were stuck in the cement and the rescuers had some difficulty prying their bodies out. Investigations are now saying that the wet concrete was almost as heavy as a swimming pool. (link) Whatever the outcome, and whatever its impact on our labour practices will be, there is simply no other way to put this: these guys came here to build our nation, often at great risk to their lives.
Singapore is what it is today because of the migrant workers that have built our structures, poured our wet cement while we were sleeping, dug and laid our roads. It was true when it was Samsui women doing that, and it is even more true now that we have migrant workers from China, Mongolia, India, Bangladesh and other countries coming here in droves in search of a better life, offering their services to us at minimal cost and maximum risk.
As Miyagi said, these guys are doing our national service.
A bunch of us spent all of this afternoon trying to figure out how we can do our part to help. We spoke with various government ministries, who are doing what they can on their part, and to organizations. The organization Transient Workers Count Too, which promotes equitable treatment for migrant workers in Singapore, stepped in. They've offered to take in donations for the victims. I must stress that as a non-profit registered under the Societies Act with experience in managing and disbursing donations, they have the structures and practices in place that Miyagi, mrbrown and I do not have. If you have queries about the accounting practices and methods of fund disbursement, feel free to reach out.
In the meantime, what we would like to do is to create an avenue for those of you who want to help to do so. The money goes towards the families of the two deceased workers, as well as to the injured workers who are unable to work while they recover.
This is how you can donate:
BY CHEQUE:
Make a crossed cheque payable to: ‘Transient Workers Count Too’, write your name and “Bugis MRT Accident” at the back of the cheque and mail it to: 5001 Beach Road, #06–27 Golden Mile Complex, Singapore 199588.
Send an email to info@twc2.org.sg with your name, cheque no., amount and “Bugis MRT Accident”, so that the donation can be properly recorded and a receipt sent to you.
BY SGGIVES (ONLINE)
You can donate using your credit card here. A small commission is charged by this donation collection agency. Under the “Special Occasion / Person” field, type “Bugis MRT Accident”.
BY PAYPAL (ONLINE)
You can use your Paypal account or credit card to donate here (scroll down and click the Paypal button). However, a commission of 4% or so is charged on every donation. There is no field for you to input the purpose of donation, so it is advisable to drop twc2 an email after you’ve donated by this method.
Whatever small amount you can offer goes a long way.
My friend Yu-Mei is putting together a blogging and social media workshop as part of HeritageFest, a NHB event.
I'll be speaking with Rosenah Omar at 3pm, on a panel moderated by Notabilia, although I do wish I could split myself and attend the panel on 1960s music at the same time! Here's the schedule for the day, and here's the Facebook event page. Hope to see you there!
Programme:
2:00 p.m.
Going Past Forward: The art of blogging or writing online about Singapore heritage
The abstinence-first message was not surprising. The continued insistence on couching the abstinence-first message in majority/minority, mainstream/fringe terms was, especially after 15 000 people showed up in Hong Lim Park this past weekend to express support for ‘the freedom to love'. Even after removing Pink Dot from the fray, it's a little hard to continue accepting the Ministry's insistence that the only ‘majority' that counts is the one that they view through their policymakers' prisms, with no consultation, data, any form of scientific inquiry or poll.
Little else seemed new, but for the introduction of ‘new' elements such as the dangers of social networking. The rest of it may be summed up as such: say no to sex until marriage. No surprises there.
Otherwise, the SEd component that raised the most eyebrows was the rather odd new declaration that "only specially selected teachers whose values align with the ministry's values on sexuality education may teach the Growing Years programme" (link). This was quickly interpreted by the hordes of trolling ‘netizens' (and I say troll in the most endearing way possible) to be: only virgins may teach sexuality education, if unmarried. If married, only those who practised abstinence until marriage can be selected to teach the programme.
If this was already true and in practice prior to news of the revision, which I suspect it well may be (given the Ministry's dogged pursuit of ‘mainstream values'), the fact that they saw it necessary to spell this out unequivocally points at a worrying sign: the Ministry is moving to align itself on what it is not, rather than what it is. In other words: it never, ever wants to find itself in the unenviable position that it was caught in at AWARE-gate in 2009 (chronology, Economist article).
That isn't surprising either.
I'm afraid all this means for our nation is we now have a Ministry of Education that is cowering in fear from (1) unknown, invisible conservative forces who make their demands for mainstream, abstinence-only sexuality education through some unseen magic, but who are definitively in the majority (2) unknown, invisible liberal forces whose demands for comprehensive sexuality education must be quelled, as they are in the minority.
How much longer before the cookie crumbles?
The Ministry has limited options. One, continue to sweep everything under the carpet and stick its metaphorical fingers into its metaphorical ears, and tell itself it'll all be okay. Two, take a side. No matter which side it is, it will be ugly. Three, have the moral gumption to look beyond the limited prism of its Guidance Branch and talk to its own teachers in the field about what's going on out there. Word on the street is the teachers (especially the younger teachers) have their hands tied: every so often, a young gay kid (usually depressed) comes to them seeking help, and there is nothing they can do to help them in a professional capacity because they're not in the right department, qualified to speak on the matter, or allowed to step over the line where they can acknowledge their gayness and tell them it'll be okay. It's not like these teachers don't know how to handle the matter — they have gay friends, or are gay themselves, not that they'd ever say so, because they can't.
Abstinence has not worked anywhere. What makes the Ministry think it can make it work here?
Through this announcement, the Ministry hopes to avoid fire from all sides, but instead barrels itself further into an unenviable position. By hardly making a stand, it will never be conservative enough for our conservatives, and never progressive enough for those of us who would like to see change.
Until the Ministry can elucidate further on the following points, this project is doomed: what is the long list of mainstream values? It keeps referring to mainstream values, but keeps us guessing. It's clear what sort of stand the Ministry of Education wants to take on this matter. Why won't they come out and say so? That their long list of mainstream values revolve around heterosexuality and abstinence? By being vague about the very thing that is meant to be the cornerstone of their programme, they're not doing themselves any favours. What are these mainstream values and by what measure are the specially selected teachers… selected for these values?
I will watch this story unfold with much anxiety, with just five questions:
What exactly are the mainstream values that the Ministry requires its teachers to have, and on what basis and characteristics are these teachers selected? Who makes the final decision to select them in every school?
How are the (at least ten) ‘specially-selected and MOE-trained teachers' selected and trained? Parents in particular will appreciate having the contents of the special training curriculum shared with them, such that they may be kept aware of the latest developments in their students' knowledge of sexuality education.
Who are the 12 external vendors which have been approved for this year, and in what way will they provide supplementary programmes? Parents ought to be kept aware of the types of activities that are available, and be clearly informed if and when these vendors have any direct or indirect religious affiliations.
How are ‘fringe cases' handled? As with any other form of education, certain students may require special attention and education. Are these specially-trained teachers equipped to provide access to a further set of comprehensive sexuality education information and materials on demand, or provide access to educators who can?
How will the specially-trained teachers in each school be assessed? Who will they report to, at school and at the Ministry? What are the KPIs?
I must watch too many scifi movies. I'd rarely been convinced of the malleability of time, but these days I measure out everything in two-week units. Time seems to race ahead of me. It always has, now more than before.
When I say these days, I don't mean it facetiously. Yes, I turn just 27 in a couple of months, but I feel old, cranky and grumpy most of the time, especially around younger people. This must be what growing old feels like at first, not with a bang but with a grumpy whimper.
I must tell my endocrinologist about my worsening memory loss problems. If only I didn't keep forgetting. I will set it as a Reminder in my iPhone, and tell it to alert me when I enter the hospital. I must also set another one to remind me of the same thing as I'm leaving the hospital, because… I really worry that I'm losing my mind.
Walking away is hard. One would think you'd get used to it, after having done it so many times, but it doesn't get any easier. It sounds base, but it's when you pack up an apartment with all your physical possessions into many, many boxes and bags, and load them into the back of a car at 5am, that seems to be when reality bores into your thick, numb skull. I'll remember next time.
Life has taken on an interesting turn. I've had to scale back on life and ambition in some ways, because I literally cannot remember things, and physically cannot do some of those things. I've undoubtedly become a new convert to the "quality of life" school of thought when it comes to work. That part I'm scaling up on. Some new favourite lifehacks: putting my phone on Airplane mode and not turning it on until I get to work, not checking email until I get to work, bringing a book to read in the bus so I spend more time reading books than email, reading and buying more physical books than ebooks, doing things differently (like buying an orange notebook instead of a black one), making it a point to take the women of my family out to lunch every Monday, among other things. All of it sounds trivial now that I write it down, but I'm also at that point in my life where I favour incremental, trivial changes over the huge coming-at-you-with-a-mack-truck changes I used to favour (mostly of the "I'm leaving the country for an indefinite period!" variety)…
I've started making some tentative steps back into the world of meeting and dating interesting people. There have been many interesting people. But. c.f. point #2: I'm just older and grumpier these days, so you can imagine how that's going. Also, I have transformed into a crazy dog lady whose primary concern in life for the next 110 days is to spend as much time with her quarantined dog as she possibly can. I feel about as attractive as anybody who smells of dog kennels most of the time can be.
Singapore has been really good to me since I came home. In some ways it feels like I never really left. I'm surrounded by incredible people in my industry who inspire me and others; I'm around people who really do walk the talk. It may or may not be naive optimism inspired by my homecoming, but I am so excited by what I see around me now in Singapore. My calendar of projects and events has filled up at a good pace. At this point, I have a just nice amount on my plate. It helps.
The hardest part about breaking up with anybody is walking away from the memories of what you once wanted to accomplish together. I may feel like I'm losing my mind and my memory, but this isn't one of those that I've lost.
Five years ago, I said: "Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and all I will remember is driving up, around, up, around, up, around, in the swirling clouds as the rain lashed at my windows and I feared for my life, balanced so daintily in this tin can navigating itself on the hairpin road."
Plenty has changed, these five years, but at least this part remains familiar: "Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and I will still tell you the same thing: I’m not sure why I do the things that I do." Then, I was referring to the heady, exciting days of a student who had the chance to criss-cross across the hill tribes of northeast India and investigate the ailments of rural Bangladeshis suffering from leprosy, TB and lymphatic filiarisis. I got to go on the amazing adventure of my life, never really expecting it to end. It hasn't.
Much has changed, but adventure has never left me.
The last five months have been tumultuous. It was the sort of chaos that was ultimately a blip in the universe (though still a large one), and not, thankfully, the sort that led to destruction and the end of the world as I knew it.
In a few days I will make that trip to Kuala Lumpur for the last time. It will be awkward. On it, I will return to the apartment I've had for two years, but haven't lived in for the last five months, and I will assemble everything that I own in that city and that country, and pack it into several boxes. I last packed all the things I owned in the universe into several boxes under far happier circumstances. This time I pack a dog into the car, too.
I don't regret a moment. Life has dealt me a pretty good lot, and I have milked it for what it's worth. So from Singapore to Dubai and the Middle East to London to Kuala Lumpur I now find myself surprisingly, but not that much, in Singapore. I left a Singapore I didn't like very much, and returned to a Singapore I absolutely love (there's an essay in that somewhere). You can't come home again, but you can definitely make it home again, for the first time.
The single life is interesting, but difficult, in equal parts. I haven't dated in such a long time, I really don't have it in me anymore.
The life with hyperthyroid is worse.
I can't remember shit. I quite literally feel like I've lost a major chunk of my former cognitive abilities. It sucks.
How am I dealing with all of this? I'm… dealing. If you know me in real life, you probably can't tell. I've worked very hard to keep it invisible. My heart rate still goes nuts. I drop a ton of weight or I put it back and I drop it again. I am manic and then I am exhausted. I am utterly intolerant to heat, even in an air-conditioned room I am hot. I don't need any medical diagnosis here (I am actively under the care of the medical professionals here, no worries). I just wish I could get my memory back. I've gone from one of those people with super memories to one of those who has to scribble down everything. I don't remember people I've just met (this has never happened before), I don't remember even meeting them, most of the time. It's amazing I can even work at all.
The last five months have felt like a massive blur. I feel like time and space has compressed for me. Or that I'm living in a time warp, splitting myself between two universes. One: pre-illness, pre-breakup, pre-everything. When life was, I thought, sorted. For the time being. The second one, the one I inhabit right now: plagued by a disease that doesn't threaten but bothers me, learning to find my feet again without the woman I love and the life and businesses we had. Breaking up gets more and more expensive as you get older.
I'm okay, I'm good, I'm pretty happy (seriously) — I was just telling someone that I thrive in change in ways that many people don't understand, but I do. Change works for me.
I should be more careful what I wish for, you know? Now there's so much of it I am still finding my feet, but I'm not sure how. That suits me fine for now.
In my mother tongue we have a brilliant turn of phrase. Geh kiang. Separately, they mean fake clever. Together, it means some approximation of 'smart alec', but that's not quite good enough. It's hardly translatable at all. 'Smart alec' does not embody the degree of stupidity we are usually referring to when we say 'geh kiang'.
My mother will tell you I embody geh kiang, every bit of me.
I was especially geh kiang when I packed up my bags and bicycle, mostly under stressful circumstances, in order to take them somewhere.
Why did I bring a bicycle to northern Europe? I found myself wondering that all throughout my Nordic escapade. I wondered the loudest and grumbled the most when it was time to pack up my bags and my bicycle all over again. Five times. I know, I counted.
I packed up my bags and my bicycle when I had to move, when I had to get in a plane, when I had to jump into a train, when I had to do all of that entirely by public transport (cabs are totally out of the question in Europe!) and onto train platforms and then into trains.
It was difficult, to say the least. Lucky for me — and my sanity — my love for cycling, and the relative benefits of having one's own bicycle in a foreign place, far outshone the logistical barriers. I will probably do it again.
When you commit to having such a piece of equipment by your side of the entire duration of your trip, you're committing to a relationship that will be the primary relationship, one that will be far more important than the by-now boring concept of luggage. You have to look after it. Endure the glances. Fight for it at airport check-in desks. Hold it, dance with it, around the feet of heavily pregnant commuters and swerving around nervous people, trying your best not to jab anybody with your hulk of a piece of equipment.
So what happened? In a nutshell,
I broke my bike
Finnair treated my bike brilliantly. I flew them three times: to Helsinki, to Stockholm, back from Copenhagen. All three times my bicycle more than survived, and the entire experience was very easy. I highly recommend Finnair for their quick, no-nonsense flights to Europe from Singapore. Helsinki Airport is also my new favourite airport.
I, however, was very stupid. I tried to fix what I thought was a loose nut, myself. Being no bike mechanic, I promptly broke the weirdest little part I could break — the plastic doohickey in the stem of the folding post of my bike. Without it, my bicycle could not stay folded. Foldable bikes like mine haven't taken off in that part of the world at all. Even though the Finns speak amazing English, most people anywhere have never heard of a plastic doohickey. Not unless you are very familiar with foldable bikes of the Dahon make.
Somehow, I managed to find an excellent bicycle shop where its owner and mechanics were super helpful. Since it's not even a part that my bicycle's manufacturer offers for sale, it seemed pretty dire. Thankfully, a quick-thinking mechanics with extraordinary ability in plastics (he had a degree in plastics engineering) took a look at the broken plastic bits, and he made a brand new doohickey for me. That entire process took a week so I had to go to Tallinn without my bicycle, but I was relieved that I wouldn't be travelling around with an unridable piece of junk for the next 3 weeks. More glad that it got fixed. I got lucky.
I had to be rescued by Swedish police
Not something I care to repeat ever again, but.. what an experience.
I was cycling along the bike lanes from Kungsholmen to Stockholm Central, happily zipping along at 25km/h with an air of familiarity. I was starting to really get where things were in Stockholm, and I'd had some amazing city rides. Seems like Stockholm Central hates me for some inexplicable reason. The last time I was there in 2010, I got locked out of Stockholm Central for many hours while my luggage was locked in.
This time, I guess I missed the sign that said "IF YOU ARE A BICYCLE, GO LEFT! NOT STRAIGHT!"
I went straight.
I realised something was amiss when I started descending down a steep flyover. I saw many heavy vehicles. I saw that I had no way to filter right (they ride on the right) without being in the middle of oncoming, converging traffic from another steep flyover. I jumped out. I saw that I could not go back up, and that there was no way I could walk off that bridge (water, water, everywhere).
I jumped onto my bike and kept going.
At some point it dawned upon me in my puny little brain that if I went any further, I would be bus chow in the middle of the underwater tunnel that crossed islands into Södermalm. I got out.
I don't know what I was thinking — probably nothing — I remember I was extremely calm. I called a Swedish friend, who could not help; I texted the Swedish friend I was riding to meet and told her I'd be late, that I'd explain later when I saw her.
Mostly I just stood by the side of the road and looked pathetic, I think.
A Stockholm city police car came within ten minutes, bundled my bicycle and its stupid owner into the back of the car, and drove me to Stockholm Central. I figured motorists might have called in to tell them that an Asian tourist was dangerously obstructing the lives of motorists on the highway by looking pathetic and helpless.
(They did confirm that they received calls about me, which is why they came; I didn't care to ask what had been reported!)
Stockholm police's parting words to me: "you should take a photo and show it to your friends."
Damn malu.
I had to carry a ton of weight every step of the way
Let's just say travelling with a bicycle, no matter how light, is not for the faint of heart. I only moved all my bags and the bicycle when I moved to a new city or went to the train station or airport, but when I moved, I moved.
One of the last minute decisions before leaving for Helsinki was that I would bring a silly little trolley with me. The kind that aunties go to the wet market with: the flimsy, plastic ones that are given out free at computer fairs or promotions. I don't know how I managed without it. Although my Dahon D7HG is quite tiny when folded, and it was also in a soft bag, the overall package including the paddings, foam and bubble wrap made for an uncarry-able package. I also had my large backpack and camera backpack. Why didn't I just pack it in a Samsonite case? I've tried that many times, each time to devastating results. First, dismantling the bike is pretty easy. Getting it to fit isn't. Unlike most other 20″ Dahon bikes, the D7HG Vitesse that I have has a large rear fender. It is close to impossible to remove, and without removing it, the bicycle does not fit into any luggage. It also has a hub gear, which makes it difficult to remove the rear wheel. More importantly, because of the hub gear and the rear fender, I'm not able to confidently put it back. I decided to avoid that nightmare this time. mrbrown and Ryan helped me zhng a makeshift soft bag carry method. It served me well.
Eventually, I gave up on the lousy trolley and went to a trolley superstore in Stockholm (yes, there is such a thing!) and purchased an amazing, sturdy, well-made Swedish trolley.
Would I do it again? Yes, absolutely! That was my first time travelling with my bicycle. To be honest, I don't think I was ready for it. I'm lucky in that I didn't get flats, I didn't need to change tubes (though I brought them anyway), that I didn't need to remove my wheels or do any repairs of any sorts on my own (other than the plastic doohickey incident). I'm no bike mechanic. I'm a little stupid about those things, in fact. I will get better at it because I now know what and where are the gaps in my knowledge.
I had an amazing time on the bike.
The Nordic countries are light years ahead of us in terms of cycling as part of the urban landscape. It was such a joy to ride there, especially in Copenhagen. Real bike lanes, bike traffic lights, an entire culture and city where cycling was a real, and sometimes the only, way of life. It was liberating.
Before going, I was quite shaky on the roads. I did not like the idea of riding on the roads in Singapore as I was not confident enough to do it. Because I got so much mileage on the roads of Copenhagen (breezy sweat-free 40km days were typical), I learned many things about what I needed to know from them. I now ride on the roads of Singapore regularly, and don't find it particularly difficult, although there are some challenges to be mindful of (car-dooring, for example).
Since I got home to Singapore, there's been a lot of talk about how public transport has become absolutely terrible. I agree it has deteriorated substantially, but my own personal way of getting around that problem is to ride more and talk less. I would be quite happy to cycle-commute at least 40% of the time in Singapore. Next time I travel, I am taking the bike with me again. Anywhere. Everywhere.
Those of you with elephant memories will remember what this site was 7 years ago. The web was a very different place. This blog was a different blog, I was a different kind of kid (19 years old! Yowch), and the ecosystem was other sites like this with no Facebook, Twitter, not in the ways we now have them anyway. The only external outlet we all plugged out to was Flickr, and we know how that went down. It's hard to believe we once lived in a world when Yahoo! was still important.
Through all of that, I was running the same Textdrive box. I had one of those legacy accounts with 'lifetime hosting'. There was no cloud (not in the way we know it now).
The point of all this is: the world has changed, Facebook has IPO-ed, I have changed (in the midst of some pretty huge personal, professional and geographical transitions at the moment), and while I'm still figuring it all out, I figured the easiest thing I could change was the server that this site runs on..
I'm home now of course, whatever home means, and I've been retelling a couple of stories. The same ones, but many of them, just because I've had such a crazy time in the Nordics.
This one isn't very much of a story. Just a little tale that, once again, shows you how crazy we Asians are about our food.
I spent the first three weeks of my big Scandinavian/Finnish vacation on my own, and/or with friends from that region. In the last week, a friend from uni came to meet me in Copenhagen.
To buy chocolate cake. From a supermarket. She'd been on student exchange in Sweden, now lived in Geneva, and missed Swedish supermarket chocolate cake terribly. I'm sure it's nice and all, but damn if I ever go to another country to buy chocolate cake again.
I can't say I've been away from my phone or Mac for more than 24 hours, not at any point in the last 10 years. I can't say I have at all. They feel like such natural extensions of my arm, they are almost artificial appendages themselves, not just of my body but also of my brain. I needed to switch off and I needed a drastic way to do it.
Which is the backstory behind why I found myself living in a hut like the above.
170 km and 2 hours northwest of Stockholm, lays a little town called Skinnskateberg. Its pronunciation eludes me, and still does; somewhere between a huin and a hun instead of skinn. I'll take whatever you throw me, Sweden, but your compound sounds and accents are something I'll never get (I've just learned how to pronounce Nässjö… Promptly forgot it too).
When some Stockholm friends wanted to know my weekend plans, I told them I was going to be in Skinnskateberg, only to find most of them had never heard of it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't my pronunciation too, because I showed it to them on the map.
I was only headed there because of one thing: my need to be one with nature, in a way I knew how.
Ever since I got sick, I've been struck with the overwhelming need to go be one with nature. I can't explain it, and I can't reject it. After rejecting nature all my life (damn the insects and sweatiness of the tropics), I now want to do it all: camp, start fires, cook in the open, fetch water from natural water sources, and whatever else my city slicker mind romanticised.
So off to Skinnskateberg I went. Why there, of all places, instead of the far north? My metrics for selecting this place were simple: I didn't want to freeze my bits off, didn't want to have to pack snow shoes, knew I couldn't pack a winter-ready tent or sleeping bag (can't justify the cost of one), and I needed to be close enough to the middle to travel south to Malmö afterwards.
Which left just one place: Kolarbyn, near Skinnskateberg.
I wanted to go to Kolarbyn because it promised no electricity, no running water, and a series of huts that resembled hobbit holes, to my untrained eye.
Of course they were just replicas of the huts that the charcoal-burners of the region once lived in, hundreds of years ago, first built to educate the modern crowd about the area's history after the industry died, then turned into the eco-lodge it now is.
Kolarbyn proudly advertises itself as "Sweden's most primitive hotel", and they'd be right.
I booked myself on a two night stay there. Though I freaked out a little when I was told I would be alone all throughout the three days, things quickly worked out when I found Roxanne, an ex-classmate now working in Stockholm, would join me on my unconventional Easter break.
I was enamoured by the romance of the whole set up, but I worried about the details: how would I do with starting fires? What would I eat? How would I chop wood? What water would I drink? How would I even get there? I wrote emails to Andreas, the owner of Kolarbyn, pleading Asian virginity in the Scandinavian outdoors, and asked him to please show me how to do everything once. His Swedish efficiency of language and character was a simple, reassuring "don't worry about anything."
As it turned out, Andreas himself is ex-Swedish military, almost like a more realistic Bear Grylls (arguably better looking too). I mean, the man teaches courses teaching people how to start fires without anything, how to forage, and survive in the cold wilderness — I could not ask for a better teacher. He had me starting fires successfully in something like 5 seconds. Which just does not happen with me, usually. With non-digital skills I usually have the mental and psychomotor facilities of a five year old child, possibly worse.
He showed me the stream, from which I would fetch water, in which I would wash my cooking utensils; at which I could optionally clean myself, an option I would decline as I did not want to go home in a freezer (not to be morbid, but I'm just learning to deal with the cold and I really need more time when it comes to being in a frigid and cold body of water).
The communal fireplace was where all the cooking would take place. Though I was alone on the first night (Roxanne was to join me the second morning), I was lucky that I had a Swedish couple for company. I could not have asked for a more Swedish experience: we shared cans of Sofiero, they fed me grilled choco-bananas, and one of them even worked with Roxette. I cooked a simple pasta with mushrooms and asparagus, and dinner I made myself has never tasted as wonderful. The wilderness helps you redefine everything, including food — slow food with slow sources of fuel is indefinitely slow, slower, slowest.
My little hobbit hole, all mine for the first night, was called Botvik. All the huts have old names — such as Olof. Mine, Botvik, sounded less of a hulk than Viking-sounding Olof, and more of a bumbling little Viking version of Baldrick, which suited me fine. The Swedish couple complained that the huts were smaller than they looked online. Since I was expecting, and hoping for, a hobbit hole, Botvik was my idea of a dream come true.
Sheepskin was laid out on each side, on which a warm, winter-ready sleeping bag would go. The fireplace was a small, but sturdy little box that would be my best friend for the next two nights. A large stone apparatus enveloped the fireplace, and I came to think of it as a convection oven for my warmth.
