3resilience

Again

2009-02-02T02:38:00.003+08:00

I've heard it said before that people only take the time to write when they don't feel happy, because when you feel happy you're too caught up in the experience of happiness to want to take the time out to write it all down. And certainly, when you're enjoying yourself, why would you want to take yourself away from the moment to make a record that may not be historicly relevant in the larger scheme of things anyway? And that's why I haven't been writing: ever since school started, I've been unbelievably happy. Interesting (yes, interesting) classes with engaging readings, long meals with good conversations, old friends reunited and catching up again, steamboats and nights spent chatting over dessert made by J, a night out on the city to wach the Miami City Ballet's breathtaking performance, random long walks, a random and dingy-looking diner giving us unprepossessing service, a dinner with Z and W - Ethiopian food and reflections on the richness of the city and the films that are waiting to be made in it, long nights, long chats, the gentleness of waking up in the morning with warmth and contentment enveloping you.

Have you ever been so happy that it scared you?

And then, this happens again. It has been precisely one month today. A worrying message on my phone, the email that sent the shock and pain of recognition shooting upwards and downwards, the sensory acuity that comes with disorientation and revelation. When you know something has happened, but you don't know who it has happened to, suddenly that message that you read becomes like a verdict, and everyone that you know who fits the description becomes a possible victim. It ismental Russian Roulette: you know that someone has paid the price, and you flip through all the people you know wondering who it is exactly. You picture each and every one of them in the dreadful situation, and because it is uncertain which one is the right one, each mental image is like a separate tragedy. Not knowing who it really was, you are forced to contemplate each possibility as if it really happened. Cognitively, then, one tragedy becomes many.

Then, there is the moment of recognition, when you know who it really is. Everyone else gets a reprieve, and there is a certain measure of relief. But it is tempered with the terrible knowledge that such relief was bought by a real, corporeal loss. And anyway, the pan that imagined losses can give you is necessarily limited, because you know that it is reall imaginary. When the separate pains from the imaginary losses congeal in the form of a real loss, the resulting pain is more than the sum of its parts. It is sharpened by being real. And you realise, too, that you know - knew - this person, that he is not som theoretical philosophical possibility, but someone whom you had talked to, worked with. Understood, even, in moments of crystal clarity. And then, with a jolt, you also realise how it could have been anyone else, too. Before, I had thought tha we were in some measure invincible, at the top of our game, immune from shocks, or rather secure in the knowledge that whatever shocks we received would not be incongruous with the context that we are in (that is to say, enjoying the chance of our lives in this university and this city). And then, something like this happens, and you realise that everyone really is not exempt from reality, that really we have not moved so far away from the old stresses and troubles that used to drag us down. That, in effect, the new world that we think we are enjoying is really just a fragile, somewhat flashier version of the old one that we thought we had left behind.

We gathered, then, the people who know - knew - this person, across the campus wherever someone was willing to open a door and offer a hug. And everyone was willing to do this. Things followed the usual (I guess it is usual) course then: expressions of shock, expressions of solidarity, tentative dips into the rivers of memory to bring back anecdotes that have been steeped in pathos by the fact of this happening. Cups of tea passed around, chocolates offered, a box of tissues steadily emptying. Anxious activity, restlessness, short self-conscious laughter that eases one pain while making another more acute.

There were, of course, moments of reenacted drama, unreal renderings of an event that still seemed unreal. We interpret the things we perceive using the models that we have, and reproduce the models in our outward reactions. That is, of course, not to say that people were insincere: that would be a total mistake. You can't measure authenticity using novelty. But there were moments when I suddenly realised that I've seen this moment before, on the silver screen, on the printed page, and while I do not question the validity of using borrowed motifs and metaphors to represent what we were currently going through, I sometimes wondered about the appropriateness of each reproduction: couldn't we have chosen a better scene in some places?

More than once, I've heard that it is sad that it takes something like this to bring everyone together, that our latent friendships have been allowed to languish until one is irretrievably lost, at which point we suddenly better appreciate the value of the others. However, I don't measure the strength of a friendship against an index of frequency of meetings. What is important is that our friendships remain strong enough that, precisely at moments like these, we can still come together despite all the intervening time. The thing is that, no matter what has happened in the meantime, we can still come together, simply be present for one another.

*

But at the same time, I see a pattern: that, whenever I get really unreservedly happy, something bad will happen to rebalance my perspective on things, to remind me that actualy, the moment of happiness is not really that far removed from a more general, ambient sadness, or at least the possibility of imminent sadness. This pattern, I think, is undoubtedly a fact of existence; life is such that happiness must always be alloyed with a degree of sadness. The danger lies in jumping from this empirical correlation to a premature causal link, namely that my happiness will cause my own sadness. That way, one's happiness becomes guilty.

I see another pattern: the shock, grief, loss, awkwardness, even the pretentiousness, are all familiar - all too familiar, fresh still in recent memory. Once again, I see people I know and care about who are hurting. And still, I see that apart from all the words and the thoughts and the sharings, the really important thing is simply presence. To share this moment with other people, not to draw attention to your own pain (which, at the same time, should not be allowed to be blown out of proportion for reasons of vanity), but to acknowledge the pain of others. And I see, once again, that above all else, other people are what's important here: the people who have to go through this, right now, and to learn from it, and to live with it.

*

I cannot speak of details: that would be grossly inappropriate. At any rate, no further information is available. I am sure, though, that eventually, those who need to know will know what they need.

City of New Hope

2009-01-20T13:27:00.002+08:00

Had a pretty good flight back to NYC. The transit through Heathrow was really enjoyable, and I spent a few hours immersing myself in the sleek smoothness of Terminal Five, pretending to be part of an exclusive jetsetting segment of society. British Airways continues to have less than remarkable service, but the crew delivers the service with such touching self-consciousness: they know they come off as unimpressive, and their good-natured bantering and self-deprecation in the face of this knowledge is somehow endearing. It makes me much more forgiving about the quality of the food and the entertainment system!

Anyway, right after arriving in NYC, went out for dinner with YR, G, WL, YR's friend WR and YR's mum. We didn't go far; the cold in NYC was pretty daunting, especially after coming from a place that was 40 degrees warmer. In the Cuban restaurant opposite school, we had a slow dinner and a long reunion, catching up with what YR and WL had been up to in the depths of the NYC winter while the rest of us had returned home. Yes, New York is undoubtedly gloomy, cold, grimy, disorganised, expensive and challenging - it is, in short, not (yet) home; but in the warmth of the restaurant, talking to these friends over generous portions of Cuban fare, there is no denying that it is good to be back here.

*

The next day, left with G for Washington DC for a short 2-day visit to the city. It really wasn't much time, and we were working on a pretty punishing schedule, walking for hours on end trying to take in as much as we could, but we still managed to see four different sides to DC, I think.

The first was the lifestyle of a family living in one of the DC suburbs. My mum's old university friend lives in DC, and my parents had enlisted her to transport some goodies over to the States for Chinese New Year. That was before my sudden return to Singapore, and so the goodies had rested unclaimed in her house until now. We made contact, and received incredible hospitality, including one whole storey of the house dedicated to guest accommodations, home-cooked dinners and breakfasts, and daily lifts to and from the nearest Metro station. We really couldn't have asked for more. The most enjoyable parts were definitely the dinners we had, with Aunt CK and her husband and young son N. The young boy is 7 years younger than me, but he is already taller than I ever will be; and he was impeccably well-behaved, articulate and helpful, leaving us as guests feeling wholly inadequate to repay all of this. Aunt CK and her husband, too, were warm and open, and we easily entered into long after-dinner conversations about US and world politics, sociology, engineering, school days and American life. It was a scene right out of the pages of what I see as the American dream: a warm family, a great dinner, and pre-electronic entertainment involving the engagement of minds in real time with each other.

A second aspect was, of course, monumental DC. We spent quite a lot of time wandering around the National Mall and Downtown DC, and while the buildings are ornate and impressively immense, you can't help but wonder whether they're really necessary, especially when the sheer scale of the structures force you to endure minutes of empty streets as you try to go around a single block. After all, marble in itself doesn't strike me as interesting, and the monument district seemed to me to be especially devoid of life and thus of purpose. However, when the sun came out today in the afternoon, the monuments looked much more impressive, invigorated by the play of light and colour. Against the wide blue sky, the bulk of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial became moving in their scale and what they mean to Americans and the rest of the world. And there was a nice stretch along the Potomac River connecting Georgetown with the monument district that offered such breathtaking views; though the walk took about an hour, it was well worth it, and exceedingly pleasant in its serenity, its not-too-cold temperatures and its incredible vistas.

A third aspect was Georgetown. Hooked up with YM again this second time that I visited DC, and she brought us around this lively neighbourhood near the eponymous university. Here, then, was the city life that I had been looking for: streets bustling with people, interesting shopfronts beckoning every few metres, places that are insider secrets (like the delightful cafe with excellent coffee and cupcakes, or the restaurant with impeccable service, or the staircase and house where The Exorcist was filmed) - in short, a human-scale place. And the thing was that, without YM, we wouldn't have figured it out ourselves that Georgetown, far from any Metro stop, accessible only by bus or car, was actually the Main Street of Washington. After the cold immensity of the monuments, Georgetown was a decided delight and quite a relief too.

And finally, of course, there is the Washington that is on the verge of celebrating the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Everywhere, you see cheap Obama merchandise on sale, from pins to t-shirts. More tasteful (and tasty!) are the limited-edition merchandise put out by the shops of Georgetown: Obama-themed cookies, chocolate White Houses (in milk or dark), limited-press inauguration wines. There were also all the cordons, troops and convoys speeding through the streets of the capital, lights flashing and engines revving. There were the special events that attracted immense crowds to the monuments, creating waves of humanity trying to funnel ineffectively into the overburdened Metro system. There were the big screens, and the innumerable flags of all sizes. And of course, there were the good spirits of all the people there, all laughing together at the spectacle of hundreds of people daftly braving the cold for a peek at some famous dignitary, waving at convoys though the dark-tinted windows meant they had no idea who they were cheering on, being polite and helpful amindst the chaos of crowds (including the section of troops who all gathered around one map to deduce for us the shortest route to a Metro station). It all added a much-welcomed buzz to the city, and all that joy made it clear that we were in DC at a time where things really matter there, even though we would be missing the actual inauguration.

It was definitely a great trip, then. To me, it was like a highly compressed exchange programme, including a stay with a local family, many long, long walks, visits to monuments, the nearest water body (the riverside walk was spectacular), and the local market district, rides on the local mass transit, and random encounters that enriched our trip and proved that it is always a good idea to simply walk outside and place yourself in a place where things are likely to occur.

*

We slept all the way on the bus, back from DC to NYC via Philadelphia (I was really surprised to find that the bus took this rather long detour), properly tired out by all the walking and exploring that we had done over the last two days. And despite the rocking bus hurtling rather disconcertingly down the wide, smooth highways, and despite the landscape outside worryingly turning more and more snowy, I had one of the most comfortable rides ever. And, of course, the company was great. G has gamely kept up with all the punishing walks that I had made us embark on, sharing in every part of this trip and thereby making this trip all the more acutely experienced. I do believe that I have been lucky enough to find another travelmate. Maybe even a new soulmate; hopefully, the first of many, but realistically...we'll see what happens from here on in.

*

I was really in no hurry to arrive in NYC, partly because the bus trip was so pleasant, but also because tomorrow, the new term starts, and I wanted to linger on the winter break, truncated though it was by the unexpected emergency at home. I do think, after all, that it has been a good break, if not wholly what I expected or hoped for. It has definitely been a worthwhile pasage of time, at least. But when we emerged from the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan, and saw the familiar grungy streets and the wrought green metal of the subway entrance, I realised that, after all, it is still good to be back here, in this city, regardless of anything else. When one returns, one brings with one new perspectives and experiences through which to interpret the place that one is returning to. In my experience, every return has allowed me to reinterpret a place such that it has become more compelling for me, more meaningful. And so, with every return, NYC seems more exciting, more accessible, friendlier. Similarly, Singapore seems more promising, more valuable, richer. In this way, returning is not an end of a trip, but a continuation of a theme across different locations. It is a comforting thing to discover this.

Brink of Returning

2009-01-15T18:09:00.003+08:00

Have been out quite often this week, meeting as many people as I could, those who are still here. That is one real advantage of coming back here for the holidays: although not many people are here, overall you're still more likely to meet more old friends and acquaintances here than abroad. And, just as it is essentially the people that make going elsewhere worthwhile, it is also the people that make coming back worthwhile.

And so it was that I went to the airport to find YS for lunch, because she was working there again. And then, after a trip to Chinatown to buy New Year goodies and enjoy the bustle of the season, went back to Aljunied to meet G, R and J for an evening of food sampling in Geylang, covering good dim sum, great ice kachang and an old favourite: the Y0ng He tau huay place just around the corner at Lorong 27A. And then, yesterday, met up with the old gang: JY, Conan and Liang See. We went for lunch at Pepper Lunch at Lido, and then chatted the afternoon away in the Liat Towers Starbucks, regularly remarking on the profusion of tourist customers that visit that particular branch. And today, met up with LJ, YJ and Liang See again for another lunch at PS.

So, I've quite completed my rounds of old haunts and familiar places, and in the process have caught up with more familiar faces than I'd originally expected. It still strikes me, after all this time, how easy it is to slip back into a particular mode of conversation: sharp, witty, unassuming, uncensored, stimulating, unpretentious, sincere and straightforward. Such is the conversation of long familiarity, sprouting from the rich loam of shared memory and coded gestures referring to inside jokes and unforgettable moments. I remember how I myself had been apprehensive when meeting returning people in years past, wondering how much they may have changed, and how easily we will be able to resume where we had previously left off. And now, looking at things from the other side of four months studying abroad, I see even more clearly how a shared past can form such a strong foundation for continuation that the intervening time is not alienating but enriching, a source of novelty that leavens an old, familiar relationship. It is deeply comforting to think, to discover, and to know that old, cherished things in the past can continue to persist in this new present.

Told Liang See that if it were possible for my whole social circle to come to NYC too, then my life there would be complete. Certainly, I daresay some of the friendships that I have right now will not be duplicated in the years to come. As such, there is no question of moving on from an old social circle to form a new one; it is rather the expansion of an existing circle. But I encounter new people all the time in New York, and certainly some of them also have shown themselves to be kind, dependable, sincere people who are a joy to hang out with: people like K, BY, Ar, As, Je, Ja, WL, YR, G, R, J and the rest. I have been ridiculously lucky on this front. And I do have hopes that many of these friendships will only grow stronger over time. But all the same, I think what I am looking for in these new friends is inevitably modelled after what I have encountered in my old friends.

It has been the case that the old principles of life have remained sound despite being imported to an entirely novel environment: approach everything with no illusions and no expectations, don't begrudge people their good fortune, put yourself where things are likely to happen, make the most difference that you can. And I think in the social realm, too, it will be the case that the old principles remain sound. It is possible that this will turn out to be false, and I only hope that should that be the case, I am flexible enough to adapt the situation as it is. But I hope that the old principles will in fact remain sound.

*

Strangely enough, even though Singapore is 70% Chinese, Singapore's Chinatown is actually smaller than NYC's Chinatown. I guess you could argue that, in fact, the whole island is a Chinatown, and that it is equally ridiculous to complain of a small Chinatown in Beijing as in Singapore. But I find it interesting that, as far as the acknowledged geographical reach of the two Chinatowns is concerned, the one in a predominantly Chinese society is smaller than the one in a Western city.

Even so, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Singapore's Chinatown, far from being the slepy, dingy place I remember most vividly from primary-school field trips, is in fact a bustling, lively ethnic district. This was especially the case, given that the Chinese New Year is almost upon us. The streets, alleys and sidewalks were full of shoppers and walkers, and merchants had turned blank walls into kaleidoscopic displays of New Year goodies and decorations. To my utter surprise, even the tacky and touristified faux-classical architecture of restored shophouses and buildings struck me as exciting, being perhaps dignified by the human pressures and flows around and through them.

I had previously remarked on the vibrance of the Chinatowns of New York, Malacca and Penang, and had admired the seemingly spontaneous, effortlessly engaging street life of Taipei and Hong Kong. It was with quite a bit of surprise, then, that I found myself becoming similarly taken by the streets of the Singapore Chinatown. It is possible that my perspective has just been romanticised by my being away for four months, so that home just looks generally better, in the way that confinement on Tekong made me look at Simei with new eyes. And it is likely to be premature to compare Singapore with Hong Kong or Taipei or (heaven forbid!) New York. But I think the life I encountered on the street was genuinely engaging, and surprisingly so. Maybe it has always been there; maybe it is just that I've recently developed a taste for it, or the perceptiveness needed to detect and appreciate it. But no matter the case, I'm glad that I managed to encounter it this time, when I came back.

And another one of those ironies that make Singapore compelling to me: despite the technology and the society bent on developing itself at breakneck speed into everlasting prosperity, traditional things still hold sway. And so it was that I found this crowd of people engrossed in the detailed divinations of Chinese astrologers, who had produced predictions for every aspect of life for every zodiac and posted them up on this board in the middle of the Pearl Centre Shopping Mall. Similar to this moment was one later that night, when we were chatting about school and army and work life in Geylang, enjoying the phenomenal quality and range of food on the North side of Geylang Road while seeing the red-light district gearing up for opening hours on the South side of Geylang Road. It is, after all, not true that Singapore as a society is uninteresting, and neither is it true that we have exhausted all the possibilities of Singapore in our 20-odd years living here. It is just that we have become intimately familiar with how this place works, and have been inculcated with acute cases of envy for the seemingly greener grasses elsewhere.

*

And so, I find that, on the verge of leaving, a part of me sincerely wants to stay on. I have completed all that I want to do here at home, and I have seen just about everyone that can be seen. But the main difference between my lives in Singapore and in New York is that here, I am not a stranger, whereas in New York, I join the innumerable ranks of strangers. It is, perhaps, a matter of a sense of belonging, or of acceptance; whereas New York is likely to be socially more accepting of newcomers than Singapore, the thing is that I am already accepted here. That status is a very strong impetus to stay, a power capitalising on a person's inertia or conservatism.

But I know also that my time is called for elsewhere, and the opportunities that are only available abroad have their own power to draw me to them. Will be flying via Heathrow again, and with any luck, will return to London to visit my people in the UK over the spring break in March. First, though, will go with G to Washington DC, to visit a family friend and to check out the capital on the eve of the inauguration. And there is also talk of a trip with As to Boston, not to mention the myriad shows, concerts, exhibitions, festivals (Chinese New Year!) and spectaculars coming up in the next term.

It is time to go back, and I feel that I am, essentially, ready to go back, bearing with me valuable experiences, a heightened sense of humility, and a tempered hope for the coming year. 2009 has started, after all; let it come, but also let everyone be safe. As for the rest of the details, we will take it from there.

Coming Back

2009-01-12T22:22:00.007+08:00

Had a big dose of culture over the weekend, getting reacquainted with the Singapore scene. Had read in the papers that the Singapore Fringe Festival was on, and decided to give it a try, since it was marketed as being edgy and provocative. I'd never tried the Fringe Festival before, and had the impression that it could open up a whole new side of the Singapore arts scene for me.

On Saturday, went with G to watch a concert, a doublebill, the first part consisting of a guy putting various random household sounds together and placing toys into a Steinway piano to create discord. The result was a strange, barely pleasant melange of noises. Allegedly, the piece was supposed to be a sonic conversation between objects found in the artist's living room, representing the various strains and melodies of interactions between family members. The random household sounds I did not get, for their mixture into an apparently random soundscape seemed only to make the rather trivial point that most household interactions tend to be random and unartistic. The discordant piano was more interesting, as a slow progression of chords that would otherwise have been quite pleasant was disrupted by the toys interfering with the piano's strings. I got the point about discord being seeded in beauty, about how the latter may even be rendered more poignant by the former. But I don't think the artist quite got away with the other sounds that he was trying to pass off as music.

The second half was a more conventional (i.e. recognisable) performance of electronica accompanied by piano-playing. The German group SWOD performed pieces from their latest album, and it was more interesting than the first performance because, firstly, it did not make pretensions to some abstract and tenuous connection with an ideological investigation, and secondly because it was not so novel that the novelty itself became a hindrance, distraction that interfered with the sensory enjoyment of the performance. The soundscapes that were created were at times bizarre, at times jarring, but always engaging, the artists adeptly balancing pleasantness with strangeness. Listening to their performance is kind of like drinking rum and coke for the first time: there is enough of the familiar to be reassuring, but there is a sharp tang of the novel to keep things interesting.

After that, adjourned to the outdoor theatre for one of the free performances. A singer-songwriter called Ling was strumming out covers and original numbers into the night. Her voice wasn't that spectacular, but her guitaring was quite impressive, and I have to give it to her: her ability to sing and play at the same time with such vigour is something that I cannot yet - can perhaps never - emulate. And I noticed something about the new outdoor theatre: if you sit at a particular area, one side of the theatre's sails frames the new casino quite nicely, whereas if you sit at yet another place, the old, familiar, well-loved skyline of the current CBD is framed by the sails. In this way, therefore, the new theatre forms a rather poignant bridge between the familiar and the new, and I am reminded of the times that I used to spend there in the pre-army days, while at the same time seeing that the outdoor theatre still continues to be the venue of new, memorable experiences.

And the next night, met up with P and E to watch a Fringe Festival theatrical performance, an Israeli-German production entitled 3SOME, allegedly discussing the state of Israeli-German and Israeli-Palestinian relations. There were some brilliant moments, including one sequence in which the German hunts for something that stinks onstage, and after sniffing everything around him, he starts to burrow under the rubber matting that covers the stage, effectively dissolving the stage surface, rendering what we assumed was a solid surface into something fluid, craggy and malleable. And then there was the beginning of the play, which did not seem to be a beginning, but rather constituted the German apologising for technical difficulties, then describing fantastic stage directions of what the play was supposed to be like, then getting lost in his own fantastic descriptions - then freezing suddenly, to have the Israeli jumping without warning out of a bathtub in the centre of the stage. That sent shivers down my spine.

They made a right mess of the stage, ending by tossing all sorts of materials indiscriminately, hanging a cello (to symbolise, they say, the execution of Germans' traditional angst about the Holocaust) and proposing, Lysistrata-style, a preposterous Final Solution to the Palestinian question (consisting of divine intervention in the form of a natural disaster wiping out both sides indiscriminately). In the end, though, the piece suffers from the problem of most modern art: a lack of clarity. Some parts were all too clear: I thought it was kind of artistically lazy to use the mess onstage to symbolise the untidy situation in the Middle East. Some parts were quite poignant: I especially liked how the German, paralysed by war guilt, was cowering in the bathtub while the Israeli was ranting away, carried away by his risque passions, skirting with blasphemy. But there were things that would have remained indecipherable if the artists had not explained them after the end of the piece, like the hanging cello or the mysterious story of the Israeli torturing a kitten for the fun of it.

On an unrelated note, after the show, on the train ride home, E was saying that she would not have missed Singapore as much if she had not come back over this holidays, and as it stands, going back to school is more difficult now because she has spent a month at home. She does raise an interesting point: homesickness is not a product of the duration of one's time away, but rather the frequency of the reminders that one gets of what it's like to be at home. In this respect, I think we're luckier in New York, where there are lots of distractions and fewer Singaporeans to serve as echoes of home, tantalising because they remind us what it's like without giving us the full experience of what it is to be home. I for one can't really say if I would have been happier staying in the States over these holidays and exploring the Northeastern US with WL and YR; certainly, though, I had planned to do that under the assumption that I would not appreciate being home as much as travelling. But as it turns out, being home is good, despite the terrible circumstances that brought me back. I have been happy here, and I have been able to spend good time with family and friends, both old and new. And at the end of the day, I am glad to have come back.

*

Speaking of returns, went back to school today (that is to say, CHS) to visit, partly because I and Kats had bumped into Ms. C in Little India a few weeks back and she had invited us to go back to school, but also because if I did not go now, it would be another five months before the opportunity is likely to present itself again. Spent a good part of the day in school, wandering the staff room, meeting old teachers and colleagues, and then bumping, to my delight, into many old students - the people from the classes L and N, and my CSE class, and even class F, whom I'd taught for all of one month. I was surprised to find that I hadn't yet forgotten their names. The really nice thing was that they still remembered me, and though I know it really is self-indulgent and egotistical, I have to say that it really feels good to be remembered!

Walking into CHS, though, two things struck me. Firstly, the beauty of the campus itself is striking; while Columbia undoubtedly has its charm because of the glamour of its address and the uniform classical architecture of its buildings, it lacks the careful landscaping of CHS, and it certainly is smaller than my old secondary school. So, whereas my old school has about as many students as Columbia has undergraduates, CHS feels serene and open, while Columbia comes off as crowded and small. Secondly, so much of it is still the same. I'd mentioned this before: working in CHS was rather surreal because I suddenly found myself back in the physical environment of my secondary school, and amidst people whom I remembered from my time there as a student, except that now I was the one holding the red pen. The contrast of the familiar with the novel social position was striking; and today, going back again, there was a touch of confusion over whether I was returning as an old colleague or an old student.

Anyway, it was definitely good to be back, amidst an environment where I feel utterly at home, chatting with old students about the university experience and their new classes in the new year, dabbling in staff room gossip with old colleagues and teachers, talking over gelato nearby with my old colleague and friend G, meeting my old Lit teacher Mr. L, who happened to be visiting CHS on the same day that I dropped in. Coming back allowed me to remind myself of where I had come from, and also to better take stock of how much I've actually progressed from those days.

*

And then, tonight, went out with family to a seafood restaurant nearby for dinner. For some reason, it was particularly windy this evening, and the red plastic tablecloth substitute flapped precariously throughout our meal, as we tucked into fried fish, sambal kangkong, oatmeal prawns, a chili crab and a steamed crab. Special mention must go to the crabs, which were laden with meat and fat with roe, and whose shells fell away with gratifying ease, to leave large, juicy, tender pieces of fragrant crabmeat that could be eaten in satisfying mouthfuls. It has been too long since I've had crabs that were that good.

My life overseas has undoubtedly been exciting. I've received so many opportunities that I find myself terrified of my own prodigious good luck. I've met many good people, made many new friends, and had many experiences that have enriched me beyond my wildest expectations. But it's moments like these, when you have the whole family together, that make all that excitement worthwhile, because it reassures you that you always have somewhere to come back to, that what you have cherished before has not been lost over time. If I could bring my whole family along to New York, that would make my life there perfect. But since that's not possible, then that impression of perfection can best be accessed by coming back, and by finding that, while many things may change over time, family does not.

*

And so passes my 22nd. Another year older...and I hear that from now on in, it's all downhill, since there are no more milestones to pass until retirement or your midlife crisis, whichever one comes first. I feel decidedly old, especially when I think about going back to school, where practically everyone is on the brink of coming of age. Nevertheless, it has been a great day today, and as far as getting older goes, I can't really in all conscience ask for a better way to do it! Thanks to everyone, for all your well-wishes and messages. They've all made my day!

I Can't Take My Mind Off of You...

2009-01-09T20:09:00.004+08:00

Just finished another video, the first one that I've made that is based on scenes from New York. I discovered that I have taken so much video over the last four months that I can make the whole thing out of videos, rather than mixing in photos, which is my usual tactic. As it stands, too, the 3-minute music clip that I set it to doesn't leave enough space for all the video, so I only managed to cover material up to Halloween. Oh well...the leftovers of the last semester will doubtlesly get incorporated into the next video.

In the process, though, was looking through my photo library, and discovered a few nuggets, not enough to fill a new Facebook album, but good enough to warrant record somewhere. So, here they are:

A perspective trick on a blue-sky day. The winter sun stays so low in the sky that parts of the campus never get direct sunlight in winter.

Another perspective trick. I took this one on the second day of snow that we had in New York. Within hours of the snowfall, numerous snowmen had sprouted across campus. Was walking with G back from a session of studying in Avery Library when we came across this little guy, who was no more than 5cm tall. In the background is College Walk (the bit of 116th St that runs through Columbia), lined with lighted trees.

And this one was taken from the top of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the world's largest cathedral, and right next door to Columbia on 112th Street. J had given me the heads-up to accompany him to the Cathedral, because he had stumbled upon a cultural festival taking place in the building to commemorate its reopening after renovations restored a portion of it damaged by fire. One of the activities was a tour of the cathedral, and after walking right into the walls, through hidden passageways and spooky spaces, we emerged onto the roof. It gave a spectacular view. If you look closely, you can just see Midtown and the Empire State Building towards the right edge of the picture.

And this is J, on the way down from the roof of the Cathedral. Trivia: the stairs in a cathedral spiral clockwise upwards, so that it makes it hard to carry out a swordfight in the stairs, meaning that in mediaeval times, cathedrals were likely to be neutral ground in wartime. Also, many thanks to J for always giving me heads-up to great performances and opportunities; I really should put in more effort to find out about these things myself.

And P, on her last day in NYC, shopping for cosmetics at Union Square. The UPenn people's visit to NYC really brightened my last days there before coming home. Now we need to meet up in Singapore one more time before we all have to go back to school.

*

Also, have taken quite some time out over the last two days to pick up the guitar again. It surprises me how easy it is to start playing again, despite more than half a year's hiatus. Maybe guitar-playing is something like bike-riding; and although what I do with a guitar can't really be called making music, it's still relaxing and soothing to make the instrument produce the sounds that you want. I definitely have to get one for my room in Columbia.

Been learning a couple of Damien Rice numbers: Older Chests and The Blower's Daughter. Kudos to G for introducing Damien Rice to me! Was listening to his songs, and I realised that actually, the guitar riffs are quite simple, and decided to try them out for myself. Another big plus is that Damien Rice actually seems to put effort into his lyrics; I especially like how he uses repetition to express yearning in The Blower's Daughter, a tactic that is powerful and moving, and makes you feel as if you know exactly what he's talking about. And, of course, the overall sound of the music is intriguing. I can't really explain it, but the rhythms and notes don't strike me as precisely conventional somehow, and the edge of quirkiness invites you to pay attention to the song.

*

And besides that, met with Kels and Soph again on Wednesday night downtown. It has been a really long time since I last saw Soph in Sabah in January, and I had thought that we had drifted apart. I was really pleasantly surprised, therefore, when we easily struck up a conversation again, especially when Kels joined us, and we talked and joked over kopitiam drinks into the night, catching up on what has happened over the last semester. After that, Soph came over to stay the night, because her flight was early in the morning the next day, and one of the few advantages of living at my place is the proximity to the airport.

And last night, met up with YS for dinner at Simpang Bedok. By a strange set of coincidences, we keep seeming to cross paths. First, she visited me in NY, then I went to UVa to return the favour, and then she came down to NY again with her mum (after telling me that she was determined to go to Chicago), and now I'm back in Singapore just when she is also in town. Anyway, we're both in the vicinity of each other, and we had a really long talk last night over prata and a Milo dinosaur. For some reason, it was exceedingly easy for me to talk t her about what happened over the New Year; I can write about it better than I can talk about it, but yesterday it seemed natural to just open up and discuss it, voicing my concerns and fears and hearing her opinions about it. This is definitely partly due to our long friendship, but I think it also has to do with how alike we are philosophically/ideologically. It is rare to find people that share something like this; and when you do, you do your best to stay close to them.