I was worried I would be cold, but I was far from cold. The fires I started, and nurtured in Botvik were enough to keep me plenty warm at night and to keep me returning to all through the day. I was especially happy to return to the warmth of my hut after a morning hike to the compost toilet, and after the temperatures sank at nightfall.
Can it be that we have a genetic disposition to watching fires, and to wanting to make them bigger? Asked another fellow camper the next night. We had no answer, Roxanne and I, for we were busy learning about snus and stuffing our faces with soup and pork, but I certainly think he has a point.
Having never come close to a fire, or a fireplace before — I mean I do come from that breed of urbanites for whom sparkles are not good sounds, and who feared fire — fire became my best friend. Not necessarily in a pyromaniac sort of way. Fire draws you, in an elusive but unforgiving way. You can't not look at it. You need it. Everyone can have it, but not everyone can build the right kind of fire. It sounds base and primal, but it made me think about what little our primitive ancestors had and how they made use of what they did have; fire really does change everything. Not having my phone or Mac around was totally okay, then; we joked that every time we go out camping we sit around fires watching wilderness tv.
It's a channel I'm starting to get used to, I think.
I have seen some places in my short travelling life, but rarely a place that offers me chocolate and naked women within two hours of arriving.
Helsinki turned out to be such a place.
Unknown to me, mostly since I knew so little about Finland other than Nokia, Angry Birds and the cold, when I pinged some local friends on what I should do while waiting for them to be done with work, they almost universally said: have lunch and chocolates at Karl Fazer Cafe, and then go to the pool and sauna at Yrjönkatu Swimming Hall — it was a women-only day the day I got to Helsinki.
What should I wear to Yrjönkatu, I asked? I came prepared: I brought a bikini, even though bringing a bikini to a place that was going to be 0 degrees Celsius seemed a little silly.
Erm.. you wear nothing. That is the idea, my Finnish friends said, so it might not be for everybody._
I stuffed myself silly with soup and chocolates at Fazer (sidenote: starting to be quite a fan of Fazer chocolates, they ARE tasty), then cycled around downtown Helsinki for a bit. I thought I would worry about the sauna only if I saw it — I wasn't about to go out and look for a place just because of pfft naked women — but of course I found it within minutes.
When travelling, especially when travelling alone, one has the tendency to do as the Romans (or Finns) do, and plunge right into the deep end, so to speak. Not knowing any Finnish at all, I timidly found my way around the inner workings of a place dedicated to the dark arts of naked bathing and steaming.
Like tattoos, dating twins, and other much-talked-about concepts, this is something I would do just once; the downsides are far worse than the supposed benefits. But maybe I'm just unimaginative: I don't really feel like I can breathe in a sauna, and I get toe cramps the moment I hit cold water naked. Travel expands your horizons, makes you learn things about yourself: I learned I would rather be warm and fully clothed, around other fully clothed women.
Miracles.
After such a colourful start to my Nordic adventures, things only got better from there. I have met some great people, eaten some nice food, and done quite a number of things. If you have Instagram, you can follow me at my regular online handle; if you don't, you can use this instead. I update Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in real time while I'm here. I'm just taking it slow and chilling out — a lot — a lot for me anyway.
"Tallinn, Estonia 028 - Catedral Alexander Nevsky/ Alexander Nevsky Cathedral by Claudio.Ar, on Flickr"
Somewhere between lying in a hospital bed, travelling, and coming back to a hospital again, I decided: man, I really need to go away. I knew that my default go-to place was India. Until it wasn't.
Don't get me wrong, I still love India very much and it still holds a special place in my heart, as the one country that has given me much, but in 8 years of intensive India travel it is no longer "a destination I know nothing about" type of experience. India is a home I go back to, in grief and in celebration, and always will; I just needed to flirt briefly with other countries and climes, and so I will.
Tomorrow, I depart for Helsinki. After that, Tallinn, Stockholm, Skinnskatteberg, Malmö, Copenhagen. I know I said in my previous post that I needed to slow down, and learn to live again — this is exactly my idea of slowing down. It sounds mad, but I have a plan.
Ever since the hospital, I've stopped smoking and drinking, even casually. Even if not life-threatening, the episode convinced me that I wanted to do more with my life, where lifestyle was concerned — it also convinced me that I wanted to see more of the outdoors. I've been cycling, running, and cycling even more. I will bring my bicycle with me to the Nordic states (yes, I know I can rent bicycles there… but. I want my bicycle! Not somebody's else's!), and I will get to enjoy the onset of spring in some of the best cities in the world for bicycle commuting.
I don't know what to expect: I know so little about that part of the world. The only thing I know for certain is I will be cold. I've prepared for it, but I've never been in that type of cold until now, so I'm just going to have to make it up as I go. I'll be completely shut off from work for a while, which will be the first time in some years. I will be completely shut off from the world, and the world wide web, for a couple of days, too, which will be the first time… since I discovered the world wide web. Work-wise, I'm excited about that part of the world as it's the land of Spotify, Angry Birds, Minecraft — some of my favourite things in the world — along with awesome salmon and mesost, which I also love. I spent 3 all too brief days in Stockholm in 2010, and now I'm going to be back there, in the company of friends this time with the possibility of a superb dinner.
Ever since I had a vague inkling of ambition, it's been go, go and go.
Occasionally go even further, at top speed. Once I learned to catch the wind, I wanted to fly. I was the weird kid who climbed and used my stroller as a skateboard, even before I could walk.
I don't really know how to live any differently.
In school, I had to run every single track and field event, jump, debate, represent my institution and country at whatever they wanted me to, learn to be house captain, juggle many loves, do more A level papers than I needed, work in a few jobs, travel the world. I was unstoppable, not from the overwhelming middle class Singaporean need for accomplishment, but from not knowing any better.
The simple truth: I don't know what to do with myself. If I do one less thing. I freak out. My mind wanders. I fidget, physically, but worse is the emotional fidgeting that comes inevitably when I do fewer things than I can. (Not emotional as in "I should date someone" but as in "OMG WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE". Just to clarify.)
The moment I was done with university, I pursued all those madcap adventures I'd dreamed of as a child. Without the restraints of geography and formal education, I shined.
I may not have travelled far, unlike some mileage-racking people I know, but I have returned to the cities I love, repeatedly. I have pushed my body through some extremities. And travelled in ways that I am told are not good for me, in the long run.
Borneo longhouse and then Barcelona, in 36 hours.
Beirut and then Istanbul, in two weeks, by land.
Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry and 3000 kilometres of my beloved South India, in a rickety little tin can.
Dubai. Istanbul. London. Dubai. Chennai. Kuala Lumpur. Chennai. Dubai. London. Singapore. Dubai. Sana'a. Dubai. Singapore. Bangkok. Singapore. Dubai. Beirut. Damascus. Aleppo. Adana. Antalya. Goreme. Istanbul. Dubai. London. That was six months of my life in 2008-09.
At 23, you think you're invincible. The world is your oyster. There is nothing you can't do.
At 27, you're a little older now. Older and slower.
I was in Bombay two weeks ago, happy as usual to be there. I was going to go to Hong Kong, then go back to India again. I came home instead to Singapore, supposedly to catch my breath for a day before flying off to Kuala Lumpur, then Hong Kong, but found myself in hospital instead.
I didn't feel so invincible then.
I slept for six nights next to a dying woman, who expended her last breaths snoring like a champ. I figured if you were at that point, you can do whatever the hell you want. Preachers and Christian relatives came to proselytize by her bedside every evening. She grunted.
I had no preachers, but lots of balloons. (The person with the least-threatening disease had the most number of balloons. That didn't seem fair.)
I had lots of love.
I had everything I needed: food, water, medicine, medical attention, visitors, and potassium chloride, attached to my arm through a drip.
Life has a funny way of cutting you back down to size: I was diagnosed with hyperthyroid. My body, like my ambitions, was in overdrive, with so much metabolism that I lost 20kg at one point (not a good thing, btw); such that my hands shook, always involuntarily and sometimes violently; such that my heart raced and slowed and sputtered, often audibly.
No one could tell me what it was until I collapsed at dinner in Singapore, and my face went pale and my body cold, but my head burned at 40 degrees when I got to the hospital. Thereafter, I was force-fed medicine and put through a battery of tests for six days before I was released into the world again with stern orders to medicate and just chill the fuck out.
That didn't, and still doesn't, sit too well with me. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm frequently stumped by people who say they are bored, because I haven't known boredom in many years. The world is out there for the taking — and imma take it! But it was not meant to be, because my body said so.
In my hurry to be better and faster, I'd forgotten to stop — I'd forgotten about stopping at all.
I'd forgotten to spend time on the things that matter most: my health, my family, my friends.
I'd forgotten my body is a vessel that cannot keep up with all the desires of the mind, that needs to be well-kept and well-lubricated.
The hormonal imbalance caused by my hyperthyroidism put my life and what I cherished most about it in jeopardy. I swung, and still do, from sad to happy to neutral in a matter of minutes. I thought, and still do, of destroying everything I'd built up in years in fits of what felt like madness. I never thought it possible for a little butterfly shaped gland near my throat to wreak so much chaos in my life, but it has: my clothes don't fit, they literally fall off me; I went well below the weight I was at 10 years ago; I want to throw things one second and then I want to hug a kitten the next; I can be in the middle of a totally normal situation, such as sitting on a chair in my house, and then my heart starts racing, and slowing, when it pleases, almost as it wants to leap out of my body. If you ask me about the hormonal imbalance caused by hyperthyroidism, I'm very certain that it's on a scale of (old school birth control pill hormonal fallout + PMS + remembering all your sad memories) x 1000. On a good day, I potter about in a haze of drugs and sadness, and somehow manage to muster some of the old spunk left in me, and hold on to it like an unskillful amateur magician for however long I can keep it up. On bad days, I am utterly helpless, tiny things set me off, stupid things stress me out with no regard for proportion — I worry about small things now as though the apocalypse was just around the corner, when every rational bit of me that's left knows it's not, but my body and my mind just cannot compute it.
I miss that the most about pre-hyperthyroidism: my cool. I miss that my superpower of being unfazed by anything seems a world away from me now. I can deal with the months of diarrhea, weight loss, heart palpitations, hand tremors. I can deal with any of those physical things. But not being in full control of my mind is a scary place for me.
Talking to people who know what it's like helps (Thanks Lucian). Medicating regularly and sleeping more has helped, too. Physical symptoms and hormonal imbalance aside, I do not like that I (1) get loopy from time to time (2) have trouble concentrating (3) am significantly slower in terms of cognitive processes (4) forget things immediately (5) feel helpless about all of this.
There seems to be awfully little I can do except wait it out and hope for the best. In the grand scheme of things, I know this is one of those things that's going to be just another quirk, in a couple of months. I know I should be thankful it isn't anymore serious or life-threatening. It just gets in the way, you know? Especially when you are a small business owner like me, I need to be 150% there, 100% of the time. It seems to be my body's way of telling me to slow the fuck down and find a pace and time where I can do the things I want without destroying my body in the process. Health is wealth, etc, and all that mumbo jumbo (even if true, it still sounds funny saying it).
I've decided to chill out. To not let this disease take over my life, or my mind. To do things differently. To sleep before two in the morning, every night. To sleep at least six hours a day. To not subject myself to torturous travel schedules. To be aware of my limitations. This part is the hardest, but I will try.
I'm going to have to take a break from all of this — Singapore, Malaysia, work, empire-building, community-building, nation-building — so I can come back in a better shape to resume all of this, and more.
There's a world of opportunities out there, it sucks that I can't have all of them, right now, but I can at least pick my battles and be darn good at it too.
Goodbye, my crazy high velocity life. Hello, a better, healthier me.
Another new year, another bad habit: I'm late, again.
Just a few days ago, I was sitting at the back of a Toyota Innova, stuffing my face with mithai and chips — not at the same time — thinking what a nice surprise it'd be for my readers, to finally post, and on New Year's Eve, too. I didn't make it. I got busy.
The landscape outside my window was of rural Rajasthan: familiar. Not as brutal as the Marwar I came up close to, the last time I was here, at the peak of summer. Not too long before that I had arrived in Rajasthan with my young traveller tie-dye pants, led by nothing other than the youthful desire to do something unexpected, terrible and difficult. Things are quite different now: I have a ‘job' to get back to. No doubt it's a business I own and run, but I still can't get away for as long as my college summer breaks allowed me to.
Everything feels different. Only India feels the same.
This winter made Rajasthan different from the last. It was much better, with its cool — almost too cool — air, dry spells. Not quite as cold as Delhi.
Hurtling through traffic, avoiding cows and camels, stopping occasionally for a ‘sulabh' break — BYOTP (Bring your own toilet paper), the Innova, the "metal cow" of the Indian road made its way through all places familiar and strange.
We made a makeshift cinema on the rooftop of the small bed & breakfast we were staying at, shivering in the cold under bundles of blankets, with a dazzling view of the Umaid Bhawan in the near horizon.
We drank copious amounts of lassi.
We ate, drank and made merry — with our hands, of course, for to eat with a fork and a spoon is just like making love through an interpreter.
We didn't break up at the Taj Mahal.
I'm in a different place now. A good place.
Not too long ago I was hopping around some parts of the world on a series of one way tickets, with nothing to hold me down to any place or any one. Just me, my backpack, my cameras, notepads, my lone self in a hostel room for one, on the lonely (but fun) road to self-discovery. That part of my life seems to be a distant past now. The places are the same but the package is different. I could not go away for a year now, not without looking back wistfully at some people, things and creatures.
The things that bind come when you least expect it.
They were the crazy thoughts that slip into your head when you meet someone for the first time — at a bar, or at least that's how it was for me. The furious back-and-forth binary exchanges through various electronic sources. A text. An email. A few stamps in your passport and many flight tickets later, and you're settled. Sort of. Settled as far as you can be. You go to a city, rent a house, set up a business, own a dog, and suddenly you're one of those people boring hippies to death about how you love Singapore because you can go jogging at three in the morning and feel safe. Suddenly you're one of those regular people who can go someplace breathtakingly beautiful like the Taj Mahal and feel nothing except annoyance at the incessant crowds, and you're not the sort of girl who goes to the Taj Mahal and breaks up with the person next to you anymore.
No one ever tells you it's going to get better in your twenties.
They don't. Okay, so you can drink Yakult everyday before lunch and after lunch, and nobody tells you you've gotta eat a vegetable. That's where it gets tricky. No one tells you anything — you're supposed to know. About everything. About salaries and savings. About weddings and funerals. About businesses and jobs. About children and insemination. About… everything. It's up to you. You can drink as much Yakult as you want, but if you lau sai, you take yourself to hospital and you pay for your own medical bills. You can go through life never eating a single vegetable if you don't feel like it, but when you're constipated… well, never mind.
You amble through life, finish college, and if you're lucky, acquire some sense of purpose — I like to think I was lucky in that department — and then you try to make yourself a success. Somewhere along the way, one of your friends is going to die in an accident, another one of your friends is going to be diagnosed with a terminal disease, and there's going to be absolutely nothing anyone can do when faced with sudden mortality: something most of us have not had to think about until now.
I'm not sad or anything like it. Quite the opposite. I love what I do (btw, it's a combination of writing, speaking, and separately of selling and making apps and running a small company that makes apps), I wake up every morning the master of my own time and location — which is something I established a long time ago as a bare minimum for any endeavour. I will be where I want to be, when I want to be. This has meant 800km trips up and down the North-South Highway every other week, crazy meetings packed in rapid succession, and some sort of invisible third arm growth that is my iPhone and high speed internet connection.
Some mornings, though, I wake up missing the part of me that's long gone. That part of me that used to write furiously, take good photos, chase stories, pursue any trail of human interest in my vicinity. I'm not complacent or anything: I've just lost it. Like not knowing how to play a piano again from neglect, despite banging on it for 10 years: I've just lost it. I've lost my need to go to places, see things, talk to people, take photographs, write stories. I've lost my wide-eyed curiosity and innocence — I've seen it all before, my brain tells me, and there are precious few things in the world that leap out at me the way everything once did. Absolutely none in the developed world, which doesn't interest me anthropologically or culturally in any way, and a dwindling number in the developing world. India. Yemen. Syria. Places like that — full of raw energy, waiting to be unearthed. And in India's case, ever-surprising and ever-ready, no matter how many times I go back there.
Then there's the writing. Not having had the discipline, time or desire to write as often or as much as I once did, the year or two of utter neglect is leaving me scrambling to pick up the pieces before I lose it forever. It's difficult to keep writing when you've been stuck, as so many writers before you have been, on that one debut novel you've been hacking away at for years. On the bright side, I am at a better place right now to write — and finish — that novel.
So the point of all this, I guess, is to figure out what's next? Lots.
There's that book to write. Like an awesome Chinese soup on slow boil, it can't be hurried. I'm just doing what I know best, although I should know better. But that's for me to figure out.
There's the business, which appears to be growing. I've had the good luck to work with great people, so I'm excited about what it's going to bring in 2012.
Then there's the travel. I've been lucky to be able to visit all these amazing places and to know a few of them quite intimately. There's plenty of travel scheduled for 2012, some work, some leisure, and I may finally be able to get to a few places I've dreamed of going since I was a little girl. Places that were difficult to get to.
On the home front, my resolve to spend more time with my family in Singapore appears to be going well. On the home front in KL, we're at a good place although there are some plans (on my part) to move back to Singapore at some point this year.
I don't know. For someone who hates planning, I've certainly planned too much. Always the big picture, the big goals at the end of the line; never the small details. Maybe it's time to think about the details, too.
Health-wise I'm in pretty good shape. I'd let myself go — so typical of a long-term relationship — but I think I'm back at a healthy weight, build and BMI. Never again. Although the rapid and massive weight loss means I need to shop for a wardrobe anew, it's a step in the right direction for 2012!
I won't bother with setting any resolutions since those so often disappoint. Let's just say I have my eyes on the prize… or prizes! Lots to do, lots to work towards — a combination of company work, personal work, and community work — and I can't wait to get started. Though I'm currently nursing a flu from the brutal Delhi winter smog, I can feel it in my bones that 2012 is going to be a year without precedence, one that will blow the last 5 out of the water (and I've had very, very good years recently)!
Also, I've been going back to India really, really often. That counts for something in the greater scheme of happiness. Happy new year, everybody.
White cabbage is death. If there is a Creator, it is one of his less glorious moments. The only thing worse than white cabbage is white cabbage soup. I am a soup maniac, but white cabbage soup I do not touch with a ten foot pole. I cannot even sit at the same table when it is being drunk. The sight and smell of it makes me want to throw up. Because of these vile leaves, I am unreasonably opposed to all food that is white in colour but is not a carbohydrate or dairy product.
White cabbage soup is Chinese New Year is a vile, hateful thing is I hate the both of them.
For reasons unknown to anyone currently alive, we must drink white cabbage soup at reunion dinner every single Chinese New Year. Without fail. I suppose someone must have liked it once upon a time - perhaps one of my ancestors in China. We have continued this tradition since. And I have started a tradition of setting up another table next to the main table, just so that I can have soup I like. My cousins have joined me. It's the table for young people and for people who don't like cabbage. I have not rested in my crusade against cabbage, and this year I shall continue.
I didn't use to hate it so much. Now, in the run-up to reunion dinner (I have mine tomorrow, one day early), I am fretting about everything and I am happy about nothing. I do not exaggerate when I say the thought of Chinese New Year fills me with such intense hatred, I can almost smell the bak kwa, and hear the loud, extended family I am somehow related to by blood. I find my mind wandering back to the not-so-good old days of a childhood spent reading ten books in a corner every single day of every single Chinese New Year because I was bored to death.
Now, at age 26 and counting, I am still trying to find out what we are celebrating.
Some of you will say, oh, silly person, it's about spending time with your family of course. Sure. When I was living in the Middle East, I looked forward to coming home because I missed my family so much. I love my tiny immediate family. I see them every weekend. It's the extended web of relations, the sort you see only at weddings and funerals, who I don't understand. Why do these strangers give me oranges once a year? Oranges are not the only fruit.
Other than family, if there is a meaning at all to this celebration, I am not able to divine it. If anything, it reminds me excessively of a culture whose values I do not understand.
As you know, I identify not as a Chinese person but as a Teochew-speaking yellow M & M - yellow outside, very, very brown inside. I'm a fake desi in the wrong body, someone who was probably an Indian man in many lifetimes past. The only Chinese thing about me is my love of soup and pork. Other than that, nothing. The festive music bothers me. I am still waiting to hear one, just one, Chinese New Year song that is not about money. The values of this festive music bothers me even more. Why is it that I must either sing about how much money I have, how much I'm looking forward to money this year, how money has suddenly appeared in my life, how money's just… you know, rolling in the deep. /rolls eyes
What about money that you made through sheer hard work? Why won't you sing about it too, bloody dong dong chiang people on the loudspeakers, who have followed me to haunt, tease and kacau me all my life?
Why about money that you made through smart investments? Why won't you sing about prudent financial behaviour and clever business acumen, you stupid gong xi gong xi gong xi people who will one day gong me until I si?
What about family? Love? What about adding in the message, "don't be a douchebag!" in your songs about striking it rich? Or about how happiness doesn't lie at the end of a slot machine, mahjong table or lottery queue?
Then there's the music. And the movies. The Hong Kong or Taiwan or Mainland China variety shows and concerts. It's always the same movies every year. Chinese New Year movies are the worst. Actually if I wasn't such a self-hating Chinese person, I probably wouldn't hate them so much. I don't mind the kungfu. I don't mind the awful, not very clever humour. Somewhere in my brain, multiple negative associations have been made repeatedly ever since I was a little girl: Chinese New Year movies and variety shows are the soundtrack to my many miserable hours sipping ten chrysanthemum tea Tetra-Paks in a row, stuffing my face with too much bak kwa, reading and re-reading every magazine, book and newspaper I have so that I don't have to talk to people, seething in rage that I not only have to be a part of such a superficial culture that judged me first by my grades then by my wallet, but also deigns to tell me I NEED TO GET MARRIED, AND TO A MAN TOO?
No matter how much I hated it, Chinese New Year always had a silver lining. If there was one thing I loved about it, it was to see my grandfather excited, filled with a sense of purpose - he did not cook at all, but he took pride in making his awesome secret chilli, and he also loved to prepare reunion dinner. Ah gong and ah ma worked together as a duo at their finest, waking up at five in the morning so that they can get the best braised duck and whole chicken, roast meat and fish for the family. Next to going for walks in the park together, reunion dinner preparations were when they were the closest.
This will be the third Chinese New Year without him around. Every Chinese New Year without him, without his stupid jokes, without him stringing the grandkids along on some ridiculous, elaborate joke, feels like a joke itself. I keep wishing this was one of those times when he stood outside the house, rang the bell ten times then ran away to hide. I keep wishing this was one of those times when he told me he had gone away on a holiday but hadn't. I bought it a few times when I was a little girl, not knowing he didn't believe in vacations. It's been more than 3 years but the banter-less silence from my grandparents' room still freaks me out. I still miss him everyday. My tears still well up uncontrollably when I think of him. When I see his photo. When I see a video and see him there and hear his voice but cannot reach out across the binaries to hold his hand.
Tomorrow, when I sit down for reunion dinner I will still panic when I don't see him at his usual spot. I know I will wake up on the first day of Chinese New Year and expect to see him in his best set of singlets, shorts and sandals, and be sorely disappointed when I don't.
I hate cabbage soup but it was one of his favourite foods, and I would drink a thousand bowls of cabbage soup if it meant I could see him for just a minute more.
My father was having a conversation with one of the students at the university where he works. Apparently one of them was a frequent visitor to this site. He told my dad as much and said I don't write anymore, that this site is pretty much defunct.
When your father brings you these news, I suppose it's true.
I think my relationship with blogging ended when Twitter began. It was around the time when I still imagined I would write full-time, and went off on my big adventure to see if that would work. Twitter became a faster, snappier way of transmitting those thoughts on the field. I got published in a few places. I did okay, with this writing thing; writing full-time then meant the blog became a receptacle for the miscellaneous writing. I'm one of those people who can multi-task, but I cannot write the same way here, the way I once did.
These days, business takes up the bulk of my time. I am trying to build an empire of useful software and fun games. We're a few weeks away from shipping our first title, a social game on Facebook with a social message. There are more down the line. 2011 looks set to be one of the most productive I've ever had. I will make more money than I have ever made, and I will have a few things to show for it. I am learning to code. I am organizing tech events (most recently, Superhappydevhouse and LadyPy, a programming workshop for women held in partnership with Google). I still write. Will these secret writings ever see the light of day, here? I don't know. I think I would like to continue writing occasionally here, for posterity, but I write more frequently and more seriously at adriannatan.com, where I will try to write about business and tech.
I helped to run the media team in the Singapore General Elections. I gave a presentation thereafter about the experience and the lessons learned.
I travelled the 380km to and from KL and Singapore every weekend to organize events, take part in them, go to meetings. I have become more accustomed to the idea of a work shirt. Which is new to me.
I am toying with the idea of turning Popagandhi into an iPhone app — but I am unsure about whether I should use the app just to display the blog entries here, save the app only for a curated ‘best of' selection of articles from the last few years, or turn it into a guide to the places I love. Your thoughts?
For now, I am going to try to cap off a busy, busy year by squeezing as much out of it, work-wise, as I can. I will write when I write.
I am a Singaporean who lives in a series of hash tags. They are:
#iamchinese my race, my ethnicity, a language I speak, "mother tongue" classes I struggled with and the colour of my skin
#iamasian a vague identity I hold; ‘one of them' in the tribes of Northeast India and I am ‘one of us' when I am on the streets of peninsular Southeast Asia
#india my second home, a spiritual home that I frequent, whose cities I roam in, whose trains I love, whose air makes me homesick, whose people are my friends
#tech what I do for work and love
#iamsingaporean is the answer that's so obvious, it surprises me
I spent many years doubting my future as part of this nation, for good reason. I always wanted to leave. I left, but as I returned I found the city's transformation to my liking; its new citizens and residents as friends rather than threats; its 2011 elections a watershed that I took weeks off my life to play a part in. I am proud of my little country, whose red passport brings me places in a way that shows me how we ‘punch above our weight'. It is a home I can count on, a home whose rapid change I want to be a part of.
It has been an interesting journey: my circuitous journey upon graduation to the Middle East, to Europe, to India and Bangkok and KL, and back again by way of politics, tech and business. No doubt I will find myself living and working in other places in the world throughout the rest of my life, yet Singapore has never felt so much like home.
I can't yet put my finger on it, it feels like a tide has turned somewhere. Friends I accepted as lost to the charms of the big cities of the West are now homebound; people who never used to care about this place now sing a different tune. I have had the honour to have served my nation with a great many able, clever, talented young Singaporeans.
I think I may be homebound sooner than I thought — although I have already come home in more ways than one in the non-physical sense of the word.
So happy 46th, Singapore. People expect a mid-life crisis of us but I think the best years are ahead of us.
The following piece is an original piece written specially for Ceriph #3, published by Math Paper Press. It's on sale at my favourite bookstore, BooksActually, and also at Kinokuniya..
Fish Sauce
We are Teochew, people of the coast.
Fish sauce, more than hot food, opera, more than even yam paste desserts - is what defines us as a people. It is what we live for, what fuels us; there is no life without it. We live for the very hot, and the very salty.
My grandfather was a sturdy, if a little tiny, Teochew man who was much shorter than his wife. Like many patriarchs of his generation, if he even had a name, you would have never known. You simply thought of him as ah gong. On his birthdays when we sang birthday songs to him we did so in Mandarin, Teochew, and then in English. Every time we got to his name we were usually stumped. He did not like us saying his name anyway - it sounded too much like "turtle", he said - so we clapped, said "happy birthday ah gong tee hee hee", laughed at the incongruence, and stuffed our faces with cake.
Ah gong introduced me to fish sauce. He must have. We were close for a Chinese grandparent-grandchild duo of the eighties - we played Chinese chess, and snakes and ladders, in near silence most afternoons - but he was at his most animated when we ate porridge with preserved vegetables and steamed fish. Which was every afternoon.
If you hold your chopsticks that way you are going to move very far from home.
Kopi-C Siew Dai
Utter silence punctuated by occasional outbursts of snark. That hum of snarky silence dominated our lives, or at least mine. On hot Singapore afternoons in our tiny three-room flat, I never noticed the silence. Those damned SBC afternoon dramas masked the silence. The plod of Grandma's food processor distracted me from the silence. The jingle of the Raymond Weil sponsored news programmes were so loud I could not hear the silence. But the snark always jumped straight through the roof.
Next to fish sauce, we liked coffee most. It was any kind of caffeine really, but coffee was king. More than that, it was the promise of a decently made local coffee, the sock kopi, with two fingers' worth with condensed milk and a very loud kopitiam server shouting in Hokkien, that we liked best. Those damned Hokkien people can't talk softly.
We went to the kopitiam together in the mornings, on the mornings when I could wake up anyway. Ah gong liked routine, so much so that I have never seen him in anything other than a singlet and a pair of blue bermudas and brown, serious grandpa sandals. He had a wardrobe full of the same thing for different ages. He could dress you up exactly like him if you asked him to. This routine man's routine began before daybreak at the seaside.
He would walk by the seaside, smirking at the taichi parade, not understanding why anybody would submit themselves to the torture of wearing red shirts with white pants. He would walk by the streamers of the Chinese dance contingent fielded by the neighbourhood's grannies, not understanding why anybody would wave little pieces of cloth around to awful music at 7 in the morning.
He would understand, or at least try to, why the kopitiam could never get his order right ("because Ah Zoh got fired from his job and Ah Orh, who was hired to replace him, is a little slow in the brain"). He could fathom everything he needed to know in a second, but he could never understand why his coffee was never-quite-right everywhere he went.
Lou Swa Ga Hai
When the people of the coast speak of our motherland, we do not say China. We do not say we are zhong guo ren - when we speak of the zhong guo ren we are speaking of those people who look like us but who are really from someplace else. We say we are the people of the Tang Dynasty, we say we are the people from the coast. In our language there is no way of saying we are anything else. Even today we say our "home", this home most of us have never been to, is in the mountain, by the sea.
The zhong guo ren eat rice and vegetables. We eat real porridge, unlike the Cantonese who break their rice grains and pretend to make soup. If a single rice grain breaks we throw all our porridge away, and start again.
There is more water in our porridge than there is grain, but not too much. The grains should clump together, but not too much. The porridge should, like us, be of the mountain and of the sea. A bowl of porridge must physically resemble a mountain in a sea, swa ga hai. Mountain and sea.
If the Cantonese, who believe themselves to be the masters of Chinese cuisine, have perfected the roast, we are the kings of the braise.
A bowl of our porridge might taste of nothing unless you are one of us. If you were one of us, our gaginang, you would know how to eat it - with the amount of fish sauce, with a dozen side dishes. With a salted egg and with a big bowl of braised pork and eggs.
Eating the rest of the meal is simple, anyone can get that.
Every time ah gong ate his Teochew porridge, which was everyday at lunch, he would pour a large amount of braise sauce into his porridge, making it become the colour of dark earth.
Lou, ga swa ka hai. Braise, and seas and mountains, he would say.
Without a comma, and with one small shift in intonation, eating this meal with him everyday was about raising, not braising, seas and mountains each time he spoke at length with me.
Ah gong may have been a man of few words but we drank the sea and ate the mountains together everyday.
Bubble Tea
At the hospital he was in some pain. Not a lot, but you could tell no matter how naturally stoic he tried to remain, he was not going to make it. I had to go to see him from Europe, made it just barely in time, and I like to think he waited for me. Or for something.
In the year since I moved out of the country I had been back only for Chinese New Year, and I had missed his last moments where he had been confined in a wheelchair. He could no longer go on daily walks, nor could he go to the toilet unassisted, but he kept his mind steely by asking everyone endless questions about their lives. He kept his wits about by observing our neighbours and their daily lives from his vantage point, his wheelchair.
The telephone was not made for people like my ah gong. Skype was an invention he could tolerate a little better, and only for the joy of watching someone on the other side of the world appear on the screen. The moment your image was formed he was no longer interested in speaking in sentences to you. That whole year all we ever spoke about was about burqahs and bak chor mee. I was in the Middle East that whole year and he was convinced I led a bak chor mee – less existence inside a burqah. Which was only half true (the pork, not the fashion sense).
For someone like ah gong who led a relatively difficult life and who was not really a part of the modern world with all its trappings and assumptions, he did not get to - nor did he want to - experience anymore than what he already had, which was adoption, migration, war, poverty and distance.
He had few cravings other than for Teochew porridge and preserved olive leaves, steamed fish and fish sauce.
When we were by his side, teary, he could not speak much by that point. He had no teary goodbyes or pent-up messages for anyone. He had no epiphanies but silence.
But he asked for his daughter.
When she, crying as only she could, sidled up to him he gathered his breath and whispered, "Bring me bubble tea. Apparently it's delicious."
We searched everywhere for bubble tea, we really did, but did not search fast enough. He could not wait.
And then Michael Jackson died the next day and the whole world forgot about the man who had never had bubble tea.
Sometimes I wish could have been there when he finally gave up on life and on bubble tea. He would have ranted, in Teochew, that tea isn't meant to be this milky, and what the hell are these bloody balls?
Thiruvannaamalai to Yercaud, 155km, though it ended up a lot more
I come from a place with no highlands. No real ones, anyway — the highest point, Bukit Timah Hill, is a mere 163 metres. Enough for families and joggers to work up a sweat on Saturday mornings; not quite enough to keep going. You run, you jog, you break up a tiny bit of sweat — then it's time to "descend" for breakfast at the nearby hawker centre.
Not so in India. Home, after all, to the Indian Himalayas. My first time in India was magical, and one I will never forget. As a naive amateur traveller at the time I had mistakenly assumed all mountains were the same. I had only experienced winter, once, in Mount Sorak in South Korea. I remembered four degrees Celsius was quite doable, even without too many winter clothes. I packed just as light, then, for the Indian Himalayas. On reaching Darjeeling I realized what a mistake that had been. This time, I was no newbie: I had been to India about fifteen times since, and knew a thing or two about its disparate climates. I also knew a little bit about its hill stations, and its rickshaws. Something in my body — common sense? — also told me it might be a bad idea to climb a hill station in an autorickshaw.
One of the things that people who know me are likely to say is that I like to do the very things that I'm told would never work.
Like driving an autorickshaw up a hill. Remind me to never do that again.
The last we ever saw of our route book.
The real story began the moment we left Thiruvannaamalai. The breakfast briefing made it seem easy enough. Take off at 8am, get lunch somewhere on the way, meet in Harur to make sure everyone was on time, meet again somewhere near Pappireddipatti so we could time our ascent uphill together.
Andrew and I were to get horribly, horribly lost, that day. For the first — and only — time.
Karthik left us that morning in Thiruvannaamalai for Chennai. Having just obtained his PhD days prior to the race, he was slated to move to Brussels soon after. Due to some bureaucratic screw-up, he had to bus it back to the capital for a medical appointment for his Belgian work visa, then head back to meet us in Yercaud that night. Not having a Tamil-speaker onboard was doable, but my team had gotten used to the idea that we could muck around after flag-off, have breakfast, hang out with locals, see a few sights, then start moving.
Flag-off at Thiruvannaamalai was as uneventful as it could be — I could not wait to get out of there. Karthik bid us farewell even before we woke up. When Andrew and I got to base we were pretty sleepy, still, having spent the previous night sleeping on terrible beds (and I on the floor). When the horn sounded and all the teams started for Yercaud, we headed to the nearest coffee shop to eat a quick breakfast (muruku and some other snacks) and to take swigs of coffee before we started properly. It must have been 8am, usually an ungodly hour for me, but the faithful were already awake.
Hungry, we had kothu parotta in Kambainallur.
At the coffee shop near a temple on Chengam Road, we looked quizzically at the legions of old, white people in "spiritual clothes". I looked even more quizzically at the firingi prices we were obviously paying here for muruku and kaapi. We read the newspapers, chatted a little, then with some reluctance got back into our rickshaw to begin the drive. Still no clue what we were in for. You know how some mornings when you wake up you drag your feet and don't want to go to work?
That morning I woke up and dragged my feet and didn't want to drive my auto. Off we went anyway. My job, since I was no good with driving these things, was to sit in the backseat and navigate. My tools? Google Maps on my iPhone. Google Maps in this part of the rural world was fine — if by fine you mean, places, villages, towns and cities actually show up, in English. The directions they came with were impossible. Being from the big city, you understand: if Google Maps screws up, it is the end of the world as you know it.
So we followed these maps on my phone, and the navigational directions they gave us. Except that we got hopelessly lost in the end. We kept going anyway, and the people we'd stopped for directions were no help. "Which way to Harur?" This way, that way, you go straight there and then you turn left… India is a pretty bad place to get lost in. Everyone wants to help, and does; except when you're lost, all that help is really no help at all. At a petrol station we got the usual "OMG, foreigners! Driving a rickshaw!" curiosity. And still no worthwhile directions. We kept driving, driving, following one lead after another.
We passed lots of farmland, and lots of construction. We drove over bumps, we drove on very awful roads. We found ourselves in a village where I got out, and gesticulated wildly. Yercaud! Yercaud! Which way? (Making a note to myself that I should have paid attention to what little Tamil was spoken around me, growing up.) "There!" — followed by the Indian octopus. The one where at least eight arms point in eight separate directions. If you're a newbie you end up following directions given by the person who made his case most forcefully and most convincingly. If you've been around these parts, it's that guy you learn to ignore. We kept driving, in some direction.
With another happy passenger. Fare: zero rupees.
More farmland, more cows, more farmers and more awful roads. The lead we had followed previously now led to what seemed to be a dead end. I jumped out of the rickshaw and gesticulated wildly. Is Yercaud back there — pointing at the direction in which we came from, so at the least we could find out if we were going in the wrong direction — or that way? Nope, all the answers came fast and furiously. It's the other way, just keep going.
I was driving on one of the smaller highways, emboldened by how easy it was becoming, when the highway suddenly led into a town, and the town led to lots of people. Remember, I don't really know how to do this — I'm just not good with manual gears, not yet — so I suddenly felt I could not control the rickshaw, and it was cruising along at a speed that was much too fast even for an small town. Andrew, who was chilling out in the backseat, was starting to realize this too.
I kept going anyway, freaking out and yelling "ANDREW I NEED YOUR HELP!" but by the time he scrambled and leaned over to take control of the gears, the rickshaw had already hit a motorbike. There was an old man on it. He fell. I felt like everything that could have gone wrong already had — and yet here we are, about to be in the middle of a large mob with possibly no way of getting out of it.
True to my projections, a large mob had formed around us and the old man. But they were not yelling, nor were they demanding anything. They gathered in large numbers but then some of them helped him up from the ground, another group picked up his motorbike and brushed off the dust, and others yet just stared at us. "It's okay, just go," the mob was saying. But I knocked over someone's bike and it's possibly not working now! "No, he's fine, you should get on your way." I tried to give the old man some money to fix his bike. He shyly refused, acknowledging the power of the mob around him. They were so nice to us, almost to the point of assuming that we must have been so unlucky to have had a tiny accident here in their town, even though it was my fault, that I felt embarrassed instantly. Knowing I could not out-talk the mob, not in a language I didn't speak, and not wanting to embarrass the old man either by insisting openly that he take my money for his bike, I made it seem like we agreed, gathered our stuff, and got back into the rickshaw. But not without shaking the hands of the man whose bike I had knocked over (even if it was gently so), and pressing a small wad of cash into his hands. We took off then, and kept going.
Then the phone rang. It was Aravind, wanting to know where we were — everyone had already assembled somewhere for lunch — so where the hell were we? Ask someone, he said. With no Tamil between Andrew and I, and sign language not cutting it for when actual explicit directions are required, I passed the phone to someone who spoke in Tamil to him.
When I got the phone back, Aravind calmly told us we were at least two hundred clicks in the opposite direction. Please drive back towards Harur ASAP. Still the villagers pored through our route book, and were unanimously convinced we just had to keep going, there would be a turn, go up that hill, and then it'd be Yercaud. I could see it, and I wanted that hill to be Yercaud, quite desperately. But of course it wasn't.
So we doubled back and drove off in the other direction.
One hour. Still no sign of Harur. We were, instead, in Kambainallur. This being a good-sized village, and by this I mean there was actually a place we could stop and eat a proper meal in, we parked outside a little hut where I saw something I recognized. An iron griddle. With food on it. Food being kothu parotta, one of my favourite childhood foods. This far out from home, and from the places I knew in India, having something close to home like kothu parotta was a wonderful feeling. It reminded me of all those nights I walked from my university hostel in Singapore to Little India to eat parotta, chopped up, with egg and chicken. I decided I would have the same thing right here in Kambainallur just so that I could feel we might somehow find our way to Yercuad later.
The people at the restaurant were bemused, to say the least. When I think of rural Tamil Nadu now, I will forever remember it for the sweltering, still heat beating down on our backs. No wind, no breeze — just the slow oscillations of a very old, very dirty ceiling fan. Tic. Tic. For half an hour we ate our tasty kothu parotta in the hut, and entertained the people of Kambainallur who were coming into see what we were up to. Yes, we are driving this thing…
I'm often asked, wasn't it dangerous? Dangerous, to the extent of possibly damaging life and limb on the road, yes — theft and other crime, not so. We usually parked our auto somewhere in sight. By the time we were here in Kambainallur we had gotten so comfortable in this part of Tamil Nadu we even experimented with leaving our bags of expensive camera equipment in the rickshaw, although well-disguised. Every single time we — as foreigners in this part of town — were treated with far more curiosity and amusement than anything we owned (which probably didn't look like very much, considering how we were dressed).
We clambered back into our rickshaw with a small post-lunch stupor, armed with cold Pepsi and Thums Up, and took off somewhere into the distance. This time we had a small feeling we might be on the right track. We kept driving, and noticed people were trying to flag us down. This time we were in the small country roads that cut through the villages, not on the state or national highways, and not on the larger arterial roads between the towns either. There did not seem to be any public transportation — nor any other autorickshaws — around for miles. We decided since we had just had a small spot of good luck (with the tasty lunch and finally figuring out which way to go), we would pass on the karma. We began picking up passengers.
All of them were going a short distance, usually to the next village, so each ride lasted an average of 10 minutes.
With our music thumping in our rickshaw, food in our bellies and cold drinks in our hands, Andrew and I started feeling rather invincible. We stopped for every single passenger who flagged us down. Each time, happiness as we drew to a halt, then confusion, horror, as they looked into the vehicle and found us looking like that. They all climbed in in spite of the incongruity. Not knowing how to speak with them we simply drove on straight, and they told us when to stop.
Lady we gave a ride to in Kambainallur.
First, an old lady near Kambainallur who wanted to go to her sister's house. She climbed into the backseat with me, her orange sari so long it flapped into my lap. She was mostly silent, being rather shy as some rural old ladies can be, only using her hands to direct how we should go to her destination.
After a few minutes, her curiosity got the better of her and she asked, in Tamil (which I understood a very limited amount of), "Where are you going?"
"Yercaud."
"By rickshaw?"
"Yes. From Chennai."
"Why didn't you take a train? It's so much faster."
With that, she pointed to the village she wanted to alight at, and ran off into her sister's house. I often imagine what she might have said to them. "I came here to your house in an autorickshaw, driven by an American and a Singaporean, and they were dressed like rickshaw wallahs." I often imagine that might have been the rural equivalent of saying you just saw a spaceship.
We kept going. We picked up at least four people, each of whom was just as incredulous as the last. One man had huge gunny sacks of spices with him, and he too sat in the back seat with me. Each started out shy, embarrassed, but burning with curiosity — each ended up wondering why we were doing this. At that point I was starting to wonder myself.
One happy passenger after another, we were finally well and truly on our way. Harur was in sight. Our team phone was low on battery, so we had no communications from the Mothership (the convoy) since the last time we spoke. We found that M., who was responsible for making sure all teams got rescued if anything went wrong, had been waiting in Harur for us for hours. His pickup truck was recognizable from afar, so we drove up to him. It was 4pm. All the teams started making their way up to Yercaud about 3 hours earlier. "So you better start now before it gets dark."
At Harur I don't think either of us had any idea we were only halfway there. It seemed such a tremendous accomplishment to have made it thus far. I started to feel relieved, like we could take things easy from here. We even celebrated with a 20 minute fresh fruit juice break. But we were to face a truly uphill battle.
We left Harur and made for Yercaud. We were so hot and dazed and frustrated by this point that even the relatively straight road towards Pappireddipatti, from which we would begin our ascent, was difficult to find. M. drove his pickup truck alongside, doing the convoy equivalent of kicking our asses, and we were finally in Yercaud!
Not so.
After 45 minutes up the hilly roads into Yercaud, a gear and brake problem we had been ignoring for the last four hours began to act up. The rumbling sound from the rickshaw was growing so much louder we had to pull over on the side of the hill. M. was not far behind, so we got him to take a look. Yet another 45 minutes spent not-moving, even though M. had really talented mechanics working with him, the sun began to fade. I have been to many places in the world and I'm supposed to be used to this — but it takes a huge effort for me to remember that when the sun sets, sometimes what follows is total darkness. And so it was. "Turn on the front lamps," I said to Andrew. "But… they are already on." They were just feeble, and really quite pointless. We could not see a single thing. M.'s team sped off and we soon lost them, driving in the dark ourselves. Our feeble lights did as much as to allow us to see when something was immediately in our faces, but not much else.
We were heading to the base hotel, but there was still a substantial climb to make. We were probably driving in the dark for about an hour before we finally saw a sign that said "Glenrock Estate" — our base camp for the next two days. Despite following the signs, and the instructions we received earlier, we could not find it. We would go straight, make a left bend, and then be in complete darkness again with no signs of a hotel anywhere near us. We kept going in what must have been circles in the dark. When we finally saw a bunch of lights, we knew it was not the hotel but the small village of Kakampatti. We pulled over for me to get some directions.
I ran into a store with a telephone, and dialled hopelessly for our friends. No luck — nobody had any cellular reception at the hotel. I asked a few villagers where Glenrock Estates was, and they said it was just ten minutes away, just up the slope we just came down from, where it was so dark we could not see the sign that said "turn right", so we missed that completely. When I got back to the rickshaw and to Andrew, he was on the ground peeking into the underside of our rickshaw. Disaster, yet again.
A bolt had fallen off the rickshaw some time in the last ten minutes. It could not start without this bolt — there was a risk the rickshaw would simply fall apart, if we did. But it couldn't even move at all. At this point I was beyond wanting to cry. Somehow I had some blind faith in how India always comes together for me.
A villager got on his motorcycle, and said he was going to buy the part for us from the garage 15 minutes away. When he returned, we found he bought the wrong bolt, and before we could even thank him for his help he got back on his motorcycle with someone who knew more about mechanics than he did, and they both went back to buy the proper part.
I sat on the ledge, wanting to help but really not being able to, just tired beyond belief. It's the sort of feeling when you are not sure when the work day will end — except in this case you don't know when the day will end, or whether you will get to where you need to be. I was fully prepared to spend the night in the village.
Suddenly, loud roars came riding down the hill towards us, and two men on quad-bikes came towards us.
"You must be Adrianna and Andrew."
I thought they must have been angels.
"We're the Bosen family, from Glenrock Estates. One of the village kids ran up here to tell us, quite breathlessly, that there were two foreigners whose rickshaw had broken down in their village. Since you were the only people not here yet, we assumed it must be you."
The beauty of my mother India is in how in spite of the chaos, things come through. If you don't panic, if you don't worry too much, if you don't allow yourself to be swept away by how different, and how insane, India seems to you, she will be good to you. Our rickshaw stayed in Kakampatti that night, but we didn't have to — we got into the quad-bikes with the Bosens, and they brought us uphill to their comfortable coffee plantation estate where we joined the teams around the bonfire, with Kingfisher and coffee magically appearing each time we wanted some.
Coffee. Beer. Food. A comfortable bed, even though it was one I shared with 20 other beds in a dorm, I was happy we made it. Now that the worst was out of the way on the second day of the race, surely there could be no worse moments hereafter?
The villagers of Kakampatti fixed our rickshaw for us, and even drove it to the hotel when they were done.
Yercaud may not be in the Himalayas, or any other majestic mountain ranges, but as a compact and quaint hill station in the Shevaroy Hills it was all I needed it to be, right there and then.
Aside: Visit the Bosens at their lovely Glenrock Estates in Yercaud! Great coffee and quaint place to stay.
I've been spending a lot of time in the Philippines lately...
There comes a point in every traveller’s life when the experience of going to a foreign place no longer feels the same, nor as exciting as it used to be when she first began. Cities blur into similar skylines, restaurants and bars. Non-cities remain precisely that—good in small doses but rarely more. The magic of travel fades into a succession of airports, suited executives and boring business hotels, or a kaleidoscope of lobster-red package tourists and concrete bungalows on dirty beaches.
Even I could not avoid that fate.
Having travelled around many parts of the world on a student’s budget not too long ago, I used to skip perfectly affordable, mid-range hotels in favour of Rs100 rooms. I was used to travelling for three months or more at a time, and had a strict travel philosophy: “It’s got to be all or nothing. Either luxury on a private island scale, or whatever I can get for next to nothing.”
The Philippines, with its 7,107 islands, was especially appealing. Under-visited and often overlooked in favour of Thailand and Indonesia, the Philippines has a certain charm that sets on slowly, but lingers on long after you’ve left. It’s so large, with each region and group of islands distinct from each other, that it feels disjointed; and so disorganized and chaotic that it can be hard to pinpoint what exactly the Filipino experience is about. Is it about the colonial heritage of Intramuros in Old Manila, or the pine trees and mountain ranges around Baguio, where strawberries, ube (yam) jams and hot springs rule?
Why the Philippines is not overrun with tourists is the reason why it should be: It can be experienced in so many spectacularly different ways.
I've often said India never calls for me, she mostly shouts. With India, there is no moderation: you either love her, or you hate her to death — she never cares for you, or you can't get enough of each other. It's clear which camp I fall into.
I could have been in class, somewhere in Singapore, dying in a statistics lecture on an unbearably hot day. A message would come in from friends in Mumbai — usually about their plans that weekend — and I would not be able to work, talk, study, or function. Not until I booked a ticket to India. I could never explain it, I just had to do it.
It was like that again when I sat at the void deck of my apartment, decked out in my funeral whites, missing my grandfather terribly, not knowing how I would ever stop. Other people need Prozac; India's yelling, honking and shouting did it for me. It did it for me every time I needed her.
When the horn sounded at flag-off, we left Kodambakkam High Road behind. The gaggle of reporters, photographers, radio personalities, curious onlookers and well-wishers faded into the distance. Our destination: Thiruvannaamalai.