Continuing

2009-01-07T00:34:00.005+08:00

A big thank you to everyone who sent their concerns and thoughts and prayers. Every little bit helps, and definitely I and my family are heartened by your support. There were difficult moments in the last few weeks. But for me, personally, I do think that the worst is over. The situation is greatly different for my cousins and aunt and my uncle's siblings, of course. The priority now is to support them, to help them to continue onwards.

As for myself, there hasn't really been many lasting effects, but the real impact has been to drive home the one great fear of people who are far away from home: that something drastic may happen when you're away. That, I think, is my greatest fear now: that I won't be able to be present when another crisis strikes, though heaven forbid that it happens again. It has never really occurred to me; usually, I think that the person most at risk when going away is the person that is departing. But it is clear, now, that simply being at home doesn't reduce the risk of some things happening, just as going abroad doesn't increase the risk of some types of occurrences. The difficulty, then, lies not in where you are, but the distance between you and your loved ones.

*

We carried out the funeral on Sunday, going through an elaborate Taoist ritual that saw us circling the coffin, bowing to it, strewing it with flowers, and then embarking on a noisy procession through the housing estate, complete with blaring band and talismanic papers tossed liberally into the air. We tried to keep up as the rituals progressed, at points threatening to leave us behind; our sadness and pain was mixed with a measure of bewilderment that served to give the situation a tinge of absurdity. We understood so little of it - the ritual's meaning was the province of a different generation - but the only hope, as always, is that we are doing good by our family member.

Actually, before we knew what was going on, the cremation was already over. It was very fast: a group of duty monks reciting the scriptures with the lacklustre over-familiarity of extended habit, a robotic lifter that raised the coffin to a space-age door, and at the press of a button, the metallic portal slid open noiselessly, the robot pushed the coffin into the dark space beyond, and then - a flash of flames, and the door sliding back into place as the flowers covering the coffin started to burn. And that was all there was to it: it was over in five minutes, barely enough time to register that the ritual has started, and certainly not enough time to appreciate that this is really the end.

It strikes me as somewhat sad, aven outrageous, that the end of a life, the end of a funeral, can go so smoothly with factory precision and industrial-strength equipment. Some things in life cannot be done quickly; certainly the value of some things should not be measured in terms of how efficiently it can be done. It is somehow wrong to end life as a piece of cargo handled by an industrial machine. There has to be a better way to do this: perhaps not as efficiently, but certainly a better way, whatever that may mean to the individual.

We went back later to the crematorium to collect the remains. I had imagined that the transmutation of the body by the flame would produce a fine dust. "Ashes to ashes", as it were. What really happened, though, was that everything combustible had been vapourised (the undertaker tells us that in the cremation chamber, a total of fifteen jets of gas flame are whipped up by a tornado of winds to engulf the body), and all that remained were broken bone fragments, completely dessicated. Everything soft had been reduced to nothing but hardness. And yet, there was something about the broken fragments that still seemed irreducibly human, and therefore inviolable. There are some things, secret things, about the human body that should not be seen, and setting eyes upon a skeleton strikes me as somehow being a desecration. It's strange: on the one hand, you objectively recognise that the bone fragments do not make up a person, and that after all, the person you knew departed long before the body entered the coffin. But as the crematorium attendant dug through the mound of bones with his bare hands, sorting out the skull pieces from the rest so that tey can be placed symbolically on top of the rest of the bones in the urn, a part of me was disgusted, outraged even.

But beyond the technicalites of burial, the main concern has been to sort out my uncle's affairs. No one had prepared for his possible departure, and looking through his things is to see a life that has been put on hold, work that was stopped for the night, seemingly still waiting to be resumed the next morning. And it quickly became clear that no one could decode his work to the level that is needed to duplicate it and replace him. At this point, I feel the most useless and helpless, because as our family grappled with his workplans, documents, finances and records, I could hardly make heads or tails of it. I was so completely out of my league. And it raises a fact that really depresses me: while I am still fiddling around in school, mulling over next week's homework, my cousins will already be planning to take over a family business. It is deeply humbling; it makes the current endeavour in Columbia look like vanity and self-indulgence. Definitely, my own work doesn't matter in the same way that my cousins' efforts matter.

As they looked through the material left behind by my uncle, they frequently remarked on how remarkable his abilities were, abilities that had not been so obvious while he was alive because he didn't make a big deal out of them, but that are immediately apparent from his intricate designs, complex spreadsheets and cryptic workflow. But of course, the documents are not simply lists of numbers, diagrams and words; on a certain level, there is no escaping the fact that these are among the last traces of a person who departed all too suddenly. How do you deal with that? How do you plumb these papers for objective data, and rationalise what you are doing against the personal significance of your own memories of the person who produced these papers?

It is deeply unfair, that I have the option of removing myself from this situation, simply by flying back to New York on the 15th, while my family has no choice but to continue dealing with the fallout from this death. And the thing is that no one really wants me to stay; indeed, they want me to go back because that is where I can make the most difference. It makes me feel even more conflicted, because I feel like I should be where I can make the most difference to them, rather than simply where I can make the most difference. Frustration comes in when I realise that I cannot make much of a difference to them at all. And that's where second-guessing comes in, that I should have lived my life in such a way that would have prepared me for this worst-case scenario. I guess, in a way, because no one can find a reason to blame me for departing again, I feel obliged to blme myself.

This in itself is not a bad thing, I think; self-doubt nurtures healthy humility. We live and learn. Most importantly, we learn while living. I guess that must continue to be a guiding principle; to learn something useful, to make myself useful to others. And self-doubt can help here, by making sure that I don't settle simply for enjoying myself or for passing the time. Productivity is not enough. The lot of others must also be helped.

*

Anyway, the struggle to return to normalcy has begun. School has started or is about to start, people are returning to work, and I contemplate my flight back to New York. But even in this period, there have been moments of normalcy, brilliant for their being so familiar in the novel context of an ongoing family emergency.

On December 30th, met Kats for dinner in Little India, and we randomly ran into Ms. C, our old literature teacher from CHS and a colleague from when I was teaching there early in 2008. It was quite spooky; we were walking along the street looking for a particular restaurant for dinner, and I suddenly spotted her in the window of a large Indian place. We went in, were introduced, and chatted for a while, exchanging festive greetings and status reports about our lives overseas. What made it even spookier was that I was still reading, at that time, Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, and Ms. C and her husband were mentioned in there. I thought of taking the book out of my bag to show them, but it struck me as inappropriate.

And after a large Indian dinner, we went down to Clarke Quay, and walking randomly along, we bumped into K, V and CH, who just happened to be heading in the opposite direction. I had not even realised that K and V were back in town! The whole troupe of us went back to Robertson Quay, and over cheap Tuesday liquor, had a conversation like the old times: philosophical wanderings, local politics, heavy issues interspersed with the wry and deadpan humour that I always remember as part of secondary-school life. It was good to find these old friends again, and to simply sit and talk, nursing drinks under the open night sky, in warmth and comfort.

And then, yesterday, took a very long bike ride around the Eastern part of the island with G. We followed a path that was even longer than the one that I had done previously with, coincidentally, another G: starting from Simei, we went down to East Coast Park, stopping at the hawker centre near Bedok Jetty for lunch. Then, we rode all the way up to the Eastern end of East Coast Park, and found a pretty little cove at the mouth of a canal near the airport, where we soaked our feet for a while and I mused about how this little cove is charming not because it is comfortable (like the huge beaches of Australia's Gold Coast or Staten Island's Atlantic shore) but because it is secluded and devoid of people (except for a couple of distant fishermen on the opposite shore of the cove). And then, tracing our way along the runway of the airport and chasing taxiing jetliners, we ended up at Changi Village for tea: mainly sweet stuff, to restore our energy. Then, we made our way via Loyang and Tampines, familiar territory both, to come back to Simei.

The ride itself was imensely pleasant: long, smooth paths, the warmth of the sunshine, the scenery that surprised me for being so beautiful (I have never really thought of Singaporean naturescapes as remarkable), good food. But it was made even more enjoyable by the good company; and as always, an experience that is shared is rendered more real, more palpable by its sharing. And I am again struck by how lucky I have been in terms of the people that I have met. Her personality reminds me of PM, while her gameliness and ability to keep up reminds me strongly of YS.

But of course, people like Joel, Conan, the old gang, YS, PM, Yvonne, K and the rest are not the sort that are likely to be common, and I daresay G will also be her own person, giving rise to a friendship that will be different from all that have preceded it, but that will prove nonetheless to be equally valuable. And not to mention WL and YR, who are still weathering frozen New York. I wonder what they're doing now. I hope they're still having fun.

Mourning

2008-12-30T21:08:00.003+08:00

I had been reflecting that New York gives you a lot to reflect upon and very little time to reflect upon it, while Singapore's main drawback may well be that it gives you very little to reflect upon but a lot of time with which to reflect. Such is the recipe for boredom. But in fits and starts, Singapore can be like New York in this respect as well. When things happen, action tends to negate reflection.

Many things have changed, and my return to Singapore a week ago seems like someone else's life, or a long time ago. We are into the third day of mourning for my uncle, who passed away in the ICU a bit before noon on the last day of 2008. What can you do, in the face of something like this? You try your best to help him, and when your best proves to be insufficient, you have to continue trying your best to help the people that have been left behind: his family - my family - myself, even. You involuntarily carry on, and because involuntary actions work best under normal circumstances and also tend to produce normal circumstances, you try to carry on as normally as possible.

All told, from the onset of the stroke till today, it has only been three weeks: not enough time to get used to it, not enough time to even properly accept that something as monumental as this has actually happened. Added to the almost instinctive reversion to as much normalcy as is tenable, this gives rise to a dazed mental state; you are aware of your going through certain motions, accomplishing rites and extending hospitality to the people who are visiting the wake, but you don't think about why you're doing it. You don't think about the recent death, or the body lying in state, or the beaming pictures that are posted in the obituaries or at the head of the altar. It's almost as if there were some other event going on: a block party, a family reunion. Even in the midst of the ceremonies of mourning, you find yourself more concerned with performing the rites well and saying the right things at the right time, rather than thinking about what has just happened. I guess when things change so fast, you only have time to appreciate the superficialities; reflectiveness only percolates to deeper levels over time.

But there are breathless moments of crushing awareness. Strangely enough, these don't come when I look on the body, which has ceased to be a person but is like a monument, an alabaster cast memorialising a life. The face has already ceased to be familiar; it is the animation that I recognise, more than the physical features, and so it is easier to look upon the body because it has become distanced from what I remember. But when confronted with signs of the past, the moments of anguish come. The strongest moments surface when looking at his obituary photograph. Or when my cousins speak of their father, speculating on what he would have done if he could have intervened in how his own funeral is organised. At moments like these, the dazed, automatic actions take on an awful frenzy, a sharp edge of desperation, like when you're walking down a street absentmindedly and thn become aware of someone yo don't want to meet, and you try to continue walking past as if you hadn't noticed, but your steps have taken on a bite of urgency.

And so, our consciousnesses skirt around the issue, stepping delicately. I think partly it is because each of us doesn't think anyone else wants to discuss it, and certainly I think that it is better for all our states of mind if no one decides to bring up the issue to my aunt and cousins. Silence and avoidance is a sign of consideration and deference. But at the same time, the ennui and trivia of organising a wake also keep us busy enough to avoid thinking about it. There are elaborate rules: the big joss stick and oil lamps that must be kept burning at all times; the provision of appropriate food for each meal for the deceased; the hourly burnt paper offerings; the ritual bowing when people come to offer their respects. And then there are the pure logistics: the seating of guests and the provision of refreshments, restaurant-style; the collection of baijing, community contributions to defray the costs of the funeral; the scrutiny of expenses incurred and the regular banking in of baijing income; the struggles with insurance forms and red tape. And just in case we have any spare time on top of that, there are always bags of paper offerings to fold, repetitive origami tasks creating wads of afterlife currency that are engaging enough to be distracting but not so strenuous as to be tiring. Putting on a traditional funeral like this is really an exercise in self-distraction, and the traditions give the family a structure to follow at the very time when they are most at a loss, to tide them over the most awful immediate aftermath of bereavement.

Some of it is actually so banal as to be absurd, and there are moments when everyone's placidity and calmness is downright unsettling. The awareness of the absurdity comes on the brink of apprehension of the enormity of what has happened. As you approach the fact of death, things start to look trivial, and there comes a point when people's lack of concern over death looks like lunacy, self-delusion. And maybe it is. But it is therapeutic, and it is what is the best for people on the brink of grief - no, not on the brink but in the thick of it, for everyone is hurting, you can be sure of that.

Such, then, is the paraphenalia of passing on. There are two more days of this; the funeral is scheduled to take place on Sunday, and then the straight, clear path of the traditional funeral gives way to a much less well-defined road to recovery. There are, of course, rituals that need to be carried out up to a year after the death, but they are few and far between, no longer all-consuming. And what happens when we are faced with the inescapable fact of the death? How, for example, do you deal with bereavement that has happened so suddenly, and carry the risk of sudden departure as you yourself depart to a place thirteen timezones away? This is the worst-case scenario for anyone who is away from home. More intimately, how do you deal with the loss of someone from your own generation, the first death in the rank of the family that is just above yours, the rank of your own parents? How do you live with the loss of a parent? And still, how do you deal with the loss of a sibling? The most awful of all: how do you accept the loss of a child? Recovery is neither simple nor inevitable.

I expect that the worst moment will be at the point of cremation, when, at last, there is no more space in which to procrastinate the expression of one's grief, and as the flames transmute the physical monument, I expect that we will all feel the anguish burning in ourselves. That is the point when philosophising fails, and you cannot take the long view because something near and intimate is being lost for good. Sure, we may whine about how life is only smoke and flames and ashes - but at that point, you really appreciate what it means, and the immediacy of it, the weight of it, the inescapable substantiality of it, will overwhelm your pretensions to detachment.

*

At monumental moments, when you're aware that you are in the midst of creating a milestone in your own life, there is a tendency to philosophise, to enshrine the moment in platitudes and to emphasise the glory for one's own pleasure. But this is not just any death, and this is not just any theoretical scenario. It is hard for me to find the right words, but I think - no, feel - that I must write this down, for some purpose that is obscure now but which, I trust, will become clearer in the future.

On the last day of 2008, my uncle passed away. He was a conscientious man, a good father, sometimes strict and demanding, accepting nothing less than full effort. He was assertive, which made him a good businessman. And he was witty, cutting through pretensions, making you question your own achievements to see whether they really were substantial before you try to hoodwink him with it. He was formidable; I myself never got over a certain fear of talking to him, because I did not feel I could hold my own against his intellect. He did not accommodate weakness, and he complimented sparingly, but whenever you did get some praise out of him, you knew it was given sincerely. He was not my age; I did not speak to him enough; but I liked him, and I cannot remove him from my memories. He loved his family; he loved us; he loved me. And we loved him well.

How else can I put it? I have lost a member of my family; we all have lost a member of our family. And we grieve, together or in our own ways; but we all grieve.

Hope

2008-12-29T14:16:00.002+08:00

It has been a trying few days of watching and waiting. Have become quite familiar with hospital procedures, though not to the level of my cousins. They, who've been at their father's side since the beginning, describe to me how different coloured lights over the doors of the rooms mean different things: red for emergency, yellow for scanning. There are also the various whirring machines in the room itself: the gently hissing ventilator, the leg massager inflating and deflating rhythmically, the feed tube with its periodically turning rotor. Everything is well regulated, well controlled and orderly. Predictability is a strong point for Western medicine, giving us an impression of what to expect. And though all the machines, with their clockwork functioning, and the well-documented procedures of the hospital conspire to paint a picture that is not all that rosy, at least having a basis to prepare ourselves is a comfort.

Preparing ourselves for what, though? On the one hand, I guess it would be irresponsible of us not to prepare for the worst-case scenario. And the people in the ICU typically don't last long. My cousins tell me of two patients who have passed through the inauspiciously-numbered Room 14, one of whom was a convict who apparently took his own life by yanking out his own respirator, finally eluding the two stern prison guards posted to look after him. The nurses also whisper among themselves of the ill fates of the patients that are admitted to the ICU. And to pretend that there is no danger not is to delude oneself. And yet, there is also a feeling that making preparations for the worst case is also a form of cursing the patient, kind of like making a prophecy that you know will be self-fulfilling. There is a certain feeling in the room that as few preparations should be made as possible, to prevent the spirit from interpreting precautions as invitations.

One result is, of course, that we adopt many euphemisms to tiptoe around the topic. Even here, I feel constrained not to use overly strong terminology to describe the situation. Thus, we speak of "passing through", or "passing away", or "going up there", as if being any more specific would be to tempt fate. And whenever we speak in the room, we intentionally try to be upbeat, even irreverent, believing that somehow, my uncle can still hear us, and that we can either encourage him or irritate him into regaining consciousness. At any rate, even if it makes no difference to him, it does make a difference to the people around him. What we say may sound slightly delusional or disrespectful to an observer, but it is good for us, because it helps to maintain a sense of normalcy, without which this situation would overwhelm us.

The goal is, of course, to elicit a response from my uncle. The trouble is that to our untrained eyes, any response is a good response. This morning, while visiting, I touched his foot and he jerked it back from my hand, in much the same way as any conscious person would respond to tickling. I was made to understand that this is a reflex action rather than an indication of consciousness, but it was so lively and so normal that I thought we had had a breakthrough. And then there are the little movements in the toes and in the fingers and in the neck, as nerves get stimulated somehow and respond like they are meant to respond, with movements that are moving because they are so normal. The movements show that the body is intact, I am made to understand; the only thing is that the consciousness is blocked by blood clots near the brain stem. Somehow, somehow, those clots must either be removed or be bypassed.

Another thing that I noticed was the stark difference between the approaches of Western and Chinese medicine. Where Western doctors are grave, distant and placid, the Chinese doctors (a master physician and an acupuncturist) are easily excitable, enthusiastic and empathic. An examination by a Western doctor may just be a few minutes looking at the waveforms and the numbers on the monitor, whereas the Chinese doctors do not hesitate to feel the patient, moving limbs, pinching and poking. I found it especially incomprehensible how sometimes a doctor or a houseman would come in and peruse the charts showing the bodily numerics without one glance at the patient. And it is surely counterproductive for both Chinese and Western doctors to look at each other with distrust bordering on blatant hostility. After all, as long it does no harm, shouldn't any approach be tried if it has a chance of doing good?

The nursing staff, though, are extremely helpful and supportive. They are clearly interested in the TCM treatments, and they also express their surprise at how strong the reflex actions are in my uncle, but they're also committed to the Western approach. So, they sometimes furtively express their support and how impressed they are with the effects of TCM. I myself, too, am ambivalent about the use of TCM. It does seem to have a chance of working, and it certainly is better for our state of mind than simply waiting (as is the Western approach at this point), but the Chinese doctors seem to be a bit too confident for my liking, citing miraculous recoveries as evidence of there still being hope. We already know that there is hope; the only thing is now to get an accurate impression of just how much hope there is, and it doesn't help to base our impression on the outlier cases of medical miracles.

At this point, though, I think it is obvious that the greatest value of the Chinese approach is that it gives us something to do. My relatives look forward to the visits from the Chinese doctors with eagerness, and they go about acquiring the rare medicines with gusto and enthusiasm. It is certainly better for us than simply watching and waiting. The hope is that, of course, it is also better for my uncle.

*

And, not being able to travel at this point in time, contrary to my original plan to bus my way through the Northeast US, I am indulging in my old love for travel literature, reading Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, which is a sequel to his earlier The Great Railway Bazaar. I read the other book in Taiwan, when we were there for military training, and enjoyed it immensely - the descriptions of each country that he passes through, the incredible people that he bumps into, the remarkable experiences that seem to find him spontaneously, and of course, the long and interminable pleasure of a slow train ride that reinforced my own impression of the romance of rails.

Now, reading Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, I revisit that previous book and that previous experience. The latter book retraces the route taken by the former book: nearly the same rails across Asia, but with 33 years in between the two trips, and all the changes that it has wrought. Theroux continues to give gripping descriptions of the people and places that he discovers along the way, but this time there is a delicious nostalgia attached to it, because this time round it is really a revisiting, a long, stretched-out return not so much to a place but to a journey. He doesn't really search for a rediscovery of the old experience, but he does run into it again and again, and the differences and - more importantly - the similarities between then and now creates the most compelling contrasts. The book simultaneously moves forward and goes back, generating a tension of memory.

And then, sitting in the hospital room amidst the serene whirrings and hummings, I read this moving passage, of Theroux quoting a short story that he was working on on his way through India:

"She had come to understand what the solitary long-distance traveller eventually knows after months on the road - that, in the course of time, a trip stops being an interlude of distractions and detours, pursuing sights, looking for pleasures, and becomes a series of disconnections, giving up comfort, abandoning or being abandoned by friends, passing the time in obscure places, inured to the concept of delay, since the trip itself was a succession of delays.

Solving problems, finding meals, buying new clothes and giving away old ones, getting laundry done, buying tickets, scavenging for cheap hotels, studying maps, being alone but not lonely. It was not about happiness but safety, finding serenity, making discoveries in all this locomotion and an equal serenity when she had a place to roost, like a bird of passage migrating slowly in a sequence of flights."

I don't think that all good travel must be solitary travel, but solitary travel does have a particular pleasure attached to it. And I am taken back to days wandering on whim in Penang, long slow walks in Sabah and Sarawak, other early-morning or evening strolls along rivers far away...the sense of freedom, the yearning to have someone to share it with, the knowledge that not many people look for the same things that I look for in travel. The feeling that solitude is necessary for this kind of enjoyment, contrasted with the impulsive desire to share this enjoyment with someone else. In a situation like this, even that contradictory yearning becomes pleasurable.

And of course, there is always the allure of Elsewhere...

*

Also, over the last few days, have been revisiting old haunts. Went with G down to the Esplanade to try our luck at the free performances, striking gold with a concert of prodigiously talented young rockers and another rock band playing rather good original compositions in the new, enlarged Outdoor Theatre. It was a bit of a pity that the new Outdoor Theatre had sacrificed a bit of beauty for practicality: the sails that had framed the skyline so well in the old Theatre now extend all the way across, blocking out the cityscape but enabling concerts to be carried out in the rain. Nevertheless, it was a special moment, coming back to this well-loved spot, clapping eyes again on the well-loved skyline for the first time since coming back. Noting the changes: the monumental shapes of the Marina Bay Sands towers rising on a daily basis, the first new towers of the New Downtown also climbing to the sky. Noting the constants: the familiar riverside shape of the city, the old bayfront spot at the Esplanade, the same clear tropical sky at dusk.

And then yesterday, met I, K and E from UPenn with G for lunch at Siglap, tucking into Vietnamese food and claypot rice that would have been considered way too overpriced in the days before going to New York. It was a good reunion, on this side of returning, but a bit strange, too. Seeing familiar people and a familiar context, but with the former never having been inserted into the latter before - this created a certain novelty in the situation, a certain self-consciousness on my part, the awareness of disparate social spheres converging. And of course, similarly the previous night, performance-hunting with G at the Esplanade, I was aware of how this compares with rushing for Broadway shows in our last days in New York before returning: the breathless sprints from theatre to theatre, certain of landing a cheap ticket to a world-class show before the evening was out. Now that my perspective also encompasses four months in the US, coming back has a certain tinge of nostalgia and discomfiture as well. Sort of like Theroux retracing his steps.

But I also realise, to my surprise, that returning really isn't as hard as I'd thought it would be. Not that much has changed, after all, and it is easy to slip into old habits again, habits that have lain in wait for your return. The experience of the last six months has not been revolutionary; it is more evolutionary, a continuation from previous processes rather than a break with the past. It is a comfort to discover this, that returning is possible, and that returning is pleasurable, and that there need not be a conflict between the old and the new.

Returning

2008-12-26T10:59:00.002+08:00

On Boxing Day morning, I woke up in my old bed and realised with a sense of relief that I am home.

There are certain sounds that are particular to my home. Rather than the wailing sirens, sudden delighted screams and murmur of unseen aircraft of Manhattan, here there are only the sounds of children laughing, of the distant hum of the MRT train, of a drill running at a nearby construction site. I hear the distinct hollow sound of doors opening and closing in my home, of people walking around barefoot. I feel the warmth in the air, the firmness of my old bed. It is a deep sensual familiarity that I woke up to this morning. And my first thought was that although my room in Columbia is definitely mine - I had gone through a lot of trouble to make it that way - my room is not the same as my home.

Coming home was easier than I'd expected. Rather than being oppressed by the heat after sub-zero temperatures in New York, it was easy to adjust to the pleasant humidity here, and it is a definite pleasure to be able to walk around without worrying about windchill or frostbite. And though there's now a new lift shaft in my old block of flats, practically nothing has changed around here. And what struck me the most, things that I'd taken very much for granted until this return, were the quiet purring of the MRT trains (not the obnoxious clanging and screeching of the subway), the cleanliness of the sidewalks, the sheer space between the high-rise apartment blocks, the greenery all around. And compared to New Yorkers, Singaporeans are really gentle and polite. Rather than coming off as standoffish, the people I see on the streets seem more respectful and courteous. After the cramped exuberance of New York, Singapore streets and Singapore life seem to me to be so luxuriously spacious.

Don't get me wrong: liking Singapore this much upon my return doesn't mean that I didn't like New York to death. Both places are wonderful; even now, I'm thinking what it must be like to spend the last few hours of Christmas in New York, what it must be like for the people that I left behind there. Singapore is not New York, just as New York is not Singapore. What I am coming to realise, though, is that neither is mutually exclusive. Indeed, they may even be mutually reinforcing: liking one seems to make my love for the other stronger. Each is endearing in and of itself, but each becomes even more compelling when seen in contrast with the other.

*

Went down to the hospital yesterday to see my uncle for the first time. As a general rule, I don't like hospitals, but the visit wasn't as hard as I'd expected. The hospital staff were supportive and gentle with us, and those people who came to visit didn't seem overcome or romantic. It does help that people are facing this with a minimum of drama, rather preferring to approach this as practically as possible, doing all that needs to be done, without indulging in self-pity. And it is true: simply being here makes a difference, both for my own peace of mind and for that of my family.

All things considered, despite everything that has happened, I guess it really could be worse. The doctors tell us that his vital signs are remarkably good, and that he has already lasted longer than expected. Of course, they are also careful to avoid rousing unreasonable hopes. But it seems that at some level, he is still unquestionably alive. I hesitate to say whether or not he is alive enough to recover. Perhaps that would be asking too much. But he is still here - and as for the rest of my family, we are all still here too, together and with him.

It is uncanny, though, to see that familiar face transformed by illness and by the medical machinery that is entwined around him. The readouts are cryptic, and I spent quite a bit of time yesterday trying to decode the hieroglyphs on the monitors: acronyms and waveforms pregnant with undeciphered meanings. The familiar face, too, is opaque to my understanding, uncommunicative, unapproachable. If there is consciousness still somewhere in there, there is no link of communication. I suppose to a trained eye, even the colour of his skin can be meaningful, but I am not trained to interpret these messages. I wonder, though, if I would like what I saw if I could read it. Maybe the incomprehensibility of medical information is also for the good of those who are conscious enough to be upset if they knew the truth.

*

Yesterday, given the situation, we broke with family tradition and cancelled the Christmas party, rather opting for a meal cooked by my brother. Had a small dinner with my family and that of my father's sister, a simple affair of rice and soup and steamed fish and stir-fried vegetables and stuffed chicken, a dinner spent dispelling myths about New York and getting reacquainted with happenings at home. Did you know that the Singapore Flyer, that colossal observation wheel, broke down, leaving hundreds of people stranded in its observation cabins dozens of metres above ground? In Singapore, moments of high drama are touched by a feeling of absurdity.

This was one of the signs that signalled to me that I have come home. The other was a quiet, gentle awakening in my old bed this morning. And yet another was on the plane. By a stroke of luck, we had taken the Southern approach into Singapore, and from my window seat, I happened to look out at the right time and my heart seized as I recognised the familiar island shapes. And then the great 747 dipped its wing, and that well-loved skyline of towers appeared above the wing edge, shrouded in the early-morning greyness, but still seeming to be beckoning to me with so much promise and familiarity. I have known this place well; how can you say no to a place like this? This city is not New York, even if it wants very much to be like New York. But it is home, and unquestionably so, and that is enough for now.

Tension

2008-12-24T04:48:00.003+08:00

Things have moved quickly since Saturday. Now, unexpectedly, I am on the verge of going home. Things at home have taken a turn for the worse, and I feel like I'm needed there, not because my presence will make any practical difference (even if I would like to think so), but because I think my being present will be better for my own state of mind, and I hope also for the state of mind of my family.

So I have a plane ticket for tonight, transiting through Heathrow, and arriving in Singapore on Christmas morning. Christmas eve in the air is not something that I'm looking forward to, but if it's needed then it's needed. And in a bit more than 30 hours' time, the white-blanketed landscape outside that I have grown to love so much will be replaced with another much-loved cityscape. It's mind-boggling how things have come to this in such a short span of time. A week ago, I was still doing astronomy questions in a frenzy, and looking forward to the end of term and a week full of celebrations and lazy aimless afternoons, evenings walking and nights of good conversations. I was hunkering down for a long winter in New York City; and as I look around now in my room, there are signs of a long stay all over the place: the food stocked up, the new supply of winter clothes bought, the new 2009 calendar already pinned up and waiting for the first flip. And now, in a few hours' time, I'll be making my way to Newark Airport and going to the other side of the world.

The other side of the world...where I'm going and where I've been in the last week both seem so alien from my position now. Home is far away, and six months removed from my experience, and the family emergency stands between me and the entire period preceding the end of the final exams. This is an interstitial state that I am inhabiting now - I'm between a departure that was effectively decided last Wednesday and an arrival that will take place on Thursday morning. I want to be somewhere else but here. I want to arrive and be at peace. But at this point in time, I don't think I'm quite ready to depart yet. And certainly not ready to arrive. To return.

I wrote once, long, long ago, in the jungles of Brunei, how a return is made meaningful by change, and we see most clearly what remains constant over time when we return from a long trip. These things are the most important. But this sudden return has left me with insufficient time to prepare for what I'll find when I return. I am unprepared to arrive, and I fear that what I'll find will not be what I expect. Essentially, I fear that the things that I regard as important will be revealed to be transient after all.

And so, in reaction, I cling to the past week, going out as much as I can, to squeeze all that I can out of this week, just so I can remain engaged and avoid being alone. Went on a movie marathon yesterday with G, YR, WR and SN, sneaking into multiple movies on one ticket to get our money's worth. Then we returned to the Ethiopian restaurant that I had visited with A, M and S, and over dinner we suddenly started speaking of politics at home, and it felt like we were in the centre of things surveying our possible futures. And also returned, again and again over the last few days, to Union Square, to buy presents for my family back home, because although Christmas this year is truncated, it should still be marked in some way.

And going through this last week, poised on the verge of both hope and grief, with moments of illuminating clarity and happiness juxtaposed with moments of deepest pain, I find that I have grown to love this life I have here, and the people that I share it with: both old friends and new, both here and elsewhere. I still count myself as extremely lucky to have made so many good friends, friends that have proven to be trustworthy and understanding, people that I can work with and talk to and eat with or simply be with. How things have come to this I do not know; there are moments when I am struck by how undeserving I am of all this, and I fear that I have somehow stepped accidentally into someone else's life, and that the real owner will turn up any moment and have me evicted. In the meantime, though, I am grateful to all my friends for their support and understanding. I cannot imagine what I would have done without them. I suppose it would have been something like Frexprog One, only so much worse due to the acute irony.

And as for this place...what can I say? On the verge of leaving New York City, I am sad that I will not be able to pass the holidays here. I cannot pretend that a part of me doesn't want to go home, and would rather go ice-skating under the great Christmas tree at Rockefeller Centre, watch the ball drop at Times Square and have an intimate dinner with a few friends to toast the start of another great year. This was what I'd imagined this winter would be like, ever since I confirmed my flight to New York in August. How can you say no to these beguiling streets, these streetcorner surprises, these singing subways, this unscripted and spontaneous drama of real life in New York? Things happen here, and a part of me yearns to stay to see what will happen next.

But a return is required, and a part of me also understands that it is good to go back. A change of scenery is nice, no matter how it comes about, and it will be great to have warmth again, and cheap, good food, and a mass transit system that works flawlessly, and my family around me. A part of me wants to see what returning will be like, what gaps have opened up, and which ones can be bridged through storytelling and regaling.

No part of me, though, wants to be in this state: already determined to leave, but waiting to depart, and waiting to arrive. Waiting is the hardest part of all this. I want to either be en route or already there, or not going anywhere at all. I am impatient to get underway, to put an end to this terrible waiting. No long goodbye this time, then.

And this is the 150th entry. What a way to end the year.

Double

2008-12-20T23:14:00.003+08:00

I haven't written in a long time, and in the intervening period a lot of things have happened. Most of them have actually been happy things, but there is one thing that happened at home that has been especially worrying. We live and learn. But the important thing is that we live.

My mind is pregnant (in the sense of Plato's Diotima) with things to say, but I don't have much energy to say it. I guess this will be rather short.

*

Two weeks ago, A, M, S, a few of their friends and I went down to Midtown to see the Rockefeller Centre Tree Lighting Ceremony: you know, the famous giant tree that's placed above the famous skating rink. We headed down right after classes, but by the time we got there, the surrounding streets had already been blocked off by the NYPD for crowd control, and there was no way to get to a spot where the tree itself could be seen. And thinking that it would not be very fun to stand out in the cold watching a Jumbotron big-screen squeezed in with teenagers screaming at Jessica Elba et al (Britney Spears cancelled at the last minute), we headed back uptown instead for a spot of dinner.

We found this quaint Ethiopian restaurant up on 122nd, and decided to give it a try. The meal cost about $15 per person, but considering the quality and quantity of the food, it's a real steal. Fragrant meats and vegetables stacked into steaming mounds on a platter so large that it warms your heart just looking at it, on a bed of flat roti-like bread with more flat bread on the side. You eat with your hands, tearing off a piece of bread and picking up portions of the dishes. The warmth of the food seeps into your fingertips, and the scents are sensually felt. And after all the dishes are gone, you eat the bed of bread, which has soaked up all the gravies, and that makes for a satisfying dessert.

And of course, the company was great as well. Sometimes you're lucky to meet people that you can get along with handsomely from the beginning, and the conversation flowed so easily around that laden table. It was an easy night, one of the last nights before the final exams when we could be at ease and linger over food talking into the night. Every day, there has been a sense of urgency, and lingering is quite a luxury. To linger: to appreciate; indeed, to savour the moment - that is a challenge and an art.

*

The other big news is, of course, that it's snowing in New York. It started about two weeks ago. Y, J, W and I had just come out of a concert of mediaeval Christmas songs from the nearby Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and suddenly we noticed that there were white flakes falling from the sky. We - well, at least I - freaked, and as we walked down the street back to Columbia, I was sticking my tongue out like someone out of a Charlie Brown cartoon trying to catch a flake of New York snow (I'm told it's not recommended for health reasons). We were meant to be studying, but the dusting of white compelled me, J and W to keep walking into the night. We went all the way up to Harlem, eating a cut of frozen yogurt on the way (because cold things taste better in cold weather).

And yesterday, it snowed really hard, until visibility was reduced to just under 20m. The weather's so cold outside that the snow's still there this morning. The season lends itself to such things as snowball fights and snowman-building, and throughout last night you could hear intermittent squeals and screams as girls were hit by flying snow. The snowmen have been sprouting like mushrooms, and right in front of my dorm is a veritable igloo, with well-shaped blocks and an entranceway. All the rooftops around are covered with white. All you need is for a universal soundtrack of Christmas carols, and you won't be able to resist being happy.

*

And to mark the end of term, we had another steamboat in one of my hall's lounges, running down to Chinatown right after the last paper to buy the food and coming back to the chopping and cleaning and marinating. We actually did a really good job, I think, especially when Ja whipped up a very commendable marinade for the chicken, which transformed it from food into a delicacy. We're quite lucky, too, to have met this boy from Queens. Without his culinary skills, we'd really be rather high and dry foodwise.

With the weather becoming colder outside, and with the finals just ended, and with the holidays stretching ahead, pleasantly uncommitted, it was exactly what I needed to be with familiar people and eating a communal meal. This steamboat reminded me so clearly of the meals we had at home - meals that my family are, I trust, still having at home. I am, of course, in such a different context and so far away from them. But I have been unbelievably lucky here, especially to meet all these people. You get your family wherever you can have them. And the most important thing this holiday season, after all the academic and professional distractions have died down, is to be together with people you know and care about.

Here, then, is a group of people that I have come to care very deeply about.

*

And on Thursday morning, suddenly I get a message on my phone saying that P, E and K from UPenn were in town and looking for things to do. So we hooked up with them to show them around town. Went to Times Square and walked down to Macy's hunting for cheap clothes, and then made a mad dash up 10 blocks back to 45th Street, a street lined with theatres, to watch August: Osage County. It was a mind-blowing piece of drama about a family dealing with the (apparent) suicide of their father. It was spectacular: they'd built an entire cutaway dollhouse on the stage, and the characters wandered in and out of it, from room to room, up and down stairs, lights turning on and off in a disconcertingly familiar way. And amidst all this, a morbidly fascinating family drama played out, with the daughters competing to see who has had the happiest life, trying to hide their insecurities and neuroses from each other, and with the mother descending into willful dementia that brings about cutting lucidity and violent veracity.

It was especially hard to watch this drama, particularly when the family started to tear into each other over the funeral dinner, because just before the steamboat the previous night, just after I completed my last exam, I'd received word from home about one of my close relatives being hospitalized for a stroke. This is, of course, extremely worrying in and of itself, but I've mentioned before that for someone going far away from home, such a happening is especially fearsome. Of course, I understand that at this point in time there's not much anyone can do except wait to see what's going to happen, but it is also important to simply be there, especially for his family. And, stuck as I am 13 timezones away with only a few hundred dollars for the rest of the month, there is no practicable way to be there for them at the moment, unless I do something drastic. And given the current situation, something drastic may be called for. Times like these, you realise the importance of being present, just to be there to share the pain.

It's a strange position that I'm in right now. I of course join my family in clinging on to the hope that my uncle recovers, and I join them too in my concern for his family and how they are holding up. But I have the luxury of distance; if I wanted to, I could escape from these worries and immerse myself in what there is to do around me in New York. Thirteen timezones does tend to reset your perspective on things. I'm sure that my family back home also don't want to keep thinking about this, but it is so much more immediate for them: all it takes is a phone call or SMS to spread the news if anything more happens. It is, I guess, a sense of guilt for being so far away when something like this happens. Not the guilt of escaping, per se, but the guilt of possessing the means to escape if I wanted to. And I see that, from a certain point of view, there is not much of a difference between the two.

So it was, then, that it was especially hard to watch August: Osage County with this hanging over my head. It was a funny play, sharp and witty, but I kept getting the eerie sense that there was a meaning reserved only for me that I was decoding because of my own personal history. There was an especially disturbing moment when, after the father goes missing, one of his daughters grabs the shoulders of her own daughter out of the blue, and demands, "Die after me." "Live," she implored. How am I supposed to read this, especially in the light of...no, the rest is too private.

One is faced with two options here, I guess: to focus on the imminence of death, or to go for its antithesis, to take the former as motivation to focus on the living of life. And I guess you have to choose the latter. The dead don't care about dying anymore, and if you focus on the former you're practically experiencing a part of your own death prematurely. I mean, moments like these call for you to commit to life, don't they? Not only to life, but to the continuous active verb form: living. Maybe it's a mental trick for me to reconcile the opportunities I find around me with the tragedy that's playing itself out at home. Maybe it's flimsy excuse to carry on as if nothing's happened, in the face of imminent catastrophe. But to choose to live on, I think, is deeply important. It is one of the choices that we make that keep us one step ahead of being merely passive victims of chance and fate and whatnot. It is one of the choices, one of the very few choices, that can instill meaning into every moment, in a postmodern context.

And so, it was especially important, I think, that these last few days be well spent, both as the best way for me to help my family at the moment (so that they don't worry about me while they worry about my uncle as well), and, if I may be so bold, as the best way to pay tribute to all that has happened before that has led up to this. For certainly, my uncle has played a part in how I have ended up here, in my 21st year of life, and for me not to take everything to the fullest is a sort of betrayal of his involvement.

So, after the play, brought P, K, E, G, J and W to the Jap bar that I'd gone to with another group of friends over Thanksgiving, and there we sent off the first semster in style, tucking into yakitori, ramen, udon and several other unsayable (and unspeakable) things. We also polished off two bottles of sake, coming up to about 3.6 litres of the stuff between the seven of us. This stuff is a great drink, but rather dangerous, because it goes down so easily that you don't really notice that you're getting intoxicated. Eventually, we managed to stumble our way out of the bar and wound up in the subway, somehow. As usual, the New York subway was in the process of breaking down, and we couldn't go any further than 42nd Street. J and W brought the rest to the surface to go back to Columbia by cab, while I had to stay with K, because he was too woozy to move, and instead spent about half an hour slumped over on a subway staircase, attracting the concerned stares of passersby and two NYPD officers.

Ultimately, though, we ended up back at Columbia and slept it off. And yesterday, brought them down to Union Square to do some shopping. It was heavily snowing in the morning, which was really pretty, but in the afternoon it couldn't make up its mind whether to snow or to rain or to hail, and it was quite the challenge to walk around Union Square, jumping colossal puddles, ducking cars and practically skating across sidewalk glaciers. Dropped the rest at the Strand while I brought P nearby to do some last-minute shopping. And then, after enjoying a wonderful cup of hot chocolate from the original Max Brenner's at Union Square, brought them back to where they'd dumped their luggage and then sent them off in their car to the airport.

It was, of course, great fun to have the UPenn people down for these couple of days, and it was great to be able to get out into the city again. But there were moments of surreal irony, when the joy of the moment was thrown into sharp contrast with the worry and the dread that I imagine must permeate the atmosphere back home. It is hard to reconcile the experienced happiness and the projected sadness back home. It makes everything that is happening now around me much more poignant: the steamboat, the rowdy night at the bar, the trek through the awful weather around Union Square, even the quiet hours of studying in regional libraries before the exam, the walks back to campus in the nights, the simple pleasures of rambling conversations over food. It makes it so much more important, now, to experience everything as fully as possible. And of course, to wait with hope.

We shall see what happens next.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-03T13:21:00.006+08:00

And so, the Thanksgiving weekend passes in a whirlwind of beers, dim rooms, shisha smoke, Garth Merenghi, Asian food, subway rides, long walks and reunions. It was an unbelievable weekend, as many people came from all over the Northeast to New York, and old social circles and new social circles met and combined in captivating social kaleidoscopes.

Over the weekend, I found that I have two great gaping holes in my knowledge of New York, specifically concerning the nightlife options available, and also the various places to get the best food in New York. The former is because 1) I don't have enough money to investigate the nightlife on a regular basis - indeed, on any sort of basis at all, and 2) I hadn't really been all that interested, to be honest. And the former is because my trusty NYC Free and Dirt Cheap guidebook doesn't include (understandably) top-end stuff. For these two lacunae, though, connections with other friends (especially the NYU people, who, having their school situated right in downtown Manhattan, are ludicrously well connected) proved to be extremely useful. At any rate, we went to so many places that I'd never even dreamed of going into that I find myself suddenly swamped with places to explore.

One of the places that we went to was Cafe Wha?, which is apparently the place where Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan were talent-spotted. Despite its worldwide renown, though, it's still a tiny space crammed into the basement of a short boutique on a small street off Washington Square. On the night that we went there, right before Thanksgiving, the place was crammed with tables and chairs, and every available space was taken up by people. Into the dingy space we went, and discovered a live band playing priceless numbers from the golden age of rock. I was rather taken by how I recognised almost every song, from Sweet Child of Mine to Hey-ya. And between singing along (rather ineffectually - though the place is small it has a superpowered sound system) and squeezing into the narrow aisles to dance (or, more accurately, jump up and down, since lateral movement was pretty much out of the question), I found that it was actually really fun. I never thought of myself as much of a nightlife person, and certainly the bill for that night tells me that I can't do something like that every other week, but I was really surprised by how fun it was. Joel was right - you need to get a little buzzed, and more crucially, I think, you need to go with people you know.

Another place was this Japanese bar at St. Mark's Place (in the Lower East Side) called Kenka. We found it on the evening of Thanksgiving Day, and when I stepped into it, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like something out of a Kuroshawa flick, with a peeling samurai poster on the back wall, a cluttered counter doubling as a bar and sushi joint, several dozen tables and scores of young Japanese and Chinese people doing away with cheap Sapporo beer by the jug and sticks of yakitori. Even the harried serving staff, with their dirty aprons and tired smiles that they could turn on and off on demand, seemed to have been chosen to fit in with the decor and enhance the atmosphere. This is, of course, a place to linger, with a pint costing only $1.50, and various snacks costing onl $5 per serving. Amidst the hubbub of people relishing the arrival of the holidays, you feel yourself transported, and you are inclined to ruminate over how you got here into this little fragment of Japan when moments ago you had just walked out of the No. 6 subway line.

*

To commemorate the special event of our first Thanksgiving, though, the first-years invested in a steamboat dinner. I, WL and J (our friend from Flushing who is also a skilled cook) went down to Chinatown to buy the food, the pot and the stove, and came back to our dorm to set up the meal. I have to say that we did a passable job. The meats were a tad bland because we didn't marinate any of it (it didn't occur to me at least that the meat should have been marinated, since I assumed that raw meat worked like meatballs or crabsticks - goes to show how much I know about cooking), but you can't go far wrong with fishballs, cabbage, rice and noodles. The best part, as usual, was the soup: clear, wholesome and, most importantly, piping hot. I daresay that we'll be having quite a lot of steamboats over the winter, especially when the dining halls close for the holidays. And there is a sort of pathos in a group of Asian students huddled over a bubbling hotpot on a winter night.

The dining halls were closed over the weekend, so everyone basically had to go out and make do with whatever we could afford on the open market. Over the weekend, I hooked up with various groups to sample the Asian fare of NYC, including the still-good Nyonya restaurant in Chinatown, another Indonesian-Malaysian restaurant whose name escapes me, and the Saigon Grill near Union Square - all of which serve what they purport to serve. The last one was especially atas, being in a prime location, but it does a remarkably authentic pho (one of the most affordable items on the menu), given its location in New York. Between that and the fare around Columbia (Mill Korean Restaurant and Tom's Restaurant of Seinfeld fame), we rounded out our meals over the weekend - and you can imagine how much cash was spent on food!

*

Special events over the weekend were provided courtesy on NYC, in honour of Thanksgiving. So after Cafe Wha?, which kept us out till about 4am, I went down to Central Park West to hook up with some other visitors for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which started, to my dismay, at 9am. By the time I got there with JK at about 8.30am, the place was already filled to capacity; there was essentially zero movement along the sidewalks fronting the parade route. And, as I'm coming to realise about New Yorkers in large crowds, everyone was in high spirits, being far more gracious than I'd expected them to be, given the early hour and the inhuman crush (at one point in time my weight was completely supported by the people around me). Kids were lifted up onto shoulders, kids were squirming between legs to get to the front of the crowd, kids were jumping up and down trying to see.

The parade itself consisted basically of enormous floats interspersed with marching bands from the various states of the Union. It was fun to see a giant floating Pikachu, Snoopy, Buzz Lightyear, Ronald McDonald, Spongebob et all bobbing along Central Park West, tugged gently through the crisp morning air by the tethers attached to a troop of puppeteers on the ground. Also, it was exciting to try to spot the celebrities, including child stars like Miley Cyrus and her protege (a pretty little girl whom I don't recognise at all), and the American Idol runner-up Daniel Whatshisname. But after a while, you realise that it's really just marketing by Macy's to get the kids to pester their parents in the run-up to Christmas. However, there was a special moment at the end, when Santa's float comes down the avenue. Santa always ends the parade, being the last float, and this year, the big red sleigh carrying the rotund and white-haired man was followed by huge red and green stars emblazoned simply with one word: "Believe".

And after that, New York offers another legendary event: Black Friday (so named not because of its tragic element, though someone did die from it on Long Island apparently, but because on this day the balance books of major retailers all go into the black). Essentially, it's the first day of the pre-Christmas sales, and all over the US stores were slashing their prices. In New York, as if discounts were not enough (and they really were not enough - there seemed to be hardly any difference in price), stores also opened extra-early. Macy's (the department store that's as large as a city block and five storeys high) opened their doors at 5am; Woodbury Commons, a huge factory outlet centre for branded goods, started doing business at midnight. Some friends actually went all the way upstate for the Woodbury Commons event, and came back laden with the fruits of a good night's work. For myself, though, I stuck with Joel, Conan, Ihui and Mark in NY and trawled SoHo instead. It was (for me at least) a journey marked by futility, because despite the discounts I still could not afford to buy anything. The price cuts are hardly on the same scale as the Great Singapore Sale.

*

So, the weekend was really stuffed with things to do. Beyond all the myriad happenings, though, was the inherent value of meeting up with friends, different groups of friends, old friends and new ones. Basically, lots of people converged on New York for the Thanksgiving break: the old gang from CHS, new friends from UVa, YS (who surprised me by coming back to NY after all), and naturally, friends from NYU as well. Made quite a lot of new Singaporean acquaintances, friends of friends who turned up at the mass Singaporean dinners that happened every other day. Shuttling between groups took up most of the remaining time; I had never before taken the subways so often.

When big groups of Singaporeans congregate, the usual tendency arises that drives a sort of competition to prove who's leading a more happening life. Like I said before, it's not a question of whether people are leading good lives: those who actually don't like it here are rare. It's just that the tendency to aggrandise the joy, to vie for the title of being the happiest overseas student, seems to me to be such vanity. And anyway, such preening doesn't contribute anything to the happiness of one's life, unless one actually gets the acknowledgement that one is competing for. This, I think, could be part of the reason why Soph always found Singaporeans distasteful, especially when she encountered them abroad, and in big groups. There is a tangible, unpleasant edge, as if it is a matter of honour not to allow any doubt about one's success and enjoyment of one's life overseas.

But anyway, in small groups, everyone's amicable enough. Met lots of interesting and nice people over the weekend from far afield (inevitably, because there were so many Singaporeans in NY over the weekend that we were running into them randomly on the streets), and certainly there are people who I would like to keep in contact with. This weekend was a prime opportunity to diversify my social circle, at least in the Singaporean sphere. And this was made easier by the fact that we all already tend to come from similar social circles, so it's not that hard to transform a shared past experience into a shared present link. And it gets even better when the group isn't entirely Singaporean, as was the case with the UVa people. We had only met once, that evening in Charlottesville at C's apartment, but it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to resume our conversations. I guess partly it's because when you're abroad and in a strange place, every familiar face becomes so much more significant. But there also seems to be an effect that the more diverse the group, the less likely that it will be pretentious, or at least vain.

And then, of course, there's YS, who came back to NYC. I'm not sure why, but I was sure glad to see her again, especially since she's going to fly back to Asia soon, and I'd not been able to say a proper goodbye in Charlottesville. So, when I got her message that she was going to come to NYC over Thanksgiving with her mother, it was startlingly timely. How has it come to this, that we would be arranging meetings that would span entire states, in a city on the other side of the globe from home? We've travelled together before, but these transatlantic rendezvous are a whole new level. I guess it's partly a signal that we've grown up, and we can now plan suc big hops by ourselves. Anyway, caught up with her at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then again on Saturday night for dinner before she and her mother went to the Lincoln Centre to watch the NYC Ballet perform The Nutcracker, and then one last time on Sunday morning to help them move from their hostel on 94th to the bus station on 34th. And this time round, it was a good goodbye; or, at least, it was a better goodbye. And now, certainly, it will be another six months before I can even consider seeing my old travelmate again.

And of course, there's the gang from CHS. Somehow, as things have worked out, four of us have managed to end up in the Northeastern United States, and while Joel and I have met up rather regularly over the last semester, this was the first time that the four of us (Ihui and Conan) have gotten together since leaving. It seems like not so long ago, that everyone was at the glass gates of Changi Airport, singing (of all things) Sinatra's number about New York. But it's already been almost an entire semester, and the seasons have changed, and we've gone through experiences that are not entirely the same. I went into this weekend with the fear that we'd have drifted too far over the last six months to recapture the easy camaraderie that we used to have. And certainly, I get the impression that I've drifted farther from them, even if they've not drifted farther from each other. I get pulled along by them, trying to keep up, and finding that it takes all my effort simply not to lose track of them. I guess part of the problem is that I can't let go as easily as I could back in the NS days, when time and money didn't matter so much. I find that now, I'm much more self-conscious than I was even six months ago. But still, it's worth the effort to tag along with these people, and throughout the weekend, I was repeatedly struck by the sheer improbability of these relationships, how they have lasted not only the better part of a decade but how they have survived the transplantation to a new continent - and how I still find myself a part of all this, despite everything. It is a privilege to which I find myself struggling to prove myself worthy.

There you have it, then: a magical, magical weekend. I can't see how things can get any better than this. Well, actually I can see one way: to reproduce something like this with non-Singaporeans, and especially with Americans. And an opportunity to do just that may be coming up tomorrow, as I hook up with some CUErs to go to the star-studded (in both senses of the word) tree-lighting ceremony down at Rockefeller Centre. In the meantime, though, I'm still basking in the afterglow of Thanksgiving. May things only get better from here for everyone.

Weekend Culture

2008-11-23T12:32:00.004+08:00

It's gotten really cold here! It is literally freezing outside, and the weather reports show that it's started snowing all around New York City, even as close by as Philadelphia. We've apparently had some flurries here (mostly early-morning snowfall that melts before it reaches the ground), but I haven't actually seen any fallen (or, even better, falling) flakes yet. But the temperature's gotten low enough that I've taken to wearing my heavy coat all the time, with scarves and gloves and other knicknacks. If it gets any colder, or if I have to spend any length of time outside, then I'll need to start using my beanie too.

Thankfully, though, it hasn't been very humid. Cold rain is the most miserable thing I can imagine at this point in time. Rather, each day has been splendidly clear; or rather, whatever's left of the day, because the sun's only out from 7am to 5pm now, and even at noontime it feels like late afternoon. What gets you, though, is the wind chill, as the concrete canyons of Manhattan funnel the wind up and down the streets. Depending on the wind direction, some blocks will offer you complete protection from the wind, whereas all it takes is to cross the street to bring you right into the blast path. Each intersection must thus be approached carefully. And I find myself bracing mentally and physically before stepping out of buildings or subway stations, because you never know where a gust will come from and rob you of your built-up cocoon of warmth.

Anyway, before it becomes absolutely too cold to do anything outside, there have been several moments of surreality this week. One was when a drama troupe brought out a bright red casting couch and planted it under a tree that had just turned bright red from the cold, making for a remarkable colour combination, and the strange sight of a couch looking perfectly in place outdoors. Another was of a couple, all dressed up, eating a candlelit dinner in the dining hall, with a white tablecloth and silverware but the incongruous and brightly coloured dining hall dishes. It'll be kind of like guys in tuxedos tucking into canteen wanton mee at home. The thing is, though, that these apparently odd things don't seem so out of place here in New York. They chime with the flavour of the place.

*

This weekend, instead of going somewhere else, I decided to devote it to exploring New York instead. Like I said before, it has come to pass that although I've visited 5 states of the union, I haven't finished exploring the six blocks that comprise Columbia's tiny urban campus. Also, that means that while I've been having lots of fun outstate, I have really given a lot of things in New York a miss so far. So, as the weekend drew near, I looked forward to making some progress towards rectifying this oversight.

Yesterday, after a soothing couple of hours of chores (read: laundry and vacuuming - who would have thought that housework could be therapeutic?), went down with WL to join G in the NY Public Library for a couple of hours of studying. The Library is, of course, still as opulent and conducive to intellectual work as ever, and the others were, I think, also impressed with it - enough, I hope, that they will be willing to accompany me there the next time the urge hits. After 5pm, though, we made a quick hop over the the MoMA to join R and C, where we attended a free screening of Wall-E. It was a great film, and it was a pity that we couldn't catch it either in Singapore or here in NY, due to the unfortunate timing of the release dates and our flight dates. But yeah - Pixar and Disney really have hit upon a mother lode with their animation movies. Wall-E is great fun, and absolutely a delight to watch, both as a visual spectacle and as simply a feel-good story. Well, at any rate, I sure won't be able to look at an iPod in quite the same way ever again!

There was something else happening at the MoMA at the same time, though. There were great crowds in the main museum building, and when we entered the main lobby, all the walls on the upper atrium level were writhing with oversized projected videos of someone's face. We theorised that this was the overflow from the Van Gogh exhibit, but we didn't have time to stay to investigate, because the movie ended just in time for us to make a quick hop across the block to the New York City Centre theatre. There, we hooked up with J and YR, and the whole troop of us went to watch a reprisal of an old discontinued musical, On The Town. This, too, was great fun, with the plot set in 1944 New York, which meant that the performance was infused with jazz music and dance. The music loosened the limbs of all the dancers, and raised the voices of the singers magnificently, and I was left enthralled by the spectacle of a big-band musical, and wishing that more of the spirit of that age still existed around us. They definitely don't make musicals like they used to.

After that, we took a slow walk back to the 59th Street subway station, on the way passing by opulent 5th Ave and the apartments and hotels lining Central Park South. As winter deepens, New York is being gift-wrapped for the season. Fairy lights start to entwine the trees, glittering decorations festoon the buildings; one Cartier boutique was literally gift-wrapped, complete with ribbons and bow. And walking through the crowds that evening, everyone huddled in their coats, our breaths misting pleasantly in the air and our faces and ears burning urgently in the cold, it suddenly struck me that this was what I had been writing about, dreaming about, hoping for all this time: such a time of carefree walking down a street in the greatest city in the world, blending into the life there, and feeling as if you're participating in rather than only spectating at the life of the city.

And returning to Columbia, we stopped by a Chinese restaurant opposite the campus for supper, and I had a bowl of fishball and wanton kway teow. While it wasn't the nicest version I've ever had, it certainly was a big portion, and hot, and between the chopsticks, the noodles and the Singlish, the cold, monumental, kaleidoscopic city outside was thrown into even starker contrast. It takes something familiar to act as a yardstick so that you can see more clearly just how far you've come away from home. Such a day, such a night...it certainly cannot happen simply anywhere. We certainly aren't in Singapore anymore.

*

So yesterday was the longest outing I've had with the Columbia Singaporeans since coming here. It has taken all of four months for me to encounter what I had encountered in UPenn, Boston and UVa earlier. But I think this is really not a problem; the delay, after all, is partly because I haven't really been in NY much on the weekends to begin with. And it does make a difference that the Singaprean community here is smaller. It means that our little Singaporean group cannot sustain itself as a viable social group, and that everyone must be part of other social circles besides. And who's to say that such an arrangement is not optimal? I would venture to say that it's healthier to mix with more people, but to always have a core of friends that you can always rely on to fall back upon in times of need. And I hope that what I see forming now is in fact a situation like this.

Today was, in contrast, dominated by CUE people. Woke up early this morning to go with K to Union Square, where the weekly farmer's market has been turned into a weekly Christmas market. There were the usual food stalls and flower stalls, but beyond the familiar booths were new ones set up selling Christmas decorations and trinkets. I had not seen anything like it since the Marche Noel in Lyon seven years ago, and I had not expected to ever see anything like it again. And so, it was with especial delight that I discovered this warren of Christmas stalls, replete with fake snow and Christmas music. It definitely warrants another visit!

So anyway, K and I were walking through the market, with cups of hot apple cider in our hands to ward off the cold. There is a special sort of comtentment that you get when you drink something hot on a cold day. Your insides feel extremely pleasant with warmth, and one blows especially large clouds of misted breath that are somehow deeply satisfying. And as we walked down the aisles, she introduced me to the most wonderful sweet I've ever tasted: maple syrup candy. From what I can tell, it's hardened and dried maple syrup. It's as close to pure sweetness that I've ever come, and it comes in hard little blocks like ding1 dang1 tang2, with a powdery coating of extra maple syrup flakes. When you bite into it, it crumbles like a good cookie, with a fine consistency. And the sweetness - it explodes on your tongue. My first bite of it stopped me right in my tracks, so that I could better savour the flavour spreading throughout my mouth. It is definitely something that I recommend to everyone! If you ever come across it, buy some and try it. Then buy more. You won't regret it.

Came back to campus after a bit of shopping (K got more maple syrup in a cute log-cabin-shaped bottle, apparently a historical allusion to how maple syrup is traditionally made in log cabins, as well as some flowers for her aunt), and A dropped by for a bit of a chat. Showed her some photos and videos of Singapore (since she's from Trinidad, and I thought she'd appreciate the tropical scenery). Then took out lunch from the dining hall. Ran into T at the doors of Furnald, and had lunch in her room instead, because we don't meet up often enough, and it's been a long time since we've had the time to talk at length. So, as I tucked into passable lo mein (what a strange transliteration), we chatted about courses for the next semester, teacher-student relationships in the US, future job plans and writing for Lonely Planet.

After a bout of work in the afternoon that took up the rest of the daylight hours (I don't know - it feels wrong to squander sunset for homework, and if it were not so cold out, I think I'd spend every sunset at Riverside Park watching the sun go down slowly), J suddenly called to offer me a ticket to go watch an adaptation of The Canterbury Tales at nearby Riverside Theatre. The last time I'd gone with him to watch a play at Riverside, it was a staging of Brecht's Ball, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed the thought-provoking performance, so I quickly agreed. Hooked up with A again, as well as AW, and we all went to watch the play.

I have only read one page of Chaucer before, and I've certainly never seen any of his work staged before. Joel's mentioned The Canterbury Tales to me before, but I'd never really known what the play was about. Until I watched it tonight. It's basically a play about a group of misfit pilgrims, who tell each other stories to make their journey pass more easily. It is an intriguing premise, really; it reminds me of Tokyo Cancelled, which was a series of stories that a group of travellers stranded at an airport tell each other to pass the time till the next outbound flight. In Chaucer's play, the stories range from the moralistic to the salacious, from the religiously extremist to the downright vulgar. Each story was good fun, though, as aspects of the tale got amplified to absurd proportions in the retelling. What was especially intriguing was their use of props to reconfigure the set for each story. The pilgrims' carts turned into outhouses, tables, beds, trees, walls, prisons and anything else that was contingent to the stories. All it took was overturning the carts, setting them up on their ends, propping them against each other or joining them together. The audience's imagination, too, was pressed into service, just as the listeners of each tale in the pilgrimage would doubtlessly need to use their imaginations in the listening. The way that the travellers used whatever they could find on their own bodies or in their carts for props and scenery was also authentic, I think: on the road, you don't have the luxury of unlimited resources, and you draw on whatever's available and you make do as best you can.