If you looked on a map, the holy southern Indian city is merely 185 kilometres from Madras. If you took a bus, it would take just under five hours. If you travelled by car, perhaps three and a little bit. Since we took an autorickshaw, our estimated travel time was something like eight hours. Or before nightfall; whichever came first.
It takes a while to actually leave Madras. The city is a sprawling mess of neighbourhoods, many of them neat and compact and middle class and manicured — by Indian standards anyway. We passed Thousand Lights, rode on to Cathedral Road, our music thumping in our DIY in-rickshaw entertainment system.
Near Menaka Cards factory on Arcot Road I made us slow down to stare at the ridiculous sign I have always loved on the side of its building: "Marriages are made in heaven. Marriage cards are made in Menaka". We strode on confidently — empowered with the sort of zeal only people who knowingly embark on insane adventures can have — past Mount Road, on to Saidapet. Guindy. St Thomas Mount. Chennai Airport. And then it was the open road from there, our first "highway" on an autorickshaw.
From then on we were well and truly on our own. We would lose sight of all the other rickshaws in the rally, most of the time, and only run into them when someone broke down, when we ran into another team in a random village, or when we caught up with the rest of them somewhere on the road. It would be up to us to decide which way to go and how to get there.
Relief.
Most mornings we were armed with little else other than the name of our final destination. At our daily morning briefings we were given tasks, and sometimes hints of how we should make our approach, but that did not preclude the fact that we would be waving our arms frantically outside our rickshaw most of the day, shouting at someone who was walking, or riding a bike or rickshaw: "Thambi! Chengalpattu, where? Left-ah? Right-ah?"
We perfected the art of speaking without words. Most times we received instructions with a bob of the head, and we replied and expressed our gratitude in the same way.
Thiruvannaamalai was not a difficult destination to get to. Excited and pumped with adrenalin, we raced our rickshaw through the Great Southern Trunk Road and then the National Highways like champs on three wheels. We stopped when we found the first breakdown of the day, Tim and Gary's, but otherwise stopped only to refuel, and to drink sugarcane juice. We got there fairly quickly, and without much incident. (Other than when we'd stopped for a train crossing in a small village, and a little girl came up to me to ask, "aunty aunty, what are you, white or Indian?" I said I was yellow, and drove off before she could ask me what a yellow person was.)
Chengalpattu. Tindivanam. Vallam. We stopped outside Gingee Fort to take photos of the fort and of the bulls with painted blue horns. Pennathur.
I have a love-hate relationship with India's religious, holy cities. I know how my skin colour, and the fact that I was born outside the structures and strictures of traditional Hinduism, means I will never encounter holy life in an Indian holy city the way it was meant to be; I will always be an outsider, always a firingi, in the religious places far more than in most other cities. It also means I see much more of the harassment and the stupidity that their most aggravatingly frustrating touts and pimps and drug dealers subject to foreigners, who believe we all come to India's holy places to seek darshan with the gods of drugs and sex, without exception, and must thus be given what we want: sex and drugs. In Benares I felt no holiness, only sexual harassment; I did not have high hopes then for Thiruvannaamalai.
Karthik at a rest stop.
By the time we found Chengam Road, with some difficulty, it was already dusk. The town's sacred vibe was apparent: in addition to the numerous temples, priests and sadhus, there were a great many white people in what I call "enlightenment attire", wandering around town. When we pulled in into the grounds of our first base hotel, a fancy resort along Chengam Road, we were tired, but victorious.
I could not have asked for a better way to end the Rickshaw Challenge, having had such a great first day; but something about Thiruvannaamalai did not sit well with me. The hotel's staff started off friendly and grovelling, but when they found out my team did not intend to plan to stay the night and spend a ridiculous sum on their "affordable luxury" they quickly turned sour. The cheap hotels we wanted to stay in were sneered at by them — we CANNOT stay in those hotels, they said, because "these hotels allow smoking", and "they serve alcohol and meat." I have utmost respect for teetotalers, vegetarians and non-smokers, but it's this sort of holier-than-thou attitude practised by a small number of you that makes me run in the opposite direction and do those very things you dislike.
So off we went, back onto Chengam Road, back towards the town centre, in search of the Promise Land: a cheap hotel with alcohol and meat.
We were turned away by many budget and mid-range hotels, because I was "gasp a WOMAN!" I was a woman who intended to share a room with a white man and an Indian man, but the idea was inconceivable to many. I was told by several hotels that they were looking out for me by not letting me stay there, to protect my honour or something flaky like that. Others said they were protecting me from the many bachelors who stay in their hotels, as though these bachelors would not know how to deal with the presence of a Chinese woman in a rickshaw wallah uniform. Dejected, exhausted, and still ranting about self-righteous vegetarians, we finally settled for a bright pink hotel with a decent fan room for a handful of rupees.
A shower never felt so good.
I slept on the floor, deciding it was preferable to the hard double bed shared by the boys, and dreamed a long dream about driving down the Great Southern Trunk Road.
There are slower ways of seeing India. On a buffalo. On a "two wheeler", a motorcycle, stacked to great heights with assorted luggage until you can't see what's in front of you. Or on foot, "by walk", like a sadhu with no clothes on.
We travelled by autorickshaw.
An autorickshaw isn't too bad an idea on paper: it is, after all, capable of hitting up to 50km per hour. Which would be comforting if our speedometer actually worked. Instead, ours wavered meekly several times per day, mostly settling for the number 65. How machines lie. I wouldn't even call our autorickshaw a machine — a primitive piece of equipment, yes, but machine, implying any form of mechanical achievement or efficiency, no.
We set off from Madras one hot morning, dressed to the nines. It was a good idea before flag-off, this brilliant idea we had of dressing just like a rickshaw wallah. The previous nights we had been in Pondy Bazaar every night, looking for various items to complete our get up. We'd planned to dress as Super Mario characters at first. The mustache and beret were no problem, the theatre costume company we'd checked out earlier had plenty of those things. They were initially designed for Roman centurion characters and other popular roles, such as various Hindu gods, but we could appropriate those items to create our Mario outfit. But the suspenders were impossible. Even the salesmen at Saravana Stores laughed at us when Karthik described what we wanted. "You mean you want dungarees, saar? They're so old-fashioned. You cannot find them in Madras. They're too old-fashioned, saar, we have no dungarees." If a Madras salesman tells you they are out of fashion, they are out of fashion. So we thought we'd dress like a rickshaw wallah instead.
Saravana Stores is a bit like Singapore's Mustafa Centre. Mustafa scores better on the "has all the crap you ever need to buy" front, but Saravana wins on the "has an entire section of the store dedicated to rickshaw men's uniforms" front. We skipped over like crazy firingis, trying out different types of singlets (who knew there were so many?); a variety of khaki shirts, and patterned lungis. A few hundred rupees later, we were in business.
The author dressed as a rickshaw wallah with a tilak.
We took off from our base in Kodambakkam High Road, much to the delight of the local press. I was interviewed several times, very likely because I was a girl with a tilak on her head, dressed like an autorickshaw man (thereby bending gender norms a little bit). I smiled nicely and fiddled with my lungi, and put on my best I am a foreigner accent. All was forgiven. Foreigners can do whatever the hell they want because we're all supposed to be crazy. Crazy enough to be driving a three-wheeler for 21 days continuously anyway.
Among the many questions posed to us by the Indian media, the one I could not answer was, "What do you hope to achieve by doing this? What is your intention?" Insanity has no intentions. It simply happens. Likewise, when I first read about the Rickshaw Challengefive years ago in Wired, I knew I had to go. The insanity took over and consumed me until I finally bit the bullet and went for it.
Where we would live, where we would spend our nights, how we would repair our auto when it broke down (and we knew it would break down at least once a day), I had no idea. Everyone else had booked the hotel package that came with the race, but we were too cheap adventurous for that. If we were going to see South India the way none of us had ever seen her before, we would do it the proper way. We would drive an auto everywhere and we would stay anywhere, as long as it was close to a TASMAC and a good breakfast.
With that policy of insanity and inebriation firmly in mind, we set off for the open road, cruising on the East Coast Road. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.
I have a piece in the Valentine's Day issue of Mint, the Indian paper. Read it here. I have not written much since my cover story in Reader's Digest Asia in July 2010, so I'm feeling pretty good about my "comeback". I will be writing more regularly, here, as well as for a handful of publications.
One of the projects that's been super fun to work on has been the birth of the Klang Valley's first homemade ice cream outfit, The Last Polka. M and E run the ice cream empire, I help out with the other bits, like the… tasting of the ice cream. And the copywriting.
What started as a crazy idea — bringing ice cream to KL from Singapore, in a bus, because we couldn't get it here — turned into opportunity. "Why don't we just do it ourselves?" I'm quite the pro at eating and at being strongly opinionated about what I put into my mouth, but the girls have much more of a culinary bent than I do. So I stick to writing about it.
Exactly one year on, we've managed to introduce the pleasures of homemade, "artisanal" ice cream to the Klang Valley. From the little home kitchen and tiny machine, to the ramped-up production now underway, the French-style, Asian-inspired gourmet ice cream idea has flourished from the idea it was, to the real brick-and-mortar business it now is. The ice cream now retails at three location: Marmalade at Bangsar Village II, Marmalade at Mont Kiara, and The Bee in Jalan Universiti (Petaling Jaya). The first scoop shop just opened a few days ago at Taylor's Lakeside campus.
The ice cream repertoire has expanded rapidly: we've now introduced Guinness, French Toast, Nutella and Horlicks to the Klang Valley, to great acclaim.
We were asked to collaborate with Time Out KL for a Valentine's Day special — an aphrodisiac flavour. We managed to create two. Until the end of February 2011, the special romantic combo of chocolate chilli and strawberry cream cheese can be had for just RM 45. Since cool indie ice cream kids love cool indie music kids, we're also collaborating with one of our favourite bands, Furniture. Their new album (preview here) "They Made Me Out of Dreams You've Forgotten", can be purchased together with the two tubs of ice cream for just RM 65 in all.
Order at our website (I know, we need a new one — I threw this together very quickly even before ice cream production began, and we've since outgrown it!), and get yourself some love.
It's no secret I've lost interest in writing a blog — I'm not sure when that happened. It just did. Uni came and went. Life and love took me places. I got caught up in my projects, and soon the fun that blogging once was paled in comparison with real life.
I still wanted to keep this site around, but it went through something of an existential crisis, not knowing what it wanted to be. Before Twitter came about the dichotomy was easy to understand: offline, long form writing, was in magazines, newspapers, academic journals; everything else was here. It is now hard to write in the same intimate, personal way I once did. I hope I still can. I have good reasons to be less forthcoming. In any case, Twitter served instead as a fast and dirty way of getting all that other stuff posted. Life stopped being so dramatic. In turn, I had little to report.
For about a year after university ended, I had the time of my life because I learned I could spend all my time writing, taking pictures, riding in planes and buses, and get paid for it. I stopped living in Singapore full time in 2008 and went through Spain, UK, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, India, Thailand, Philippines, Germany, Sweden although I never really thought it was possible.
Some time beginning 2009, I began to exhibit signs of wanting to settle down. I began working on an aviation startup with a business partner, and although I have moved on to other things since, I learned a great deal from the scene, the experience, and the people I worked with. I'm now between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and Bangkok, getting my two companies up and running. Business is picking up, and I will link to it once our new website is up, and I am still learning and making it up as I go along. One of the companies designs and develops on the web, and also publishes lifestyle publications; the other, just a day old, specializes in iOS development. We have had the luck to work with some great clients in our early days, and we continue to learn new things everyday. We have done some good work, there are cool things happening at the moment, there are iOS titles we will soon be publishing that I can't wait to tell you all about, and everything's new and exciting and shiny at the same time.
I still write, but when I put down my bags and signed on for a two year lease and for animals, I told myself that I will save what little time and focus I have left after all the other stuff I want to do, for writing that matters to me. Offline, I will resume writing for a number of good publications that I like, on topics that I give a damn about. I will post links here as they happen (there's a story slated for 12 February in the Indian paper, Mint). Online, I will save this space for the long form writing I want to do more of. Twitter and Tumblr will serve as the repository for the off-the-cuff ideas and thoughts that tend to become fragmented and scattered after a while.
I will be saving a whole section on this site for India, as it's probably about time. I don't think I will ever run out of things to say about India, even if I don't write about anything else. I intend to start writing more about my work as well. In previous incarnations, the mystery wasn't so much of one, as it was my complete and utter inability to get organized. Now that I've finally managed to define what I do, and to keep tabs on each aspect, I should be able to share them more thoroughly and frequently.
So why did I pull the plug on the old site? I haven't. The old site and all its archives are still available here. I felt I needed to reboot my online life to make a complete break from the old way I used to write, and the person I used to be. I don't know if this version is 100% different, or better, but I'd like to find out. I could no longer allow my 16 year old rants — no matter how eloquent or interesting I think they might be — to define my online self.
2009 was a year of many things: it was the year of change and death. More so it was the year of change because of death. Many famous people died that year; my grandfather, who was not famous, somehow also did the same. In April I called him from a phone booth in Beirut at US$2 a minute and had a 30-second conversation with him about minced pork noodles. In May I called him from London and had a 30-second conversation with him about minced pork noodles. In June they called me 3 hours after I landed in Kuala Lumpur from London, on the brink of my new life not far from home. 12 hours later I was sitting by his hospital bed, in a hospital 5 minutes from where I have lived all 24 years of my life, feeling like the last 24 hours of travel was about to change everything I knew about those very 24 years. By the middle of the month he was dead, and I didn’t get to see it. All I know is that 3 different people woke me up at 6 in the morning that morning and told me in 3 different languages that my ah gong was gone.
In Chinese familial taxonomy, the standing of every person in your family is relative and also language-dependent. Depending on your relationship to that person, and which linguistic branch is dominant in that side of the family, you call him or her a different thing. So your father’s mother is ah ma, your mother’s mother is gwa ma — if both sides of the family more or less speak the southern Min languages like Hokkien or Teochew, like we do. Your father’s younger sister is one thing, older sister is another; depending on their position among the siblings, and your own relationship to that person, each person is called something else. Like knowing whether tables, ties, or street lamps are feminine or masculine in French, everybody inherently knows this. But ah gong was only ah gong. To all of us.
I lived with this man and his wife almost every second of my existence. Then I grew up, travelled madly, lived abroad, and came home expecting not very much to change but instead everything did: no old Chinese man berating me about cigarettes and alchohol, no grumpy old man coming into my room at 3am every morning to check if I was alive, no funny old man who was a head and 3 foot sizes smaller than me telling me his slew of so bad they’re funny jokes that weren’t really jokes.
Then bloody 2009 took him away from me. We found out he was born on the same day as Michael Jackson. (Chinese lunar calendars and their ever-changing dates; we only found out when the date went up on his tomb.) A week after that, Michael Jackson died. Sometimes when I think about it, I think it was cosmically timed so that my ah gong could shine his torch at MJ’s face, laugh at his nose, and tell him that in Singapore we’ve immortalized him in a soya bean milk and grass jelly drink, after the ambiguous colour of his skin (and his famous song).
The rest of it in a nutshell, because they just don’t seem as important: I lived in the United Arab Emirates. I went to a camel market. Some camel trader offered 20 camels for my hand in marriage. I said no. I went to Yemen. Missed two bombs. Called my parents to tell them I was alive, and they said “okay, good”, because they were asleep and thought I sounded too happy for someone who’d just had a bomb scare. Happened to be in Pattaya and Bangkok at the precise moment the Red Shirt/Yellow Shirt April demonstrations erupted. Swatted flies with a tennis racket electric mosquito swatter while watching Thaksin on TV, with all his evil. Did my ultimate roadtrip: Beirut, Bekaa Valley, Damascus, Palmyra, Homs, Aleppo, Adana, Antalya, Goreme, Istanbul, London. Messed around in London for a while. Went home. Ah gong died. Mourned for a long time. My friends say India is my Prozac, so I went to Chennai, Fort Cochin, and Mumbai for a while to, well, “find myself”. Moved to KL. Settled. Got a dog. Started a business. Spent the new year with my love without having to spend a thousand dollars flying to see her.
2009 was good; but I can’t wait for this one to really kick off.
Some friends from Turkey came to visit this past weekend. I had a great time hanging out with Melissa and Emirhan in Antalya when I stopped by en route to Istanbul (from Damascus), so I naturally returned the favour and put them up at my place. After three dinners (not at the same time, albeit the same night), Emirhan gave up at the sight of three relatively small Asian girls chomping away at their 20th meal of the day and said it must be that we all have two stomachs, the other one being the one that leads straight to refuse.
Kuala Lumpur is a funny place. It contains no immediately obvious tourist attractions (not to me anyway) and the lay of the land is hard to grasp. It’s a sprawling mess of cities, townships, and everything in between; the lack of acceptable public transportation makes it hard to get around. In other words it’s a city not for tourists, but for visitors who have the time and ability to stay, sit around, drink teh tarik, and make new friends.
Unless you’re here to eat and have both the ability and desire to match us locals on our tremendous stamina for eating.
To say “eating” is a national pastime and obsession is not merely stating the obvious, it also woefully understates the true extent of the obsessive nature of this common indulgence which is the mark of a born-and-bred Malaysian (and to an extent, but less so, Singaporean). It is neither a task nor a hobby — it is a way of life. Every aspect connected to the act of eating is performed with loving care and preponderance; the final act of eating is nowhere near a climax, for there is no start, nor finish. Evidence: have an awesome lunch or dinner with a group of Malaysians (or Singaporeans), the ones who are passionate about food (almost everyone is, but there are some who are far long gone). Say nothing. Listen to them speak, and make a mental note of what their conversations are about.
I’d wager that 90% of the conversation is about food. Not about the food they’re eating at that very moment, no, not at all (beyond the expected “this is good”, “this is fucking amazing”, or “this is awful”, which pervades in the first five minutes or so) — it’s more likely to turn into a rare moment of Malaysian/Singaporean introspection and cultural analysis. “This is far better/worse/comparable to/cheaper than/better value for money compared to…”, the connoisseur declares, not with the pomp or authority of a food critic, but with a heart of tender love, “but I’m afraid to say the hawker in (insert any other part of town) is better.” He is bound to be accosted with fierce interjections, because everyone’s a passionate food critic in this part of the world, and sometime cultural and culinary commentator too.
If you’re truly lucky, and understand the local vernacular well enough, you might be witness to a display of shocking real-time food gossip, one that knows neither state nor national boundaries. We all do this to some extent — we know exactly how many of the famous hawkers got started, how their families fell apart from intra-family bickering, how the secret recipe diverged into dozens of different locations and took on their own styles, which one remains true to the original secret, right down to the very last minutiae such as “the chilli in the 4th brother’s version is inferior to the one made by hand daily by his 2nd brother. However the cousin’s newly revised version (open from 10am to 8pm at this other location), is by far the best.”
We even plan our holidays around food. I know my family does, and so do many of my friends. In fact it was no big deal to find that so-and-so’s family had just driven 8 hours northwards to spend a night in northern Malaysia, in order to eat wanton mee at that location, nor was it surprising that they would choose to drive back down not on the expressway, but through the trunk roads that would take them through certain other locations where they could, you guessed it, eat some more (hard-to-find versions of food we love).
From the time I was 15, I developed a strange habit of stealing my passport and bringing it to school with me. I had the good luck to have gone to school in a fine educational establishment. It gave me many wonderful things: it developed my writing abilities, and my school-time activities in those days taught me how to multi-task like crazy and how to play truant, but above all its location on Bukit Timah Road, Singapore, featured one untapped resource — bus 170 to Johor, Malaysia. I hopped on it frequently to lunch (alone, for I was an introvert — and still am) in my school uniform. Then turned back around and went home to a suburban estate in Singapore like it was the most normal thing.
Because it was. At least where I came from.
Moving to Malaysia made this even more unavoidable. I am surrounded 24/7 by fantastic local food, much of it towering heads and shoulders above the Singaporean versions which, despite sharing the same characteristics, are now mostly inedible from a combination of neglect, lack of innovation and tradition (at the same time), rapid development killing our long heritage of ‘street’ food, and other things like that. Say what you will about how the food is better here because it’s ‘unhealthier’ or ‘dirtier’ — I don’t care. (The free use of pork lard is a Malaysian Chinese habit I fully endorse, and begrudge our Singaporean hawkers for not indulging in.) I wake up most mornings in Malaysia thinking about eating noodles. I have travelled far and wide but I care for little in the world (with the sole exception of jamon iberico) than a good bowl of southern Chinese Southeast Asian noodles. bakchormee in Singapore; pork noodles, soup or kon lo in KL. And wanton mee, the northern Malaysian version of which I find far superior by far to our chilli and tomato-addled sickly versions down south. When I am not thinking of noodles, I am thinking of nasi lemak. The very idea of eating noodles and rice for breakfast is alien to many. No scene is more striking than one onboard any airline leaving or entering Malaysia or Singapore on a long-haul flight, when breakfast is served at 5.30am. Stewardesses, onboard Emirates, Malaysian Airlines, or Singapore Airlines flights, come by patting passengers on the shoulder with breakfast options, having to explain the only local option, nasi lemak, to those who don’t know. “Rice steamed in coconut milk… served with chicken curry… fried bits of little fish.. and… a big dollop of spicy sambal.” Of course, all the locals happily tuck into our spicy chicken curry coconut rice at 5.30 in the morning, while most other passengers think us insane.
So while we didn’t have very much time to re-educate Melissa and Emirhan on the wonders of local food, we tried our best. Since there are few pleasures greater than the delights of a superb Ramly burger, the sort that can only be found in Malaysia, we headed straight for one. Followed by satay Kajang. Followed by two rounds of lok-lok. (A lok-lok truck is a contraption of a truck that’s been pimped up to allow for the display and storage of fresh sticks of meat and seafood, to be dipped into communal vats on the rims of these trucks, each filled with boiling hot soup, into which one cooks your sticks of food in a DIY fashion. It went out of fashion (or was outlawed) in Singapore even before I was born, so I eat at one every other day in Malaysia and find great pleasure in it.)
By this time Melissa had already given up on the idea of eating anymore, but Emirhan tried his best. We had one round of lok-lok, rested for beer, and returned an hour later for more.
That’s when I realized how much of a stereotype we had all become. Scurrying to the truck at 2am, we noticed most of the sticks of food had been packed away for the night. Anxious, we all did a spontaneous mini-sprint to the steamboat — separately. In another moment of unplanned synchronized gluttony, we immediately took out our phones from our pocket… and laughed. We knew precisely why the other person was doing it.
We had to check the time the lok-lok truck stopped selling food… because… we just had to.
And then we ate. And ate some more. And went home and planned what to eat in 5 hours’ time.
That’s when I knew I am indeed native to this land. A gluttonous, perpetually hungry native.
Downtown Beirut was swanky. Saifi Village was strange. I had to duck into a hair salon and get my hair cut by a gay man in Ashrafieh to avoid the guy following me on his scooter, and the other guy trying to sell me drugs. All I wanted was a steak. Walking around Beirut, glamorous, fashionable Beirut, the party capital of the gay Middle East, where everyone, straight, gay, and in-between, was artsy or beautiful or a bit of both, was mind-bending. Here was a United Nations tank, soldiers armed with rifles. Here was a pockmarked building, riddled with gunshot wounds, the architectural reflection of Beirut’s own wounded but eternal soul. In the fashionably frumpy quarter of Gemmayze, I joined the artsy young Beirut set for a night. Saturday nights in Gemmayze’s many hole-in-wall bars and clubs felt right; in early 2009, this was where Beirut’s heartbeat was to be found. Every couple of years, that changes, according to my friend Dana. Like many Lebanese, she left the country as a teenager because of the war. Never quite settling elsewhere, she joined the permanent Lebanese diaspora in Montreal and then in Dubai. I cannot imagine what it’s like to call such a beautiful, vulnerable strip of land “home”; it must be hard to juggle so many identities. “The New York Times Travel page just ran a story about how ‘Beirut is back’. Bars, clubs, it’s so hip now, yada yada,” I said. “Oh, please. Every five years or so the New York Times “rediscovers” that “Beirut is so different from the Middle East” and “and how we’re a party town,” she scoffed. “It’s a surprise only to them. Every five years or so somethings blows up, the shit hits the fan. Then we’re okay, and we make the New York Times again. And again.” Meanwhile, a gorgeous gay Lebanese man held hands under the table with his strikingly handsome French partner, while Dana ordered us more beer and whisky and expounded at length about how weird it is that Middle Eastern culture places so much importance on what’s been between her legs. I remembered what a foreign correspondent once said about this city being every old-school foreign correspondent’s dream: you could interview the Hezbollah at lunchtime and count on foie gras, wine and beautiful people showing at your parties after, on the other side of town. I love this place.
Weddings, funerals and fortune tellers depress me.
Weddings, I’ve been known to say, make me linger too long on the idea of happiness. Not that it’s ever been bleak on the romantic front. The wedding type of happy simply seems worlds apart from the love type of happy to me, but then I was the odd one out in too many ways. I was that strange little girl who distressed, not too silently, over the idea that any impending happiness had to come from a Prince Charming, a white dress, a ring, or a HDB flat. I squinted hard in the horizon and tried to see some kind of prince heading my way. I made mental concessions, I had to. “If this prince has long hair, a beautiful face, and soft hands to hold,” I often wondered aloud, “then I guess it’s okay.” Maybe that’s why I didn’t have too many friends in primary school. I like the idea of marriage. But weddings, and ceremonies or rituals of any sort that spell out the rules of what can’t be done more than what can, just depress me. Gay people usually feel we have to work twice as hard in everything: to excel at sports even though you’re a faggot, to make it at the workplace even though you’re a dyke, to be happy even though you’re a sad homosexual. And now I have to work twice as hard to fly somewhere else, book a vineyard, buy two dresses, find the right girl, and fly everyone there and know not everyone I love will be happy for me? I don’t know. I don’t know how that compares to cold jellyfish, PowerPoint slides, sharks’ fin, yum sengs and bad singing from the groom. Maybe happiness doesn’t need other people’s approving — or disapproving — looks.