At the end, a character playing Chaucer himself (ironically, it was a black girl - yet another example of the proud tradition of actor-character contradiction that started when Greek men played female parts in the days of Sophocles et al) broke the fourth wall to ask the audience: "Do we tell stories to ease our travels? Or do we travel for an occasion in which to tell stories?" It is an intriguing question. I would say that I do the latter more than the former. I would even go further to say that I travel to find stories to tell - some of which end up here. And as we move into winter (the first winter ever that I actually have to live through), I find, to my delight, that things are happening around me and to me that are actually worth retelling. That is the happy consequence of being in the right place at the right time.

Away

2008-11-19T14:15:00.002+08:00

And so, over the weekend, I took off again, this time to Charlottesville, Virginia, on a trip to visit YS before she leaves at the end of her academic exchange. I hadn't realised how far south Virginia was when I bought the bus tickets, but it turns out that a nine-hour bus trip can really get you places. I'm told that Virginia is actually considered by some to be part of the South (meaning Confederate territory - the South in Southern Comfort and Southern Hospitality), and certainly, as the bus wended its way through the country highways and across the smooth, long Interstates, we got so far off the grid that people were burning wood for light in farmhouses and shacks, and for the first time since getting here, my phone had no reception.

At the end of the long bus rides, I found a small, quiet town tucked into rolling foothills, with roads lined with copious amounts of greenery and the buildings and roads adapting to the lay of the land. Here, civilisation treads lightly on the ground, laying on the landscape like a soft blanket rather than crushing, digging and tunnelling the landscape into submission (I am romanticising, of course, by comparing Charlottesville with Manhattan). The air was noticeably fresher, edged with a certain sharpness that seems to be distinctive to mountains. And everywhere, the overarching impression is one of space: roads and sidewalks shared with only a few other scattered pedestrians, enormous rooms comfortably occupied by a few quiet users, and the wide-open skies meant for eyes to roam over and savour slowly.

Speaking of space, YS shares an enormous apartment in Charlottesville with three other housemates. They have their own bathroom, a fully-equipped and sleek kitchen, a 40" LCDTV, a small porch and three full-sized bedrooms. YS's own room seems to have been the master bedroom once upon a time; or at least, it's as big as the master bedrooms I see in HDB flats. After the rather limited possibilities of my Furnald room at Columbia, having so much private space was incredibly relaxing. It's a beautiful way to live; certainly, I would have been content to simply spend a day lazing around in that apartment. As it was, though, being able to come back to it at the end of the days, to potter around the kitchen using the high-tech appliances in my first attempts to make breakfast since time immemorial, and stepping out onto the porch to sample the crisp morning air were all deeply therapeutic, cleansing even.

The pace of life there is noticeably different. People walk around more slowly; there isn't that all-pervading sense of urgency, that need to always be doing something even when one doesn't have anything to do. People do stop and chat, and go out of their way to meet people. And it's really true that everyone seems to know everyone else: for such a sparsely populated area, it's amazing how many acquaintances YS ran into simply by walking down the streets. But that's not to say that its smallness results in there being nothing to do. The first hour I was there, we found a delightful little Greek restaurant for dinner. Then, walking through the Corner, UVa's little pub and bistro strip, we were attracted by music to go up a narrow flight of steps to a cramped and smoky jazz bar, where students were jamming into the night. The next day, YS brought me to a quirky tour about the really intriguing and idiosyncratic history of UVa (and of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the institution and of other things like the United States of America). I sat in on a dress rehearsal of a performance of The Nutcracker that she had helped to choreograph. Then, we went for dinner at the apartment of one of YS's friends, and it turned into a home-cooked meal with a dozen Singaporeans chipping into the festivities. And on Sunday, we popped into a wine bar and sampled the local Virginia vintage over brunch. Certainly, then, there is no dearth of things to do, and the demands on one's time are well within reason, leaving you with the sense of being pleasantly occupied but not overly stressed.

One big thing that struck me about the weekend was how easily new connections were made, and how old ones were reprised. The vast majority of my time was, of course, spent with YS, and it is still heartbreakingly easy to talk to this old travelmate; the words and actions seem to find a natural progression of their own accord. But there was a highly unlikely turn of events: as we browsed UVa's bookstore, YS bumped into a friend, who turned out to be SN, my old senior from RJGuitar. I had been her understudy for taking over the role of secretary in the ensemble, and we hadn't kept in contact since her batch graduated. How is it, then, that we would randomly end up in the same town three years later, and that I would just happen to walk past her aisle as she was repacking books onto their shelves?

And afterwards, we ran into C, YS's senior in UVa, who then proceeded to quickly invite us over for dinner at his place. And so it was that we made it to C's apartment on Saturday evening, and I tried my hand at food preparation again (with no trivial amount of trepidation), and then this whole group of friends also turned up, bearing rice and herbal soup. We had a great dinner of rice, soup, curry and stir-fried vegetables, which far and away is the best Singaporean food I've eaten so far in the States. And had a long talk with SN, who had also come to the gathering, and easily bridged the three years that had come between us. Also, made the acquaintance of the other Singaporeans, Jakartans and Malaysians, and found out that a group of them is planning to visit New York over Thanksgiving (and so the foundation is set for a very busy Thanksgiving indeed).

It seems to me that when one is abroad, one cherishes commonality with other people so much more. In a strange place, and among strangers, any sign of shared history or viewpoints is seized firmly as an anchor against the whims of newness. So it is that distances that would have seemed too tedious or troublesome to bridge at home in Singapore become trivial in the States, and commonalities that would have seemed insignificant at home become central. One's perspective is necessarily realigned with one's changing environment. Thus a kinsman almost invariably becomes more amiable when encountered abroad. And often, this is not because the kinsman somehow becomes nicer in a strange situation (though this does happen to), but it is because one's own prejudices against that kinsman become untenable, absurd even, in the new situation. Being in a new environment thus serves to liberate one's preferences from one's prejudices, so one can more fully explore the possibilities of interpersonal connection that had always existed, but that one had not allowed oneself to consider as viable.

Also, it seems to me that chance plays such an inordinately large role in my life now. Consider the chance encounter that produced the reunion between I and SN. Consider also the random encounter with C on the streets of UVa that produced the dinner invitation. Consider, then, the parking garage we just happened to pass on Saturday evening, that we climbed to witness a breathtakingly spectacular goldburst as the setting sun stained the wide open sky. And then, there is the random acquaintance I made on the bus trip back from Charlottesville to Washington, who turned out to be a member of staff on Capitol Hill, and who, over the 3-hour bus ride, proceeded to engage me in an absorbing conversation about her law-school plans, Capitol-Hill careers, insider politics, religion, family and race. And last but not least, there is my finding YM, my old classmate from RJ whom I had not talked to for years, in her basement apartment in DC. She had just happened to have hosted a pre-Thanksgiving party, and had lots of food left over, so I was the dumbfounded recepient of incredible hospitality, even as we reminisced about our old class and marvelled at the places that everyone had gotten to over the years.

And it strikes me very deeply, that I am at the receiving end of so much good fortune - too much, even - so much that it makes me feel terribly uncomfortable, as if I had received an undeserved windfall through a clerical bank error, and I was liable to be found out at any moment. But even as I suspect that there has been some mistake in the heavens somewhere, I cannot help being so totally taken by the people and happenings that I encounter, completely at random, over here in the States. There are certainly deeper, structural sociological forces at work here to make some happenings more likely for me. But I experience it as luck, as the unpredictable outcomes of unfathomable processes working impersonally. And I find that luck brings me into so many incredible situations. It just befuddles me, how things can work out by themselves so nicely.

And so, the weekend turned out to be a great holiday. I had originally had some reservations, Charlottesville being so far removed from Manhattan, and there being so many enticing free things happening in Manhattan over the weekend. But it turns out that the principle still holds true: that if one can choose between going elsewhere and taking the risk of a new experience, or to stay where one is and take advantage of a certain but less surprising experience, then one should always try to choose the former. And as I look back now at the weekend, I find that I really cannot ask for more. I cannot think how it could have been any better. And the fact that such things can happen almost entirely by accident - well, what can I say?

*

As for my old flightmate - she will be returning to ANU next semester, but not before trotting the globe a bit more by dropping by Japan and Singapore over the winter. I have to say, though, that she is an inspiration, a vision of how my own time here in the States should look like. Now, she has so much more experience than me, and I find that I want to - I have to - catch up. And to be able to see a real person who has made it work is reassuring as well as motivating.

Also, her departure is saddening. It is saddening to me that she will be on the other side of the globe next semester, even though technically her being in Australia and her being 3 states away in Virginia are experientially very similar (in that in neither case can I call her up on short notice for a coffee somewhere). My life here necessarily is characterised by the formation and nurturing of new relationships and interactions, the making of new friends and the reconstitution of a new social network. But a significant part of my current experience is also concerned with revisiting old relationships, with resuming. A part of my current experience is thus caught up in the reprisal of old relationships, of enacting the experience of sharing time abroad, an experience that had been delayed two years by NS. So it is that meeting up with people like Joel, YS, Jes and other familiar faces from the old era still holds an especial significance for me. And now, all too soon, this old flightmate will be flying away to another corner of the world again.

It is, of course, in the nature of things to be constantly in flux. But the understanding of that fact doesn't stop me from regretting the passing of a good thing. But what can we do? We lay the foundations as soundly as we can, and then we trust the foundations of the past to hold firm in the storms of the present, so that they remain standing and ready for some reunion in the future. And I believe that there will be reunions in the future (after all, from this weekend, it is clear that reunions can even happen randomly). People come and people go. But the hope is that, as people go, they will one day come back.

Long Walks

2008-11-12T22:40:00.002+08:00

NOMADS performed the play over the weekend to two sellout performances and two late-night audiences. I wouldn't go so far as to try to venture a guess as to whether the reception was to critical acclaim or simply critical, but no matter the outcome, the process is over, and I find that I am much relieved now.

The final days of rehearsal and each performance was rather gruelling, certainly for the actors and our director as they rushed to perfect the stagecraft, but also for me, because every performance was heart-stopping to watch; or rather, the audiences' reaction to every performance was a drama in itself for me. You can't fool the audience with pretty stagecraft when your play's message is defective, and the overarching theme in the responses from my friends who came to watch it was that they enjoyed the moments of stageplay and the wordplay, but they didn't get the point of the play. Depending on your viewpoint, that last issue could be a fatal flaw, and I for one happen to think that theatrics are cheap, and that the real skill comes from making those theatrics transmit a message. There is, as I always say, no question over the technical skill of all these people - and certainly, working with them has been enlightening and humbling - but if a play has no message, the audience feels like it's been cheated, and rightfully so. And ultimately, the lack of a message is the fault of the writer, and I take it as a big failing that I wasn't skilful enough in this respect to write in a message to the script to match the theatrics.

But it's over. It is strange, this time round; this first brush with American theatre (though, of course, NOMADS is an experimental process and hardly representative) wasn't as invigorating as I'd expected. Of course, the same tensions were present before performance; there is a specific sort of stress, for example, that permeates a stage during a technical run or during the last rehearsal, that has no analogue in the real world. But the end of this process bring not so much a sense of accomplishment but a sense of relief. I guess it's because of the defects in the script and the insurmountable fact of the unfavourable audience reaction (in the sense that they didn't get it). But it's strange, because back in CHS, even when we put up a poor performance (and God knows that we did), there was still a sense of camaraderie and a sense of sharing in the experience, even if that experience was one of failure. We had a good crew back then - not nearly as technically proficient as NOMADS, but essentially professional and tight-knit. That was a good drama troupe, and I guess that the togetherness is worth something in and of itself, and in a framework like that, audience reception is secondary to group dynamics.

Mmm...but it is also true that to compare this nostalgic image of CHS EDrama with NOMADS is clearly self-serving and fallacious. Things are just different here - different circumstances, different conditions. And the thing about coming all the way here is that my presence here demands my complete commitment to using the circumstances that I find here, rather than pining for circumstances of times past.

*

Anyway, the other, bigger thing that happened over the weekend was that YS came up from Virginia to visit. She arrived in a big way, too: because of a bad train connection in DC, she ended up arriving in Chinatown at about 4am. This was the first opportunity for me to take the subway in the early hours of the day, in the time period between the closing of the nightlife and the starting of rush hour. The trains were still quite full, butjust as the character of the passengers fluctuates through time during the day, the passengers of the subway at this hour were a surreal mix of homeless people and beautiful young things trying to extend the nightlife. So you have unkempt people sprawled across the seats trying to sleep as best they can on the rocking train, and people looking spiffy in leather jackets and high heels, draped over each other and raising their voices over the clangs and screeches of the train. It was the most surreal scene I've seen since coming here.

So anyway, I picked YS up from a deserted Chinatown, walked her down Canal Street till we got back to the 1 line, and brought her uptown back to Columbia safely (though I still think that people grossly overestimate the danger level in NY). The next day, we went on a whirlwind tour - basically I tried to squeeze in all my favourite spots over these months of solitary sojourns into the city streets. So we ended up going to the Hell's Kitchen flea market, Bryant Park behind the NYPL, the Staten Island Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge. I would have brought her to Brighton Beach as well, but we were unfortunately running a little late, and it's clear that anyone who comes to New York must, above all, take the Staten Island Ferry and cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

Bryant Park recently opened its winter-time skating rink, and though the prices are ridiculously steep, there is definitely something to be said for being able to skate in the open air, beneath the soaring towers of Midtown Manhattan, with the solid Classical mass of the NYPL and the trees of Bryant Park in the foreground. I had forgotten how fun it is to skate, since it has been three years since the last time I put i the effort to find a patch of skatable ice in tropical Singapore. And it was ridiculously fun, despite the drizzle, to skate round the rink, and to rediscover how to accelerate and to turn (though I still don't know how to stop other than essentially ramming the side walls). After a while, when you get familiar with the ice again, you start to look around, and you see all these other revelers around, some stumbling and some soaring across the ice. And then you see the wider surroundings, the park and the buildings and the overcast sky, and it's magical.

Unfortunately, due to the drizzle and the accompanying heavy fog, the Staten Island Ferry and the Brooklyn Bridge were not as spectacular as they could have been. But even when it's shrouded in fog, the skyline of Manhattan is majestic, and there are still no better ways to see it than from the Hudson and from Brooklyn. But even if the scenery had been fully blotted out by the fog, I still would have made these trips, because it's just nice to have company for such journeys. They are best shared. And YS continues to be as sporting as ever. This old travelmate; walking the streets of Manhattan with her was like a natural continuation of all our previous walks exploring strange and new places, from Taipei to Bangkok to Boston. To travel together again was a real treat - the easy conversation, the spur-of-the-moment decisions to branch off on a whim, the shared moments.

And so it was that it was with great reluctance that I brought her back to Chinatown on Sunday so she could catch her bus back to DC and then to Charlottesville. It just so happened that the sun came out brilliantly on Sunday; whereas the previous day had been overcast, Sunday was a perfect bluesky day. But we had to spend most of our time underground in the subway going to Chinatown, which was a real pity.

But it was a fitting end, I think, because when we entered the 110st station to catch the train, we bumped into this magnificent two-man jazz band, playing soothing and skilful numbers, stretching the notes out like how yearning can stretch a moment out. Listening to the music, I was once again struck by the fact that now, this old friend was here to share the moment. And that made the moment somehow more real, as if in the sharing we can better confirm that it actually happened, and was not simply a figment of the imagination.

And as we made our way southwards through the warren of tunnels beneath Manhattan, the trip was like a countdown until we ran out of numbered streets and went off-grid into Chinatown. And then, a few minutes of wandering (too short!) brought us to the bus stop where YS's bus was already waiting, with a cheerful Chinese lady ushering passengers onboard. At that point, then, amidst the bustle of Chinatown and the piercing bluesky morning light, something struck me as deeply poignant. Here, then, was a realisation of a crystalline truth: I did not want this weekend to end yet. I did not want her to go. It had simply been too good to see this familiar face again, to have the company of my old travelmate again, and this time exploring the greatest city on Earth. It simply does not get any better than this.

At any rate, time and buses wait for no man, and all too soon she was off again to DC. As I watched her climb the steps onto the bus, though, I didn't really feel all that sad. It wasn't sadness, exactly, but rather the first pinings of nostalgia. It wasn't sadness, because it's not like this isn't going to happen again. Other people will come visit, old friends like Joel and C and I and maybe even G and Jes, if my persuasive skills are good enough to get them to cross a continent or an ocean. And as for myself, I will be going down to Virginia over this weekend, once again taking a long sojourn along the smooth and easy highways of this wide-skied land. At this point, I don't really need to get out of Manhattan again, considering than only 2 weeks ago I was in Philadelphia. But a new place is a new place, and its newness is enticing in itself. And of course, YS is in Virginia.

Yes, We Will

2008-11-05T14:10:00.005+08:00

We live in incredible times.

Outside, the streets are exploding with euphoria as people stream out into the crisp night after seeing CNN's projection that the victory in this election will go to Barack Obama. Cars honk their horns in joyous rhythms, pedestrians trawl the streets with endless cheers and whoops. The security guard to my dorm couldn't help sharing her enthusiasm. Now and then, choruses of "Yes, we can" erupt across the campus. In nearby Harlem, a midnight party is in full swing, and its cries and calls echo across Manhattan - indeed, across the whole Union.

I was involved in the electio-day poll site survey today, and K and I made our way into Brooklyn to observe our poll site. The people there, the staff as well as the voters, were in high spirits, happily working together to facilitate the voting process, happy and eager to cast their votes. Everyone we talked to reflected their satisfaction with the process, and a few also remarked on the good spirits that everyone was in on this election day. It is such that people feel part of something bigger. Especially first-time voters - they exhibited an especial earnestness.

(Outside, somewhere on campus, cheers of "Obama, Obama" echo out into the night...)

We spoke for a while with the poll site manager, and he shared about how he keeps volunteering to do election work, because it is so worthwhile to help people to exercise their right to vote. He spoke of residents in the neighbourhood who would recognise him on the streets after election day, and thank him for a good election experience. He reminisced about helping first-time voters, explaining the vote-casting process and seeing them overcome their initial fears and uncertainties and emerge from the polling booth awash in new empowerment. And this year, especially, it was all the more important to put in the effort to help everyone to vote.

(A cheer goes up right in front of my building...)

After that, we made our way down to Times Square. It was already full of people, becauce ABC and CNN had each claimed an end of the Square and set up live broadcasts of programmes following the election results. We joined the CNN broadcast, joining the great crowd of people in front of that great screen, and, through CNN's periodic pans of crowds at Times Square, in Grant Park (Chicago), LA, and even Kenya, we joined a great globe-girdling network of supporters and watchers. And as polls closed in each state and results came in, and as Obama's tally of electoral college votes rose inexorably, the crowd's excitement grew palpably more intense.

(Some people start singing somewhere, the words washed out by the distance, with only the tune carrying on the wind...)

And then, when the polls closed on the West Coast, CNN made their historic announcement. And the crowd went wild.

This is the moment, then, that "Yes, we can" became "Yes, we did", when hopes raised at the end of last year came to fruition, when a promise made when Obama became the Democratic nominee was reaffirmed by popular support. And for myself, this was the culmination of a process that started a year ago, when Obama first appeared on CNN, BBC and TIME Magazine and started to fascinate me, and then passed through my teaching stint in CHS, when Barack Obama repeatedly appeared in chats (and a speech of his appeared as one of my lessons' material). And then it passed by the ServiceNation debate this year on 9/11, and then came up again through the last few frenetic days of campaigning (especially in Philadelphia), late-night comedy's commentaries on the political process, and finally, today's poll site survey. The chance to see this phenomenon growing, gathering steam, and finally coming to fruition here - in person - is unparalleled. It is unbelievable.

And to see all these people on the streets so caught up in euphoria - I have never seen anything quite like it, this utter abandon in joy, without a hint of ironic self-consciousness. People are simply happy, and want to share that happiness with others. The people standing in Times Square watching the live feed shared a sort of camaraderie in the commonality of their location; people were politer, more accommodating, more indulging of one another. And I remember especially standing at a junction in Times Square when the live feed cut to a picture of a black man crying in a church somewhere. I asked K, "Is that Jeremiah Wright?" A nearby man interjected, "No, that's Jesse Jackson. He ran for President too a few years back." And as this man watched Jesse Jackson weeping on the screen, his own face was also glowing with happiness. Happiness and pride, pride at having been part of this incredible event.

Obama has surely done something special here. He has unleashed a great wave of hope in this country, made people aware of the gap between where they stand and where they can be, and galvanised them to bridge that gap. And he has unleashed this wave across all sorts of categorical barriers, so that people share the same hope regardless of race, gender, age, class. Just looking at the faces of the crowd at Times Square, one is struck immediately by its sheer diversity - and the sheer harmony it contained. Not since 9/11 has there been such a groundswell of collective will. People believe in the vision that Obama has offered as a prospective future; more importantly, they believe that they can - and must - achieve that vision. Here, then, on this night in November, there is a keen sense that the whole country stands upon the brink of a historic change, a change in direction that is fuelled by an inclusive consensus. On this night, then, "Yes, we can" becomes "Yes, we will".

And as for me - I stand here, in awe at finding myself amidst all this. I struggle to take all of this in, and to grasp how a series of ridiculously fortuitous accidents has put me in this time and place, where things happen. And I look at these things happening, and I find myself looking forward, towards what the future may hold, towards what will happen next.

Having Time

2008-11-03T13:34:00.002+08:00

I haven't had so much time to write in such a long time. Accompanying Joel as he studies for next week, I have suddenly found myself with very little work left over among the work that I brought along with me to Philly. And so it is that now, we're in his room, and there's soft jazz playing and every available light burning. The day, begun so softly with a late awakening at 12pm, is drawing to an equally soft end.

There is a real feeling of being at ease here. Partly, it's because I'm on schedule and I have time left over (also because, due to daylight savings time, we've magically gained an hour over the night of Nov 1, so we literally have more time). But it's also because of all the familiar faces here, of the people I met the last time I was here, and who are so unselfconsciously warm and welcoming. So it is, then, that I can walk around in Philly and UPenn feeling really safe: the safety of being in a place only temporarily and thus not needing so much to live with the consequences of your choices, and also the safety of being among so many familiar people. It is an interesting mix, a simultaneous feeling of being secure as a stranger and of being secure amidst people I know.

One thing that strikes me is how, here, people seem to move in fewer social circles. It seems to be the case, from the short times that I've spent here, that one can eat meals, study, go out and have long conversations with the same group of people. This is different from in Columbia, where it is much more the case that the people you eat lunch with will not know the people you eat dinner with. That way, you get to meet more people, and you're obliged to maintain more connections with more social circles, but there really is something to be said for a small social circle, in which you can take your time and develop deeper relationships. Of course, that is only one side of the equation, since having more people to make friends with will count for nothing if one does not put in the effort to make friends, and I do see that there is my main problem: my aversion to meeting new people by going out on a limb and approaching them randomly. But as far as personal preference goes, I would like to have a small and solid social circle, surrounded by a more diffuse network of acquaintances. In Columbia, the latter is much more in evidence, whereas in UPenn I can immerse myself in the former. The trick, I guess, is to find some way to unify the two geographically in the same place.

Yesterday night, after dinner and studying, went out with Joel and the rest of the gang to a club where the Singaporean and HK associations had organised a party. Despite it being Nov 1, everyone had apparently intended to dress up, so in an effort to keep with the spirit of things at the last minute, I pirated an idea from last night's Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and went as a recession. Anyway, it was the usual set-up: social mingling at the front of house, loading up on alcohol at the bar, and then heading to the back where a dance-floor was active. Clubbing is still not my thing, even after travelling halfway across the globe. I'm told that to enjoy it, you need to be tipsy enough to lose control and your inhibitions; I fear, though, that past experience has shown that I would only reach that state by being completely drunk, and when I'm completely drunk, I'm useless as a social being. But I have to say that as far as drinking and dancing goes, this was the best clubbing I've been to so far.

Randomly bumped into LL, out of sheer randomness. LL was one of the participants in the original Frexprog, and we hadn't talked to each other since coming back from Lyon, which was six year ago. How is it, then, that after coming to the other side of the world, I would happen to be in Philly and attend the same party that she happened to be at? It's a ridiculous alignment of the stars - fate - whatever. But it doesn't show that it's a small world, so much as showing that wherever we go in the world, our social circles tend to follow along. So we get the impression that we know everybody, while in actual fact we only know a few people and we just keep running into them wherever we go.

After that, Joel and I braved the biting cold of night and went out for supper at the Philly Diner with T and Ir, and over a cheesemelt sandwich and a stack of quesadillas we marked the occasion of the end of Daylight Saving by turning all our timepieces back an hour. And it was an easy conversation into the night, with the usual commiserations about how tough it is to be a student, how expensive it is to live in the States, and so on. The topics were not new at all, but then again, the topics were not the main point of the gathering. It was just nice to be out so late at night, amidst the hubbub of a 24-hour diner, with people I know and having an easy, flowing conversation. And for the first time in too long, I felt like I didn't need to be anywhere else; there was nowhere else to go, and there was time to simply enjoy being here, now.

Another thing that really stood out this time in Philly was the food. On arrival yesterday, I had my first Philly Cheesesteak from a roadside vendor downtown, and then last night we went to an authentic Vietnamese place for a marvellous bowl of pho. Today's lunch was at the wonderful Hill dining hall, which was serving roast chicken, roasted potatoes and divine pancakes which went so well with maple syrup and a sprinkling of blueberries. And just now, popped out to a Thai restaurant, where we had a spicy green chicken curry - the hottest thing by far that I've eaten since coming here. The proliferation of good food here made it feel like we were back in Singapore again.

Anyway, tomorrow still stretches out ahead, virtually unfilled. The UPenn people have classes, so I expect I'll take the chance to walk aroubd University City myself, and maybe try to find a barber that's cheaper than NY's offerings. And then, there'll be a smooth bus ride back to Manhattan, and then Tuesday's election day sociology project, and then two more days of lessons before the weekend is here again. I find that I have time again, and it's a good situation to be in.

En Route

2008-11-01T22:41:00.002+08:00

Yesterday started comparatively early, with breakfast with RH, who was flying back to Tennessee for the fall break. Walked down to 108th street to grab a couple of great bagels with a most divine blueberry cream cheese. I realised that I hadn't been out of campus so early before, beyond that run that G and I did at the beginning of the term. After the work really started to come in in earnest, even my morning hops to the roadside kiosks for a bagel have been sacrificed in the name of more reading time. Mornings in Morningside Heights is something that I haven't had a chance to really experience, and it was good to be out and walking on the quiet streets, enjoying the bluesky morning and the emptiness. The city seems to give itself to you more wholeheartedly in the mornings; there are fewer people to share it with, and you can enjoy it at your leisure. Like in so many other cities, mornings are a more personal time: mornings belong more to the individual.

Anyway, in the evenings, went down with YR, Re, WL and JK to Greenwich Village to watch the world-renowned Halloween Parade. Needless to say, the entire stretch of the parade's route along 6th Avenue was packed with people. We ended up at the junction of 6th and Waverly Place, perched atop a stack of unused police barriers. It turned out to be a really good spot for viewing, because our elevated position put us above the heads of most of the crowd, and the police didn't bother us (while they did get people who had more precarious perches atop traffic lights and fire hydrants to get down). Next to us was a jolly old man out with his daughter to watch the parade (and every time an amusingly clad participant trooped by, he would give a rich laugh). All around us were other groups of friends milling around and pressing forward. Jokers (many, many Jokers - it seems like The Dark Knight made a big impact this year), Tellytubbies, Storm Troopers, firewomen and Indian chiefs walked by regularly, and for a time, there was a particularly elaborate Mad Hatter behind us, with whom we were quick to grab a photo.

The parade itself was marvelous, starting off in a big way with a procession of mounted police officers, followed by enormous and fluttery puppets, three-storey skeletons, block-long articulated dragons and swooping undead birds mounted at the end of sticks. And then, a spectacular treat came when at least a hundred zombies marched down the street led by a Michael Jackson lookalike. They stopped in the middle of the avenue, and then the music cued in, and they burst into the dance of the walking dead from "Thriller", to the uproarious approval of the crowd.

There were also many floats shuddering under the weight of the revelers dancing upon them, and many Obamas and McCains (and a particularly realistic Sarah Palin, accompanied by a walking Russia and Alaska, and a Joe the Plumber). Some of the ingenious jokes included a security camera, a lady disguised a a photo strip (the kind that you get out of a photo booth), another lady wearing a placard showing a dropping GDP graph, and several subprime lenders waving bloodied notes. It was great fun to just sit up there on our perch picking out the various costumes, and trying to figure out what the joke was.

It occurs to me, too, that something like the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade can never happen in Singapore. Where in our little island will we find so many people willing to invest hundreds of dollars into a costume that will earn them a few hours of fame, and then will become unwearable for a year at least (while other costumes are certainly one-hit wonders)? It was incredible to see so much spontaneous gameliness and ingenuity; and, after a couple of months of endless work that had totally circumscribed our ability to go out together as a big group like this, it was good to be out with this gang, and to feel like a part, however small, of all this pageantry and enjoyment.

*

And now, I make my way back to the City of Glass Towers. Such are the wonders of modern technology that this bus is equipped with free wifi, and suddenly I find myself with another two hours in which I can write and clear my correspondence. It is an intriguing experience; as I have been writing, the Manhattan skyline has slipped past outside the bus windows, the scenery has changed from urban to country, and the smooth long highways have soared through forests turning golden, red and yellow in preparation for winter. At this point, New York looked much nicer from a distance, especially with the morning sun glinting off the towers and the Atlantic shimmering in the distance. The Statue of Liberty, silhouetted by the water, looked like a promise: "you have arrived."

I have gone down this road before. The toll gates, the small towns that we are passing through right now, are all familiar from two months ago. And later in the afternoon, will hook up with Joel again. He had said something two weeks ago, when the UPenn people had come down to New York for their fall break: who would have thought that we would be seeing each other so often despite having come halfway across the globe? In fact, we are meeting more often now than we did when we were in different JCs on the same small island. It's an interesting outcome, this. But I am glad that this friendship, and quite a few friendships besides, still involves regular meetings. It would be very different to live here without these familiar faces from the past era.

Performances

2008-10-31T13:57:00.000+08:00

So, once again, it's time for what is becoming a weekly ritual. This week has gone quite splendidly, all things considered. Most of the time was taken up studying for my last midterm exam, but after it went by today, I feel much better, like having been given a reprieve. And this weekend will be long because of the election on Tuesday. Will be going over to Philadelphia again on Saturday, but will be back on Tuesday to do a sociology project that involves actually going into polling stations and observing interactions there. It's an unparalleled opportunity! Not only will we get access to an area of American society that hasn't really been studied sociologically before, but simply being even tangentially related to what in all likelihood will be a historic election is exciting enough in itself! To think that, a few months ago, I was using one of Barack Obama's speeches to teach an English class. Now, Obama's been on this campus, and I'll actually be involved in the election process that will decide his fate. It's mind-boggling to think how things have lined themselves up so nicely, how things have come to this.