Funerals are something else altogether. Losing a loved one is a terrible thing and, I’ve been told, doesn’t get any better with practice. There is nothing pleasant about a funeral. Grief and loss is the sum total of the pain of heartbreak and disappointment, magnified. They remind us of our own mortality, the things not yet done, the things we will never do. Aspirations, ambition, dashed dreams, lost loves, happiness, the abruptness of death, what little time you have left and what you still need to do. Death makes every obstacle in life seem ridiculously small in comparison. My grandfather died a few days before Michael Jackson. It destroyed me. My ex is getting married in three countries to the same person, just a few months after my niece was born and a few days after one of my good friends gave birth. It’s supposed to be revitalizing. I find this all chilling. Exciting, eventful, but some days I crave normalcy. Yet I’m finding, rather late into young adulthood, that everything we did in English Literature class — love, loss, death, other such milestones and the cycles of life — are not overwritten cliches. How Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in Stoppard’s version, spent all their lives trying to find out their destiny only to be ultimately disappointed; trapped within the wheels of pre-determination?
And those high priests of pre-determination, fortune tellers. They are to most people, beacons of light. For the less superstitious like myself, they disappoint me greatly even if they have only good things to say. That’s it? That’s life? That’s all love is about? How the hell do you know this anyway? I’ve been to quite a few from Singapore to Dhaka to Antalya and Istanbul, just out of curiosity, and I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I just don’t want to know. Maybe all I want is to fumble my way through life attending as few funerals as I can. Travel even more. Give up smoking. Drink as much good wine and spirits as I can, not at the same time. Be a good person. Send my parents on nice vacations every now and then. Give my best in everything I do. Love bravely, truthfully, fiercely and without fear; not of anybody else, not of each other. Be loved in equal amounts. Have a long distance relationship only once, but make it count. Give to charity. Be kind to cats. Live in as many cities as I can. Turn 24 in three months time but not 10 000 kilometres away from the person I love, ever again.
Maybe even learn to be more optimistic about weddings if I expect to still have friends in my middle age. Or do a better job of pretending.
Living in Singapore is not easy, one can quickly see. Could it be that we tire quickly from our programming — the PSLE, the Os, the As, the university, the serving the nation, the feeding your family and all these things? Or is it that we pack the rush hour morning and evening trains daily, increasingly unable to recognize our neighbours or the languages they speak?
If you thought the living was uneasy, just you wait and see.
Being dead in Singapore doesn’t seem particularly different.
As if being alive and drawing air here didn’t already call for us to live packed closely together in high-rise public housing, since we lack “space” in the corporeal sense, not two hours after you’re gone your family members will be making plans to pack you into spiritual equivalent of the flats you’ve lived in all your life, as I found out last week.
– “Ah Gong will be living in Block 206 ok? Any objections?”
– “What level?”
– “Level 6.” (No lifts or floors with lift landings here, I’m afraid.)
– “Unit 281.”
And on and on it goes, debating the merits and the cons of the block (C, D, or A?), level and unit, direction it faces (“sea- or ‘mountain’- facing?”), until somebody, i.e me, goes, “Explain to me what the difference is between Ah Gong ‘living’ there and in another block, level or unit?”
– “$200. The uncle say ah, if you want to choose the unit, must pay.”
Turns out it wasn’t just $200 that made all the difference. The Chinese/ atheist/ Buddhist/ Taoist dead (categories which tended to overlap with each other) got the lower floor. The Christians — who tended to be Chinese, Indian, and Eurasian — were upstairs. Upstairs seemed to get a bit more air, a bit more sunlight, and didn’t heat up too much at mid-day, unlike at the other blocks I’d been to. Not that it mattered to Ah Gong. Ah Gong survived poverty and hunger in his childhood in China, a cleaver-attack on his head in mid-life, and a smart alec grand-child in his late years… he’d adapt.
– “Sorry, if you want to put him in a Christian block, you need to show a baptism certificate for him or for an immediate family member.” Unbelievable — racial/religious quotas… for the dead? Turns out the Christian lots are in such high demand, like our schools, that everyone, even non-Christians, wanted to be there.
Keeping your urn in a randomly assigned spot: no extra charge
Wanting your urn to be in a specific spot: $200
Pre-booking your urn spot next to your loved one: $1500, depending on religion, site, and race
– “Better not to pre-book lah! Sekali here also kena enbloc then how?”
– “Then die lor. Oh budden die orreadi hor.”
It read like there was a statutory board (with an appropriate death-related acronym) administering this thing.
The funeral director was a man named Fred who, like all and sundry who call our sunny shores ‘home’ these days, was foreign talent. He worked long hours, spoke perfect English, left the Chinese dialects to the middle-aged Chinese men he hired, and unlike these middle-aged Chinese men, seemed to genuinely care.
He, and everyone involved in this, was so efficient that within 3 hours of Ah Gong’s passing at the hospital, he was returned to us at home — embalmed, coffin-ed, dressed, ready to go. Ready to lie down for a few days while people sat around pretending to look at him, eating peanuts, collecting money. Even the cartons of Yeo’s packet drinks, in winter melon, chrysanthemum and lemon barley flavours, had been bought.
Because our estate is currently in the throes of HIP (Home Improvement Programme), having recently undergone HUP (Home Upgrading Programme), there was no space at our void deck for the wake. So at 10 am, all of us lined up at the opposite block, uniformly dressed in our funeral whites. The tentage had been up for hours, the chairs and tables had been put out, as had their corresponding plastic sheets and peanuts.
Some dramatic music sounded from the back of the hearse, out of its improvised 2.1 system (speaker+flower+coffin).
We lined up to welcome Ah Gong home. Except that in this homecoming version, he wasn’t breathing. And he was in a shirt and tie, which convinced me something had REALLY gone wrong this time.
The shit hit the fan several times, but he always came home in his white singlet — the only thing he bothered to wear, in all the 24 years I’ve known him. He only wore a suit once in his life: at his wedding, or rather, when his wedding portrait was taken. Even at my brother’s wedding he compromised only slightly by wearing some kind of short-sleeved shirt over his singlet (unbuttoned so his Flying Goose brand singlet was unmistakable). I never thought I’d see him in a tie.
I never thought I’d see him dead.
I never thought that behind the white tents of the void deck, the ones I’ve walked past often in all my years living in a HDB flat, would lie someone I knew, someone I loved.
I never thought I’d be, three days later after the fact, walking glumly and sullenly through the carpark not because I hadn’t done my homework and didn’t want to go to school, but because my uncle was carrying a large photo of the man I’ve come home (and left home) greeting every single day of my life: ah gong ah ma wa tyng lai leoh! That we’d walk lock-step to the hearse, that I would find myself making a mental note to remember to tell my children to pick a non-peak hour when I “chuk sua” — the impatient Singaporean drivers would really annoy me even when I’m dead, honking the way they do in trying to overtake a coffin while people are crying behind it.
It only seemed right to share with the world what the recently deceased were known for. In writing his eulogy, I hopped about with a notepad and a pen tucked above my ear, asking all my cousins: “what did Ah Gong always say to you?”
Da Jie said, “si sua ta!” (“Anyhow say!”)
Er jie said, “sark suk!” (“Silly!”)
My brother, his favourite grand-child, said, “Dua cha.” (“Big blockhead”.. which was his nickname)
To my other cousins who spoke Mandarin instead of Teochew, he took great pains to translate his terms of affection. “Ben ben!” (“Stupid stupid!” in Mandarin) “You mei you mai liu lian?” (“Did you buy durian?”)
So I wrote him a eulogy and I got to say si sua ta, sark suk, dua cha and liu lian all at the same time.
I stood before the crowd and I introduced myself. I cried instantly.
I tried to say my Teochew name for the first time in my life (vastly different from my English name and my Mandarin name), but I could not: Ah Gong had sabo-ed me, again! The only time I ever heard my name being said in Teochew was when he talked about having named me. He always said it in a way which rhymed with the hour. jit tiang, nor tiang, sa tiang! So I stood there and introduced myself as li- ‘hour’. People in the audience laughed loudly and my uncle, who reminds me most of Ah Gong, called out: and your name is also two o’clock and three o’clock! And si- tiang too!
Ah Gong, ni you pian wo! His eulogy was delivered, not entirely flawlessly, in Teochew by me and in English by my brother. I wrote an essay in Teochew called “Torchlights and Alarm Clocks”. I talked about how it’s going to be weird not having him tie pink ribbons to my backpacks so I can see them come out of the baggage carousel, how he’d write my Chinese name on everything I owned, even the cool ones; my brother and I both said growing up with him was about having a torchlight shone on your face at 3 am every night, just so he knew we were there. I cried a lot. I laughed a lot. He was a silly, funny man and he made us all laugh. We said in heaven he’s cursing all day on sweet potatoes (his only bad words were Teochew vulgarities about stuffing your mouth with a sweet potato, and something about your mother’s eggs). I think in heaven Ah Gong is back in his singlet, shaking his leg like the China-man he is, with Bruno his favourite dog. And his alarm clocks are going off all at the same time, and his torchlights never need their batteries replaced.
I’ve never had to deal with it, never thought about it, possibly because I never had a pet, and never had family or friends who’d passed on or contracted anything major. People lived, in my family, and lived quite long.
Especially my grandma and grandpa, who seemed to just go on and on. If that’s a skewed perspective of old age that might be because I have seen them go on everyday from the moment I was born: they have lived with us forever.
Ah Gong was always in the next room. He never laughed; he sniggered, he chuckled slyly, he was grumpy as hell — in the most endearing way possible. He was a traditional Chinese man — born in China in 1930, adopted then brought to Malaysia, saw his adopted father beaten to death by Japanese soldiers during the war — who, for most intents and purposes, kept his feelings (and thoughts) to himself, avoiding actions or words of affection like the plague, but was the sort of man you warmed to anyway.
I like to think he waited for me long enough, given how well-timed the whole incident was — he only fell drastically sick when I was due to return, and I at least managed a week or so with him, despite his sedate state, despite how he was barely there at all. I had expected my trip to the Middle East and London this last time to be like any other — I’d be back, he’d pretend he barely cared, but he’d get quite quickly to the only way he seems to know how to show any love: verbal-sparring with me in our secret language, Teochew.
Instead, I got back this time and found the house strangely empty. No Ah Gong pottering about finding things to amuse himself, no Ah Gong waking me up with 8 alarm clocks and 1 mobile phone call, no Ah Gong to play hide and seek with when it came to the subject of how cigarettes mysteriously appear in my bag all the time, in increasingly strange (or secret) compartments or methods of concealment. He always found them, he always out-talked me, he was always right, he figured out stuff quicker than I could think, and he laughed and smirked because he liked being right much more than the fact that I was doing what I shouldn’t. In his last days Ah Gong sat mostly on his wheelchair, his mind still sharp and observant, and his temperament still endearingly grumpy.
But life and love doesn’t go on and on, I’ve come to find the hard way, and as he lies there I can imagine him saying: every single time you go abroad you buy me a clock, and the one time you haven’t I’ve really gone.
In Mandarin to “gift a clock” can also mean to send someone off at their funeral. It’s thus taboo to give your elders time-keeping devices of any sort. But we had a special relationship based on the two great loves of his life: torchlights and alarm clocks. He never said I love you, or I care about you, but when he did, he gave you a torch. Or two.
I came to the Middle East to do just one thing: see a part of the world that I felt I needed to learn more about. Its language was alien, but familiar – many Malay and Hindi words have roots in Arabic. Its customs and food strange, but not dissimilar – much of the Indian subcontinent that I love and call home was influenced, for the better and the worse, by centuries of Mughal rule. Dubai and Singapore had many things in common, and then not at all.
My months through the region are coming to an end. As I travelled through Dubai I fell hard for the United Arab Emirates, but not for its most famous, brashest city. I loved Abu Dhabi and I loved Al Ain. I loved the weekend drives into the desert, and camping trips to Oman. I discovered the lengths people will go to for bootleg alcohol, when liquor licenses and hotel drinking start to dry up (driving to Ajman to get bootleg supplies etc).
And as I embarked on my quest to see the real middle east, after giving up on Dubai – I was in for a treat. Yemen, bombs and all, shook me; it was like nothing I had seen before. Then my ambitious overland journey, beginning with Beirut. That’s now drawing to an end.
The last month or so that i’ve been properly on the road, I’ve navigated my way around Lebanon through Syria through Turkey, without once knowing how to drive a car. I’ve met ridiculously awesome people. I’ve had countless cups of tea with strangers. I’ve seen some sights.
And the sights I’ve seen, I’m amazed by the opportunity – and good luck I’ve had in seeing some of these wonders. From a castle built by one man, still alive, in Beiteddine, to the phenomenal Kraks des Chevaliers in Syria (the embodiment of all childhood castle jousting fantasies, says Theroux, and he’s right – again). The ancient cities of Damascus and Sana’a. The friends I’ve made all through Beirut, Damascus, Palmyra, Aleppo, Antalya, Cappadocia and Istanbul.
The long bus rides. I left Damascus last week and 36 hours later arrived in Antalya, but not before being stranded in Adana with too many Syrian pounds but no Turkish lira – and no money changer or warm clothes in the freezing cold of an eastern Turkish morning.
Done with my last bus ride (12 hours from Goreme to Istanbul), I now sleepwalk through Taksim Square at 7 in the morning, pleased to be back to one of my favourite cities in the world. One that makes me thankful for the beautiful people I call my friends, who last shared this city with me
But journeys never end, only their chapters do. It strikes me now that for all my complaints and grievances about the middle east, this region is truly special and needs to be seen to be understood. And I’m glad I had the chance to see it while I could.
If I could do it again, I would do a few weeks in Iran. But that will have to wait.
For now, long Turkish bus rides and what’s left of my Istanbul days – one filled with lots of ‘midye dolma’, wet hamburgers, fish sandwiches, Bosphorous views and raki when the sun goes down, I’m sure.
Then London. Then moving into my new pad in Kuala Lumpur. Then a new chapter in life, love, and adulthood. I think I have airtickets booked or planned for every month from now through January, though, so the adventure doesn’t end – it’ll be the last of the middle east and Europe for some time, but more awaits.
Time to finish breakfast, put on my heavy backpack, and walk the last 1km to my hostel. It shall be the last hostel in awhile – I’m not giving up backpacking, I’m just… Upgrading. Life, travel, trading in my hobo life for the chance of getting to own things beyond my baggage allowance for the first time in a while.
I don’t have to tell you what happened in Mumbai. You already know it. I wasn’t there that day, and although I may at some point in the future, I have never lived here. Not in the real sense of ‘living’ somewhere, with bank accounts and rented residences, or jobs. But Mumbai is my city, my friends are Mumbaikars, and I feel every bit one myself: I still call it Bombay, because Bombay is romantic and real and Mumbai isn’t; I love the city, have my favourite haunts in Bombay, both north and south, and know the city well.
Perhaps too well.
On any regular Bombay evening, my friends and I would be sitting at Cafe Leopold in Colaba Causeway. I’m there every night, not that I particularly like it. When the papers and news reports tell you the gunmen threw a grenade into a ‘popular tourist cafe’ in Colaba, you need to know first that Leopold isn’t just any popular cafe, Colaba isn’t any regular street… and Bombay isn’t any regular city. Leopold had a strange, inexplicable draw. Mr Shantaram was there, back when he was actually living in the slum a few streets behind it, and so were the real life cast that inspired his fictional motley crew of Bombay misfits, mafia and other things. Even now that Johnny Depp is going to play him in the movie, now that he’s a minor celebrity, he is still there. You never quite leave Leopold.
My friends and I at Leopold would just be like any regular bunch of friends who might be sitting there that night. Young and foreign — photographers, wannabe Bollywood stars, scruffy Bollywood recruiters, writers. Drawn by the magic of Leopold: the bad music, the bad pasta, the Kingfisher and Cobra beer that was never terribly cold, but the coldest the city could give. And our friends: each other, and the chattering yuppie Indian middle classes. When we were done someone might say, let’s go for a kebab. We’d pop around the corner to the famous Bade Miya, just down the road from the Taj, sit in a derelict building outrageously (and illegally) outfitted with fluorescent lights, while more young scruffy expats and Indophiles like me sat with each other and with our yuppie middle class Indian friends — smoking, eating with our hands, and perhaps someone would say let’s go to the sea.
Bombay is a city by the sea, but not in the usual sense of it. It’s beautiful, but only if you look hard. The Arabian sea engulfs it on one side, and on a hot Bombay night there is nothing more entertaining than sitting by the Arabian Sea, eating bhelpuri and drinking_chai_ with your love — and Bombay is a city for lovers — on Juhu Beach or by the rails along Marine Drive. You’d look out to the domain of old Bombay money, Napean Sea Road and Malabar Hill, shimmering away in the distance. The majestic Taj hotel behind you. The Gateway of India, and all its pigeons and pigeon shit and tourists, to your left. Bom Bahai, Bombay, Bom Bahai the good harbour, as the Portuguese called it.
And CST was where it all started and ended. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, so renamed to please the frothing at the mouth Shiv Sena, Marathi supremists and their Shivaji cultists. Victoria Terminus, or VT, was what the rest of us called it. You entered Bombay at VT, stepped over sleeping bodies, crouched all over the station and platform floor. They never did that in ones, rarely twos — the Indians do everything in groups, and especially in Bombay groups of ten, twenty, will all be sleeping, chatting, sitting, drinking tea on the floor, squatting by their ancient-looking luggages, waiting for trains to take them homes. Some of them would have just got in to Bombay, destined to a lifetime of pavement-sleeping in this crowded city; others would be veterans, waiting to go home for the week after months or years in the big city. You can tell who’s been here for a while by the way they talk about the city: there’s a certain degree of Bombay smugness. Or perhaps smug is not the word — it’s the air of knowing. When you know Bombay, whether you’ve lived there all your life, whether you’re Parsi, Gujarati, Malayali, Singaporean, American, British, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, whether you go back to sleeping on your pavement, to a Malabar Hill Road address or your expensive room at the Oberoi. It doesn’t matter. When Bombay is your city, it shows. Whether you stepped out into Bombay in the morning at CST, or in the dead of night, they were there. And to get out you had to step over them, shove your way through the porters, and the thronging multitude carrying what seems to be hundreds of kilograms of things they were carting home: sweets, hay stacks, goods. When you left Bombay, you did so at CST too. If you left for a day trip you might go to a place like Matheran, where I like going whenever I’m in Bombay, and you’d take the train from CST to Neral Junction to get there. If you lived in Bombay, especially in the north, you would take a train home from CST, too. You’d get on one of those dangerously overcrowded suburban locals, the ones I so love.
But it all fell apart. The city of dreams is burning. Those sleeping bodies on the station floor are probably all dead, and so are the waiters at Leopold — two of them. So are the sorts of people I might have met and chatted up at Leopold. Heck, my career started in Leopold when a roving photojournalist chatted me up there and we found we had an incredible chemistry and worked well as a team, sealed off with Kingfisher, Gold Flakes, and Indian whisky at Gokul just around the corner. I never went to the Taj or to the Oberoi but as India’s finest hotels, they are not mere hotels — they are symbols, testament to the power of this city and its dreams. As a young man Ratan Tata’s great grandfather, Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata, walked into the colonial Watson’s hotel and was turned away — because he was Indian. He vowed to build a grander hotel than that, and he did: the Taj hotels are the pride of India, and the Taj Mahal in Bombay was the crown in the jewel: the Beatles stayed there, and so did endless other kings and queens, especially the ones that matter most to the Indians, the cricketing gods. For the pavement-sleepers, scruffy backpackers, middle class Indian tourists, and locals alike, The Taj was — and still is — the landmark in the city by the sea.
If something like this could happen to any city, it would be to Bombay, and it would be to these sites of great emotional resonance. The city has never been an easy one to live in. It is full of crumbling buildings and bureaucracy, it is the symbol of Indian inequality of class, wealth and status, it is the city full of people who have nothing right by the people who have everything. It is hard to imagine why anyone would live here. But Bombay, like Leopold and its terrible pasta, like the Taj and the Oberoi and its occasionally contrived grandeur, has an inexplicable aura that draws her people — and their hearts — to her. And she demands you love her despite the terror attacks, despite the gangland wars, despite the everyday inconveniences of living in a place like this with no living space, no drinking water and no dignity.
Other writers more talented than myself have made the New York connection, and it’s true: Bombay is where people come from all over India, even the world, to chase and live their dreams — I did — and they’ll do it by grumbling a heck lot, but will always grit their teeth and survive. If the terrorists wanted to take Bombay apart and show the world that they’ve destroyed this great city, they will never succeed. They do not understand this city is a very different city, and its 14 million inhabitants are hardy people who are toughened but never disillusioned — go take a walk around the chawls and slums, including Asia’s biggest one at Dharavi, and in the midst of poverty and suffering there is always an air of incredible hope and optimism. It is a city of 14 million who have fought back floods, bombs, shootings, racial riots and gangland wars, because they fight daily the misfortunes of everyday living in this city of tough love. More than any other city, Bombay knows how to survive. And will.
So be strong, my beloved Bombay. I will be with you shortly.
Some people do long distance relationships. Most don’t.
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.
If there are two items you must not forget when travelling, they are your universal travel adapter and your watch.
I keep forgetting either one but that is seldom a problem. Forgetting just a travel adapter means you can tell time with the other essential item, the watch; forgetting the watch but having the adapter means you can tell the time with your mobile phone, iPod, or computer.
I had neither this time.
And so it was that I woke up on Thursday morning with a jolt. I had a flight and it was one I could not miss: I had a dinner appointment in another country. Not having a travel adapter meant my phone was dead for days and I therefore couldn’t inform my dinner date of any changes in the plan; the only alternative then was to make it for dinner. Not knowing what time it was I leaped out of a sofa in downtown Jakarta and sped into the bathroom, having stripped fully and redressed entirely in the 5 steps it took to get there, swept all my toiletries off the bathroom counter, administering the contents of these toiletries on my face and mouth before they got into the bag, relieved myself concurrently, and was out of the house (also having checked three times that I didn’t leave any thing behind, which would be disastrous: I don’t have the key into this apartment) exactly four minutes since I woke up with a jolt.
Downstairs at the foyer I cut the line and jumped into a taxi still worried I might miss my flight. It was 11 am.
On checking my flight ticket I realized I was, for the first time, grossly early for a 2.55 pm flight. At least that gave me enough time to get through the predictably unpredictable Jakarta traffic.
By 11.45 am I was at Soekarno-Hatta airport. If you’ve ever been there you know how that airport does not in any way resemble the airport of the capital city of the fourth most populous country in the world. The way it’s built it looks like someone took a bunch of the dullest looking Lego bricks and lined it up in a row. At each break between a set of bricks someone else started labelling them: International, terminal A, B. Domestic, terminal C, D. You can only enter the airport if you have a boarding pass and a passport, everyone else had to clamber up some steps to the Waving Gallery. The only thing you can do at the terminal is check in. The international terminal is too crowded; it makes you sprint from place to place looking for where you’re supposed to be, before going through another hurdle (to pay fiskal, 1 million rupiah for Indonesians, 100 000 rupiah for everyone else), then getting into the grotesquely long passport control lines. The domestic terminal is far more sedate and cuts to the chase. You enter the terminal; look at the screen; the check in rows are 5 feet in front of you. You check in your bags, then walk 100m to pay fiskal (30 000 rupiah, domestic). Then you get on the plane. I have seen airports in small tribal town India that work and look better. Guwahati airport in Assam, for example, is light years more advanced.
But never mind all that because Soekarno-Hatta airport has a Krispy Kreme outlet — outside, as all the shops are.
While attempting to check in early I notice my flight had been delayed to 4.15 pm. I take to delays with a certain degree of nonchalance that only experience with budget airlines and Indian trains can afford. I sit at a restaurant eating overpriced soto babat, and only because A&W Indonesia doesn’t have curly fries, and talk to strangers. One man sitting next to me with an Eee PC tells me he is Vietnamese American and is travelling the world; he’d quit his job, but as a world class backgammon player… plays backgammon online and makes more money from that than some investment bankers I know. We both have not showered in many hours and as solo travellers, need each other: to watch our things when we go to the toilet to wash our faces.
When it was time to check in for my flight at the new timing, I roll my trolley all the way back to the domestic terminal. The screen has been saying “retimed: 4.15 pm” all this while. Announcements are impossible to hear in this airport, if they exist at all. While trying to check in I find out my flight… berangkat! Departed. At the old time. It wasn’t delayed after all. Although the screen still said my flight is leaving at 4.15 pm.
So I’d missed it and was put on the next flight to my destination… at 6.40 am the next morning. I was running out of Indonesian currency, and money changers don’t really exist in this airport (or they do, but in the most inconvenient place possible — at a location which necessitated me taking a shuttle bus there); I was getting cranky. I decided to stay in the village nearest to the airport rather than brave traffic back into Jakarta, preferring village life to hanging out at Soekarno-Hatta even though I knew my new friend the backgammon champion was going to be playing backgammon online at the airport until 10 am the next day. Every minute there was depressing.
Someone booked me a decent hotel in that village, and they also came to pick me up. When I arrived in Banten I felt nothing. No panic, no horror, just one question: what am I going to do until 4.30 am tomorrow? (Remember, not having travel adapter = no laptop and mobile phone.)
The hotel was decent enough. I’m used to hotels of all stripes. My accommodation preferences sway two ways: either extreme luxury of the private retreat sort, or bottom of the barrel. I mostly dislike everything in-between and would rather stay at a place scraping the bottom of a barrel than yet another soulless hotel. The bottom of the Banten barrel, this Sri Permata place, wasn’t too bad. I mean, I have stayed in leprosy mission guesthouses in Bangladesh, longhouses hours away from cellular coverage in Borneo, and box-sized rooms in Calcutta. And enjoyed them all.
It’s the sort of place where everything on TV is in a language you don’t understand.
In my case, everything on TV was in a language I understood in fits and starts. My grasp of Malay/Indonesian is shaky, not having done it in school, and with the sentence structures of a two year old and the vocabulary of a three year old, it’s frustrating to understand bits and nothing else. Though my dedicated efforts in reading signboards in Malaysia mean my abilities in this language are slowly improving (Me: “What’s_faedah_?!”, on an insurance signboard. Her: “Say it again! Hahaha!” Me: “Frown!”) it still counts for nothing. If anything at all I feel like an idiot. Watching TV affirmed this. I understood one in ten words.
So an Indonesian comedy program, which I’m sure was very funny to the native audience, sounded to me like this:
“Where!”
“Here!”
“There!”
“Who!”
“Mosquito”
(Audience: “Hahahaha!”)
Me: “There are many mosquitoes in this room alright.” (in my head, and in English /switches off TV) Though to my credit, I did understand that they’d written in a product placement for Hak Hak Bento prawn tempura: they’d erected an entire shopfront on the set and were discussing how delicious prawn tempura was. Not entirely useful linguistic skills, then.
By which time it was 5.50pm and every channel on TV was a call to prayer for buka puasa(break fast). I wandered out into the village in search of food.
Since I had 11 hours to kill in this place I picked a warung at the brightest spot in town — Cafe Rindu, right outside Indomaret, Indonesia’s answer to 7-Eleven. In a town like this, 24h convenience stores did not exist. They closed at 10pm. I had 4 hours to go in the bright lights of this warung.
Reading Indonesian menus are never too harrowing. Being from where I am I understand 98% of menus in Indonesia and have probably eaten most of it. It seemed like a day for_roti panggang_ (toast), but so many options! Coklat! Keju! Strawberry! Selai kacang! It didn’t seem like a night for chocolate, cheese or strawberry. But just what was the last option?
I puff up my chest slightly and furrow my brow.
“Kak. Errrr… selai kacang. Ini apa?”
If anyone ever asked me that in English I would react the same way 18 year old Yati did. Stumble, laugh, giggle, and not know what to say.
“Peanut butter. This what?” What is the world? Why is the sky blue? Why does my Indonesian suck? Why am I so hungry? What is life? Why are we here? How does one answer that?
Yati pondered the deepest existential question posed to anyone since The Answer is 42. What is peanut butter, indeed?
She made me some, and I understood. I understood the secrets of the world, and why we are here. To eat peanut butter toast at a warung in a random, faceless small town in Java. To do all that while attempting to talk to people in a language I don’t entirely understand or speak.
When it was all over she asked me to be her friend. In Indonesian, of course. (“What? Huh? What did you say? Speak slowly? I is from Singapur. me speak Bahasa Indonesia a little bit a little bit.”)
I wanted to ask her to leave me her address so I could send her a postcard.
“Please give me your maklumat.”
Blank stare.
(Maklumat = information)
“Sorry, please give me your alumat.”
Another blank stare and a giggle. I vow to stop trying to speak Indonesian if I get it wrong again.
(Alumat = doesn’t mean anything)
“PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR ALAMAT.”
Yati clapped her hands, giggled, actually shrieked and did a little jiggle. And wrote excitedly on my writing pad. In English. Name = Yati. Age = 18. Address = xxxxx, Banten, Indonesia.
I’m not used to girls behaving like that towards me at all, certainly not used to tudung-wearing girls in Java (or anywhere else) being so excited about me.
I wish I could tell her peanut butter is the world, but knowing my shit Indonesian it would probably come out as “in the world, peanut butter is”. Or “peanut butter, in the world”.
It was time to leave. And I had her alamat, and all the maklumat I needed. Now to tidur, and balik ke Singapur. Langsung!
A few Malay/Indonesian language elves died in the process of writing this entry.
(Incidentally, for years my mother thought I was dating a Javanese girl named Yati. And chose to call her Yeti. How that’s anywhere close to Z’s real name is a mystery to all of us. My mother was also fond of boasting to her friends that Yeti was the colour of _kopi susu_and like hitam manis — milk coffee, and black and sweet, which I guess ties into the whole abominable snowman idea — so I guess irrelevant Indonesian skills are something I inherited.)
My city is often made out to be a boring business city, sterile and lifeless. Not entirely. No amount of protestation at how we’re really unique, though, is effective in driving home the truth about (some parts of) my city — how there are bits you can really love, if you look hard enough.
My city, tonight, started off innocuously enough, with a solo train ride back to the city from the airport. Wondering around the east, feeling like I’m exploring a new country altogether, one I only go to in order to leave and return to the country, before running back towards the familiarity of the places I know and the places I love.
Little India was my first love. It was here where I wandered about, as a kid visiting relations, demanding ice cream and discovering kulfi, my first taste of something new, different, bold — pistachio, spices, cream, all the better to quench the heat. Then as a teenager, discovering the back roads of Little India, talking to everybody, wandering into every shop; how I can always count on being fed for free by Indian hawker families who now treat me as their own niece, how after twenty years, I am still in awe, still finding new places, new tastes, and new people. Then going to places like Triplicane, Chennai, and feeling entirely in my element, knowing where to find things and occasionally, what to say.
Then Arab Street, adjacent, separated only by that canal. It is a walk I make often, in either direction, past the thieves’ market at Sungei Road where I followed my father to as a child, complaining, sweating under the heat looking at old, dirty things and deciphering rude Hokkien shouts they call Hokkien conversation, which I now love. Past Kelantan Road, which I know for the laksa my mother loves. Jalan Besar: that Chinese fringe of Little India. Kitchener Road, Maude Road, Tyrwhitt Road. The parts in which I find myself, often, thinking of as Scissor Cut Curry Rice, Pu Tien (Henghwa restaurant), Min Chung (Henghwa coffeeshop, amazing clams), and Northern Thai (what was once my favourite tomyam soup haunt, with fried fish).
My city, tonight. First off the train into the city, then Haji Lane, Bussorah Street, Arab Street, Kandahar Street. These are the streets where my memories, both happy and tragic ones, were made. Then that walk across that canal and into Little India; years before I was born my grandfather worked at that huge market in the area, now I know it almost instinctively. Desker Road — you know it for the transvestite brothels — I know it for Usman, the Pakistani coffeeshop at the end of the street, in bright blue. Shahi paneer, fried dhal, kadai chicken, and the first palak paneer that even remotely agreed with my by now demanding tastes for food from this region. They knew us, we regulars; after all this is where I once ran up a tab for the copious amounts of tea I used to drink here. Tonight I was here with someone more regular than I, someone who could actually speak their language (someone so regular they deliver to his doorstep when he asks!). My rudimentary Hindi won me plenty of points.
If you don’t know a thing about South Asian cultures, you might find Little India one big, scary, monolith (I still find it appalling that Chinese people here think there is a language called “Indian” and one uniform “Indian identity”). But you get the South Indian, Tamilian influence everywhere along Little India, them forming the primary Indian population after all; but the further north you get, the more diverse. Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants and shops, sporadic and not entirely large enough to form Little Pakistan or Little Bangladesh, but thousands of miles out of the subcontinent, co-existing in harmony. Tonight, I wolfed down my lovely Pakistani meal, had a never-ending discussion about travel in Pakistan and Mughal-e-Azam, then popped over to a Bangladeshi restaurant on “Bangla Square” to get us a misti doi each.
Cultures clash so often in this part of the world, I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore — but as I made vain attempts to show off what little Bengali I knew (this doesn’t take very much effort for a yellow girl), the owner of the place spun around from the hilsa he was scooping and said: ni zai wo de guo jia… zou lai zou qu ma? (were you walking around in my country, Bangladesh?), and was happy I’d been to his “native” (Rongpur). He apparently worked in Taipei for a while, and his Mandarin was probably as bad good as my Bengali. But still. The misti doi was great. The misti doi made me ache a little for the subcontinent. As a parting shot, I took a stab in the dark and asked if he would know where I could buy Hemanta Mukhopadhyay’s Bangla music. This being Little India, after all, he shouted out of his shop — someone came running by waving a TV controller about shouting “what is it?” — and promptly led me away to a little cornershop in an alley. The name? Dhaka Corner. They had my Mukhopadhyay, as well as the Ornob album I wanted, and recommended a new Bangladeshi popstar called Habib, who really is excellent. All this, just a stone’s throw away from where I spend so much of my time, Mustafa Centre. So in one evening alone, I had dinner at a Pakistani restaurant with a Nepali boy and some Chinese friends (and generally felt like we were showing them around a new country), bought misti doi from a Chinese-speaking Bangladeshi, found the Bengali music I’ve wanted for ages, then long conversations about Lahore with random intriguing Pakistanis.
Some nights, I really love my city. Tonight was one of them.
Where I dig through my archives and repost the stuff I like. This is from 2007.
Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and all I will remember is driving up, around, up, around, up, around, in the swirling clouds as the rain lashed at my windows and I feared for my life, balanced so daintily in this tin can navigating itself on the hairpin road. This being Meghalaya, where everyone loves their rock ‘n’ roll, Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” blasted from this tin can while I said a little prayer.
The purpose for this journey? To spend the tail end of my summer living out the monsoon in the world’s wettest (inhabited) place. If London gets close to 600mm of annual rainfall, where I was hitting up racked up 12000mm consistently, also the holder of two world records: highest monthly rainfall, highest yearly rainfall.
Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and I will still tell you the same thing: I’m not sure why I do the things that I do. Except that I was chasing the monsoon, that year and it just so happened I was paid for it.
We’d gone from my beloved Calcutta hurriedly, up to Darjeeling. I was eager to revisit that hill station with such a huge chunk of my heart before the rains shroud my beloved Kanchenjunga in the monsoon mist. I remember walking, walking for no particular purpose, just as it’d been the last time. Even in leaving, I remember driving, driving for no particular purpose. We drove down the winding mountain roads, stopping in Garidhura for a chai. In Garidhura a toothless man grinned at us, saying he’d been an English teacher for decades but hasn’t had much practice in a while. We only had time for a chai and a chai’s worth of conversation; then we continued driving, driving very fast, driving around bends, past tea plantations, past army barracks. Rapidly descending in circles but what the air took in altitude, it gave back in the freshness of tea plantations and the lingering scent of Darjeeling, my sweet, strong, Darjeeling without sugar.
But to chase the monsoon across to the west coast and down south — there was a quick intermission of the scorching Indian summer in the plains, by the Ganges and in the desert. Before long the three weeks of enforced vegetarianism had passed, and so had the worst of scorching Indian summer nights, there we were in Bombay. Expecting the monsoon to lash at Bombay as it had the past year, we quickly took off to catch a bit of the beach before the sea devoured it. Palolem, Goa. The monsoon had caught up with us. It didn’t rain but it poured for more than 15 hours a day — a few died in a neighbouring state, while they began to dismantle everything on the beach slowly. We were one of the last huts standing, still reluctant to leave, even though the monsoon had taken our electricity and internet and phone lines, and the sea crashed at our doorstep every night. A man stood in a raincoat knocking at my door at 10pm, saying he loved me and can you please come to Palolem in December. I broke poor Jailesh’s heart without him being ever able to understand why. We packed up the next morning, waited for the rain to subside before braving the journey out of Palolem and into Canacona. Even within the comforts of my air-conditioned sleeper bus to Bangalore, water went drip drip drip on my face, and unlike more natural elements, a broken air-conditioner right above me is more predictable than I’d like.
Ask me again in a year, or three, or five, and I don’t think I’d be able to explain how I got myself to Bangladesh just one month after suffering from a faulty air-conditioning unit somewhere between Goa and Karnataka. Dhaka, Sirajganj, Syedpur, Rangpur, Bogra. What I really want to know is why in the year of 2006, every restaurant costing more than a hundred Taka had simultaneously decided to call themselves “Armani Restaurant”. No matter what anybody tells you, remember that Armani Restaurant in Dhaka, and Armani Restaurant in the Hotel Anik (Residential) Sirajganj, and the Armani Restaurant on the national highway to Syedpur, and the Armani Restaurant in Rangpur, are all uniformly bad. Even if an organization hands you an open tab for food and drink and rest, steer clear of the Armani restaurants that every man and his brother-in-law’s-cousin-in-law-owns.
I missed the monsoon in Bangladesh that year, but certainly had plenty of flood victims to interview. One week I was sitting in an upazilla health complex between a man and his last toe (severe, untreated multi bacillary leprosy), the next week I found my monsoon in a mad taxi ride from Shillong to Cherrapunjee. Pulling closer and closer into where I was going to stay the night, strange romantic signs painted on the rocks before me began to appear. I will hold your hand in the rain, one went. I remember thinking: great, if only I had a hand to hold out here, and could do so without being blown away to Sylhet by this rain. Sohra, Cherra, Churra, Cherrapunjee. Sohra charmed me out of my raincoat, amusing itself with my feeble attempts at their language. I think it rained in Cherrapunjee every time the worst Khasi speaker in the world said ai sha dut laitilli, called someone khong, asked her for doh terkhong, and said kyublei.
But it didn’t rain quite as much as I needed it to. The morning I left Sohra, as I sped from Shillong to Guwahati to Calcutta and Bangkok, I think it began to pour, and I’m never going to be able to eloquently describe what it’s like living in a Victorian governor’s house suspended between one thunderstorm and another, the precise moment before the rain begins, how the clash of light dances across my front door and across my fireplace. How your conception of the basics: as basic as love, and what you feel about rain, can be changed by experiencing the wondrous rain in the monsoon in the world’s rainiest place.
Reposting stuff I like from the archives. This is from 2007.
At the stroke of eight each morning, I awoke. All my days in India have always had purpose, and it was especially purposeful in Calcutta, my crazy, lovely, chaotic, I hate you I love you Calcutta. This was a luxurious hole in the wall, 400 rupee a night room — a fortune. One could live on 400 rupees (S$13, US$9) for two days, but we blew it on a room with two beds, 24 hour hot water and electricity, items of much greater fortune. My purpose that morning was to get my eyebrows threaded in the neighbourhood beauty salon (oddly enough run by fourth generation Chinese immigrants who look like they could be my aunts, but speak only Bengali and Hindi now), queue up at the Bangladeshi High Commission for my visa, and zip over to Apple and Canon’s little hole in the wall offices to have our equipment returned.
I opened my door and closed it immediately, an act which had come to become a signal to The Boy. All over the subcontinent, establishments of all shapes and sizes from the 400 rupee “luxury” of Sudder Street (like the one we were in), to 15000 rupees a night Park/ Taj/ Oberoi hotel rooms, The Boy, one of the several members of the entourage which you will deal with each day (The Boy, the bearer, the sweeper, the caretaker) is one of those inevitable legacies which outlasted the British Empire. The memsahib this time was not a colonial wife or daughter, but a scruffy yellow woman always dressed in tie-dye pants and a shirt which said “Om”. The moment the signal came, the boy would come to my door, and bring me a tray of coffee and tea, on the house. The boy in question here was about 25 (much younger than the Boy in Planter’s Club, Darjeeling, who was about 90).
As a veteran, one occupies your own space in the ecosystem of Sudder Street. Or perhaps an ecosystem forms around you. I had been to Sudder Street four times in two years, and was slowly settling. Before long I graduated from the fearful Oriental who scuttled away when approached by drug pushers, semi-giggling and blushing, to the old India hand who had the entourage of neighbours to meet and greet. There was the Spanish group, who huddled together eating omelettes. They all looked bronzed and supremely attractive. The French-speaking always occupied the same table at the Blue Sky. The Americans and the Britons were buried in their Lonely Planet India, a tome thicker than the Mormon Bible and in a sickening shade of blue, perhaps as homage to the pop-art kitsch Krishna on its cover. Everyone, regardless of where we came from originally, said “namaste” when greeting each other, “dhanyabad” in gratitude, subconsciously complementing these with that Indian head wiggle and punctuating our sentences with “accha” and “baba”. Everyone was either a volunteer at the Mother Teresa home, or was travelling for a year, or both.
A man walked up and down Sudder Street every afternoon and night, with a bag full of wooden flutes, looking so comical that you could make a Bengali arthouse movie (pop trivia: Bombay’s Hindi-language Bollywood is crass, commercial and popular; Calcutta’s Bengali movies are arthouse, obscure, and difficult but beautiful) starring him, the Piped Piper of Sudder Street. He would be leading a pack of backpackers and volunteers, playing his own wooden flute to classical Bengali songs. He was friends with the fruit seller, the man who stood outside the phone booth with a push cart hawking the best of Bengal. The fruit seller’s sister was a homeless 21 year old woman-child with a beautiful baby, and when we met we couldn’t stop talking. Each time I planned to meet friends at the Lindsay Hotel’s rooftop restaurant for dinner, I had to leave my room 2 hours earlier, because I inevitably ended up in her living room — on the sidewalk where she lived with her baby, just opposite the Blue Sky cafe. Tomorrow, she will sneak into a train on unreserved class with her baby, to go home to her parents for the festivities. If a train conductor catches her, she might give him half of her money — 10 rupees (S$0.35, US$0.22), but either way standing all the way to the station at her village.
After speaking to her, I might nip across into Blue Sky for a quick apple juice. The boys from Sikkim, Assam and Darjeeling who had to travel to Calcutta to sit for examinations or go through job interviews would hurry up to greet me in Sikkimese, Assamese, Nepali, Khasi, just because I was the only person in the room with the same skin colour. Embarrassed “Oh I thought you were from Sikkim/ Assam/ Darjeeling/ Meghalaya/ Mizoram/ Manipur” comments would be exchanged, then I might sit down with my apple juice to read all the Indian English newspapers available. The Occasional Orientals might drop by, sit at the next table, and gossip enthusiastically in that loud voice we love to speak in when we think nobody understands our language. I just keep very quiet, eavesdropping, wanting to hear what they might say of a place I hold dear to my heart, in a language only three people in the whole street understood. They’re usually terrified of Calcutta, terrified of India, and for a good reason — most people are. The world would be better off without hacks like us contributing further to its literature of chaos and its teeming humanity, so I won’t go into that; but if you love this place, you can be sure you’re very, very much in love.
I’m not sure why I keep returning to Calcutta — in writing, and in person. Is it because it’s my first Indian city, and that I had spent a month living there in Narendrapur, a little hamlet in its suburbs, showering with hot water the cook had heated over a cooking cauldron, eating rice cooked in mustard oil with my fingers and drinking tea in alleys with no street lights for miles? That wherever I may be, College Street still cheers me up, and the Indian Coffee House still amazes me every time? That their beautiful, poetic language is what I’d heard someone I loved once speak daily for two years, and its food was what I discovered and fell for, the same time I fell for and discovered a great love? That many nights were spent here in cheap hotel rooms, with Bob Dylan and the Arcade Fire for company, writing, and writing, writing some more and editing our photographs for print? I may never know.
I opened my door and closed it — but no Boy came to my room with a tray of coffee or tea. I walked a distance to get to my neighbourhood Bengali restaurant, but its cardamom tea, its katti kebab, its Kolkata briyani, was a sham. I’d come so far to see you, and you welcome me with acid rain, endless electricity shut downs, and drug pushers on my beloved Sudder Street. Like the great love I can’t explain — so I can’t explain you away. All I know is how here, more than any place else in the world, more than even my home in Singapore, is where I have loved, and loved, and fallen out of love, but like a reliable lover Calcutta never fails to cheer me up, even long after I’ve gone.
Reposting stuff from the past. This one's from 2007.
I’m a horrendously bad sightseer and tourist, that much is true. You have no idea how bad I am. I almost never manage to visit any of the attractions of the city — unless they’re glaringly obvious and utterly compelling, like, say, the Taj Mahal — other than that, I really should take a keener interest in museums and palaces and memorials. Somehow the idea of traipsing along with my nose in the Lonely Planet, paying a camera fee for each of my cameras and an inflated foreigner’s admission fee, visiting places where my pictures will inevitably turn out with the ubiquitous Korean or Japanese or American tourist with a sun hat and sunburnt skin in the corner, doesn’t cut it for me anymore. At home my idea of torture was to be taken to Sentosa or the bird park, so why should it be any different abroad?
Before I’m flayed alive, in my defence I have a convincing excuse: I know exactly why I travel. It’s not to have the best shopping deals in the developing world, neither is it to rough it out or live it up in the cheapest manner possible. All of those are byproducts of my greater task — to eat.
I love food with an extraordinary passion only an Asian can understand. You’d expect it to be so if my entire life revolves around it: have you eaten? is an acceptable, indeed the predominant method of greeting. It doesn’t matter if you’ve truly eaten. Just bloody say you have. After all, nobody ever says, “oh, terrible”, in response to “how’s it going?” As a family, in our personal capacities and in all of our social settings, the extent to which we’d go for a good meal is mind boggling to the uninitiated. Think of me — and my family — as an extreme version of Asians who love to eat; it’s not just the good meal we’re after these days, it’s the mind blowing meal that drives us further and further in search of it. All those stories you hear about crossing the Causeway to eat a specific dish for lunch, and flying around Asia to satisfy a craving for roast meats or herbal soups? They were probably talking about us! My English friends were shocked to hear about that. To their mind, it was as unfathomable for someone to be so obsessed with eating, as it was for that person to remain skinny, as it was for there to be more than one such person, or to even have a family full of such people. They couldn’t even fathom the idea of going to France for a good meal over a weekend. Now, if France was as close to me as it is to England — I’d be there to eat up a storm by now!
Backpacking brings out the best and worst of national stereotypes. We inevitably end up banding with the Australians or Dutch or British or Canadian backpackers we meet along the way, and fall into that “doing stuff together” routine. I’d participate intently, in all the most important initiations this temporary alliance brings — especially in that inescapable discussion always taking place five minutes after meeting each other, the one about our bowel activities (“So I got diarrhea in Benares! It was really bad, out flat you know, 7 days.” “You were lucky 7 days was all you got. When I was in Dharamsala..”). Yet when it comes to sightseeing, I’m out of the picture. Minor temple? Palace? Sorry man I’ll see you later — I’ll be at a restaurant. In fact I’ll be at five restaurants today for pre-lunch, lunch, post-lunch, and tea. And I’m not exaggerating. My itinerary is vastly different, yet you can’t call it inferior. It depends on what you’re after, I suppose. I’m after a good meal, or two, or three or four, as I am with every meal I eat back home.
Abroad, my sense of purpose becomes amplified; you could think of me as a younger, poorer, less famous, Asian version of Anthony Bourdain on a Cook’s Tour. My segment would be called A Hungry Asian Woman’s Tour (notice the clever and subtle turn away from “cook”). Aided by spectacular research and some insider information, nothing can faze me. I have had life-changing experiences eating at culinary institutions of each city, such as Bangalore’s Mavalli Tiffin Room. I have traversed the lengths and widths of Thailand and Laos in search of the somtam (papaya salad) fiery enough to put a fire on my tongue and to turn me purple. I’ve developed an unfortunate omnipotent immunity to spice, such that I barely feel a chilli buzz anymore, and that depresses me. Like an addict with eyes glazed over, I’m indignant to find my chilli high. All the food in India and Bangladesh was not spicy enough either. Time after time locals advised, challenged, and urged: what you are about to eat is deadly spicy. I eat. They watch for a reaction. There’s none, just disappointment on my part that if Indian food is not spicy these days, and that I’m blasé about a supposedly terrible tomyam or somtam which has driven my Thai and non-Thai companions to the point of almost pointing fire extinguishers into their mouths, maybe I’ll never find food spicy enough for me.
After a certain amount of travelling in a certain area, you can’t help but feel fatigued by a certain sort of attraction a region has an abundance of. In Southeast Asia, it was wat-fatigue. In Europe, it was cathedral-fatigue. In Darjeeling and other Nepalese/Tibetan areas, I was ghompa-ed over. In Rajasthan, it was forts. Straight off the bus in Jodhpur, when the rickshaw-wallahs tripped over themselves thinking they could rip us off on a round trip to the fort, I turned it down flat. “No fort. You go Sardar Bazaar. Drop me East Gate. I go Shree Mishrilal. Drink best lassi in the world, accha baba!” I stayed in Jodhpur for 3 days, and made 6 stops at the lassi shop. We drank perhaps 5 servings of Mishrilal’s lassi each day, and brought 2 more back to the hotel. Then walked out of the bazaar to Shahi Samosas, best in Rajasthan, 4 rupees (S$0.14) for one, and before they were consumed we’d hail another rickshaw-wallah. “High Court Road, Paraswanath Khulfi”, for the most amazing khulfi (ice cream) you can have for 20 rupees. We never made it to the fort, but we certainly ate a lot.