Outside, the weather has taken a turn towards coldness. The leaves are finally starting to turn colour, and it has become quite an ordeal to walk through corridors, which funnel winds to supersonic speeds and produce a proportional windchill. The wind is generally confounding outside, really, as it flows through the streets nd avenues, now deflected this way, now diverted that way, so that as you walk through the city you can never tell the direction from which the wind will assault you next. And nighttime temperature are near freezing; it's snowed upstate already, as well as in New Jersey, and I'm told that any time now we can expect to see at least some sleet in New York City. The other day, idly looking out a window in a classroom, I thought I saw the first signs of snow, as a rain drizzle turned finer, and the water droplets started to flutter most suggestively in the wind. In the end, it turned out that it was not snow, but for a time I was seized by a certain measure of wonder, which reminded me of the first time I touched snow, in the Italian alps. all those years ago.

The last week has been dominated by two things, the elections and the preparations for Halloween. In terms of the former, TVs all over campus have been tuned to news channels more often, and every night brings excellently hilarious late-night comedy takes on the day's politics, from the Colbert Report to the Daily Show and, each week, Saturday Night Live. And today, on a random trip into the city to celebrate the end of a week of studying, I was on a bus passing through Times Square when I saw a forlorn little group of about a dozen Republicans holding "McCain-Palin" placards, surrounded by a platoon of police officers and having their pictures taken by throngs of tourists. Indeed, what's stood out about this election ever since I got here is not so much the candidates' positions on the issues, but the comedic elements that come out of their campaigns, from the gaffes of Sarah Palin to the little Republican demonstration in Times Square, which had the superficiality and futility of a gesture of resistance in the face of an implacable force.

And on the other hand, the campus dining halls have been festooned with skulls, pumpkins, ghostly shapes and cobwebs, to the extent that walking in for a meal is like entering some sort of fantastical funhouse. Even the desserts have been colour-coded to match the pumpkin heads and witch's hats. People in the hallways and the corridors speak of the costumes that they are preparing; some students even went to class over the last few days in costumes (I was in a lift with a Cheshire cat the other day). Not having experienced Halloween before, I find all this rather cute - especially in how the actual practices and traditions of Halloween so closely match what I had read in children's books. Who would have thought that people really did go door to door asking for tricks or treats?

*

Last Saturday, one of my friends from CUE asked me to join him for a play in nearby Riverside Church, which is a grand and ornate structure that has been converted from simply being a religious building to being a community centre. The performance of Brecht's Baal was put up by the masters programme in theatrical directing, much in the same way that the TSD programme in VJC puts up semesterly performances. Tickets were for $5, but with the power of our Columbia IDs we got in free, and it was a steal. Certainly, I would have been happy to pay them $5 for the show that they put up.

The plot of the play is somewhat convoluted. As far as I can make out, it is the depiction of the journey of one man into deeper levels of depravity and extremism as he explores the outer boundaries of human experience, quickly checking off the seven deadly sins as he careens from drunken parties to rapes, profanity, drugs and murder. There were some great lines, especially when Baal (the titular main character) is trying to shrug off the clinging loyalty of his pregnant lover. But the strength and power of the play came mostly from the masterful stageplay: the elaborate set, the ingenious scene changes, the splendid costumes, the integration of a live band and a trio of drag queens into the stagework, the use of a night-vision video camera. It was beyond question a technically competent play. And, coming at the end of a long day of studying (as usual), and right after an afternoon of incredible gusty stormbursts, it was even more poignant to watch, even if I didn't really get the meanings in the words.

On Sunday, I decided to go to Brooklyn College to attend a radio play performance by LA Theatreworks. Some of you may remember that I posted one of their radio plays on this blog before, after I'd heard it on the BBC World Service a few months back. This was the play about a psychic/con-man trying to defraud a client of her inheritance, raising the issue of how hard it is to tell between magical clairvoyance and powerful observation and deduction skills. I had been extremely taken by that radio play, and when I saw a performance by them advertised in the Columbia Arts newsletter, I knew I had to make the trip down there to watch it.

Brooklyn College is at the end of the No. 2 subway line, and between Manhattan and the College, the train passes through a large swath of predominantly black neighbourhoods. It is really clear when you enter Brooklyn, because suddenly all the non-blacks get off the train, and I was left as the only non-black in my carriage. It also just so happened that I was reading a book for my sociology class on racial dynamics, and it was somewhat strange to be reading about anti-black discrimination and ghetto formation when all around me were the very people the book was referring to. I was half afraid that someone would glance over at my book and then be offended, but I was even more uncomfortable with the thought that the unbelievable racism being described in the book was actually a reality - the results of which are the people who were riding with me in the subway.

Anyway, when I got to the College, I was in for a stroke of luck, because the show was not sold out, and the box office was pushing tickets at a 33% discount. However, just as I was about to buy the ticket, a teacher from NYU walked into the box office and offered to sell some spare subsidised tickets she had for 50% of the price. It was an offer that was too good to be turned down, so I quickly purchased one of her tickets, and saved myself 50% of the price. It's the second time something like this has happened to me, and I'm beginning to think that rushing for last-minute tickets for non-Broadway performances is an eminently doable thing, with a high chance for a profitable outcome.

LA Theatreworks was putting up a double bill, recreating Orson Welles' infamous broadcast of War of the Worlds and performing a kitschy melodrama, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. It was an interesting mix of stageplay and radio play, with the actors wearing costumes and acting out a limited range of actions, while at the same time being always stuck to their onstage microphones and producing their own sound effects. It was a treat to watch them, as well as to simply close one's eyes and listen to the performance and enjoy the sensation of images being created by sound in one's mind. The two plays also produced an interesting contrast, as the actors reproduced some measure of the terror of Welles' original broadcast (which had been so frightening and realistic that it had sent listeners into a panic), while The Lost World was unabashedly kitschy, complete with damsels in distress, caricatured heroes and villains, and many, many instances of Deux ex machina. All in all, though, it was great fun for a Sunday afternoon. And on top of it, I got to see another part of New York too.

*

And tomorrow, will pop down to Greenwich Village to watch yet another performance. The great Halloween parade takes place tomorrow at sundown, and it is reputed to be filled with ingenious costumes and irrepressible characters. It's something that is on the scale of Christmas, but is apparently perenially underrated. Will go down to have a peek, to get a feel of what holidays in New York are like. And even after tomorrow, there is still the long weekend ahead. After the last two weeks of intense working, seeing all this time ahead of me is a very welcome relief!

Brighton Beach

2008-10-24T13:11:00.000+08:00

Thursday is fast becoming my favourite day of the week, because it is the one school day on which I can go off campus right after classes. It's also the last day of classes for each week, and so there is a special pleasure to finishing the last lesson of the week, and straightaway scooting off into the subway station. I still feel like I don't get off campus nearly enough, what with prodigious amounts of reading and the studying for the various exams this week eating up all my time. Thursdays, then, represent the one day in the week when I feel I am entitled to spend a few hours simply riding the subway, walking around and enjoying the afternoon and evening.

*

But before I get into today's little sojourn, just a note about last Saturday, which was my only totally free day of last week. Took the chance to go to the NYPL again, laden with books to study, with the intention of taking long walks around lunchtime and after completing the day's work quota. For lunch, walked a few blocks westward to grab a couple of hotdogs and a banana drink from Gray's Papaya, which serves two frankfurters topped with sauerkraut and a drink in their Recession Special. This simple meal actually tastes remarkably good and wholesome, and Anthony Bourdain swears by the food in this place, so what's not to like? And the store itself too is a sort of social barometer: it attracts all sorts of people, from the homeless to tourists to people working around Midtown. And the price of the Recession Special, too, is portentious: you know the economy is going downhill when the price for this special offer goes up.

After a second bout of studying, took a longer walk to 39th Street and 9th Avenue. That placed me in the midst of Hell's Kitchen, formerly the red light district of Manhattan. It has been considerably cleaned up, and whatever seediness that still lingers there is used to add a certain edgy flair to the weekend flea market that occupies a junction in that area. And this was a real flea market, with racks of used coats, antiques, bric-a-brac and artwork. When I walked into it, it was like walking into a fairytale, because it so closely fit my idealised vision of what a flea market should look like.

The prices must be cheap for antiques, but they are still beyond the reach of a cash-strapped student, so it was with a heavy heart that I forewent a battered typewriter and a working gramophone. There were also tin signs for sale, the kind that you find hanging in diner-themed fast-food restaurants advertising 5-cent Cokes and 25-cent hamburgers. When I get my next stipend, I will consider buying half a dozen of those for my room's walls. All the same, though the next step is clearly to actually try to carry out a transaction rather than just browsing, it was an enjoyable hour spent pottering around old things and the lively characters who were trying to hawk them. And after that, like a bonus, I found the Midtown skyline towards the East totally lit up by the rays of the setting sun. The sight made me feel as if I'd really stumbled upon something secret and wonderful, something that few people know about and can have the privilege of experiencing.

So, the days passed and two exams were taken. Enough said about that. And at three o'clock, the moment classes ended, I left campus rightaway, not stopping to dump my books in the room. You really feel the confinement, when you spend more than a few days in the same place. It's like being in camp; you look forward to the next day when you can book out and leave. And setting off at a brisk walk out of the campus gates felt especially sweet today, for the sun was shining, the weather was brilliant, I was still on top of things workwise, and I had passed through two exams earlier in the week.

I felt like going somewhere far away this time, somewhere far from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Descending into the subway system, I took a line that I'd never been on before, to go to Coney Island and Brighton Beach, holding in mind that I'd better get out there and have a look at the Atlantic coastline of Brooklyn before it got too cold to venture out like that. And so it was that I changed trains at Times Square and hopped on a Q to Brooklyn.

Some of the trains on this line are much newer, and compared to the rickety 1 trains, they are positively space-age, with LED stop indicators and LCD screens. And one additional treat is that this line crosses the East River not through a tunnel but by crossing the Washington Bridge, the one just North of the Brooklyn Bridge. So, after humming and clanking its way through the tunnels of Manhattan, the train suddenly took a turning and burst out into the daylight, and there was a wonderful view of the Financial District beyond the Brooklyn Bridge, with the waters of the East River sparkling in the afternoon sun. The train made its way slowly across the bridge, and in the meantime, gazing at the skyline, tracing the ferries wending their way below, and glimpsing the Statue herself far out in the bay, I was so caught up in the view that I couldn't bring myself to look away, even to grab my camera. Anyway, I'm sure it won't be the last time I cross the Washington Bridge in a subway train, and the next time, I'll be prepared.

In Brooklyn, the train runs underground through the downtown district, all the way to Prospect Park, and then the tracks run at grade, before they finally become elevated near the coastline. Along the way, therefore, there was a lot to see: ranch-style houses set on tiny lots abutting the tracks, cinderblock rowhouses and school buildings, streets that are charming in their anonymity (Avenues A through U). And then, the train finally arrived at Brighton Beach. Spent some time exploring the neighbourhood around the station, known as Little Odessa. And it really looks the part, with Russian signs, pedestrians conversing in Russian and the Russian word for vodka displayed prominently in shop windows. Even the fashion of the people on the street is different, with people wearing heavy coats and the fur-lined hats with floppy ears that you see in the movies, so that you feel like they just parachuted in from the freezing wastes of Siberia. Set against this frigid exterior are cafes and restaurants filled with raucous Russians intent over steaming food and drinks, though on this occasion I didn't feel confident (or rich) enough to step in and try to find out what it's like.

Brighton Beach itself is a splendid stretch of sand, somewhat narrower than the Gold Coast beaches in Australia, but pristine and expansive by Singaporean standards. And there is a boardwalk that runs between the residential developments of Brighton Beach and the sands themselves. From this boardwalk, you have an unobstructed view of the beach and the great Atlantic beyond, and it's a great place to simply sit and bask in the sun, while watching various Russians wandering up and down the walk. There was one family with several young children playing in a playground set that had been placed rather oddly in the middle of the beach (it reminded me of Bergman, somehow - it must be due to the incongruous feeling I got from seeing this playground set against the great expanse of the beach that makes for an absurd sandbox). And then there were a couple of girls sitting on the rails of the boardwalk nearby, no more than ten or eleven in age, debating between themselves in American English whether I (I was sitting nearby) was a lady or a man, while their grandmother admonished them gently in Russian. After that episode, I resolved to get a haircut.

The other thing about Brighton Beach is nearby Coney Island, the renowned theme park, home of such ageless wonders as the Cyclone rollercoaster (my guidebook tells me that it's the most imitated coaster in the world) and the Wonder Wheel, which used to be the largest ferris wheel in the world. Now that summer is over, though, the park is closed, and there was a certain pathos in looking at the shuttered stalls, the fenced-up grounds and the great and silent rides. There is a special kind of poignancy in an empty and closed-down fairground, isn't there? Nearby, a lot had been turned into a parking lot for about a hundred bright yellow schoolbuses, and in a hardcourt next to the theme park, two teams of local boys were in football training, running and dribbling and shooting to the staccato commands yelled by their Russian coaches.

By far the biggest attraction, though, was the sunset. Like I said, the boardwalk offers unobstructed views of the Atlantic, and by walking from Little Odessa to Coney Island, I was able to pass enough time to watch the sun setting into the sea. And what a stunning sunset it was, the goldburst creating the most striking silhouettes. It was a great feeling, somehow, to be out in the open, under a clear cloudless sky and on the very brink between afternoon and evening. And as the colours shifted to gold, I increasingly found myself drawn again and again to my camera, as the colours and the light and the shadows interacted to form scenes that positively demanded to be recorded.

I am a sucker for sunsets. But I think part of the appeal also has to do with the openness of the sky and the sea. After a week spent in classrooms, dining hall and dorm room, just being in a wide open space was deeply refreshing. Places like the Washington Bridge Park from two weeks ago, the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market and Brighton Beach are just right antidote for the claustrophobia that creeps up on me after a week of school. And it is a real relief to find that New York itself can actually provide such relief. New York is, after all, so much more than just Manhattan, and even as I am getting to know that small island better and better, there is still the challenge of appreciating the real range of opportunities being offered by the city as a whole.

Taking

2008-10-17T13:39:00.000+08:00

And so, life rolls on. It has been a busy week, with the scramble of work that has by now become the norm. However, it is time to call it a night, to call it a week, even. Next week brings examinations, more reading and another essay. However, next week is still some days away. And now, at the end of today, this is the time, I think, to take a breather and write for myself. Whether or not I can actually spare the time, this is the thing to be done.

And now that I look back at the week, I think that it has been very good, actually. After a couple of months here, I think I am beginning to learn what to expect, and how to behave appropriately. I am beginning to get a sense of what is important and what is not, and I am more able to tailor my responses to what I encounter, rather than having the innocence of the newcomer that forces you to accept and absorb everything. Yes, it does constitute the closing of my mind to some things; but then, I am able to open my mind further in other aspects. And I realise that even here, the principles that I learned earlier still hold. The principles are sound, and it is something very reassuring to realise.

Anyway, I am on the brink of finishing the script for NOMADS. It has been a rather trying process, but now that the back of the beast has been broken, and we're nearing the point where I will be taking a back seat and letting the actors and director orchestrate the last stages of the production, I find that I can look back with a measure of amusement. The process has taken on the romantic and nostalgic tinge of hindsight. And I find myself coming out of the process with a better idea of what I can write, and how I can write about it. That much, at least, is a gain that cannot be denied.

*

The other big thing that happened over the weekend was that suddenly New York was flooded with students from Cornell and UPenn, because it was their fall break and they all decided to visit the big city. The Singaporean society in Columbia is really tiny, as I've already remarked upon, and suddenly to be among dozens of Singaporeans was rather disconcerting. It got to the point where we were bumping into Singaporeans on the streets in Midtown. Over the last two months, I had grown to treat the streets of New York as essentially anonymous spaces; whereas the Columbia campus is so small that you can expect to run into someone you know the moment you step out into a corridor or walkway, the grids of New York offer refuge from surprise socialisation. So, it was really strange suddenly to see these streets populated with familiar faces.

I think, though, that if you put too many Singaporeans together in a context like this, it becomes exceedingly unhealthy. There is a certain edge in a big group of Singaporeans in a foreign place that immediately strikes me as uncomfortable; it is like you suddenly become highly self-conscious, and you are trying to prove yourself to be worldly and engaged. Suddenly, you need to demonstrate that you are enjoying yourself immensely, to the point when your life and position become enviable by others. This is of course not to say that all Singaporeans are naturally insecure in a foreign environment; however, it seems to be the case that it takes only a few insecure people to set the tone and spark off this sort of status competition, and in a big group, one is simply more likely to encounter one or two of this kind of character.

Anyway, why do we cleave towards the familiar so much? I find that, even though I resolve to expose myself to as many new experiences as possible, I am myself drawn to familiar things - routines, friends, settings. I am perfectly aware that this means that I am missing out on things that I don't even have any conception of, and that I am nurturing a sneaking suspicion that I am shortchanging myself, and yet, the familiar carries such a seductive quality to it. Thus, even though a big Singaporean group is predictably cumbersome, I still want to seek them out, just to see what they are like even if for nothing else. I wonder what it will take to break away from that tendency.

*

But anyway, the weekend was grand because many friends were in New York for the holiday. Picked up Joel on Saturday morning in Chinatown, and then spent the day wandering around Chinatown, a block party outside Columbia, Midtown, Greenwich and Union Square. We spent a good three hours near Union Square, browsing a used-CD shop and the Strand bookstore (18 miles of books! What a bookhunt it was - practically every shelf had some sort of treasure on it). It was really sheer bliss to throw all of one's concerns and work into the air, and to simply walk the streets. And walking these streets with Joel, sinking back into the easy banter that can lead us from Aeschylus to dinky little plastic footstools, from dim sum to the American election, and everything in between, was simply great. What else can I say? I was glad to see him, and to bring him around a bit.

On Sunday, went down to Chinatown to pick up a whole group of UPenn people, most of which I had met on my previous trip down to Philly. Then, spent the whole day bringing them around, from Chinatown to Times Square (where the girls singlehandedly boosted the American economy by indulging themselves at the Hersheys and M&M's stores) and then to 5th and 6th Avenue. There, by sheer chance, we bumped into a parade and a colossal street fair, both of which closed the two avenues for a good thirty or forty blocks south of Central Park.

It was apparently a Latin American to-do, with samba music, Carnivalesque costumes and a kaleidoscope of flags. On 6th Ave, floats carrying TV stars, singers, bands and dancers rolled past - and I think one of the cars carried the ambassador of Argentina, with that country's Miss World nominee in the next car. On 5th, stalls selling Greek, French, Thai and Dominican food tesselated themselves at every junction, while the stretches in between were filled with all manner of stalls. Whereas the street fair got repetitive after a couple of blocks, the pulse of the music from the parade and the crowd of people out on this stunningly sunny day gave everything a festive air nonetheless. And all this, of course, was taking place in the midst of the the towers of Midtown, a stunning setting for a huge party.

Later, I found out that this was part of the Columbus Day celebrations. But at that point in time, I had not known that something was going on on 5th and 6th Avenues. I had actually intended to bring them to the NYPL via these avenues so that they could take a look at the ridiculous pricetags, and we ran into this event out of sheer luck. In Singapore, to run into a single street performer is a thing of delight; elsewhere, I would be happy with chancing upon a flea market (like in Penang, or the spontaneously appearing night food market in Kota Kinabalu). However, in New York, and on the very day that these people came to visit, we had the luck to stumble upon a colossal celebration stretching through the spine of Manhattan. What can I say? Things simply happen here.

After that, we finally ended up at the NYPL, and then from there we went to Grand Central, took the subway down to the Financial District and visited the Century21 discount store, which is right next to the WTC site. After that, I had to pop back to school to attend a NOMADS meeting, but Joel took the UPenn people to the Staten Island Ferry, and they took a ride just as the sun was setting. Apparently, there were incredible sights to be seen from that trip. And then, after that, it was back to Times Square, dinner on 9th Avenue, then back to Chinatown to send some of the UPenn people onto the bus back to Philly.

It was great to be able to spend this weekend showing them around New York, to finally put my trusty guidebook and the experience of two months in this city to its best use so far. And as luck would have it, the weather and the city itself was all too happy to cooperate to throw surprises and delights into our path. It was a great chance to see the city on one of the last days of summer; and certainly, if these people had not come down to New York on Sunday, I would have totally missed the Columbus Day event. As it turned out, though, it was one magic day, and I'm glad that there were people to share it with.

*

Oh - one more thing. I spent the weekend redecorating the room, rearranging the furniture and the posters a bit, and I created a little sitting area, so now I can actually have people in my room and not have them sit on the floor. Anyway, part of that sitting area is a great upholstered dining chair that I picked up on the street in Midtown on Saturday when I was walking around with Joel. Apparently, someone had just thrown it out, and it was just sitting on the sidewalk. It looked perfectly good, freshly dumped, so I decided to take it. And so, for the evening of Saturday, I was walking around Midtown with this chair tucked under one arm, eventually taking it to NYU and Rockefeller Centre, where we met up with some of the Cornell Singaporeans, who predictably though it was ridiculous to take a chair off a sidewalk. And maybe it is. But now, I have a nice chair in my room, courtesy of New York City and its overly-rich denizens in Midtown, and it was well worth the investment of time and effort to carry it back.

It was also a great sociological experiment. Things are such in New York that no one found it strange that I was carrying a chair along the sidewalks, and even when I took it into the subway, people were happy to accommodate the extra bulk. It did attract several comments on the subway, though, especially when I sat in it right next to one of the normal, un-upholstered subway seats, but they were mostly made out of amusement. No one begrudged me my new chair. Of course, if you tried the same thing in Singapore, you'd probably attract a lot of unwanted attention from the MRT staff or the police before you got it back home. In Singapore, I would not even try a stunt like this. But, luckily, this isn't Singapore, and you must make the most of the opportunities that you find in front of you.

Bridges

2008-10-10T13:38:00.001+08:00

It has been a rather good week so far! Have been clearing work at a good pace, and passed up my last essay of the week on Wednesday, meaning that I could take something of a break today, which explains why I am here writing now rather than reading something for class. Also, have managed to squeeze in some more writing for the NOMADS script. It's nearing completion: one more scene to write, and then that's it, and I can deliver a product to the drama troupe (although it's unlikely that this will be the end of the editing phase). The biggest problem by far is trying to make the storyline cohere. At the moment the play is still very much three character studies clumped together into 30 minutes, and the plotline is really just there for decoration. And on Monday, one of the producers asked what the play was about, and why the audience needed to see it. Good questions: unfortunately as things have worked out, I don't know if we can find an answer before the performance date.

At any rate, with this approach to playwriting, this is the big challenge for the playwriter: to somehow find a way to combine the character profiles into a compelling story, to tease meaning out of an arbitrary combination of factors. It's a rather postmodernist approach, and I don't think the audience will be particularly impressed if we do actually end up giving them the disjointed sequence of scenes that is the current play. In its current form, I don't believe the script is worth staging; or, if it is staged, I don't think it is worth watching.

*

Speaking of watching, in Astronomy lab this week, we finally got to do some actual observations, pointing our telescopes at the Moon. It's my first time with a telescope of any appreciable power, and it's amazing to see the amount of detail and resolution in the eyepiece. Even though we're observing in New York, where the atmosphere is less than clean of both light and particulate pollution, the telescope just cut through all that distance and air to bring the ridges, craters and seas of the Moon into sharp focus. It really is an epiphanic moment; suddenly, an alien world is within grasp of your intellect. And there is also a moment of clarity, when one's previous idealised notions of the Moon (since it functions more as a symbol that stands for something else rather than an object in itself) are transmuted by one's observations of the real thing.

Of course, beyond the Moon, there was also a stunning view of the city by night. The observatory is situated on the roof of the tallest building on campus, and from there, the surrounding neighbourhoods of Morningside and Harlem glitter in the night. In the picture above, you can just see Midtown in the distance, and the big bright building is Butler Library on Columbia's campus. The picture was taken in the telescope dome, so the dark shapes are the dome and the telescope itself, and the Moon is also easily spotted.

*

Beyond watching the skies, Wednesday also brought a chance to watch a Broadway musical. Last month, as I had written before, Columbia's Arts Initiative Programme suddenly made available free tickets to watch Wicked, and they were quickly snapped up. Went with C to watch this show, which was my first Broadway experience - and it left me hungering for more.

Broadway shows seem to occupy a unique place in the popular psyche, able to pull at heartstrings and delight even the most cynical audience members. The closest thing that I can find from previous experience to compare this with is Bollywood, with its large-scale musical pieces and intervening dramatic scenes. And just like in Bollywood, Wicked was extremely effective at invoking emotions, balancing humour with sadness, righteousness with indignation, and finishing off with an ending that is deeply feel-good (this is not to say that it's a shallow ending - though my pro-tragedy tastes prompted me to prefer a darker, more poignant finish - and yet, we must remember that Broadway attracts crowds by being entertaining, and a sad ending spells a failed musical). And needless to say, all the props, costumes and makeup were opulent, and the choreography and stageplay were professional beyond anything I think I can achieve.

And most satisfyingly, the story itself too is rather complex, so it's not child's play to watch Wicked. As you already know, the musical is based on the story of The Wizard of Oz, except that it complicates things, not only blurring the lines between good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, intelligence and stupidity, but going so far as to erase them altogether. What results is an entrancing mix of characters and plot trajectories that seem disparate but actually ultimately link together into a great web of reciprocal influences and causality. Thus small details from early on in the play come back to become the key to understanding the happenings at the end of the play. Thus, seemingly innocuous happenings shape the outcome of the plot decisively. One of the best examples is how a normal girl gets to become green, with a pointy hat, a cloak and a broom; the Wicked Witch of the West is not presented to us as a finished product, but we are allowed to see how she is shaped and formed, and that awareness negates the possibility of glib generalisations and stereotyping.

And of course, simply being out on the town is a nice feeling. After the show, wandering down to Times Square from the Broadway theatres with C, I felt like I had been part of something larger, something special. As I said before, things happen here in New York: you can feel it, you know it, and most important of all, you can be part of it.

*

And since today's a bit of a lull for me, I took the chance to get away from school and decided to explore the Brooklyn riverside. I'd previously gone there with CUE when we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, but this time round I had much more time to spend there, and there was daylight. It's just nice, of course, to wander the streets of New York in and of itself: taking the subway somewhere else, listening to the rails singing metallic, and then finding yourself in a new place where your status of stranger is simultaneously your greatest vulnerability and your greatest asset.

But today's exploration of the Brooklyn riverside was even more rewarding than just being a nice walk. The area is really beautiful! The architecture is more interesting and varied than in Morningside, and the whole district has been done up rather nicely. Urban renewal, gentrification, or whatever else you want to call it, has done a good job sprucing up the place. But at the same time, the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges remains a place for cultural ferment, chock full of art galleries, indie cinemas and little performance spaces stuffed into old industrial buildings.

And when you're tired of walking around these delightful and handsome streets, simply head to the river. The Brooklyn Bridge Park has absolutely stunning views of Manhattan and the Bridge itself; further up, on an escarpment, the Fruit Street Sitting Area give a less touristified vantage point right next to a high-class residential neighbourhood. The former has now displaced the NYPL as my favourite place in New York, and I spent a couple of hours there on the grass watching the sun go down. And it also helped that today was an unseasonably warm day, warm enough to wear summer clothes in; and the bluesky day ultimately produced a sunset that was beautiful enough to stop anyone in their tracks. Watching the goldburst turn to red, and watching the water and the glass on the buildings reflecting the splendour, suddenly you realise that it is a good thing to be alive. The ludicrous beauty of the view is just what one needs to make living worth it.

City of Red Brick

2008-10-05T13:20:00.000+08:00

This week was relatively uneventful, but ended with a short jump to Boston to attend the Singapore Seminar, a gathering of Singaporeans in the States organised by the PSC. The organisation of the seminar itself struck me as rather cynical: the new PSC chairman unabashedly acknowledged that the purpose of the seminar was to maintain scholars' emotional attachment to Singapore. On the one hand, the fact that they think we need to have our emotional attachment maintained wrongs us by assuming that our resolve or morality were so weak that we cannot do this ourselves. On the other hand, the fact that this is an issue at all reveals such fragile levels of commitment among the young people who have been chosen to be the next generation of mandarinate leaders in the civil service. Neither notion is flattering

Also, predictably, the seminar itself was more show than substance. Predictably, when you put 140 officials and scholars together in a conference room, everyone is somehow compelled to take things more seriously than they warrant. So there was a striking amount of posturing and self-congratulation - as if we needed any more reassurance that our (future) bosses are important and influential people, and that the calling that we have chosen will be nothing if not demanding. The usual range of platitudes were recited (we need a more politically engaged population, we can't rely on the government to do everything etc etc), with no progress on how one should go about bringing them to fruition. Generally, then, it was the usual situation of an official event pretending to be more important than it really is.

Fortunately, for most of the people at the SingSem, the objective of attendance, far from being the lukewarm discussions, was the chance to meet old friends and acquaintances again. Once again, I am struck by the rather limited circle that we've been moving around in ever since secondary school. Many faces were familiar, if not outright friendly. But all the same, it was good to be with old friends again, among them YS, Joel and Jes. And more generally, it was a good time to compare notes and trade tips about collegiate life, especially from the people who've already been studying in the States for several years.

And when you put so many Singaporeans together, suddenly it becomes feasible to maintain a national clique. The use of Singlish, the clipped tones of conversation, the familiar hand signals and the use of common symbols to invoke nostalgia for home (nasi lemak, chicken rice, chili crab) suddenly all become acceptable, as the group is large enough to impose its mannerisms on the ambient social situation on the streets. Several groups of Singaporeans first met up for dinner on Friday at a local Chinese restaurant (lobster, fried crab, mushrooms and caixin, caixin and oyster sauce, fish head soup, Hainanese chicken), and then we trawled the streets of Cambridge, Boston for other itinerant groups, so that the Singaporean gathering expanded over time.

It also helped that we had a local contact, in the form of SJ, an old secondary-school classmate from the PRC, who had gotten into Harvard, and who had happened to get into contact with me (after years of having fallen out of contact) just days before we were scheduled to arrive in Boston. With his help, our group wended our way through the quaint streets of Cambridge, past Harvard's handsome brick buildings to end up finally at the banks of the Charles River. Then we went to his suite to hang out for a while.

Although it was night-time, it was clear that Harvard's facilities and environment far outstrip what Columbia can offer. The rooms are ridiculously spacious (to the point of making all the Columbia students' hearts break with jealousy), the buildings themselves exude stylishness and solidity in their architecture, and the streets and lawns are neat and well-kept. And today, we continued the self-demoralisation by visiting a dorm in MIT too, which belonged to C, who I have not talked to in years either.

(On a side note, it is clear from just walking through the environs of these colleges that these are special places, and that the people in them are brilliant beyond decency. Walking past a group of MIT or Harvard students is like running a gauntlet - I swear, you can feel the buzz of intelligence and genius in the air, and you feel somewhat like a trespasser. Also, there is a certain exclusivity and insularity in the campuses. The streets run through the campus, but many plots are surrounded by security fencing and thus only provide visual enjoyment to the random passerby)

Anyway, besides making ourselves resolve to transfer to Harvard and MIT, or at least to do summer courses there, we also took some time out to visit the city itself. We arrived in Chinatown on the aptly named Chinatown Bus, and had a glimpse of downtown before we went into the little streets of Chinatown itself to look for a nice place to eat. The Chinatown is not very big, and is mixed with a Little Saigon. However, we found a supermarket in Boston's Chinatown that is superior to its New York cousins in one crucial respect: it stocks durians. They are strange, misshapen, unstinky durians from California, but still, they have green, spiked shells. I could hardly believe my eyes when I found them.