It’s not all gluttony, but a firm belief that if you want to know Asia — know what Asia eats. Best if dietary restrictions can be put aside temporarily, because to be vegetarian in Southeast Asia is pure torture. Eat everything once, and forget about your developed world idea of hygiene. Sit out by the streets, and bloody eat. See if you don’t have an epiphany. If I get diarrhea, I first think: was it from a good meal, or from a crap one? If it was good, I would probably excuse the cook for the murder of my loved one, and diarrhea’s just the unfortunate side effect so will you give me one more plate, please. So at soi Texas, Yaowarat (Bangkok), we found Lek Seafood in 1 minute, consulted the menu and decided on items for 4 people within 10 minutes, the food came in 3 minutes and we fell silent, deliberating upon the most fantastic crabs, mussels and prawns that S$6 per person can buy. The food was gone in 10 minutes, in the most silent meal ever, as each person had a quiet revelation about why we were there. In Luang Prabang we eschewed the mediocre restaurants on the main strip (where each item in every restaurant was at least US$5), tired of the renditions of Western food and mediocre versions of local food costing an arm and a leg. Stumbling into an alleyway for US$0.50 per person you can have a vegetarian all-you-can-eat buffet plate in a corner shack; forging on, since vegetarian does not cut it for me, we settled on excellent feu ga (pho ga, chicken noodle soup). We doused it in fish sauce, decorated it with lime and small cut chillis, bought a whole fish and chicken from the shop next door, a big bottle of Beer Lao, and what an inspiring meal it made — sweating in a little noodle soup stall in a local market in 16 degree Luang Prabang.
Food Street (Bangalore), Lindsay Street (Kolkata), Ari (Bangkok), Petaling Jaya (Malaysia); the places I ate the best are the places I was happiest in. In a tiny shop in dusty Syedpur, Bangladesh, nobody spoke a word of English and I didn’t know what I was eating. But boy, the “cow”, “chicken”, “fish” (fascinating, the choice of vocabulary I learn when learning a new language) they fed me turned me into an instant convert in the school of Eating With Only Your Right Hand. In a family’s dining room in Mawmluh village, Cherrapunjee, Meghalaya (Northeast India), a family watched me engrossed in eating rice with fermented bean and beef and stewed pork, eating raw little chillis to go with my food (it’s a custom). Aoky’s mother thought I was so truly into Khasi culture and food that she believed I would have no problem chewing 2 betel nuts too. It was on that part that I faltered, though I’m sure if betel nuts tasted better, I’d be all over them too.
Reposting stuff I like from my archives. This is from 2006.
Rajasthan, at the peak of summer. There are no tourists around for miles, except the two of us. For a good reason too. Tell any Indian you were in Rajasthan in May, and he is bound to exclaim, “Vhat? It’s… hot!” And when an Indian says it’s hot, believe me, it’s hot. I believed them. I just didn’t care. Some people like it hot. Rajasthani “hot” means 48 degrees Celsius, or 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I went because nobody being around meant I got 75% off hotel rates, at whatever hotel I wanted to be in. I can’t help it — I’m Asian. The name of this region, Marwar, came from the Sanskrit root word, “Maruwat”. “Maru” means ‘desert’, while “Maruwat” roughly translates to ‘region of death’.
By this time I had a way around the Indian public transportation system, in any city and town I chanced to be in. I also knew this far out in the desert, air-conditioned Rajasthani state buses were non-existent. Besides, proper travellers took non-airconditioned buses everywhere, didn’t they? We were proper travellers. But even the Third World has its own sub-divisions. Where we were, was moderately more difficult than some other parts of the Third World we’d been in.
As our bus ticket was written entirely in Hindi, my nascent grasp of the language had not yet developed from “attempts at letter identification” to “actually useful application of language”, so with no knowledge of my bus other than where it was going (Jodhpur) and the time it was to be expected (6.45am), I had to depend on my auto driver to take me to it. He took us to the side of an empty road which seemed to stretch into the desert as far as the eyes could see.
We stood by the side of the road for what seemed like hours. We flagged down each bus which came by — none of them were marked in English, nor had as much as an indicator of where they were going. Jodhpur? We asked, hopefully, each time. After countless cups of tea and nimki for breakfast (there was a little dhaba near where we were waiting), someone frantically screamed at us: “Jodhpur! Jodhpur!” Together with what was probably “you’re going to have to sit among those chickens if you don’t scramble up fast enough!” We got up, and got a seat each, miraculously, at the back of the bus. The only acceptable time for bus travel in Rajasthan in the summer is between 5am and 7am, and you’d better pray that you get to your destination before it starts the daily heatwave by noon. At 10am, we were well on our way, and happy about it. Perhaps complacently so.
The bus stopped by a dhaba for a break, or so I thought. I dipped out to go to the toilet (or the hole in the ground), toilet roll in hand. Toilet rolls are bound to cause stares here; they are believed to be unsanitary compared to the far superior system of water. My embrace of the country had not yet translated to a full embrace of its toilet habits, I still needed my toilet paper. On the way back to the bus I saw fit to order myself two cups of tea, special (costing more at 2 rupees instead of 1; where 1 INR=US$0.02). As the chai-wallah pushed the two cups of tea into my hands, I saw the bus which was supposed to take me to Jodhpur — and it was leaving. Leaving with my partner, my luggage, my passport and my money. I was there with my two cups of tea, and 10 rupees in my pocket, thinking for a split second that if I didn’t catch this bus I might be stuck out there on a Rajasthani highway dhaba with no mobile phone and no identification papers. I ran — I sprinted as fast as a girl with two cups of chai in her hands could sprint. My partner’s attempts to stop the bus was futile, all she could do was shout “stop! stop!” from her seat at the back of the bus. The bus was so packed that even if she managed to make her way to the driver, I might have been married to a Rajput already.
My travels have assured me of the certainty of determinism, a higher being, and my place in the world as someone whose every step is, quite literally, an act of faith, guided by the divine. Because I actually managed to catch the bus, and when I got on I was relieved I had my two cups of chai intact. Now at the front of the impossibly packed bus, I faced the arduous task of getting my chai through the bus, led by the sole vision of myself sitting by my window, looking at the desert and sipping a cup of tea. As I made my way through the bus, people made way reluctantly for me, all the while shouting to each other in Hindi and Rajasthani: look out! Mad china-woman has tea that can kill! And indeed my tea could kill — I had two of them, and they were, in line with our geographic position at that point in time, the Rajasthani kind of hot. The Rajasthani kind of hot tea which threatened to scald anyone who was in my way, and also burned my hands as I held them.
I made it to the back of the bus, two cups of chai intact, after 5 minutes of mad chai-balancing kungfu. When I got there, Z seemed capable of snapping my head off at that moment.
All I could do was smile with relief: “Chai, baby?”
Before she could strangle me, the bus jolted while avoiding a truck, and I spilled tea all over her shirt.
Whether it’s a long-haul transatlantic flight or a regional short hop, or even just a trip out on a local bus, the process of meeting and eventually talking to strangers, can lead one to use quick heuristics in sizing them up. Perhaps it’s our automatic mechanism to do so in order to pass the time, while travelling and moving, or that in the restricted space of train carriages, cars and buses, the lack of activity means we entertain ourselves by making up stories about other people, knowing we will never meet them again after you shared space and shared experience has passed. The woman across looking down — maybe she’s broken up with her boyfriend, lost her job, or is having a bad week, you begin. Before long you find yourself elaborating stories about these people, in your head, and these random strangers: soon you start to believe the girl in the school uniform at 11 am, when she should, by all accounts, be in school, is a truant. The inconsistency that is her presence in a school uniform, in public place which is not a school or school-related venue, leads you to draw upon what you already know, what you’re already familiar with, the joy of truancy. It develops further; she becomes a truant perhaps because she has problems at home, or maybe she’s just come from a doctor and found out she was pregnant, and perhaps the person who made her pregnant is a junkie and soon you ponder upon the incongruence of her presence at a place unrelated to what she is supposed to be. Then you catch yourself thinking this whole enterprise going on in your head is ridiculous.
I first noticed *Neha Sahoo* on the platform of Yesvantpur station before we boarded the Bangalore-Guwahati Express. It seemed straight out of a movie, especially a Bollywood one, or one not unlike a typical Asian afternoon soap opera — it was a typical teary goodbye scenario, with the couple glancing nervously at the clock every once in a while, looking frantic as the scheduled departure of the locomotive became eminent. I felt like a voyeur, watching them and imagining stories for them, yet I cannot help it and have no noble excuse to vindicate myself: I write. I eavesdrop. I peek in. I make up things while negotiating the line between fact and fiction, never succeeding. Like all seasoned Indian train travellers, Neha Sahoo and I both head to the man at the platform selling snacks — we know we’ll need it, while we sit on board our berths, waiting for the latecomers to settle in, waiting for our tickets to be checked, waiting to begin. Train travel is precisely like that, tentative and genuine. Tentative while we sit there waiting for something beyond our control, something as much physically larger than us as a train, to decide our fate, our punctuality in our next city, and our sleeping habits for the next two days; as genuine as Neha Sahoo pulling all her life’s belongings on board, while I silently fight with her for space under our berths, chaining my backpack tightly under seat 33. If farewells at airports are already as piercing as only those of us who have experienced them will know, farewells at train stations are in another league of pain altogether. Airport farewells have an element of closure; no matter how much we would like to dispute it, you can lose sight of what you’ve just left behind quite easily, if you let yourself. Train farewells, through the fact that you are connected by a railway line, most probably still within national borders, tosses heartbreak through geographical distance up into the air, making things uncertain though they shouldn’t. The emotions felt by this young woman and her lover were already piercing and intense, even to a casual observer such as myself.
At least with airport farewells there is no chance to see the person you love inside the vehicle which will spirit her away, waving her goodbyes, with all her life’s belongings contained in three trunks you helped to pack. Hidden in my upper berth in seat 35, I was a lone female traveller about to cover 2000 kilometres with only 1 rupee chai, a neighbour who will spend the next 36 hours sobbing and talking on the phone (chalking up huge inter-state roaming phone bill), and my Hindi language books for company. I watched Neha Sahoo’s still unnamed lover watch the Bangalore-Guwahati Express carry her away from the Bangalore in which they had spent 2 happy years together, to the Kolkata which will be her home from now. And in a selfish moment, decided all my farewells from then on had to be neatly and cleanly incised.
36 hours later, we pulled into Howrah station. I helped Neha Sahoo pull her three cases out onto the platform, hired her a porter, lifted my backpack onto my shoulder and walked off quickly without one. This was it, this is how it ends for us all — me, headed to Sudder Street for the third time, a career and a life on the subcontinent to be discovered; Neha, bound for Salt Lake district, for a new job in a new city, just to be close to her sick parents six hours away in Orissa.
Half an hour later our paths crossed again — the big yellow Ambassador taxi I had bargained down to 50 rupees to take me to my two dollar room, stopped in the traffic while crossing the Hooghly. I had come to Kolkata once in the winter, once in the summer, and here I was waking up with the city in the monsoon. I shut my eyes and let the lightly acidic Kolkata rain fall onto my cheeks through the window, which was predictably jammed. Always happy to be in Kolkata, my body adjusted itself to the city, the distinct aroma of Kolkata others find to be a stink, my linguistic brain adjusting to the switch in languages from Kannada to Bengali, trying to realign myself geographically from Karnataka to Bengal, from South India to the East. I saw her in another taxi, a few glimpses away, stuck in traffic while crossing the Hooghly too. The rain fell upon her cheeks through the predictably jammed window of her big yellow Ambassador taxi, though she did not notice: she was gazing out into the river, or what was visible of it. This was me, happy to be away from the city which had my comforts, my lover, my defining moments, in the monsoon on a famous bridge in an infamous city, seeing myself, my own recent pain in the beautiful Orissan lady I had spent 36 hours sleeping across from; a beautiful Orissan lady just two years older than myself. As our taxis diverged and mine sped into Sudder Street, backpacker central, and hers left for Salt Lake, upper middle class district, it also took her deep into a city which her heart will never be in because she left it back in Bangalore, on platform number five, at 6.15pm precisely.
Where I dig into my archives and repost stuff I like. This one’s from August 2006, when I'd spent some time in both sides of Bengal.
Nine in the morning, every morning — a chef in Sirajgonj district’s “only acceptable hotel”, the Hotel Anik (Residential), cooks me a breakfast of two parathas and two eggs. My decision to omit a dish of “vegetable” (pronounced “va-gee-tay-ble”) caused many eyebrows to be raised, when it was first heard, as if you could even hear cooks and waiters alike exclaiming in Bengali: “What? No vageetayble? Is she mad?” It’s one of those cultural idiosyncrasies, when it comes to food — waiters puzzle at how we can possibly eat roti or naan with only tandoori chicken (bread and tandoori, both considered dry), without a gravy, and leaving out any component of the rice-vegetable-dal holy trinity is considered absurd. Until we foreigners came along with our ketchup and eggs (sunny side up) inside parathas or rotis, rolled up, trying to form a pita wrap. Even India, so used as she is to hosting a wide, mostly eccentric array of foreigners for decades, still noticeably struggles to figure out her guests. The bashful new kid, Bangladesh, at 35 years of age, naturally has even more issues on that count. Especially out here in rural Sirajgonj.
I looked forward to Bangladesh with the earnestness of a long time lover of all things Bengal. Bengali culture, poetry, their towering figureheads — I worshipped people like Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen; almost melted and died of shock and ecstasy the first time I heard Tagore recite the Gitanjali at his Nobel Prize reception. I sat in the cars of my ex-boyfriends, as a teenager, often suspecting I liked the classical Bengali music which emanated from their fathers’ CD collections in the car, more than they did. As a familiar lover of Bangladesh’s cultural cousin, Calcutta, I felt the need to get on The Other Side of West Bengal.
I knew Calcutta’s accents, her dingy streets, and felt at home in her local tea shops where three cups of tea and three biscuits cost me only seven rupees every morning. I knew Calcutta’s history, her public infamy and private fame; I knew how she woke up and went to sleep. My SIM card was considered by the telco to be in its “home circle” whenever in West Bengal, be it Calcutta or Darjeeling, even in the states of Sikkim and even Assam; her street food comforted me, as easily as a cup of fresh misti doi did at the end of every meal. It is in Calcutta where I land, pick out the exact change for a prepaid taxi (Rs 210) then head for the hotel that is my home every time I’m there, change, freshen up, and go out and see friends. The staff at the Blue Sky Cafe whoop and rush up to shake my hand the moment I walk through the door, leaving the French volunteers’ pancakes to become cold. I wolf down a quick breakfast, then go to look for Sanju and her children, spending my next few hours sitting down on a pavement sharing a cup of tea with the family. Not entirely a scenario that is difficult to imagine, until you find out that Sanju is a beggar that lives outside my hotel, but who has never asked me for money. I connect with her for reasons I cannot explain, other than how she is 21, as young as I am, has two young children, and has the look of a fighting woman, the sort I look up to. If cities and countries are languages, Calcutta is the one I have learned well, the one where I have begun to imitate her inflections of speech and colloquial habits.
Dhaka was a shock, coming from Calcutta. Bangladeshi roads were smoother. The city even seemed cleaner. The air did not have as much pollution — an index I know from how the contents inside my nose at the end of every day were not as dark as they are in Calcutta. Everyone smiled, or stared. But there wasn’t time for Dhaka, we had to be shipped off to Sirajgonj, one of Bangladesh’s 64 administrative districts, two hours away. Sirajgonj was a dusty town not unlike the other dusty towns in developing Asia, the ones I spend so much time traipsing around. Only the very old or the very young could be found here; only the enterprises of family, and family business; no venues of extravagant leisure or recreation, no places for the young to mingle and socialize, for the opposite sex are not to mingle so freely. Cycle rickshaws happily stopped, even with passengers in tow, to stare indiscriminately at my foreign face — the passengers don’t mind, they want to stare too, a practice I attribute to how television channels in developing countries have not yet exposed their viewers to the Global Village.
It’s never easy to be a foreigner anywhere. To be a foreigner in a place with no tourist or business appeal, no culinary highlights or natural beauty, a place such as Sirajgonj, was simply to court attention with a capital A. For six nights we hid in the Hotel Anik, tired of stares, tired of the attention. It was to be in any village, trying to escape the mob by sliding off for a fag in a quiet corner, then looking up to find 200 or more people staring at you having a fag. Conditions did not improve even as we moved from one part of Sirajgonj to another, then through Bogra, Rangpur, Syedpur, Nilphamari. The same things happened with such uniformity: everywhere, people stared, hung around. One evening, after what seemed like our millionth village mob, done with work and done with shouting over 10 heads at a time trying to get answers from interviewees, my escape plan backfired dramatically. I had tried for a stealthy exit but before I could take my second step out of the village compounds about a hundred and fifty adults children had gathered to give me a memorable send off — children surrounded me, running alongside and behind me, whooping as I indulged them by letting my camera and camera flash go off in their general direction. Young disabled children hobbled around on their wooden twigs pretending to be walking aids, running much faster than I could have on two feet. My British colleague, still scarred by his country’s poor showing at the World Cup, decided that if the Union Jack could not be raised at Germany this year, he would at least try to make her name resound through the country of Bangladesh, and led the chorus of children in chanting “England, England”, even if they did not know what it meant. To them we must have appeared a duo of whacky looking characters out of a movie, who for no particular reason, decided to appear in their village to teach them a chant about England.
As “England, England” resounded through the village of Rudapur, I drifted away. My phone rang and a familiar voice I had loved said, “You’ve probably been to more parts of Bangladesh than I have babe, welcome home.” My head was bursting to say, “Oh? Apnar gram naam ki?” (What is the name of your village?) yet I had to remind myself I was here, sitting at 1.30 in the morning having a bowl of century egg porridge at Crystal Jade — a sign that I was “home”. Not long before that I was sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Anik, bottle of contraband Indian whisky in hand, and together we sang a song. “Sometimes… I look into your eyes, I swear I can see your soul…”
Sirajgonj, the district that loved to stare, left me alone for the first time, or so I thought. A family standing on the roof of the building across from me caught wind of two mad foreigners singing James and Radiohead anthems on their rooftops. It was that evening that I learned to wave madly before they did, and returned the stare for the first time.
Reposting stuff I like from the archives. This is from 2006. It has also been republished in print in GASPP, A Gay Anthology of Singapore Poetry and Prose.
I am still a feminist because I am no longer ashamed of saying I am one. I have grown tired for apologizing for so many of the things I am: for being liberal, lesbian, anti-Bush and anti-war, a Christian that hates the fundamentalists. Anymore to apologize for, and I may have to apologize for being Chinese.
I was feminist before I was lesbian. I was feminist before I was liberal. I was feminist before I knew feminism had become synonymous with ‘bra burning’ and ‘aggressive’ (I like my bras too much, and I prefer to be passive-aggressive). I was feminist the moment I was acutely aware that being a girl meant there were many things I could not do, and so much more I was expected to.
The first feminist I knew was my father, who taught me I must never bow to the demands of any man, and must never let any man suppress my intellect or free will. He must have known I was a feminist from the time I was 4, when, I did not believe the distribution of potato chips was fair and equal, and demanded he demonstrate by bringing out actual weighing scales, that I had as much as my male brothers and cousins.
In primary school, I was an avid soccer player. About as good as the boys, the boys told me. I played every recess time and after school, every day. I was the midfielder with stamina, who was fast as well and was everywhere and anywhere on the pitch at all times. Good enough, that the boys thought nothing of inserting me into their ambitious tournament plans for the next few years: we were a team. I started the first match in the tournament with the brand new soccer boots I paid for myself. At half time, the referee — his name was Mr Azman — said I couldn’t play, ever again. Even though this was an informal tournament in school, with no rulebook or precedents, he said that’s just the way it is: no girls allowed.
By the time I was 18, I thought I already had a pretty good grip on the “girl” issue. During one class debate, a member of the opposition made a disparaging remark about how sometimes rape victims “were just asking for it”. Livid, I made a comment which led him to say: “Let’s go outside, I’ll show you how good it is to be raped.” This same person is on his way to becoming a lawyer, and I fear.
I’m turning 21 this year and while I don’t play soccer anymore, as a photographer I’m told “they want guys, because they look more like photographers”, as a Mac Evangelist in retail I’m told they “want to consult the guys”, even though I know as much. Guys still hit on my girlfriend in front of me because I evidently don’t count and I’m not the real thing; if I’m opinionated, I’m being either aggressive or emotional, and if I’m stoic, I’m heartless.
As a member of the majority race and male, you may not believe it when I say that sexism is alive and well, because you have never encountered it. You see female managers and female CEOs, females in positions above you, and you fear for your male superiority. What you don’t see is the sacrifice only women are made to make when they choose career, how they could be similarly qualified and similarly excellent or better leaders, yet climb slower and earn less, how if they are assertive they are aggressive female bosses, how if they are not then they are ineffectual leaders and submissive. What you don’t see is how she had to fight hard for most things that come easily to you.
As a member of the majority race and male, you sat next to me in school today at the library cafe, talking about how your girlfriend is not as loud as pornstars when you “fuck her”, wondering if that’s because “she doesn’t know how to express her pleasure”, then your friends all started talking about blowjobs and said in no unclear terms, that the world revolves around “your cocks”.
I will continue to be a feminist until the day my classmates are not seen as objects, whose pleasure is necessarily held up against porn industry ideals, until the day their pleasure is not dictated by the selfish dicks they date.
As a member of the majority race and male, you fathered one of my closest friends. When your daughter complained to you that she used to be touched inappropriately by your friend’s son, when your daughter discussed with you the topic of male infidelity, you laughed and said, “We’re men, we’re like that.”
I will continue to be a feminist until the day every father stands up for their daughter’s rights, the way my father does.
As a member of the majority race and male, everything you might be culpable for is “because she asked for it.” Can’t have children? She must be infertile. Want to use condoms? Only if she pays for it. She doesn’t seem to like sex with you? There must be something wrong with her. Pregnant? She sleeps around. Sex video spreads on the internet? It’s her morals. Lesbian? They haven’t met the right man, and you just might be the one.
I will continue to be a feminist until the day my friends’ fathers stop explaining away their affairs based upon what their wives supposedly lack.
So when you say, those feminists, in the same breath as those nazis, those communists, those crazy bra burning women, you need to know that the object of our hatred is never men — it is what some men do to us.
I will continue to be a feminist until the day my uncle in the flesh and blood stops being an asshole, and his immigrant wife is not afraid to divorce him and press charges.
I will continue to be a feminist until it is realized that while it is best for every child to have his mother and father, if the father is a dangerous man he has to be kept away from her beautiful young children before he does any permanent damage.
I will continue to be a feminist until it is realized the existence of many good men does not mean it is irrelevant to be a feminist. They are our fathers, our boyfriends and husbands, our sons. All it takes is just one man, that isn’t good, to destroy the lives of too many women around the world, and among us now.
This is why I will remain a feminist, I’m not apologetic for it, I won’t burn my bra, I don’t hate you, and no, you can’t watch either.
What I have noticed about being away, and still can’t shake off, is how mornings in each foreign place are so strikingly different from what one is used to; how different they are from each other — how foreign the word foreign sounds after a while. I like to believe it never hits you you are away until you wake up feeling displaced. Or that you haven’t really made a place your home until waking up comes so naturally and matter-of-factly there is nothing to it; until what was not your bed now feels like yours, and is even adorned with your peculiar smell.
It is brighter, earlier, in some places. Your mind races to make all the connections — back home, comparing, you might have been (1) preparing for school (2) relishing a particularly delicious dream (3) kissing your lover at the crack of dawn. And you think of how, back home, it is similarly bright only at seven. Exactly twenty minutes before flagraising.
Instead of being awoken by an alarm, Vanna’s motorcycle pulling into the front porch, does. He brings with him a motorcycle trailer to ferry us and all our bags to the bus terminal. There was no time to lose. We left Phnom Penh on our third morning, scarcely enough to have completed the tourist circuit in and around the capital — much less enough time to have stocked up on the US$9 cartons of Davidoff cigarettes. There was no time for contraband cigarettes for the Angkor Wat beckoned.
The Mekong Express ambled out of the city, and in the vicinity — as far as the eyes could see — mornings here, meant, baguettes; streets full of them. The more cynical among us say baguettes are only the good that French rule had left to Indochina. Well before noon we are midway there, when I notice for the first time on the road in Southeast and South Asia, that I have not given any thought to the condition of the road I am travelling on; either because the roads have improved, or I am used to them by this time. Instead, I happily recline ten degrees, smash into my neighbour’s lunch, and attempt to enjoy the on-board Khmer “comedy”.
My neighbour, a Khmer-Chinese man, laughs so hard at the ongoings onscreen, culminating into an already creaky seat rocking under his weight, when an effeminate man in the program is paired with a masculine woman. Then in a language I seemed to understand, he describes the hilarity of the situation to his wife, who is only marginally interested.
I shut my eyes and found myself at home in Indochina, somewhere between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap (though before Kompong Thom). Where my mother tongue, Teochew, is widely spoken and even overheard in buses, when other mornings in other places see the same middle-aged men finding humour in the same bad jokes.
I recline another ten degrees, this time smashing into my neighbour’s lap. Curling my thigh around hers, I begin to think: I want every morning to be like this.
Reposting stuff I like from the archives. This one's from 2006.
There is this picture of us back when we were even younger; snapshot circa 2004. 3 years after the start of our life together. If pictures could tell a tale this was the tale of us on the page just after ‘happy together’, though there you were, still assuring, still composed, still my best friend. Any casual observer might have waved it off as yet another happy boy and girl in love, as it was for a time, but by this time I had already gone. Walked out of that door to build a new life for myself, and pieces for you to pick upon.