Yesterday night, after checking into the hotel, we took a long walk from near MIT to Harvard, passing a street lined with bars and college-age revelers out to welcome the weekend, a small plaza in which a garage band was playing, Harvard's endearingly handsome dorm buildings, and the Charles River, spanned by elegant bridges dramatically lit up at night, and lined by a long strip of grass and historic buildings strikingly highlighted by spotlighting. And then today, we went down to MIT, looked at some of its impressive array of modern buildings (quite the opposite from Harvard's style - and I am told that one of the MIT buildings was even designed by I.M. Pei), then went back to the Charles River, where we took some really stunning photos of the Boston skyline, and then made our way to Massachusetts Avenue via Fenway.

And I have to say that Boston really is a gorgeous place, a place more in keeping with Singaporean tastes (if I may be so bold as to assume that such a thing exists and that Singaporeans generally subscribe to it). The streets are wide and clean, the subways are modern and fully functional, and many of the downtown buildings are less than 30 years old, giving rise to exciting cityscapes. The river district is especially seductive, with the wide river flowing, royal-blue, through the centre of town, lined by tree-lined banks and brick or glass-sided office towers rising gently in the background. For me, it sets a standard f0r what a city can do to exist integrally with its river. And all throughout the city are old, quaint buildings which are either Victorian or turretted apartment blocks built out of a deep-red brick. The effect is to create dignified streetscapes with dramatic contrasts of colour: the walls and the foliage. The beauty of Boston (combined with the splendid weather) took my breath away more than once.

As for the people, they are clearly more helpful than the average New Yorker, though they do fall short of the kind of generosity I saw in Philadelphia. An exception must, however, be made for students, who are liable to behave somewhat erratically. Also, I do feel somehow that racial awareness is more acute in Boston than in either Philadelphia or New York. People actually do complain in your face if they see a whole group of ethnic Chinese walking along; of course, it could only be that we were making too much noise or taking too much space, but I think there is no ignoring a certain condescension or criticism in their once-over glances. Nevertheless, encounters with members of the public are generally civil and polite; the streets feel safer there if you're a traveler with no knowledge of local norms.

All the same, beyond the stunning city and the enviable schools, the real attraction was really the chance to interact with old friends again. SJ and C are people with whom I haven't talked in years, and I got the chance to visit them in their schools in Boston over the weekend. Also, there were nice moments when Jes, Joel and I were poking holes in the arguments presented at the SingSem, and trying (not very hard, though) to stifle our giggles at some absurdities we uncovered. And YS was guiding us around Boston, so it was like old times again, travelling with my old flightmate and exploring a place. There was even a river scene, which reminded me of the times previously when we had also sought out foreign rivers, and other times beside other rivers with other people.

*

It occurs to me that this trip up to Boston really is a sort of escapism on my part: an attempt to escape the stresses and routines of Columbia life, or to revisit some parts of the past. There really was a desire to just go somewhere - anywhere - else. So the delight at those moments in Boston were somewhat tempered by the thought of having to return to New York so quickly - New York, with its crumbling sidewalks, construction work at virtually every corner, its fantastically complex and unpredictably operating subways. And while New York is a monumental, awesome city, Boston is more livable, more humane in some ways too. Boston feels real, whereas there are places in New York that are so ingrained on popular culture and public conceptions that to be in the actual places strikes me as surreal.

And yet, when it actually came time to go, there was no real regret. After all, Columbia may be inferior in almost every aspect to the Boston colleges, but it has something that no other college has - New York City. And when, on the bus, the constellation that is the Manhattan night scene suddenly appears out of the darkness, and you see the complex interplay of lights in the night, suddenly you realise that this is New York City that you're going to, and nowhere else is quite like it. In Boston, things may be nicer, but here in New York, things happen. And you're right in the thick of it.

Suffering Unto Truth

2008-09-28T14:10:00.003+08:00

I haven't written in a long, long while because work has eaten up all my time. It is a really lame excuse, really, because work is never-ending, and if you commit yourself to it, you'll never find that you have time. But this week's situation was made worse by the coincidence of the Philadelphia trip (which was a cut in productivity that I willingly undertook, and it certainly proved to be worthwhile), the NOMADS scriptwriting deadlines and the due dates of two essays. Nevertheless, not writing for ten days has really had a toll on me, I think: I feel like there is a lot pent up that needs to be recorded. Every morning I wake up and memories flood my consciousness, and that post-sleep peacefulness is all too fleeting. Here, in this journal, I have the chance to release my memories, which is the first step to both immortalisation and forgetting. In other words, I find that I need to have a private channel in which to simply write for no one else but myself.

Anyway, I'd like to get a rant out of the way first. Have been rewriting the script for NOMADS over the last week, and I'm on the third rewrite. It has gotten rather frustrating, because it seems like they don't like what I write. Not just in the sense of finding it distasteful; I am made to understand that they simply won't act in it. Now, in a normal theatre production I would just let matters lie and simply let the play remain unperformed; but, in this reverse-engineered process, we have a performance date but we don't yet have a play, so I am obliged to produce something performable. So, to make matters easier, I let the actors craft out characters that they would like to act, thinking that I would then be able to string them together into some kind of plot. But I should have known that we would end up with a bunch of caricatures and extremities, and that a plot would just be a cosmetic device, an excuse to put these characters onstage.

So what we effectively have is a bunch of zany characters who don't really have a compelling reason to be put on stage at all. I mean, there is the definite entertainment value, and these characters surely capture the actors' abilities more completely than anything I can probably come up with myself, and one can always resort to the convenient escape clause of labelling the play an absurdist or post-modern piece. But I take issue with the fact that the play has no real meaning behind it. I can still write it, but it's really at this point just stringing words together. There is no real reason at this point why this play should be performed at all, why we should compel an audience to sit through all thirty minutes of it.

And without this function of communicating a meaning, the play is really just a technical exercise, an opportunity for self-aggrandisation and self-indulgence. It is not drama; it is only theatrics. And while there is no denying that the technical prowess of everyone involved in this project is beyond reproach, it seems to me to be such a waste to simply use it to preen on a stage. I am not saying that I can write a good enough script that will capture their abilities; I am willing to bet, though, that their abilities are not well captured by this kind of reverse-engineered play-acting. And for me, this is not really play-writing, but a variation of functional writing. Essentially, this is secretary work.

And quite frankly, the degree of self-indulgence that theatre people get into here (a gross generalisation, but indulge me) is repulsive, nauseating. There are times when I just want to shout at them to grow up and behave professionally, and now I find myself dreading our rehearsals, not because I cannot contribute but because I have to sit through hours of that kind of ego-massaging. It seems that we approach this task from fundamentally different viewpoints; whereas it is a feel-good exercise for some, for me, there is something that I actually want to communicate. I can see where they're coming from, but my personal perspective does not permit me to participate in it.

Anyway, that was refreshing, but ultimately unhelpful in the real world, so I'll leave it here for the time being.

*

Throughout this week, I've had moments of wistful nostalgia for the weekend trip to Philly, not so much because I miss Philly (though I really like the place and the people there), but because I just want to escape all this work, and Philly's the only other place I know something of at this point in time. Anyway, it was a great trip, and I felt like I really needed it. In fact, I probably didn't have the correct impression of how much I needed it till I actually left Manhattan on the bus. The smooth, wide highways, the easy cruising through the New Jersey countryside, and the wide open sky suddenly drove home how crowded Manhattan really is, how little sky we can actually see. And on the bus, I couldn't do any work, and so I indulged in two hours of music from the good old iriver instead, and realised that since arriving in the States, I've not had the chance to really do nothing but think and reflect, since before this bus ride every waking moment was taken up either by work or by some new experience that occupies all my senses.

Anyway, Philadelphia appeared on the horizon suddenly, rising out of the countryside like a fairytale kingdom. This is a city of glass towers: all its modern office buildings use glass curtain-walls, and downtown Philadelphia gleamed in the sunlight. The downtown section is also more open than Manhattan, the buildings having been set back further from the grid of streets. Throughout downtown are also scattered many handsome parks, especially the one near Independence Hall, which is the most peaceful place I've encountered since arriving in America. And, most intriguingly, the people there are detectably nicer than Manhattanites. People there walk more slowly, take their time more, are more courteous. I mean, when we were walking around on the streets, all we had to do was to stand still for a minute and look in all directions, and some stranger would approach us and offer to give us directions. I actually feel safer in Philly as a stranger than in Columbia as a student (though, partly, of course, this has to do with the fact that I must bear the consequences of my interactions in Columbia more than the consequences of random encounters on Philly's streets).

The University of Pennsylvania itself is also a beautiful place. It is more of a campus than Columbia is, with ornate architecture, sweeping paths along and across great expanses of lawn, little nooks in the dorms that only residents know about, and many, many places to eat (and the food is better too, to boot!). The ovewhelming impression is one of space, as the rooms are bigger, the libraries emptier, the ceilings higher in the big halls, and if you want to get across campus, it actually is a chore that requires ten minutes of hard walking.

Met many great people there, from the other Singaporeans in UPenn (there are more than 15 of them in the Class of 2012, which means that the Singaporean community there can form a viable clique of its own) to international students and Americans alike. And once again, the people there are palpably nicer, less in a rush. It veritably makes Columbia people seem like they're always on edge, with urgency permeating their every move. And in between bleary-eyed bouts of studying, the students there get up to some pretty reckless things. I didn't plan in advance to arrive on a party night, but both night I was there involved alcohol, and the first night involved a person getting so drunk he had to be hospitalised (which, now that I look back at it and I know the guy's alright, seems pretty darned funny - especially the antics he got up to!). The other night had a big birthday party for one of the Singaporeans, involving much dancing in one of the larger dorm rooms we had at our disposal (I simply bobbed my head, having no real envy of embarrassing myself in another school), and bouts of singing such classic songs as Home and Where I Belong (and I have the videos to prove it!). And this was followed by thoughtful conversation (aided by alcohol) into the wee hours of the next morning, the first of its kind since I came to America. There was only time for a nap before we had to start studying again.

But all this notwithstanding, it was simply good to see Joel again, and to get back into our old pattern of interaction and our old antics. Exchanging notes about college life, revisiting old threads of conversation, even reviving old half-forgotten jokes, I managed to recapture some of the old sense of security. I am ashamed to admit this, because I know that philosophically, this shouldn't be the case: but I was really happy to see a familiar face that predates the whole long goodbye and long wait, and to return to a state of being and interaction in which so many more things can be taken for granted.

On Saturday night, we went down to South Street, which is apparently the happening place in Philly in the evenings. Walking down the street was like walking through Jane Jacobs' version of the Lower East Side; the place was chock-full of people and vibrance. We popped into a multi-storey carpark, following a sign promising free music, and found a garage band playing on the roof. We bypassed a lot completey covered by cut-up beer cans and glass bottles, and some huge murals that are apparently a Philly trademark (something like the murals of Lyon). There was a flea market on the street; among the bricabrac was a computer that had a 3.5" floppy drive. We popped into a hat shop and a comic shop, and finally ended up at a great Greek restaurant for dinner, finishing with a divine Greek dessert, a supersweet pastry stuffed with dates whose name escapes me now.

One of the really cool thing about Philadelphia, though, is that these streets tie into my coursework. South Street, which is presently the hip street in town, used to be the boundary of the old black ghetto, back in the day when WEB Dubois wrote his seminal sociological account of the plight of The Philadelphia Negro. Closer to UPenn itself is another neighbourhood, Powelton Village, that is mentioned in my Urban Studies class; in fact, UPenn itself is mentioned in the assigned reading. So, as I walked those streets, I was also looking out for signs of what I'd read about in class. And there is a special kind of satisfaction in looking at something on the street - a house, a street interaction, anything - and suddenly realising you have the terms with which to explain it.

*

Anyway, speaking of sociology, I was out for two afternoons this week doing field research for the paper. Well, it really isn't rigorous, academic-grade research, because all I did was to ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth and observe how tourists behaved. Heck, there wasn't even a field in sight (except for the minor league stadium near the Staten Island terminal for the ferry)! Anyway, though two short afternoons of observation is nowhere near enough to draw any concrete conclusions, there were some interesting phenomena, like how tourists communicate with each other more readily in an environment that is clearly tourist-friendly, how locals are more indulgent of tourists in this environment, and how tourist and local negotiate the cultural barriers that are highlighted through their proximity on the ferry.

One of the quotidian satisfactions of sociology, though, is that you are better able to read ambient conditions and predict the behaviour of groups of people. Here, for example, we are just passing by the Statue of Liberty, and predictably, the whole row of tourists decide to snap a picture of the lady at the same time. It makes for a cute photo, but it also makes a sociological point, that people tend to behave in predictable ways given the same stimulus, and that even though each person may exercise individual will, collective order still emerges out of the aggregate result of all the effects of the individual exercises of will.

*

And a last note about the weather. Woke up today with the campus shrouded in fog. Throughout the whole day, the fog did not really lift, but hung around, clinging to the tops of the skyscrapers. It has been a damp day, but oddly enough, it has been warm enough that I can open the window of my room and enjoy a bit of a breeze. In fact, I could swear that it's gotten warmer at night. But anyway, my astronomy professor would have me know that the autumn equinox occurred at 11.44am on Monday, and that moment marked the official beginning of autumn. And on campus, the first of the trees have started to turn colour.

Time passes. The seasons change. And it has already been a month's worth of school.

One Month Mark

2008-09-18T12:53:00.000+08:00

Had a special event today. After classes finished at 4pm, I made my way down to the New York Public Library again to attend a forum on the role of the written word in today's media-rich environment, involving two literary critics, James Wood (author of the newly published How to Read Fiction) and Daniel Mandelsohn. But the real reason why I went was because Pico Iyer was mediating the talk.

When I got there, though, the tickets to the event had already been sold out, and I found myself in a standby line, wondering whether I'd wasted a trip downtown. However, New York hasn't disappointed me yet, and this time was no different, because I managed to strike up a conversation with another elderly lady who was lining up in front of me. Firstly, she very kindly informed me that there was a waiting list on which we had to put our names; without that hint, I would have been standing uselessly in the line. And then we struck up a long conversation to pass the time, talking about magnificent libraries in the world, college life and even US politics. I count it as a minor achievement to be able to carry out a reasonably coherent and substantive conversation with an American about the elections; and of course, last week's ServiceNation event came in useful too.

Then, as luck would have it, someone with a ticket shows up at the beginning of the line, and offers to sell his ticket at a discount to my new acquaintance. And to my utter surprise, she declines the offer and asks him to sell it to me instead, saying that she was already second on the wait list and was thus almost certain to get a standby ticket. It was an offer that was too good to refuse, and I took the ticket off his hands. I have to say that I was really touched by the gesture; here is a degree of generosity that I have never come to expect from a stranger, and what are the odds that I would be the lucky recepient of such a gesture?

So, after offering to wait with her anyway (which she graciously declined, telling me to go get a good seat instead), and thanking her profusely, I made my way down to the basement auditorium of the library's new wing, and it wasn't long before the conversation began. And it is an interesting setup, this kind of public conversation, for although the proceedings were definitely not scripted, there was a distinct feeling of theatricality. As the three of them talked, they were always aware of the audience who was also listening in, and they also frequently broke the fourth wall, much to our delight. There was that special self-consciousness when you know that your conversation is being eavesdropped upon; there was an edge of contrivance and conscious self-censorship (or at least spontaneous self-editing). This is clearly a dimension of conversation that can be successfully investigated by a piece of theatre.

Anyway, the important thing is that their self-consciousness did not stop them from making very good points. Two of them are professional critics, so the topics ranged around the role of the critic vis-a-vis the author and the reader. One good point that came up was about the motivations of critics, that they see themselves as sort of gatekeepers of the literary canon and the defenders of that canon's integrity and quality, and because they feel possessive about this canon, they can be rather vicious with pretenders to literary greatness. In other words, the nastiness that critics may display towards a literary piece is not personal, but stems from the defence of a higher ideal. And it also follows that it would be unprofessional to temper their words out of consideration for the author's feelings.

Another interesting point was whether critics should also be masters of the medium before they criticise works in that medium. Basically it is the argument that only writers have the right to criticise writers, because then they know the hardship of writing. And Mendelsohn made a great point about how this viewpoint tends to belittle the audience, effectively denying that the audience has any right to criticise or even appreciate a piece of art, because surely an audience member cannot write or paint or compose like a master. There is certainly a place for admiring the technical mastery of the creator in his medium, an admiration that will surely be enhanced by one's own visceral experience of operating in that medium. But I think these people rightly place the emphasis on effectiveness of communication rather than technical excellence, for at the end of the day, a work of art is not meant to showcase technical skill as much as to communcate an idea.

And they also spent considerable time decrying the proliferation of opinion through new media, especially the internet. They made a rather good point about the act of commenting, actually (as in what you do when you tag a tagboard or add a comment on the end of an article). In it, they characterised commenting as an evil, basically throwing words around cheaply and disrespectfully (both to the writer and to the use of language itself). They rightly point out that commenters (and most online content producers, like this journal's writer, for instance) are exempt from the standards of rigour and responsibility that professional critics subject themselves to. Consequently, it would be premature to assign authority to these unchecked, anonymous opinions, as opposed to the rigorously regulated expressions of a critic or a writer. This is not to say, of course, that there is no good material on the internet and in mass media; indeed, the panel agreed that there are probably more good pieces of writing out there now than ever before, due to the artistic liberation enabled by technological and social changes that only occurred recently. Rather, it is to say that the amount of rubbish has also risen dramatically, and the scope of information that anyone reading this journal is likely to be exposed to is probably also too wide for him to accurately get an impression of what is valuable information and what is not. So, relatively trivial works get undue emphasis while relatively worthy works are underrated.

But all these valuable insights aside, I actually got to talk to Pico Iyer himself! It wasn't for very long, but it is immediately apparent that this person is cuttingly insightful, acutely sensitive and deeply considerate. This is not a person with a big stature, but he fills the space with serenity and enthusiasm for interaction. When one speaks with him, one is aware of great intelligence, and one is accorded a courtesy so great that one feels unworthy. I mean, he actually took the time and effort to converse with me, rather than simply throwing a few perfunctory phrases around, which was what I expected, and which is the most one can really expect for some of the artists and writers from home. Maybe it has something to do with worldview; maybe conceit and self-satisfaction are incompatible with a wide experience of the world.

And, like I said exactly a month ago, The Lady and The Monk was the only old book that I indulged myself in bringing over here from home (for my old students, reread the passage I extracted from it for our Travelogues worksheet; for G in London, interestingly, he says that this is his favourite book among his own works). It represents my favourite Iyer book so far; and as luck would have it, I was able to personally meet its author. And I was able to get a signature on it, thereby making it the most valuable possession in my room at the moment - at least on a symbolic level.

*

And after I came back from the Library, floating in a haze of incredulity and euphoria, I reread the last part of that book, where Iyer describes his leave-taking from the city of Kyoto. And for one breathless moment, I thought of where this book had accompanied me on the travels of the last year, and how I had been introduced to Iyer in the first place, and the people I know who are now in Japan, and - by implication - all the people I know. It was a moment that stunned me, that awakened a powerful yearning in me. These are people that I want to meet again; more importantly, these are people who I think deserve to have a chance to experience what I am able to experience now.

Scriptwriting

2008-09-17T12:40:00.003+08:00

I would have written something here yesterday, but there was a NOMADS (New Original Material Acted and Directed by Students) meeting yesterday. This was our first chance to get together as a group, us meaning a writer, a director and five actors. And, as mentioned before, there was a stunning amount of talent on display. I mean, by the standards of home, I think these people would be eligible to perform professionally. It is with incredible ease, gameness and confidence that they slip into the theatrical realm, that special state of mind when you are self-aware without being self-conscious. And it certainly is a daunting task to write something that will do justice to the talent of all these people.

So, instead of writing here, sat down to write the beginnings of a script instead, basing the premise on the old monastery joke that is one of the few jokes I've ever memorised, partly out of social necessity, but also partly because it elicits such priceless responses from listeners. And once the situation was identified, the issue defined and the characters enumerated, the composition of the stage action itself came much more easily. Partly, I think, it is the dialogue and the interaction developing naturally and logically from a scenario and a set of social norms, but also it was because I haven't written anything fictional in a long time, let alone something meant to be staged. I wouldn't say that the material is good; I would be mad to expect it to remain unchanged in its present form. But I am at least glad that it came easily, without too much trouble.

And now, we have something of a nucleus of a script, and I feel much better, having a better idea of what I can do and who are the people that I am working with. The rough effort of setting a foundation has begun, and soon, hopefully, we will transit into the phase of creating actual architecture, in crafting the symbolism and the stagecraft, and creating meaning in action. Already, there are viable ideas coming out, and we seem to be heading somewhere productive, even (dare I say it) epiphanic.

And the other day, after auditioning the actors, we stepped into the black box that will be the scene of our plays. It is a magnificent black box, able to seat about 100 people comfortably, and infinitely customisable, from the reconfigurable bleacher seating to the splendid lighting grid. The imagination can run wild in a space like this, expand to fill it, to tap the potential that saturates the space to create a memorable means of communication. It is good, after all these years and despite all the nervousness and insecurities, to be involved in stagecraft again.

*

On Sunday, hoping to repeat Saturday's good study trip, went out again on a mission in the subways. Originally, my intention had been to go to Washington Square, around which the urban campus of NYU is arrayed. But on reaching the place, I found that half the square was closed for reconstruction, and the other half was more or less filled to capacity. So, instead, I wandered away through the unnumbered streets, and inadvertently made my way from Washington Square to Canal Street, on the way passing through Greenwich Village, SoHo, Tribeca and Chinatown.

I will say this much about NYU: they really are in the thick of things. Washington Square doesn't even come close to producing the effect of Columbia's South Lawn. Rather, walking from building to building on the campus, you are constantly aware of being part of the fabric of the neighbourhood, through small signs like the pedestrians passing through and the community notice boards mounted beside NYU campus information. And NYU students study under the shadow of the Empire State Building; a more poignant reminder of one's place in the city cannot be found. And while Columbia still is able to offer a degree of shelter from the city around it, there is no escaping the city in NYU; I don't even think that they try to escape the city. And, honestly, for a while, I found it hard to return to Columbia, because NYU seemed so much more involved in urban life.

Anyway - we've all heard the stories of the charms of the small, unnumbered streets of New York's component villages. Well, I am as surprised as you are to report that the stereotypes are true. The streets are a tad too well groomed, too neat and tidy, but there is no denying the charms of cafes opened onto sidewalks, the leafy canopies trees enmeshing with wrought-iron fire escapes, and pristine parks and plazas with murmuring fountains, a sculpture or two, and the elderly playing chess. These are places in which one wants to get lost in, so one can encounter by chance the spontaneous epiphanic moments and people that one sees so often in movies and reads so often in travelogues. In these streets, this fantasy of the sublime chance encounter seems realisable; and I do find myself hoping that it is realisable.

*

Also, J called on Sunday, and we spent a half-hour catching up, trading notes about our first weeks in the States. It really has been a long while since I've talked to him, or to any of my old circle of friends, for that matter. In the last two years, I have come to depend on them a lot, taking for granted that a sympathetic ear or sporting stomach would be up to a night of beer and philosophy at the drop of a hat. Now, continentally dispersed as we are, the old certainties have changed.

Anyway, J suggested a trip over the weekend to Philadelphia, and I am determined to take him up on that offer. It seems that due to the work distribution among all the subjects, every week that passes will make it even harder to get away, so I should take the chance now, regardless of the work that I may have to do this week. And there really is no reason why I can't simply read my books in Philly - and I expect J also has his own work to do, so we won't be spending nearly enough time in a drunken stupor, if at all.

Another reason is that, in my Urban Studies class, I am reading this sociology book about black people in the pseudonymous "Eastern City". There is a quirky tradition among sociologists to use flimsy pseudonyms in their papers, which prove to be no disguise for people in the know (i.e. people who actually live in the real-life "Eastern City" will recognise it straight away from the descriptions). To cut a long story short, the professor informed us that "Eastern City" is really Philadelphia - and that the neighbourhood under consideration is actually right next to UPenn. So, a happy coincidence now enables me to take a look for myself. Talk about contextualising one's findings in the real world...

And incidentally, my Urban Studies professor sometimes quotes from a book written by my Sociology professor, and both of them quote from material written by another professor in the Sociology department. Sometimes, the two courses use the same reading material, and the ideas raised in one may be echoed in the other with eerie synchronisation. It goes to show, of course, how interrelated these two fields are, and how good sociology is about being observant for connections and patterns wherever they may occur. It also serves to lighten my workload somewhat. And it is rather cute that professors quote one another, and may name-drop colleagues like celebrities; it shows that the world of academia is very small.

The Twin Lions

2008-09-14T13:41:00.002+08:00

So, last weekend, I went out to Union Square in to study, and it was a great chance to explore the city and get work done. Building on that good experience, today, went down to the New York Public Library bearing books and homework.

I realise now that I realy do like simply riding the subway. The people that one may meet in the subway system no longer seem threatening, and are only amusing for the most part, and certainly harmless. Similarly, the old infrastructure, the open tracks, leaky ceilings, screeching brakes, jerky cars, worn staircases, graffiti-ed walls and general grime in the system are also essentially harmless. Once you get to that realisation, then you start to appreciate the character of the system; the diversity appears colourful rather than threatening, and the deterioration is quaint rather than dangerous.

I am repeatedly struck by how the sounds of the subway get at me. The tinny service announcements in the carriages, the echoing clanking as the train passes through the tunnels, the screaming of metal on metal that can penetrate through layers of concrete right up to the sidewalk; and I daresay there is no sound that quite has the quality of anticipation and seduction as the building rumble of a far-off train approaching in the tunnel. And then, there are the sights as well: the barely-made-out graffiti on the tunnel walls, the lights and coloured signals flashing past as the train speeds along the tracks, the spectacle of a car full of people, and other people on the platform trying to cram their way in. It is a veritable circus; it is a subterranean society thathas its own rules, its own conventions, a society that is ephemeral and transient in nature, but which leaves an indelible and persistent mark on the rest of the city.

And it strikes me how elegant the system really is. The key is to realise that the trains operate like buses, so there can be more than one train line on one train track. Once that is realised, then all one really needs besides that is a practical level of literacy. The principles of the system are easily deduced from there: express trains only stop at stations with four platforms, local trains open their doors on the right when stopping at a local stop, and above all, follow the signs when unsure. And once these principles are deduced, the system is easily navigated, and the principles prove to be reliable even when one needs to extrapolate a response to a novel scenario (for example, a service stoppage between stations). The subway is thus like a complex logic problem, and its solution delivers the amount of satisfaction appropriate to the solution of a good riddle.

Anyway, I digress - so, I went to the Public Library today. And it is an amazing building. The entrance hall itself is breathtaking, a room clad entirely in marble. All the hallways are lined with marble as well, and they are high-ceilinged and wide, and lined with portraits or sculptures, and echo pleasantly as one heads purposefully down them. There are elaborate ceilings worked with heartwrenching intricacy. There are antique water fonts set into the walls that are no longer functioning. The stacks of books on the open shelves extend impressively the length of two city blocks, and I am told that seven storeys of bookstacks are hidden in the bowels of the library. There is a particular alcove with a particularly stunning sculpture of a young girl balanced on a log crossing a stream, entitled "Water Nymph"; its beauty and purity seizes you as you walk by. And there is the breathtaking Rose Reading Room, which is what is pictured above. An enormous room filled with long, solid wooden tables, reading lamps and lined with shelves of books, and topped with a plaster ceiling made to look like wood, and framing three massive murals of a sunset sky. That room is my new favourite place in New York.

Halfway through the afternoon, broke my reading to join a free guided tour of the library, and learnt a bit about its workings. About how some collections are meant to be accessed by special permission from an approving board only. About how to request a book from among the endless stacks, and how the Library has the fastest book retrieval system in a reference library. There were interesting histories of the various benefactors who donated to the Library's trust, biographies of philantrophists who donated impressive collections to the Library, and a short summary of the unimaginable range of materials available to the public.

And that is what you immediately realise, after you spend enough time in the building to get over the initial shock at how splendid it looks. You realise that this is a real working library, a real valuable resource to people looking for information; in other words, it is not merely a nice architectural gem, but a social environment, a venue for activity. Sitting in the Rose Reading Room engrossed in my own book, I am particularly moved by the notion that I am sitting on the tip of an iceberg of knowledge, of incredible volumes of things to know just waiting for me to ask for them. And then I look up around me, and watch other people read for a while. Someone will occasionally make notes on a notepad, type something into a laptop, flip a page, get up to find another book, or simply stare off into the distance. Everyone is engrossed in what he is doing, and no one talks to another person, and yet, there is a certain sense of camaraderie, a sense of community even, in being in this place together, and being here with a purpose that is common in that it is a quest to know more.

Where Things Happen

2008-09-12T13:08:00.002+08:00

Over the last few days, I've come across another problem: what do you do when you know more than you're letting on?

Of course, the ideal situation would be for you never to know more than you're letting on. After all, this is called being frank, and being generous with your ideas. But there were times over the last few days when I saw something and then felt I could not offer it for consideration. It just didn't seem appropriate or useful to interject to submit a new idea for discussion. It seemed inappropriate because it would undermine the social convention of the class (i.e. I would look like a smart aleck poking holes in other people's arguments), and it seemed useless because sometimes, you can tell when people are not amenable to considering new ideas. Comfort is a strong incentive, and provocation does not sit well with a sort of intellectual inertia.

What I find really disturbing is how, sometimes, people get away with saying things without substantiating them. It just seems like laziness to me. And yet, people get away with it, taking away a feeling of self-satisfaction and calling it good thinking. Inasmuch as making your views known is a self-serving enterprise (and I have to admit because it's true that this is usually the case at least for me), it is wholly understandable to like things that make you feel nice inside. But then again, this is a university, and when we use words in class we should be more careful, and value meaning and rigour over hazy feel-good ideas.

But it is also true that people don't take kindly to having this pointed out. This is not to say, of course, that one should not point it out, but rather, if your objective is to provoke a reconsideration of the validity of ideas, then one should wait for the appropriate time to point it out, a time when people are more amenable to listening. And sometimes, that means refraining from saying anything.

*

Anyway. I find myself part of the Nomads Theatre Workshop. It's not so much a theatre troupe as it is a theatrical experiment, it seems to me. How it works is that it brings together a director, a writer, a group of actors and a producer to come up with a production from scratch. The model seems to be a collaborative one, in which the writer tailors a script to fit the peculiar strengths and personalities of the actors he works with, and the actors can suggest directions to the director, and the director can adjust the script as he goes along. This is another level of improvisational theatre, I guess, taking the improvisation techique out of its usual place in onstage comedies and infusing the entire play-producing process with its ethos.

Quite frankly, I don't knw how this will turn out. Firstly, and perhaps foremost, I haven't had anything to do with a stage for almost three years now, which means that my most recent involvement was with G's TSD production in J2 (incidentally, G, if you're reading this, remember the Akami script I wrote for your production on a lark? I submitted it to Nomads, and it landed me this spot - so credit goes to you too!). And, up till now, the one production that informs my entire impression of theatre is still the 2002 production of The Road Less Travelled, which was done for the SYF competition. As you can probably tell, my exposure to this medium of expression has not been exactly wide, and has not been exactly up to date.

And secondly, what little theatre I've done has been rather rigid and well-defined, following a clear path from the writer's conceptualisation, through the director's guidance till the actor's performance on the stage. I guess, theoretically, I can appreciate how a more fluid, collaborative process can work, but I've never done anything like this for real before, and in my experience the lack of a rigid structure leads to a potentially lethal lack of discipline in the production. The theory, I guess, is that freeing everyone involved from the rigid process will also liberate creative energies that are outside our normal conception, and make everyone more involved in the final product, enhancing the feeling of ownership. I would really like that to happen. It would then prove that theatre does not need to be a technical profession, but can happen anywhere with the most basic set of preconditions. But my hope is tempered by the suspicion founded on limited experience.

At any rate, I find myself utterly overwhelmed by the range of talent that I've seen in this troupe. This is not a big operation at all, and I haven't by any means met every member yet, but the directors, writers and producers all seem to have stellar talent. They spout jargon effortlessly, lapse into moments of self-expression (singing, dancing, monologue - you name it), and they know that they're good. Here is a group which can namedrop the pantheon of theatre carelessly, and come across as if they know full well what they're talking about (because, surely, they really do). And they take the process so seriously, getting worked up and passionate when defending their creative space and fending off the apparently tyrannical intentions of the producers. Against all this, I can only sit quietly and observe with a mixture of incredulity and amazement. On the one hand, I can hardly take all this seriously - there is a certain absurdity in how I had managed to sneak in on an operation that is so tight. On the other hand, I also cannot see how I can conceivably contribute, except through doing the actual brute work of writing the damn play. Quite frankly, therefore, I wonder what I've gone and gotten myself into; I feel out of my league.

*

But on a lighter note, today was the 7th anniversary of 9/11. 9/11 - it is one of those moments in history when everyone remembers where they were. I happened to be sleeping that fateful morning, and I never quite figured out why my parents did not wake me when the planes hit, so that I only found out the truth the next day, staring disbelievingly at the horrifying photos on the front page of the Straits Times. I remember how, the next day at school, every lesson was permeated by discussion of this event, how every radio show and every TV channel had minute-by-minute updates. How each moment was infused with the acute awareness of being on a historic threshold. How moments of heartwarming togetherness and solidarity were contrasted with heartbreaking examples of callousness. How 9/11 affected all of us, and how we all decided to deal with it in our own ways.

And now that I think back on it, it is quite possible that 9/11 was the first real instance of New York touching my life in a palpable way, and thus 9/11 also formed the kernel around which I built my fictional and vicarious impression of this city. Would it be too callous, too presumptious to say that 9/11 made me a New Yorker at heart? Well, at least it made me start thinking of whether I wanted to be a New Yorker. But who knows about these things, eh? Who know if, for example, I would have come here even if 9/11 had not happened? The fact is that I remember 9/11, and now I'm in New York City, and my mind would like there to be a link, because such a link would be elegant and intriguing. And in that sense, maybe I find a link that is not really there.

Anyway, to commemorate the anniversary, Columbia hosted the ServiceNation forum organised by TIME Magazine. Among the speakers at the forum were Columbia's President Lee Bollinger, New York's new governor David Patterson, Tobey Maguire (aka Peter Parker), and the two presidential candidates. It's an example of the fantastic opportunities that simply being here makes available to us. This thing, this chance to be where things happen, to be at the very point of breaking news, just fell into our laps without us having to do anything or put in any more effort than that which was required to turn up. And to think that, only a few months ago, I was using Obama's Iowa victory speech to teach public speaking skills to my English classes. And just now, I was within a hundred metres of the guy, listening to him talk live. It's a mind-blowing thought.

The actual event was held in the Roone Arledge Auditorium, which, while being the biggest room in Columbia, still could only hold at most 1,200 people. Most of those seats were filled by 9/11 victims or their families, and only 100 students were picked by lottery to attend the forum itself. The rest of us made do with a big screen set up in front of Low Plaza.

So there we were, among thousands of students and staff, sitting on the steps leading up to Low Library and waiting for the speeches to begin. The atmosphere was festive; people had brought dinner out to eat on picnic mats, people were sprawled on the grass, and people were chatting in high tones about the virtues of Obama (predictably). And among all these people were news anchors, radio journalists and reporters weaving in and out and trying to get a good soundbite out of all the hubbub. On the periphery, Columbia's private police force and officers from the NYPD patrolled the grounds, with black-suited Secret Service men standing guard outside the building housing the Auditorium. I felt certain that, somewhere on the roofs of the campus, snipers had been positioned too.

We had gotten excellent seats through one of our CUE friends, which put us almost right in front of the big screen. And I was simply enjoying the vibe. Although I didn't rightly know what was going on in the speeches, and though I don't have the right to vote anyway, it was nice to lose oneself in the masses, to cheer and jeer and shout and applaud together as the sky darkened from blue to orange to navy, and the images on the big screen shifted. This is something that you will almost certainly never see back home.

So, I leave you with a short video of the proceedings, picturing (variously) the big screen with Butler Library in the background, and cheering crowds on the steps of Low Library. Who knows, maybe this little segment will appear on the news soon? It's a humbling and exhilarating thought.

Knowing More

2008-09-10T12:22:00.001+08:00

There is a lot of work to be done nowadays, but this is enjoyable, engaging, intriguing work. Now, I feel as if I am plumbing the boundaries of my experience, both in terms of knowing more, and in terms of knowing more deeply. From rudimentary astrophysics to the philosophy of sociology, from discussions in genetics to issues raised in the classics, everything seems now to be cloying and seductive. I haven't been so fully engaged on so many fronts in a very long time, and it feels good to be challenged once again to delve deeply into ideas and concepts, to live the life of the mind.

My Sociology and Urban Studies classes are, of course, deeply intriguing. I feel like these classes speak my language, or rather that the language I speak happens to coincide with the terms that are used in the class. It is a beautiful thing, to find harmony in wavelengths, and to understand things deeply, or at least to feel as if one has the key to open the metaphorical door to understanding. There are moments of epiphany, of ideas that nudge my perspective to see a phenomenon in a novel way, in a way that yields previously unconceived notions. Through these new angles of viewing, a particular aspect of the world suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. Rarer are the moments when discussions in class articulate an idea that I've had for a long time, but have not phrased as precisely or as technically. Suddenly, an impression becomes an idea, moves from the shady world of being just a suspicion to becoming a testable, observable hypothesis about how the world works. There is a great sense of empowerment in these moments, when you feel like you are suddenly given the tools to articulate what you think, and to test in a rational and structured way whether this idea is an accurate representation of reality.

And today, reading Homer's Iliad, I finally had a big-idea moment. Today's big idea: the dilemma over choosing a short, glorious life or a long, unremarkable life is not what primarily motivates Achilleus, at least at the end of the book. Rather, he is motivated by fellow-feeling for Patroklos, particularly a thirst for vengeance for his fallen companion. The winning of immortal glory and renown for himself is secondary to the objective of avenging his friend. And with this idea, suddenly Achilleus' unheroic behaviour and philosophising fits in with his characterisation as an Achaian hero. And suddenly, the work makes a lot more sense, and really starts to speak to me. And with that, one is not so caught up with trying to figure out what the patterns mean, and one can devote more attention to appreciating the aesthetic excellence of the composition, and one can better realise that this is really a poem, a work of art, and an elegant work at that.

My science classes, too, are interesting. Today, we talked about genetics, and how the genetic diversity in humans points to a single ancestor who came to exist somewhere near Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, deep in the shadows of the past. The really interesting point for me, though, is not that these differences exist and point to a common ancestor, but that the differences are so slight that they produce no significant speciation among humans: for all our biological differences, we are one species. Thus, the big idea is not so much that we all came from a common ancestor, but that as a species, we have the potential to head towards a common descendant. In other words, genetic knowledge is one thing, in that it makes clear the chemical potential that is available in our genomes. Using that knowledge towards an end, good or bad, is another thing entirely. The potential is there; it is up to us to tap it.

And just came out of an astronomy lab class. Being an astronomy lab, it's scheduled at night, but today we were just doing introductory-level experimentation techniques: dealing with uncertainties in measurements. Yet, there was a certain amusement to be had with the notion of me taking an astronomy class; along with the image of looking through telescopes at amazing celestial objects, I also have the image of Harry, Ron and Hermione heading up to the Astronomy tower for Divination. Sitting under the eaves of the roof of the Pupin Physics Labs on campus devising experimental procedures therefore had a parallel poetic meaning for me.

What really gets me among all this, I think, is how elegant understanding is. How elegant the process of inquiry, evaluation and recording is. Comprehension is a beautiful thing to behold in action. These lessons, I feel, contain information that I can access, that I know how to read, and this ability is also an empowerment, allowing me to be a participant rather than just an observer in the daily business of learning. It spurs me on; I seek to know more so that I can see more of the beauty in knowing.

*

Of course, then, there is also the energy of this place. The people here are very diverse, but you also realise that among the diversity is a certain unity of purpose. People come here looking for something, and though what they're looking for covers a wide range of human experience, they go about their search with comparable dedication and eagerness. The directions may be divergent, but their sense of direction is there, along with their momentum. Direction combines with energy to produce velocity. And the diverse velocities of the people here make this a very engaging, participatory and surprising environment.

And by the way, that's the view from the bathroom down there. If even bathroom windows can take your breath away, what wonders must there be available in places that one frequents more often?

Observing

2008-09-07T11:44:00.001+08:00

At night, the lights beckon and seduce. This is near Times Square, looking down Broadway at 50th Street. The building where the ball is dropped every year is somewhere to the left, and since we're looking southwards, the famous north-facing facade can't be seen. A few streets up, the billboards blaze outside the Broadway theatre houses. And even though the place has become plasticky out of touristification (I take the word of New Yorkers on this, since I have no idea what the original, gloomy, gritty Times Square was like - though the particular pattern of contrivance that panders to tourists is obvious even to the untrained eye), the flashing lights still seem to flash some morse-coded promise. Songs have been written about this visual siren song.

*

After classes ended on Thursday (oh yes, it is true that most Columbia students have 4-day work weeks; I've even encountered people in the lifts who have insane 2-day weeks), went down with a group of friends to the MoMA again, this time to catch one of the many film screenings there. After all, for the price of a return trip on the subway, we could get a week's worth of cultural inculcation (among other things, the Columbia ID gets us free or highly discounted access to many of the city's major museums). We were trying our luck, and ended up watching Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It. It was a really fun movie, about a girl who's a polygamist, and how her multiple boyfriends/partners, who are caricatures in themselves of the range of black stereotypes, react to her so-called unfaithfulness. There's even a lesbian element, one that our protagonist (I use the term descriptively, rather than positively) repeatedly refuses.

The film's done in something of a documentary style, with characters reflecting on each other and confiding in the camera, while flashbacks (or, more accurately, stylised reenactments or dramatisations) intersperse these personal accounts. Technically, there are a range of interesting techniques and devices, such as the camera zooming in on a character's face, and then the screen blanking out as the character's name is flashed. There is a part of the film that is projected in colour, a dreamlike dance sequence that, contrasted with the rich monochrome shades of the rest of the film, burns with bright colours and beauty. And Lee uses slow motion to excruciatingly, lovingly extend and linger on the most physically intimate moments of the film, and while there is a lot of sex, there is surprisingly little vulgarity.

There were certainly a lot of cultural and thematic pointers in the film that I missed, but one idea that stood out for me was how it may be perfectly legitimate to enjoy the physical aspects of sex so much that this aspect is regarded as primary, rendering all other considerations, moral, emotional, social and otherwise, secondary to the ultimate objective. Especially, love is portrayed as at best secondary, and at least peripheral to the physical aspect. At most, love is a means to the ultimate end. Most of the time, love is something that is distinct from sex, is only tenuously connected to the physical act. The protagonist, I think, subscribes to this view, to the incomprehension, revulsion and even fascination of her partners.

Anyway, philosophising aside, it was great fun to go down to MoMA and to indulge in some cultural enrichment at the end of the week. This should occur more often, I think; we should make it a point to do something like this at least once a week. After all, with so many opportunities for us to take advantage of here, it behooves us to put in the effort to put them to god use, in order to justify our good fortune in ending up in this place.

*

Anyway, speaking of good fortune, here are two more things to make yourheart flutter in incredulity:

Firstly, the Columbia Arts Initiative, an agency meant to source out good cultural deals for students, somehow managed to secure free tickets for the freshmen to watch the Broadway musical Wicked. That's certainly more than $50 per ticket, and each freshman only needs to pay the $5 booking fee, and we get two tickets apiece! And so, it seems, by next month, I will be able to fulfill one of my objectives of watching show on Broadway, with the really nice surprise that it will cost me next to nothing!

And secondly, there was an announcement on Friday that Barack Obama and John McCain will be coming to campus. At the same time. On September 11. Apparently, they will be giving speeches on the role of national service in America, the importance of citizens contributing to the national interest. They will not actually be talking to each other; they are giving separate speeches. But it will still be the first time they appear on the same stage (if I'm not mistaken). And what wouldn't one give for the chance to hear these two speak, live, in person, and at this crucial juncture, a juncture that feels historic even before it becomes history?

These chances are being given to us even without us putting in any additional effort to get them. I mean, where else in the world will opportunities like these be given away for free? We live, here, on the cusp of a wealth of incredible opportunities. The atmosphere is charged with chances. It keeps you on your toes, because you don't know what to expect at every moment, and yet you know you can expect something that will be worthwhile.

*

And this place's beauty still carries me away. Yesterday morning, went on a school run with G. It was a 5-kilometre route that took us out of our small campus and through nearby Riverside Park, winding our way along the Hudson shore. We had an NYPD escort across busy road junctions, and there were hundreds of people running at the same time, but all this could not override the joy of jogging in the crisp morning air, the sight of the mist lingering across the river, and the New Jersey skyline, barges and a bridge slipping in and out of sight among the foliage. The sheer pleasantness of the scenery is reason enough, I feel, to run that route again.

And today, went out on my first solo trip into the city. Carried my work with me and made my way down to Union Square, at 14th Street and Broadway. What I found at the other end of the subway ride was a farmer's market set up along the outside of the park, and a green space filled with benches and picnic tables, statues and fountains, set among tall and stately townhouses. Walking among the stalls selling everything from fresh vegetables to cheese and poultry, enjoying the sights and sounds of spontaneous commerce, it felt like such a pity to have to begin my work. And yet, when I had my paper and laptop out, it felt like such a privilege to be able to work in such a pleasant environment. It makes a difference that you can look up when you're bored or tired, and just watch the people going by, with their secret intentions and destinations, or just scare off the gathering pigeons, and feel the breeze as dozens of wings beat the air at once.

And in my solitary moments, I feel as if I can properly listen to this place, and comprehend what it is saying. This city sings as well: from the sharp and echoing sounds on the subway, to the sedate clicking over of the traffic lights that change in succession, one street after another on a wave that runs the length of Manhattan, to the buskers and artists that surprise you on street corners and in tunnels, to the occasional blaring of sirens that accompany the rush of flashing lights among the maze of Manhattan streets. And when I'm alone, I feel like I can pay full attention to this spontaneous, unselfconscious symphony. I can interpret it, I can read it, and I can act on it. When I'm alone, I feel more in sync with the city as a whole, more a part of its fabric.

If only you could hear what this city sounds like...

*

And outside, now, a noisy game of ultimate frisbee is in progress, echoing all across the quad. At first, I have to admit (and rather regretfully, at that), I had assumed that there was alcohol involved - an assumption based wholly on prejudice and ignorance. But it seems like they're really just intoxicated with the night, with the notion of the first weekend after the holidays.

I guess I really should be putting more effort into getting involved in these kinds of activities. After all, isn't this meant to be part of the college experience, or at least part of the ideal that everyone comes to college carrying in one's imagination? But it is rather tiring, I find, to keep putting in this effort. It is particularly hard to talk to people who are culturally American. I lack the social awareness, the cultural markers to carry out a proper conversation. I find that I am prematurely distracted by cultural differences, and thus am unable to concentrate on what they're saying. And at the same time, I don't know enough about ambient culture (like TV, politics, sports, even the weather) to make small talk, meaning that conversations tend to peter out rather quickly. This is a problem, I guess, that will dissipate with time. But in the meantime, people are making friends in this crucial period of transition. This is something, I think, that I cannot simply wait for; I cannot wait for it to simply take care of itself.

But at the same time, I remain essentially a conversation-ender, if you will. I tend to be an observer; I watch, I see, I hear, I listen, I feel. And then sometimes I write, and even more rarely, I draw. Talking does not come into it as something central or fundamental. Or, if it does, it comes in as a means to communicate the meanings that I find in the observations. At this point, though, it doesn't seem like the communication of this type of meaning is of central interest to anyone. And, having nothing to say, I simply don't say anything.

At the end of the day, I certainly want to make new friends here, if only for the self-interested motivation that I will need the support of a vibrant social network in the months to come. But at this point in time, I want to see more, and to know more. This objective, unfortunately, is not something that is widely shared, I think. People come here to look for different things, and it turns out that I am looking for something that is quite different from what most people are looking for.

The question, then, is whether I should just get with the programme, and look for what they are looking for as well.

By the Way...

2008-09-04T12:16:00.002+08:00

I love these new classes.

I have to admit that, previously, I had been rather skeptical of the idea of a core of required classes. Although the premise that a student should be well informed in all aspects of knowledge (from science to art, from literature to global cultures) is valid - and indeed is laudable - I had not bought into the notion that every student should take the same course, cover the same content, read the same books. The validity of the restricted range of content relies on a somewhat paternalistic belief that the makers of the core curriculum know what the students should learn better than the students themselves. This may actually be true, even if it is philosophically repulsive; but the point seems to be moot, now that I've actually tried out some of the courses. There appears to be a real common ground, in terms of common questions that interest (or at least should interest) everyone. As K said, it may actually turn out to be worthwhile to go through material that I would not have normally chosen to go through.

I am taking a literature course, a basic science course (Frontiers of Science, which resembles a philosophy and statistics course rather than instruction in the laws of the hard sciences) and (hopefully, for I am still trying to apply) a course in art humanities, which is concerned with "visual literacy", or equipping students with the necessary vocabulary to interpret and explain works of visual art. And so far, the courses have been engaging and intriguing. They aren't really content-heavy, with the possible exception of Literature Humanities, which purports to go through twelve books in fourteen weeks. They seem more concerned with methods of discourse and argument, rather than the content of the course. In other words, the content (the books, the artwork, the principles of science) is used as a tool to teach how to think and how to express oneself. The core courses thus seem to be much more concerned with fostering analytical abilities and facility of expression rather than familiarity with the content. At any rate, the courses are so general that the content covered would hardly impress a real specialist in the field. No - these courses are much more an intellectual frolic, an environment in which thinking methods can be practised in relative safety.

On top of that, I am taking one Sociology class and one Urban Studies class. Both courses started today with lectures, and I must say I have been utterly carried away with them. The greatest attraction of these courses, to me at least, is how they incorporate the city into the instruction, drawing on the urban context around the classroom as a valuable empirical source that evidences the abstract principles and ideas discussed. The Sociology class examines how sociologists use their methods in an urban setting, examining issues such as crime, the family, culture, immigration and politics. The Urban Studies class seeks to examine the experience of race, ethnicity and immigration in American cities, particularly New York, and even incorporates two field-research opportunities (for a first-year, something that is quite frankly intimidating!), one that aims for us to examine a social phenomenon like religious rites or the black market in the context of a New York neighbourhood, and the other that sends us out on Election Day to polling stations to examine why some people do not cast their votes (due to reasons like long lines or intimidation, for instance).

And as if these were not enticing enough, the professors started speaking in terms that I feel as if I've been waiting to hear for the longest time. They talked about social constructs, structural factors that are created by people and that then affect how people behave to each other. They talked about implicit social conventions, and how their subversion by "fringe" elements could reveal so much about the nature of those selfsame social conventions. These are ideas that I find eerily familiar. And I am reminded of how I wrote in my applications that people spontaneously generate social organisations when placed into political, economic, geographical and social contexts, and how from the cumulative chaos of countless individual free choices there can emerge patterns that are consistent across cultural and physical barriers. These courses seem to me to offer a tantalising glimpse at how to approach the task of examining and describing these patterns, and how they come about. And I feel as if my previous thinking and ideas that I've come across before have found an echo, or a home, here. I feel as if these are precisely the courses that I should be doing. There is that sweet sense of harmony from feeling that one is in the right place at the right time.

And of course, a big part of why these classes have proven enjoyable is also because, beyond the good teachers and the intriguing content, the students too bring and offer so much in class. There are small classes in which people compete for speaking time. Even in large lectures, students take turns to converse with the professor. The ease with which standards of communication are established between student and teacher is unprecedented in my personal experience; and it is very exhilarating to be a part of this exchange, charged with the urgency of having something worthwhile to contribute to the discussion. In an environment like this, I believe, one really delights much more in the ideas that are produced, and it really does not matter who says the idea. One may even find that stepping back to observe the synthesis and expression of ideas is worthwhile and interesting. And I do expect that there will come a point when other ways of participation besides raising one's hand in class will be investigated. At this point, though, I am quite content to enjoy the foment of views and opinions.

I feel like I have been set free again. My mind has something really substantial to chew on now. And it is good to be operating once again in an academic environment, to think well and to speak well, and through these interactions to generate ideas that are beautiful in their elegance and truthfulness.

*

And, parallel to this, I continue to marvel at the remarkable fact that I am here, in this city. In the mornings, I go down to the corner of 114th and Amsterdam Avenue, where there is a cart selling bagels and coffee. I buy a cup and a bagel, and then stroll down to Riverside Park, or up to Morningside Park, and slowly munch my way through this simple breakfast while enjoying the views and the crisp morning light, the sharp and fresh air and the people who go by. I think of how R is already auditioning for an acapella group, on the second day of classes. I think of A, J and K, who are still looking for the perfect mass at the right church in the neighbourhood. I think of a prospective trip to the MoMA tomorrow after classes to watch whatever that they happen to be screening in their cinemas at that time. And I realise that, here, in this city, and in this particular place in Morningside Heights, the academic element is only a small fraction of the vast range of opportunities that are available to us, a range that is so big that it positively demands that one puts in the effort to make full use of them. I must do justice to the remarkable circumstances that I find myself in.

Columbia

2008-09-02T12:20:00.002+08:00

I just wanted to add a brief note today, because tomorrow marks the start of classes, and the actual return to the work of formal learning. After the long wait, two and a half years after the last formally academic pursuit, I am finally about to resume that particular task. I have already been here for a bit more than two weeks, but the time has been largely passed as if I were a visitor, a tourist wowed and amazed by everything that I happened to encounter around me. Indeed, I daresay some of the locals are rather fazed by my quickness to resort to the telltale tourist tools of map and camera. But all this is, of course, part of the settling-in. As departing was a process, involving the long goodbye, so arrival too is a process, a process that, I think, will begin to end as classes start, and a schedule asserts itself. Now, then, is the time to start to live here properly, and to participate.

Took the chance, too, to visit a few more places over the weekend, popping down to Times Square again to explore Midtown. Walked past the New York Public Library (which was closed for the weekend), visited the opulent and far too expensive Grand Central Station, and then went on to the United Nations Headquarters. Being able to go into the complex and explore the public areas was mind-blowing. This was the place that I had read about in history classes; this is still a nexus of global power. And, for a moment, I could not believe that the glass-encased tower really was the UN Headquarters, that the concrete podium really housed such august chambers as the General Assembly and the Security Council, and that, come a weekday, the empty flagpoles will be aflutter with the flags of all the countries of the world.

We went on from there back to Rockefeller Centre, walking through the plaza and seeing the golden Prometheus. This is the place that will play host to the magnificent and renowned Christmas trees and skating rink come winter. And after that, made our way out of the expensive district to the Museum of Modern Art, using our Columbia IDs to get in for free. I had actually done a bit of research on the MoMA for URA - and anyway, who hasn't heard of the MoMA before? Nonetheless, seeing the nondescript facade, and the residential tower that rose above it, and knowing the story of how these structures came to be built together, was a moving experience. As was seeing, in person, original artworks from Salvador Dali (the melting clocks guy; the MoMA is currently hosting an intriguing exhibit of his paintings, photographs and films), Pablo Picasso, Duchamp, Monet and Hopper.

New York, I find, is filled with experiences like these. This place is so deeply infused in the collective imagination of the world that you encounter New York even before you set foot in it. As such, the borders of New York lie not along the Hudson, but in every city on the planet, and in our imaginations. Conceptually, at least, it is thus possible to start to live in New York long before you cross through Immigration. And the thing about New York is that it offers you the originals to these imagined and vicarious moments - and then lives up to all the hype. It really is as great, as enticing, as intriguing, as gritty, as risky, as people make it out to be. In fact, it may be even more so, because how can any caricature of a place really capture the full texture of its complexities and layers of significance?

And so, as we walk through the streets and avenues of Manhattan, I find myself utterly carried away by even the smallest details: the subway saxophonist, streetside food vendors, traffic signs, fire trucks. The various props that populated my imaginary New York, no less magical for being real. And sometimes, looking at other people (especially American non-New Yorkers) react to this place, I wonder at why they aren't utterly carried away as well. It is still true that very few people look for the same things as I do when we come to a new place. It may also be true that I should, as they do, pay more attention to building the critical social relations that will form the scaffolding for the college experience, and grasp the time now to do it, for the city will always be there, but this opportunity is transient. It may yet be true that they just express their fascination in a different way, a way that I am not yet adept at accessing or interpreting. But nonetheless, sometimes their blase reactions strike me as incomprehensible. This is New York, after all.

But these concerns are about to become secondary. Classes start in about ten hours' time. On the lawns of the campus tonight, students are encumbered with books. Some are actually reading them, while others are too caught up in catching up with friends after the summer holidays. Small groups sit on the steps leading up to Low Library; some perch on plinths that jut out over the stairs, enjoying the view and the cool evening air. And above the hubbub of chatting voices, carrying conversations that are soothing because they form an uncomprehended buzz, a Christian group of about fifty was singing to the accompaniment of one guitar, all sitting on the steps and gazing at Butler across the lawn, as if staring at something personal, but singing in unison. So this is collegiate life. It is starting to get underway; and I find that, on this penultimate evening of my arrival, I am ready to begin.

Ground Zero

2008-08-31T12:43:00.000+08:00

These days are ridiculously exhausting, considering that I'm not really doing anything overly strenuous. It's just that there is so much to absorb and assimilate, to learn and accommodate, that it demands every ounce of effort and attention that one can muster. The days careen from one remarkable experience to another, with scarcely the space to take stock of what has just happened, before the next happening thrusts itself upon you and demands that you pay attention. These are the heady days of a new arrival, the headlong and total commitment to the experience of a place, driven by an eagerness that is founded on total defencelessness and the total faith that the place will provide only worthwhile experiences.

Anyway, taking stock. Among the people that I've already had the privilege to meet are a Nepalese girl, a sixteen-year-old freshman, a Kentuckian, several Californians, a substantial number of New Yorkers (some of whom live right down the street from Columbia), a Beijinger, a Shanghainese, two Hongkongers, an Indian from Hyderabad, a girl from Comoros, a Londoner, a Peruvian and a Venezuelan. I had been rather cynical about the so-called diversity of the cohort before, because how diverse can you be when everyone's in college and pursuing the same goal: a good degree from Columbia? But of course, a commonality of objective does not in any way restrict the multitude of means to get there, and it is in the methodology that contributes towards the objective that the diverse experiences of this class come in. Of course, it would be ludicrous to say that Columbians form a cross-section of the world's societies; but I realise that I am being exposed, all the same, to more backgrounds and experiences than I could ever have imagined.

*

Yesterday was taken up mostly by signing up for this term's classes. Ended up with four courses, namely Literature Humanities, Frontiers of Science, Sociological Imagination and an Urban Studies lecture called Race, Ethnicity and Immigration in Urban America. I also want to try to add Art Humanities to the schedule, but that can only be done on Tuesday.

It is something of a relief to finally begin constituting a timetable, and to gather the required books for the courses - in other words, to start preparing a structure into which this life can be placed. The stability this offers may be arbitrary, but it is still stability nonetheless. And it does offer something else to talk about. Some people have said that they're taking up to 20 credits, which is 6 more than the recommended level. Some chose courses based on how well they fit into an easy schedule. Some are still debating whether to drop one of their six courses for the term - 2 more than recommended. There is a certain element of seeking to reassure oneself in these conversations, since we are all relatively new in this system, and want to be affirmed that we're not only doing things correctly, but doing them well. But what really strikes me is the freedom that they have to choose. This detail may not be important to them; it may not, at least, be interesting to them. But when choosing your courses becomes a luxury rather than a right, then I feel the vexation of being the holder of a Singapore government scholarship, the riskiness and frustration in having to trade a measure of freedom for a measure of empowerment. I understand that without the scholarship, I would not even be here to be vexed by the strictures upon my choices. This very frustration is thus enabled by the strictures that form its target. But the frustration is real, and it is there, and it is acutely felt.

Also watched Pan's Labyrinth in the on-campus cinema (a room that also doubles as a lecture hall), and found out that it is a pretty good movie, with stunning graphics and stunning plot ideas that play with the power of wishful thinking. Fantasy and real life intertwine through the plotline, and magic and material things come together to mutually annihilate, in the process generating beautiful patterns of consequences. It was a good story, written self-reflexively to comment on the power of story-telling to transfigure reality into something more manageable. And there was a beautiful ending, a death, but not an dreadful death, more like a deliverance, the return of a soul to its rightful place in a dream world, escorted by a hummed lullaby. The ending was good in that it made moot the question of whether all the magical things "really" happened, showing that no matter what, the effect of the magic, real or fake, is felt in real, emotional terms, by real, emotional people.

And after that, met up with CUE people again to go to the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, a legendary establishment in Alphabet city, crammed among row-houses with only a faded awning to identify it. Apparently, this is the most venerated literary spot in Manhattan, and is renowned on the international slam poetry circuit. So we were there, crowded into an overcrowded room, enjoying normal people making beautiful verses about welfare reform (which, I thought, was a topic more suitable for an essay rather than slam poetry), child molestation, sex and dignity. The words were well written, and the stage added another dimension of performance, so that the emotional impacts of the words can be amplified, and also so that the audience is not merely a passive receptacle of art, but a participator in its production and thus its meaning. In Singapore, such events always strike me as pretentious, but here, where they had practically invented the medium of slam poetry, it was pulled off sensitively, brutally at times, but always with a sense of awe and respect at the artistry that was being given to us on that tiny stage.

*

Today, some of the Singapore group started out by going to Flushing, the other Chinatown of New York, located in Queens, a Chinatown that is really Chinese, because the Chinese moved there from the Manhattan one because they were being priced out by that area's growing success. It was a happy trip, on which we took another Chinese meal (with the table overflowing with good, authentically prepared Chinese food, as should be the case for good Chinese meals), ate some great egg tarts from the Taipan Bakery, bought Yeo's packet drinks from a supermarket that imports things that I never expected to see outside of Southeast Asia (attap chee in syrup, for example). Also bought another jacket, in preparation for the turn of the weather to coldness that is sure to come soon.