There is no picture of us, for you made me destroy them long ago. The digital equivalent of the primitive act of shredding, however, cannot possibly shred those which persist with no tangible traces. On that couch which wasn’t ours, in an apartment which wasn’t ours, in a time which never was ours, I had a smile which I don’t think could have ever been mine, and a lover who never was. Everyone’s a thief, so everything we had was stolen, though did you really have to take the heart, too? I watched you walk away, as you always do, with no tears but that scrap of paper in my pocket which read: I have always loved you. But.
There is a recent picture I have with her. The sort which makes people cringe and squeal and avert their eyes: oh that’s too sweet. I don’t think I’d ever looked so radiant, or been as photogenic — she does bring out the best of me, it’s true. I’m usually smirking in photographs, never very confident about how I look. Yet in a moment without inhibitions, in a country which didn’t inhibit us, I actually beamed. You could even see the little dance in my eyes. I haven’t had the bad luck to have to do any walking, yet, except on and on.
[..] but most pictures lie. The moment the shutter is released, so are such lies. Little ones and big ones; classmates you can’t stand wipe off the smiles for posterity and continue being pests. Words, however, are even more dangerous. There is no shutter to depress or release, only floodgates. No freeze frame, only continuously; everlasting and persisting long after the fact. Words just meander on and on like that, once released, there’s no undo, no file to destroy or photo paper to fade off. Margaret Atwood says the only truly honest writing is that which will never be read, not even by yourself — to be honest in writing would require the equivalent of writing with one’s left hand, correction fluid blotting out everything which has already been written, as you continue. Words, as we know, are fatal, which in turn rub off on the person who pens them, making her potentially fatal too. Art and Life may coexist, though if they also co-vary, correlate, and co-habitate then my god we are in trouble. Perhaps this is why, afraid of myself, I turn to other forms of art thinking they could perhaps be less dangerous in these hands, so I could feel as if I continue to operate heavy machinery though more forgivingly so. How was I to know that in a parallel life I could have such art director aspirations? I’m starting to believe I’m a movie. Which is potentially fatal.
So in one movie there’s this scene with the three of you I love at a table, speaking with each other. I’m thinking my god let me out of here I can’t breathe. In another there’s a scene of a writer at her desk scribbling furiously in illegible longhand, haunted by the scrap of paper in her pocket; I have always… but. The camera pans, we’re at this cafe, more or less like one of the many other cafes we’ve had The Talk in. Bittersweet Comedy? you scribble. I want to reply: comedy only when there is an audience; bittersweet is quite enough for me. When people kiss in dark alleyways they are usually making promises. When we do, we break a thousand of them, including the ones we have been hanging on to for any semblance of survival.
I can understand why writers may be attracted to each other — it must be wonderful to be written about. I have never been written about, though I have always been writing about. Then I think of Hughes and Plath and.. feel a little better about it. Writers are also a dramatic bunch, and I can’t even handle my own.
As any good student of the social sciences might, I have fallen into the habit of diagramming and chart-drawing. Clearly labelled axes, arrows indicating strength and direction of relationships, establishing causal relations and so on. So in our chart of inclusionary and exclusionary love, i.e. Us and Them, we have 2 separate diagrams, each labelled family/ religion/ friends, other legitimate, Wanted Things like that. In one, the lines extend to touch every base, there exists the outward pull which initiates the relationship with Such Wanted Things; the area within which forming the total area of everything passionate like desire and sex and understanding, etc. In our chart, then, the axes are rarely ever touched; compared to the full circle/oval of the first, we have this malnourished figure which isn’t sure if it was a triangle or a skinny oval. Desire and sex, etc, The Things Wanted. Never once extending beyond its boundaries to touch the periphery of Everything Else and Ever After.
Everything Else, Those Things Wanted, Tomorrows and our yesterdays. Full Circle.
Reposting stuff from the past. This one from 2005.
There she is, your ex-lover, across the bar and incandescent. Gleaming as she always does, though perhaps now from that diamond ring perched so effortlessly off her slender fingers, which grip the cigarette tightly in other places. You steal a glance. You steal two. You kick yourself for it. When the words “ex” and “lover” come together, you think, they form such a funny word. The prefix usually suffices, “ex” has an air of such finality, such legitimacy, all these things we never were. “Lover”, while being the closest word you can dredge up, comes together with the first with layers upon layers of an intensity now forsaken, a sordid mystery to be recounted, a tinge of regret in some places and the embrace of the new in others.
Beer, whisky, Marlboro Lights. The usual. I used to find the way she held her cigarette, the way she flicked it every so often, incredibly alluring. Now that I’m years past legal I find myself unconsciously recreating her style. I stopped requesting for Exit Music, she admits, mostly because I was afraid Shirlyn might realize.. I keep asking for it. I stopped coming here for the same reason. When, to torture myself, I’d ask for it, and revel in how it was rendered so perfectly, so strangled: we hope.. that you choke.. so perfectly mirroring us. It’s so easy to fall into old habits, you say. A temporary wave of nostalgia. Do you remember how we snogged at the ATM in front of your house/ at the playground/ in the lift, what we were thinking then? We weren’t thinking then. It’s so easy to fall into old habits, I know.
Old lovers, I used to say, are like old wine. (In addition to getting better every year,) You store them away, achingly at first, always knowing it’s the best move. Out of sight but not as much out of mind as desired. At some indeterminate point in the future you take them out, admiringly. Whether or not you partake again… would merely be a matter of choice. And circumstance.
Side-stepping, arm to arm, swaying together across that grass patch. Being this drunk would have been a good excuse a few light years ago. You ask: how many girlfriends have you had? I count with my hands and feet.. yet somehow manage to truthfully say, well, two. I’m drunk and of unsound mind but sober up at the words, ring, flat, wedding. Like a hostage who loves her captor I begin to feel, for the first time, pleased you are the friend I’ve never had, the friend you should have always been. Even if ring and flat and man are everything I could never be.
Where I post stuff from the archives, the stuff I like. This is from 2005.
Do you remember how when we first met, I thought you were Adrienne? You were in blue jeans, and a black, backless top. I was in what I used to wear years ago, and still do. Haha I guess things change, years pass, we move on, but not our dressing. Well I’m a bit drunk now so pardon my bluntness. I think about you sometimes. I often wonder if you do. I mean, of course, fondly — you know. We used to be close. I still don’t know what to call it, but I miss that. The uncertainty. The testing of boundaries. That streets had no name. The desperate feeling of wanting what you can’t have, the intense guilt. God the guilt. How intimacy was so innocent, how we were young. Adrienne. You thought I was someone else, who had the same name, but different hair. On my rare night out tonight I was with people I hadn’t seen in years. Classmates. People I knew back when I still bothered to dress up, before this jungle and this inanity became my home. People I knew back when there was you. Us going out in school uniforms. Disappearing. Years ago. When longing was young, and we were even younger. When longing was never wrong.
Let it go, pal, let it go. It hurts like fuck, sure. We can’t ever see beyond our pain or our loss. [glaring sideways for a second, then corrects himself] I’ve been there before. Recently. When you love someone so much and want nothing more than her happiness, yet she thinks you can’t give her that anymore. How can you go on, knowing you can’t make her happy, and she won’t let you try — knowing every moment you hold her, she’s thinking of that goddamn woman — [tense, tearful] It used to be simple, you know. Boy, girl, happy photos and expensive dinners. Birthday surprises and Christmas presents. It was simpler when we were younger. But at twenty five I suppose we know by now this is transient, that things run their own course. At least they’re — she’s — happy now. [wistful, sideway glance] And that should make us happy too. She was the first woman I loved. Only, perhaps. I suppose I should be happy to be the only man she’s ever managed to love. It’ll be our turn to be happy. [Inshallah.]
Semi-imaginary dialogue involving several people who have never met each other, all speaking to me in a bad dream: I had a part dream, part nightmare; we were kissing in my room and our parents caught us. I need to know it didn’t mean nothing to you. I had a luscious dream which ended too early. We were kissing in my room and our boyfriends walked in. Did it? We lit types — so obsessed. With symbolism, coincidence, signs, literary devices. Pregnant pauses. So obsessed with tragedy, and obsessed with obsession. You’re in love with the idea of being in love with me. And I’m in love with the idea of you being in love with me. Another lifetime perhaps, another place. Am I just a friend to you? It stopped being simple, the moment we kissed. You don’t know what it means to be loyal. She was my friend, you know, God, the guilt. She even hugged me. Come to London. Come see me in San Francisco. (Don’t come to my wedding.) You’re loyal, and well, loyal. You’ve been different things to different people, in different dimensions and places. In another time and place when this longing is never wrong. See me there, won’t you? I’ll dream about it, and hope it doesn’t end earlier than it should. /dream Did I mean anything to you? becomes a cry in the dark, though it’s no longer clear now from whom.
Down Monivong on a motorbike with you we went around in circles, lost. Moving onto Sihanouk Blvd it was the same, everything here was the same, looked the same, in this strange place. In the Trasak Pham of memories we were happily washing away the day’s thoughts — of Tuol Sleng, of genocide, of despots who died untried, of the white trash along Sisowath and starving children they literally kick away over chianti and foie gras — the lights went off. The whole street of Trasak Pham liked stealing electricity from this house, as our host had so graciously warned. The water stopped too. At least the soap suds were off, and there was always the prospect of sleep. With the air conditioning gone too, between stale air and mosquitoes, we chose the former. You tossed about, sleepless, bothered, while I fell flat and slept. I remember sleepless nights with you well by now. That night you stayed up to wait for Guy’s bike to pull into the porch. Many months, nights, later (we have no luck with electricity) we braved mosquitoes, escaping to the veranda at four a.m., telling each other jokes to stay awake until sunrise. We set out thus far without a purpose, returning with some. From Changi to Klong Prao, Arab Street to Trasak Pham, riverside to Thansadet, they say the woman in whose sides you seek refuge and who makes you laugh at four in the morning, is the one to want. In the right time and place when longing is never wrong, and we’re not getting any younger. Where the streets are never nameless, even if a little obscured. (I keep wishing I could write a little better about you, but as you know by now, happiness does not lend itself well to engaging literature.)
Where I dig into my archives and repost stuff I like. This one's from April 2005.
Wherever I go, I am not allowed to forget – how perfectly crisp and displaced my unaccented English is. If there is an accent it is not one you can pin down. To my countrymen it betrays my independent school upbringing, a way of life, perhaps even my inclination towards the ways of the “West”. To all others it is a curious melting pot of diverse manners of speaking, testament to the absorption of diffuse cultures, if we are even able to say clearly what “culture” is, if we even had any control over these points of contact.
In a backpacker’s lodge in Australia one year, the football-mad nationalities gathered around the TV to watch the emotional Manchester United-Liverpool showdown, while the Americans sat in a corner unsure of what to watch out for on the telly. I realized, but not without some shock, that in the event I would ever watch my national team play (and so they did – at the Tiger Cup the next year, to surprise victory), the jersey I would be wearing would be the one on-screen. Red, too.
I said to a visitor once: the best thing about living in this place is the First World living at Second World prices. Everything else is a sort of win some, lose much situation. Our methodology in learning and teaching the Chinese language perhaps betrays far more than we are willing to let it – those characters, if we ever learn them at all, have become meaningless, we learn the broad strokes but not the fine print, we repeat to perfection the art of imitating a model essay under duress by our tuition teachers; those words are hieroglyphics at best, and the best that many of us can do is to attempt to create meaning from these hieroglyphs.
I am never allowed to forget my accent. In English, it is an accent which points not to precise geographic locations, but to imprecise states of mind and imagined affiliations. In the mother tongue, it is the lack of a passable accent that is grating to even my ears. Both have to do with displacement and unsettlement, and neither of them are exactly pleasant.
The district does not sleep tonight. Sonagachi is just waking up, but the streets are already lined with last night’s vomit, uncleared, and the air still reeks of the liquor from every night before for the past years, uncleared. Today’s girls have taken the place of yesterday’s, though, who have either moved on to be the mummy (the lucky ones), or given way to one venereal disease and unwanted childbirth too many.
It is easy to rage when reading about it miles away from the scene – the exploitation! The misery! The violence against women and children! The illegality of human trafficking!
Being here changes all that. The rage is still present but tempered with resignation; even understanding. Some of the girls look as young as 12 – mostly, they are; if not, then they are malnourished and hence look many years younger than their actual age. Most of them are not here by choice. The only people who get to choose are those who had “choice” taken from them in the first place: the ones who, now hundreds of miles away from their homes (in Bangladesh, Nepal, rural parts of India whose village names they never knew, cannot remember, or can never return to again from shame) – these people can choose to stay in, or ship out into the big cities of West Bengal and beyond, where they have no one, whose language they do not even natively speak.
Sonagachi is Kolkata’s red light district – it also happens to be Asia’s largest. Conservative estimates put the number of sex workers in this district alone to be at least 40 000. This number means nothing until you take a walk through it: girls as far as your eyes can see. Some of them reek of alcohol and substances; all of them look resigned.
It wasn’t the fist-clenching, heart-pumping moment I had expected.
Instead, I felt the – what shall I call it – sadness – permeate my body and grip my soul, as my eyes fell to meet their vacuous ones, woman to woman.
It was the moment I had been waiting for all my life, to invoke that trite turn of phrase.
I’d felt her inch closer to me, her arms against mine, as we tried to pretend to be interested in watching the movie, my palm against hers. We lasted about eight minutes. By the ninth, we were kissing breathlessly, bodies against each others’. She was my first as I was hers – it felt nothing like kissing the many boys we’d each had. I remember with precision all which I was thinking as I stepped into her darkened flat: how is it possible that I have only known this person’s last name for a week, and yet feel this.. impossibly close? After. I was lying stomach down, fiddling with my mobile to pretend to have something to do other than swoon.
“When you grow up,” she said. “You’re going to be really scary – impossibly brilliant and sexy. And I’m going to have to try so hard not to want you.”
I was grasping at straws vacillating between my rising enchantment and the crushing despair: that in two hours she had accomplished what it took my men months to, if ever at all – wrap me around like that. And she knew it.
I sat at the edge of the bed, as I would continue to for weeks after, watching her as the orange light fell upon her face, as I would for months after. Her hand in mine for never more than an hour each time. I remember thinking, my God, she’s so goddamn beautiful.
It has been a number of years, but I’m not sure I’m done growing up, or if I’ve even begun to.
Where I dig into my archives and repost stuff I like. This one's from 2005.
like the foreign worker who, having spent six days of every week, fifty one weeks of every year, building for a country that is not his, listening to languages that are not his, but whose greatest pleasure comes from talking every Sunday in his native tongue for hours to any relative and friend in Dhaka who will listen, to release his repressed Bengali at a dollar a minute, no matter the cost, who,
like the repressed lesbian kissing her first girl after a string of boyfriends, and is perfunctorily surprised to find she likes it much more, because girls don’t merely stick it in and slop around but take their time with her, and she knows now, from a kiss alone, that irrevocably, and uncontrollably, she has to be, the mystery ends here, no matter the cost, who,
like the seven year old in his first week of school, is afraid of teachers, people he calls monsters, as they are very big and scary and always demand to know if his shoes are white, if his nails are clean, if he’s brought his consent form, like it matters at all, and he finally manages the courage to raise his hand, to ask in a meek voice, if he can go to the toilet, there where he swears to never again take Ryan on in the challenge of drinking three cans of Coke at a go, no matter the cost, who,
like the wage slave on her night out after years in the office, is relieved to find the bar to be the same as when she last left it, in 2001, only that the prices of the drinks have risen proportionately to her income, so has the number of suitors (men and women) taken on an inverse relationship to it, and she realizes she is now 28, though last she checked it was 2001, and once in 2003, so after a few rounds of whisky she gets groovy, at the time of the night where whisky is now called ‘happy juice’, determined to have fun for a change, no matter the cost, who,
like me, is relieved to find release, release from the spell of old, from the bright lights and other excesses, from the daisy chain of ex lovers of ex lovers who are now each other’s new lovers, from the endless chain that swears they love you, truly, really, but not really at all, but now finds greatest pleasure in holding the hand of the one I said I loved yesterday, though I already meant it everyday before yesterday, in sitting here writing, as she sits here sketching, admiring her with the silliness of the first flush of love on my face, knowing that I am, in far too many ways, as a woman reborn, in a motion picture where I provide the words and she the pictures, set to the soundtrack that is ours, and ours alone, and I leave this dangling without a full stop because that’s just the way it is, no matter the cost
Blast from the past: digging into my archives and republishing the stuff I like. This was originally from 2004, and reposted again in 2005. And again now.
It is the universal truth — before any woman, man, boy, or girl, is able to walk, first she must spend time crawling. And so it is here, as well as others, that first she learns the root and the nature of her passion and desire, isolates it, tames it well, calls it by its rightful name. But first, an awakening: coldness gripping her palm, fear and joy overcoming her heart, when she, after strings of boys (and strings of boys’ broken hearts), realizes with a rude shock, everything she had dreamt of for years, thought about in secret, put aside from shame, was here and now and right here, in the cubicle in the cinema in the fluorescent light, and there was nothing shameful about it.
First the prelude before the climax. Six boys and counting, there is no lack of suitors, there never was and still isn’t, but it just wasn’t the same, it wasn’t quite it, there was something missing. To be sure, they were all excellent specimens of their kind, and yet — to hold a man around his waist and wish his well-toned body softer and more tender, to kiss him and to imagine what it’s like to kiss a woman, feeling increasingly like an imposter the more we make out and the further this spirals: this is not the life I could be content with, this is not the life I could pretend to want.
I’m decidedly not gay, she says, before announcing this is why we cannot see each other anymore. Well — I’m not either! I chime in, badly wanting to keep her. Or am I? I couldn’t possibly, I thought, having had more men in my short years than some women ever will in their lifetimes. I, too, was prey to the misconception that sexual behaviour and orientation were necessarily one and the same, ignorant of the nuances of human interaction. All I knew then was that I wanted this woman more than anything else I had ever known, and that “gay” was the name other people had for us.
Going from whispered secrets in darkened stairwells to holding hands with women in the light of day, felt like one very long draw of breath, and even further leap of faith. It was to stare the unnamed persecutor in the eye and to say, I am not ashamed, it is to look gleefully at these men who want us both, and to say, you’re not invited, it was to leave a taxi stand in anger and resolve one night when the white men in front of us want to know where we’re headed (her place) and had the gall to ask if they could come along, it was to claim that very simple act people who don’t know take for granted, that is to hold the hands of a woman is not at all an easy task, no matter if she is the one you love, simply because you look like a woman.
Settling into the motions of the “R” (Relationship), another set of questions and conflicts arises. Please do not squeeze the toothpaste topdown, can you please lift up the toilet seat? Why? Whom among us pees standing up? Birthdays and anniversaries, breakups of friends and weddings of family; what CDs to leave by the hifi, which CDs to leave in the car. I’m not very much wiser off from when I started, but at least I know now to leave the toilet seat up even if nobody pees standing up, or, failing which, to turn over and go to sleep and to make breakfast in the morning.
And when it ends, girls cannot, unlike boys and girls, simply cease to be, mostly since close friends and lovers so often overlap in our world. Who takes what, which places you can never visit again, which CDs of yours and household appliances to leave behind in her possession, which to demand back. Yet why do they always remain the first people to run to when another affair fails, and why do they still care as much, all without illusion or pretense? If there was a word for “between friend and lover but never again but more than a friend nonetheless”, I would invent it here. I would be much poorer off without knowing this one group of people known as the gay girl ex. They’re the sweetest people in the world, but only when they’re not busy being malicious to each other, or dating each other.
Many nights I have stood here by this window in my kitchen, phone in hand, sobbing. Gazing into the distance, not quite sure what the person on the other line is saying anymore, but inserting appropriate “ums” and “yes, buts” at the right points. Last week, I found myself at the same spot, doing the same thing. But this time I was pretty sure, unlike other times, I would hate myself for doing what I tried to if you hadn’t stopped me, and this time I don’t know very much about the future, mine or yours, or ours, and don’t pretend to. But I do know I can’t bear the thought of not having you in my life, as difficult as it is, with or without.
(this is a story i do not have the means to write because i have not lived it yet, have no clue what it will be, don’t even dare to start on it. this is the part where i say it may be a blank canvas, yes, but at least i know from all these vignettes i’ve had the luck to witness and be part of, these snippets i’ve glimpsed into, it isn’t something to fear. drawing all these vignettes together, weaving them whole, not phenomenally different from what everyone else is doing: just putting the pieces of a puzzle together, finding the pieces which fit, except that in my world — it takes much more effort to hold the hands of the one you love, much more masochism to just keep swimmin’, much more courage to even begin to try to love.)
Reposting stuff from my archive. This one from 2003, when I was a wee child.
(so I still lie, to myself, more than to you.)
sketches for my sweetheart the drunk..
Hey. I don't think about you so much these days. I still do, of course – when my too-good memory starts acting up. Of course I do – it's not easy to forget anything for me. But especially not with us. The floating poem, unnumbered. "Whatever happens with us, your body will always haunt mine." I don't know what's going on with you now but I applaud you for the concerted effort to keep me out – you know exactly how I will obsess otherwise. I didn't take it too well at first but then I am 18 now and have learned the adult code of conduct in part, so it isn't so bad anymore. But I think you know how the story goes. Mine again, for a time at least, then not, then you will, then you won't..
I know it by heart – why can't we say goodbye conclusively?
(Because whatever happens with us, your body will always haunt mine, and I, yours… because there isn't any good enough.) I miss you alot. I don't know what you're doing now or how many men you're sleeping with. When dusk comes around and orange light sneaks into my house through its apertures I think a little of us, hair falling like water, orange light against our faces. So when it rains I think a little of us, lying on your bed wasting away a lazy Saturday afternoon. Of course you never forget these things. I used to stumble in wanting to translate our collective memory to the currency of living.
I don't anymore, I don't even want to try, knowing I will die in the process.
I own you and belong to you in a way no one else ever can. But then other people also own you in a way I never will come close to. I think you'd unsuccessfully attempted to articulate this before (using a bad analogy about skiing and injuries I think): you've never seen me at my worse. When I am ill, crippled, or injured. He has – taking me to clinics and driving me to hospitals, the like. With you and I – when we are together we are always at our best. The best foot forward, according to you. We never slip up because we don't see each other that much to begin with. When we do meet it's always the best performance, rendered to perfection in private rehearsals in our bedrooms, alone.
You own me and belong to me in a way no one else can: they have not, I presume, had you hold them in the way only two women can – lips locked on the one end and fingers primed for my pleasure at the other. They have not had me go at them in the same manner I do you, in the name of love (truly, I wouldn't be bothered to work half as hard otherwise); encouraged by your reaction to me. But then you also belong to everyone else in a way I could never own you in. I don't know what you're like when you're with your friends, what you're like with your men, what you're like when you're drunk (though I suspect I don't want to know..). As we speak you could be fucking some strange man now and even if you were doing it in part out of the desire to prove you're not that gay (not as gay as to want only me), what good does that do for me? I am still here, still a fuckwit, still thinking of you. We go running back to our easy men and easy sex, easy sex from easy men. Because what we want is too difficult – or maybe we want it precisely because it is unattainable (in this lifetime, in this country).
Baby, I'm just so tired. So tired of living up to your expectations of me, especially your demands for brilliance from me. So tired of playing the part of precocious talent being tormented by a mentor she hates and adores in equal parts. So tired of drawing you to me and tempting you with the carrot of having your history written out as you speak it, since I have proclaimed myself the scribe of The Great Affair. I don't think you'd have liked me as much, or kept coming back, if not for the reaction I have to you, and the words that this spawns.
I want to run away from you.
The more you are around and the older I get, the more of a mess we will get into, and you know that as well. You know as I get older and as the gap in our social circle thins out, as it becomes increasingly easier for us to see each other, you know somehow or other (we might not even will it to), we will be in a greater mess than anything that's ever happened. So I want to make that impossible. I want to runaway from you, from him, from this place. I want to see the both of you as little as I possibly can – you, because I probably will still love you years from now and will have to stop myself from wanting to shag you so much, so indiscriminately and illegitimately. From him because nobody has to live like this, this life I have subjected him to with my cruelty. For too long you have dominated my landscape. Nobody has to live like me.
I just turned eighteen; to have loved so much but come away with… this little. Only D. can empathise – we both chose the harder path because we were too proud to settle for all that comes easily. We scoff at these other teenaged couplings and mock them for their simplicity, at how heroically ordinary they are. In our pursuit of the extraordinary and the exceptional, we could lose our minds (and hearts, several times). People may not think much of our ‘affairs' but they fail to see our intensity. What our love(s) can culminate into, fail us most times but if and when they bear fruit, the results are so amazing in their gravity but overbearing in their weight.
All this, before the age of eighteen. The fruition into dust and ashes such as this.
I want to runaway someplace where the air smells colder and my nose will have a perpetual sniffle from. Where the sun kisses the land and the beach is not mud and stones masquerading as a seaside and I can have an engaging intellectual setting to call home for some years. Where I don't need to see or hear from you so much. Practise forgetting you completely. Have an inordinate number of men and women, perhaps fall in love with some intelligent, beautiful woman even (and not merely to spite you with). Not you because you will always break my heart, not him because I will always break his heart. After a lifetime of excess, I crave balance…
I should have loved a thunderbird instead. At least when spring comes they roar back again..
With my wife Sabrena in the Paris metro in 2022
(image from 
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Coconut makes the world, and our infra, go round.
Dark, golden and distilled beauty. Just like our microservices.
My total, with the unique code (+032) added to the final bill.
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It seemed like a good idea to quad-bike around parts of Turkey, 2009.
Welcome Drew Graham. Let's kick some ass.
Going to the mountain.