And after dinner, went to Tom's Restaurant (the Seinfeld restaurant) for enormous milkshakes, before making our way further downtown to wander through Tribeca. Found the cinemas at which the eponymous film festival is held every year, and made our way into the Civic District, past colossal neoclassical skyscrapers, City Hall and what looked like a courthouse. Our trajectory eventually took us to Ground Zero, which is still empty, a sorry sight after seven years. On the one hand, the peacefulness of the site at night really enhances the solemnity of the unassuming, simple memorial at the site, a memorial that consists of nothing more than a nominal roll of all the victims of the attacks. But on the other, one hopes to see this scar in the Manhattan landscape start to heal. We owe it to the lost, to the heroes, to build something out of the ruins.

In moments like these, then, and at places like this, you realise that you are intimately connected to the pulse of history, by virtue of being in proximity with its heart. Everyone remembers, for example, where they were on September 11, 2001, when the news broke. It was one of the moments that united human experience, that defined the flow of history. I remember that this happening had a profound impact on my secondary-school life. And to see the site itself with my own eyes was a powerful experience. I had pretended to know what it's like at the site itself, extrapulations that seem inexcusably pretentious and presumptious now that I've actually seen the place for myself. You look around you, and things that made history, things that are still making history, are all around you. It is a humbling experience, and a precious, rare privilege to be in the right place and at the right time to experience this.

Multitude

2008-08-29T12:17:00.003+08:00

The thing about coming to a new place, of course, is that you come to it totally defenceless. Being deprived of the knowledge of local social conventions and how to navigate them, one is forced to experience everything. The first few days in a new place are defined by an acute awareness of all that one experiences, whether those experiences are directed at one or merely incidental to one's life, because one does not have the social conventions that tell apart the important happenings from those which are just peripheral. One must accept everything at face value, one must treat everything as important. Only through the lens of local knowledge can one discern what one really needs to pay attention to, and what one can ignore safely.

And here, there is no shortage of things that are available to be experienced. From the mornings, I am faced with experiences that are new to me and therefore seem so remarkable. There is, for example, the particular delight in huddling into my light sweater, toting my trusty black bag, and wandering the brownstone-lined streets of Morningside, digging into a breakfast of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese bought from a street vendor, and enjoying the sight of joggers, dogs and cabs purring down the still-quiet streets.

And yesterday, went to Rockefeller Centre to go to the Top of the Rock, an observation deck on the top three floors of this opulent art-deco marvel of a skyscraper. I almost cried; seeing the dense patterns of facades and streets stretching out in all directions, the dramatic swath of Central Park, the famous and hallowed spires of both the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue in the distance, and the Hudson all around, you realise that you really are in a charmed place, a place filled with magical names and venues, a place that the rest of the world dreams about.

We also wandered from Rockefeller Centre to Times Square, walking through the district and taking in the crowds and the proliferation of gaudy signboards. There are famous names here too, but I didn't feel that they were hallowed, since they seemed to lack the dignity of the reserved charm of landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge. One thing that I did find intriguing, though, was the range of shows on Broadway, The Lion King, Mamma Mia, The Phantom of the Opera and more. And if I pass out this year without watching at least one of them, then shoot me, please, for wasting all that time away.

Closer to home, in the Butler Library, a handsome neoclassical building on campus, A and I visited the unbelievable collection of printed material housed in the Butler Stacks. Basically, these are made up of low-ceilinged and dimly-lit rooms filled with bookcases which are in turn filled with books. It was the greatest collection of words in print I have ever seen. I found and held a tattered and disintegrating volume on the history of Prussia, signed and donated to the university by Frederick the Great himself. There is so much knowledge and history condensed into one place; it really is absolutely stunning. And I fancied that, if we stayed quiet enough, we would be able to hear these venerable books murmuring their knowledge, letting it echo throughout all of eternity.

And tonight, just came back from a night out in Central Park, at Victoria Gardens, a small amusement park that looks somewhat like a permanent pasar-malam, an amusement park that Columbia had rented out for the night for the exclusive use of the freshmen. It was surprisingly more fun than I had expected. I guess that, with its carousels, carnival games, acrobats, stilt-walkers, contortionists and fire-eaters, this is a smaller, more conveniently located relative of Coney Island. But despite its diminutive size, there was a great vibe, with the students dancing, riding the mini-rides, munching on candy floss and playing the childs-play games.

It should be immediately clear, therefore, that New York is a place of great contrasts, with intimate encounters taking place side by side with great touristy activities, with spontaneous coincidences coexisting with well-planned extravaganzas. The city offers encounters on all levels ranging from the epic to the micro. The specialness of it comes from how these offerings manage to maintain their ability to fascinate and enthrall despite their sizes. On every level, then, New York delights. And that, I think, is the defining characteristic for a great city.

*

Along with these spectacular activities, the people who I am experiencing all this with also demonstrate a great range of characteristics, a range so wide that it is mind-boggling and exhausting to keep up with, but which is still so endearing despite the wide range. These are, generally, the CUE people (who continue to meet up throughout the week, and at least say hi to each other on the street), the international students (among which are the Singaporeans) and the people living on my floor (with whom I celebrated an impromptu birthday party with a chocolate cake shaped like an unmentionable body part). These are solid, dependable people, and among them I also find people I can more easily talk to, who can relate more to my own previous experience, either due to sympathy with a shared experience, or simply a mind that is demonstrably more open. It is a privilege to have met them, and to be able to count them among my acquaintances and friends.

*

Yesterday, too, was the last day that my parents were here. They flew off early this morning to Washington DC. So, yesterday morning, went out with them for breakfast at a diner near their hostel, and over omelettes, muffins and tea, Dad used the Tower of Hanoi game to point out a crucial insight into life: one cannot keep track of everything, so one should just keep moving forward, staying true to tried and tested principles or rules, keeping an eye on the past to ensure that one does not go backwards, and trusting that, in the end, everything will fall neatly into place.

And it is still early days, but as far as I can tell, this insight into the nature of life has held true. The principles that life in Singapore has taught me - or some of them at least - are still sound here, sound enough so that I find that I can stick to them and still see things falling neatly into place. Things were a bit iffy at the beginning of the week, but now that I've started to sort out my schedule, and now that I know CUE people will continue to be a dependable source of support in times of trouble, it seems like everything will work out fine.

Said goodbye to my parents in the lounge in Furnald yesterday evening, handing over my old phone (with the Top of the Rock pictures still inside, so I can't post them up here at the moment) and receiving sundry items, among which was a large microwaveable pot. The impression was that as long as we kept talking, we could put off the moment of leave-taking. But there was only so much that they could think of to ask of my college life thus far. They eventually promised to fly me back home whenever I felt like I needed to return. And in the end, I simply hugged them.

The enormity of the departure still catches me off-balance now. I will not see them in the flesh for a year, a prospect that is now clearly more daunting than I had expected. And as they left the building and blended into the crowd outside, I was struck by a deep sense of yearning and sadness. They had enough trouble letting go of their son; I had not expected to have so much trouble letting go of my parents. But then again, this does not in any way mean permanent estrangement. And anyway, some things need not have been said.

What can I say here, then? These are my parents, and I love them very much.

Opportunities

2008-08-27T11:44:00.003+08:00

...and another day brings new challenges and new hopes. These days have been filled with so many extremities that they are very tiring to live through, as emotions crash from highs to lows to highs again. Such great mood swings have not been experienced since the days of Frexprog, and to reencounter them in this context was unexpected and undesirable. The mood swings rob me of clarity of perception, force me to turn inwards and to retreat from the social interactions that are so crucial at this point in time to construct a new, meaningful context in this strange place. But then again, I should have seen this coming, as this situation does bear a substantial amount of similarity with Frexprog: I have felt, in Paris and Lyon, the same kind of alienation and disorientation before, feelings that are so intense that they can paralyse you.

But also, in a very fundamental way, New York is a place of extremes, a place that enables you to experience extremes, to plumb the farthest and most absurd possibilities of human experience. Here is a place where vistas of incredible inspirational power coexist with scenes of abject deprivation, where the most helpful and warm people live alongside people capable of startling rudeness - and both parties still get along surprisingly well. Here is a place that awes one by making incredible things real, and disappoints only in that in making these things real, it renders them in the dull, unattractive colours of human imperfection. Nowhere else in the world have I experienced this effect of rendering the fantastic into human scale, or, to put it equally in another way, to elevate things that are human to fantastic levels, without sacrificing the grimy, flawed, imperfect human quality of it. Here is a place where greatness can be lived, rather than just observed as an artifact. Here, wonder is participatory rather than simply a spectacle.

I've said it before, and I'll say again how here, opportunity lies thick on the ground, more so than anything else. New York tires you out by throwing ever extreme at you with scant consideration of whether you can handle it - and you have the feeling that you'd better find a way to handle it, and fast, because there's lots more where that came from. During the academic introductory talks this morning, the deans made it a special point to point out how the class of 2012 is liberally peppered with prodigious talents, like the guy who's already made $40,000 by publishing his own children's book, or the future Olympic archer. And they also pointed out how being in New York connects one to the world, and how the world reciprocally impinges on every aspect of our intellectual, social and physical lives. And I was thinking: what sorts of opportunities for synergy and insight can arise from such a remarkable milieu? What wonderful things can we make by catalysing the opportunities available to us with our own talents? We stand, indeed, on the brink of a world of unimaginable opportunities - but the thing is not to just stand there, but to go out and actively, bravely grasp it.

And I still feel overwhelmed by that prospect, and quite inadequate as well. I am intimidated by this place and the people it houses, by all that they're bringing to the table, and by the comparatively paltry abilities that I can offer. I feel as if I'd somehow snuck in by a back door, and that I'm just extremely lucky, and by right should not be here at all, taking up space, breathing the hallowed air of genius and curiosity, and collecting opportunities without knowing what to do with them. I only bring my self, my experience and my abilities, but I am beginning to see how these may not actually count for much in such a charged context.

*

Had a bit of a fright today, because I had arranged to meet a couple of the Singaporean students to go down with the folks to Chinatown for dinner, when my phone ran out of battery power. I had told them to meet at the "Canal Street station" on the subway, but I had neglected to check the subway maps, and to my dismay found out that there were actually 3 different "Canal Street" stations, each on a different line and serving a different avenue in the Chinatown area. So, being unready to deal with this unexpected communication failure and having no way to contact them, I tried to recharge my phone at local phone shops, but could not find one with the right charger. And we then proceeded to search all the stations called "Canal Street", until, by sheer dumb luck, we ran into each other when I was coming out of the Canal Street station on the green line.

Went into Chinatown, and Mum and Dad showed us a great shop that they found, that stocked such critical comfort foods as mooncakes, Khong Guan biscuits, instant noodles, sauces, Teochew porridge preserves (like the spicy beancurd and various pickles), and a range of authentic-looking Prima Taste sauces (laksa, Hainanese chicken rice, satay) imported from, of all places, Singapore. Suddenly, New York doesn't seem like such a scary place. And they also stock instant noodles, steamboats and woks. It was great to step into the place, and to have the familiar smells hit you on a visceral level. I was quite frankly surprised by the intensity of the nostalgia.

After that, we went to a Chinese restaurant run by a Cantonese family, and had an excellent Chinese dinner of fried rice, beef noodles, hor fun, soy sauce chicken and char siew. It actually tasted like the Chinese food from home, rather than the sweet-sour fare that usually passes out of allegedly Chinese takeaways. Even the scaldingly hot Chinese tea, nothing more than reused tea leaves steeped in boiling water, tasted like nostalgia. I had not expected to miss home so much, and certainly not so soon, and definitely not when the folks are still here. I wonder what it'll be like next week.

*

And to top it all off, we took a train up to 83rd Street and 5th Avenue, because the university had rented out the Met for an event that night. Yep, that's right - Columbia took over the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an evening, so that students could wander the galleries at leisure till 8.30pm. Now, I've seen some pretty good museums over the years, museums that would put anything Singapore can offer to shame, but the Met very nearly takes the ticket. I mean, there were mummies that were so perfectly restored that they seemed almost fresh - almost moist, even. There were Grecian urns with brown figures traced out on black backgrounds that have appeared on many covers of Greek literature works, pottery that is hallowed by age and recognisability. There was even an entire Egyptian temple, donated by Cairo, dismantled and shipped to New York, to be put back together in a dedicated gallery in the Met. It blows my mind to be among such objects that are eerily familiar, eerily meaningful, and so old that I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to make them or use them for the first time. Only the Louvre, in my mind, surpasses the Met.

So there we were, Columbia students all, from the various undergraduate schools, some dressed up impressively (the girls from Barnard), others coming in sandals and berms (the guys from the College), filing through the hallowed and high-vaulted galleries, looking at objects of incredible antiquity, discussing classes and orientation activities, and pondering on how these ancient objects we can see and sometimes touch will fit into our lives from now on. Certainly, the connections that we formed tonight between the museum and our syllabus are laughably simplistic, and certainly real classes will begin soon that will take us through those same galleries to explain the connections far more eloquently, but already I feel like opportunities are coming together here in ways that I had only imagined about, daydreamed of, before.

Ran into lots of CUE people in the Met, and inevitably, the group grew till we could have formed our own tour group. It was a chance to reunite, and to share the experiences of the previous days apart, as if CUE had not already ended, and that we were simply taking a break from the distractions and laying the foundations for the imminent resumption of CUE. We had only been apart for two days, and we were already talking in nostalgic terms, planning our next reunions and promising to keep in touch as if irrevocable departure was impending. And afterwards, wandered the streets of the posh Upper East Side with K and A to go to the subway on 77th Street, reflecting on what we've seen of the city, the new people we've met, the old people we can't get enough of - and how much of all this we really owe to CUE. And it really was a special time, and it deserves all the hype it's getting. And I do think that, judging from the trend over the last few days, the memories and relationships of CUE will become more and more meaningful and precious as time goes by.

Live From New York

2008-08-26T11:37:00.003+08:00

This, too, is New York.

I have realised that it is harder to make new acquaintances than I had anticipated. It is partly, I think, that I am really in some ways too old for some of the antics that the people here get up to. There are certain things that seem to me to be too self-indulgent or pointless to go through with, and that does form a barrier to quickly establishing new connections, a quickness that is especially important in the rapidly shifting circumstances of the freshman year. But more importantly, I think, than the age differential is the gap in perspectives. It is not that people here are unable to appreciate the irony or self-indulgence of what is happening around us; indeed, some people have spotted them before I have. It is a fundamental disconnect in the vocabulary and modes of communication between me and them that hampers the capitalisation on that common realisation. The potential of the shared insight is thus unable to be harnessed as a social device.

In quite a few ways, then, I find it impossible to understand where these people are coming from. Beyond very basic, functional levels, I can't seem to read them and their intentions, and thus find myself at a loss as to how to respond to some of their behaviour. Of course, one must always be nice, but sometimes being nice seems to muddle the situation even more. It elicits responses that I cannot seem to account for; and what is more fearsome than nastiness is random nastiness, which cannot be grasped and thus avoided. And all this demands a set of social conventions and an interpersonal vocabulary that I have not figured out yet - that I need to figure out fast. It is clear, at least, that the problem lies in me, rather than in them.

*

I find myself entertaining myself for quite a substantial amount of time, therefore, and I can see that it is becoming unhealthy. It is simply that putting in the necessary effort is so tiring and ineffective. But that is certainly not to say that I'm sad or upset. Apprehensive, yes. Sometimes irritated, or frustrated. But not sad or upset. This is New York, and it is big enough and thick enough to offer anyone - and stranger - distraction and enrichment.

The picture above was taken on the last bluesky day of the week, from the Staten Island ferry. On Saturday, we spent the day out in the city, and visited a beach on Staten Island, taking some time to frolic in the surf and across the sand. I was snapping a shot every other minute, because the scenery and the shifting situations simply proved too compelling, from every angle. And when you see a scene like that one above, its beauty arrests you, and its wonder overwhelms you, and drives all other thoughts out, leaving a vacuum that is filled by incredulity and awe. Scenes like this show how a place is filled with promise, and that promise gives one the courage to hope, and to try, and to put in the effort.

And then there is the Columbia Urban Experience. It couldn't have been a more awesome introduction to this place and its people, I think. Well, it could have been better, I guess, but I couldn't have rightly asked for more, because I do think my lack of sustained effort and comprehension is the cause of its shortfalls where I am concerned. The people were immensely helpful and thoughtful, and the programme exposed me to sides of New York that I definitely could not have accessed by myself. I miss the familiar faces and the clarity of purpose that we shared (even if we did not share a certain clarity in meaning). Most of all, I miss the kids that we worked with. I will have to write more about CUE some other time, but let me say this: this programme has meant more to me than I can say.

*

And moving on from the last day of CUE, we had the convocation ceremony for the first-years today. I have to say I was approaching it rather cynically, seeing that it was basically a self-congratulatory orgy on the South Lawn, but I have to admit that I was deeply impressed by what was said. Belinda Archibong, the student leader responsible for the New Student Orientation Programme, spoke movingly and eloquently about how being a Columbia student makes available special opportunities to one to grow intellectually and emotionally. She ended off with a "I am Belinda Archibong. I am a student at Columbia University - and so are you" that sent a shiver down my spine. And then Dean Quigley of the College spoke about how matriculating means that live would "never be quite the same again", and how, even though we were about to undergo deep changes in our lives, we should try to maintain a measure of continuity with our pasts, so that the past will help to make sense out of these disorienting shifts. Basically, all things change - but all things must not change at the same time.

And, for the first time, in a very real way, the realisation struck me that this place is not just a place for learning, but a place for growing. That New York is not just nice scenery, but an interactive and mutually supporting environment, a context within which to live, and which informs all aspects of one's life here. That Columbia is not just a school, but a mindset. The enormity of the choices and opportunities that lie ahead are daunting. I feel intimidated by everyone I meet, because of their diverse and richly detailed experiences that I cannot hope to parallel. They are offering me so much, and I am not equipped well enough at the moment to take full advantage. And even worse, I am at a real loss as to what item of value that I can actually offer in return.

So things are awesome and fearsome, incredible and intolerable. I still feel like a spectator to all these things that are going on around me. But it certainly is only a matter of time before I find someone I can really talk to here. I believe this to be true, out of an act of faith in the opportunities offered by this place. In the meantime, though, I pray for courtesy and patience, which will provide the strength I need to pull through all this at the moment.

This is New York

2008-08-22T12:01:00.004+08:00

Warmest greetings, everyone, from New York!

Okay, haven't been posting pictures because I haven't set up my permanent internet connection yet and am using a public computer in a lab at the moment, and haven't been posting at all because CUE has been utterly packed with events, meaning to say every night's sleep is only at most six hours long. In fact, by posting this now, I will probably regret this tomorrow afternoon. But too many things have happened, and all of it begs to be written down somewhere.

But what can I say? New York is utterly astonishing. It's not exactly a forgiving place; the first thing I encountered when I got of CX 830 at JFK was a long queue through Immigration, because their computer system had broken down. Then, there was a long queue for the taxi, and then a traffic jam along the highway from JFK to Manhattan. The first impression of the city was, therefore, one of gridlock. And the people are rather ruthless when they're irritated, all too ready to unleash a formidable array of curses and cleverly disguised profanities at you.

But they make up for it by being almost flawlessly polite. The traffic here does go out of its way to give way to large gaggles of undergraduates wandering across avenues and streets with nary a glance at the lights. On the subway, people do say their P's and Q's, and even the most perfunctory "Thank you" prompts a reply, an extra effort that is almost unheard of back home. It is not difficult or intimidating to deal normally with these people at all; the only possible obstacle is the accent, which can be easily learnt and overcome.

And the things that New York throws at you every day are astounding. Every night, CUE participants get to go out on the city to explore various landmarks and activities. So, over the last three nights, I've been to Central Park (where we went in search of a Graciella commemmorative concert but found a spontaneous rhumba party instead, which was in turn broken up when the cops showed up), the Brooklyn Bridge (after which we went hunting for cheap eats and ended up in a fantastically decorated European-style cafe near school), Chinatown (where for an exorbitant price we got authentic-tasting bubble tea) and Shea Stadium (for a Mets game - after which there was a fight among the fans, and New York's finest appeared again, this time on horseback). The city is so vibrant that even when you get lost, you're bound to find something worth going to; boredom is not an option. And whereas history may lie thickly on European streets, here, I think what coats the streets and avenues of New York is fascination.

And the unexpected can ambush you at any moment. On the subway ride from Chinatown back to Columbia, a man with an orange t-shirt on his head and many plastic bags tried to talk me into joining his evangelical army to save Riverside Church from the Devil, in the meantime demonstrating an incredible knowledge of Singaporean society. On campus at the start of this week, film crews were all over the lawn filming scenes from Gossip Girl, which actually means nothing to me, but was fun to watch - and I'm sure this factoid will make someone jealous (I mean, we were within spitting distance of the stars, whoever they were). A CBS reporter haunted one of the Columbia gates on one afternoon. And when I was opening a bank account earlier today, a woman suddenly burst into the bank, screamed at the manager to leave her alone and stop harrassing her, and then left - after which the cops arrived.

And the people who experience all this with me are amazing as well. It's still early days, but it turns out that it may not be that difficult to talk to these people after all. There is a certain youthfulness in their thought and expression that cannot be ignored, but above all, their earnestness and goodwill smooths away any cultural barriers that may have existed, defusing potentially explosive differences into valuable talking points. There is also a certain degree of racism that is only to be expected in a city and school like this, but most of the time it is harmless, and sometimes even richly funny. And anyway, practically everyone has been game to try out new things, and to wander the streets of Manhattan at all hours, and have been invariably helpful and friendly. There really is nothing more that I can rightly ask of these people, and I am deeply glad that I've had the chance to pass this week with them.

At my service site, too, the people are remarkable. I'm working at a homeless shelter, and there is a day-care centre in it that looks after the kids when the parents are out looking for new accommodation. K and I are working with the older kids, who range from three to six years old. Their energy is boundless, and they are utterly, stunningly intelligent, demonstrating a surprisingly wide knowledge and being able to carry out conversations that are so earnest and sensible that it makes your heart melt. And even though they are under welfare, they seem to lead such charmed lives to my eyes, and I find that my fascination with this city is somewhat reflected in them, in a more intense, more guileless, purer form.

The streets, too, seem to me to be enchanted. The weather has been flawless since I left Singapore, making every day a blue-sky day, when the light is sharp and clear, making everything blaze with beauty. On the first day, riding the cab into the city, we passed over the Triborough Bridge, and there was the Manhattan skyline, resplendent in the gold of sunset, shadowy and utterly promising in the distance. The largest monuments, like the legendary Shea Stadium, and the smallest details, like the book stalls that pop up on the sidewalks in the sunlight, speak to me equally with promise and anticipation; these streets contain within them the seeds of powerful experiences, only waiting for someone to come and find them. But by far the best moment so far was when I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on foot at night with some of the CUE people. Seeing Manhattan glowing in the weeknight darkness, the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings incandescent in their luminous regalia, Downtown made up of dense constellations of office lights, and the torch of the Statue itself a pinprick of yellow in the distance - at that time, I felt like I would burst into tears right there: I felt I was ready to die. At that time, I knew that the long journey to New York through space and time, the journey that started so long ago in such different circumstances, had finally come to an end, and had given birth in its waning to a new era - this new era - bursting with promise. And the best thing was that since I was with a CUE group, I had someone with which to share this incredible moment, something that had almost never happened before, and had certainly never happened so intensely before.

This is New York. And things are starting.

Everywhere

2008-08-17T07:09:00.004+08:00

It was a pretty good night, all things considered. Caught a couple of hours of really good sleep on the airport benches after the last post, and woke up this morning with the dawn breaking outside the windows of the terminal, making for a splendid alarm clock. The thing about Hong Kong's airport is that it's basically one very long pier encased in glass curtains three storeys high, and it's built on the shores of Lantau Island, and these two factors make it a surprisingly good place from which to watch the sky turn from yellow to white. And with runways all around the terminal, it also makes for unparallelled plane-watching. It's a cathedral to aviation, where enthusiasts and acolytes can come to worship those great flying machines.

The problem is that as is usually the case with cathedrals, everything is very grand but not very user-friendly. It seems I maligned HKIA a bit in the earlier post: there are free water fountains here, and there are also free sleep lounges with luxurious-looking chaise lounges. But it is clear that there are to few of both (I assume the lounges are comfortable, but I didn't have a chance to find out myself). And this morning, I blew almost HK$200 in one shot over a shower and hotcakes for breakfast. This place really doesn't show mercy for one's wallet. But oh well - it is an airport, after all, I guess.

I'm going to go onto the aeroplane later and conk out. Yesterday, worked on some updates to the website until I was typing words wrongly, and when I tried to walk to find somewhere for a nap, it felt like I was swimming. And finally falling onto a bench to sleep was the sweetest feeling ever. I was getting dangerously uncoordinated; in this effort to reset the biological clock to New York time, I plumbed depths of fathigue that have not been known since night-shifts in the Army.

At any rate, I am eager to get going for the next leg of the journey, the sixteen-hour flight to New York proper. The planes sit on the tarmac gleaming in the sharp morning light, the kind of intensely clear light that you only get on early mornings and on island seasides. Each one sits uncomfortably on its landing gear, clunky wheels that seem totally out of place on a machine of speed and height. Each plane is a flight of fancy, with an unknown and therefore infinitely various destination, encompassing within its frame a universe of possibilities and within its mighty engines the potential to realise them. And I am going to New York. New York. I roll the name around in my head like a sweet, like an incantation or a prayer. Savour it. New York.

*

Some principles of this new era, then, perhaps.

Firstly, approach everything with a sense of awe and humility: awe that such everyday miracles can happen, and humility because such miracles can happen to someone as ill-prepared for them as I am.

Secondly, don't begrudge other people their good luck, talents or abilities, just as one should not blame them for shortcomings that are out of their own control. The only real shortcoming is laziness.

Thirdly, a problem is only a matter of perspective, and perspective can be enhanced by open-mindedness. Unfamiliarity breeds vulnerability, in that one does not have the everyday markers and conventions that signal what is important, and what is not. One is forced to experience everything as acutely as a critical event. But the best way to deal with this is to embrace the opportunities, rather than to be obsessed by the risks, however real they may be.

Fourthly, always be generous. The more people who can benefit from one's effort, the better. Anyway, it's less tiring to give things away than to safeguard them.

And lastly, remember where one comes from. And remember to hope.

CX 716 to Hong Kong

2008-08-17T01:11:00.005+08:00

And so it begins.

Going through the actual process of departure is far less glamorous than contemplating it as a hypothetical situation. What one envisions is a scripted leave-taking, picture-perfect and therefore enviable; what one leaves out are the moments of drudgery and tedium, the pre-check-in scramble to repack the luggage so that it fits in with the baggage guidelines, the struggle with bulging packs and bags, the sweat that flows freely, belying the fluster that nags one's mind. And underlying all this is the constant nagging doubt that one has forgotten something crucial, something simple and indispensible, and one will think oneself the consummate idiot once that oversight is discovered.

But once the bags were checked in, and the boarding passes were obtained, everything started to go more smoothly, in the way that I had envisaged, in my idle fantasising moments. After the bags are tagged and have disappeared down the chute, one knows that one is committed to the trip; there can be no turning back now. And, for better or worse, the only real way to counter that nagging doubt is to embark anyway, and find out the hard way whether the doubt is paranoia or prescience. So, once my boarding passes were in hand, I felt a lot more settled, and could turn to the task of taking my leave of my people.

I will not belabour this point: it would be unseemly, crass, too much like bragging. It is enough to say that more people turned up than I had expected, and the send-off that they gave could not have been better. I could not have rightly asked for more - heck, they even threw in a few bars from that Sinatra song! It was exceedingly odd to be escorted to the glass gates, pushing this trolley, and realising that it is actually laden with my stuff, and that this time round I was not sending someone off, but was in fact being sent off. I do feel somewhat bad, really, like making a mountain out of a molehill. But if there ever was a way to say a good goodbye, and if there ever were people who I wanted really to say a good goodbye to at the glass gates, then this would be it. To have friends such as these - this is enough to complete any life.

*

And a part of me misses them already - my family and friends. There were no tears this time, thankfully, for they were quite frankly uncalled for. And yet, the departure definitely affected me deeply. Thinking of what I left behind, the enormity of it all sends pangs through my chest, a sort of clenching that is produced by a mix of fear and yearning. The yearning is for more of the same in the coming days; the fear is my aversion to losing what I share already with my people. I cannot let go; more importantly, I will not let go of these days, these people. This is not a question of moving on. Definitely I will have to move on sooner or later. The crux of the issue lies in whether I can find a way to reconcile what is to come with what is already here, to make the old, familiar friendships complement the new ones, to avoid the situation in which they become mutually exclusive.

Am I trying to have my cake and eat it? Yep, definitely. But then again, how can you choose between an unimaginable potential future and an indispensible past? Making that kind of decision will tear me apart, I think. So, it is not greed but self-preservation that motivates this stand.

*

And after finishing the long goodbye, I got on the plane and things got on to a good start. The flight was scheduled for a 6.30pm departure, but up till takeoff, I did not make the connection between the departure time and the sunset time. And so, as the plane hurtled down southward along the runway and then leapt into the air, the whole scene was suffused with a soft golden light. And as the plane banked left to head north towards Hong Kong, I was treated to a breathtaking view of the city bathed in the slanting rays of the setting sun. I managed to trace out the twin runways of the airport, the Singapore Expo complex and Changi Business Park. I am pretty sure I managed to spot Simei as well, but that may just be wishful thinking, as the plane pulled quickly away, and soon, we were past Ubin and into Malaysia. Nonetheless, it is a nice thought to me to think that my last view of Singapore, and of my home, this year was when it was resplendent in the raiment of a sunset. The view seemed like one last parting gift from the city.

The flight as a whole was charmed by its fortuitous timing. The cabin provided ample legroom, the entertainment system left one spoilt for choice, the food was admirable (especially dessert - Cathay Pacific puts in just that little bit more effort to get everyone ice cream, which I think is a little bit that goes a long way), and the service was excellent. But as far as I was concerned, the biggest show was happening outside, and I would have been just as satisfied flying by JetStar. The view through the porthole was spectacular, and I spent two hours simply watching the sun set from eighty thousand feet in the air.

That vantage point really gives a whole new take to sunsets. Below the plane was a sea of billowing clouds, whereas more ethereal wisps hovered at our altitude. The air above was crystal-clear. All this combined with the low sun produced incredible colours and contrasts, as the sun threw the low cloudtops into stark relief by silhouetting them, and turned the higher clouds incandescent by backlighting them, while the higher altitudes were a deep and royal blue. As the plane soared in and out of clouds, and the colours changed constantly from gold to orange to red to dusky brown, one cannot but be transfixed by the shifting patterns of light. I found myself quite simply in awe. And one gets the distinct feeling that this is God's country.

And afterwards, as the last dull glimmer of the sun faded away and night fell, the plane began its descent to Hong Kong, and the lightshow continued. We approached from Kowloon, bypassing Hong Kong Island to go directly to Lantau. There was low and patchy cloud cover, and for some reason, the clouds were gathered in the valleys that lined the Hong Kong landscape. And Hong Kong, being a city that blazes almost vehemently with light, backlit all these clouds dramatically, turning them yellow or red. At one point, the brilliant neons that line Victoria Harbour lent their colours to the clouds, so that they obtained diffuse tinges of unnatural colours. And at another point, the Turf Club's massive floodlights turned the clouds above it to pure white. And at yet another point, a line of lights outlined the great Tsing Ma Bridge and the expressway it carries from Lantau to Kowlooon. And over all of this, the full moon cast its silver shadow, gently highlighting the cloudtops and reflecting on the water's surface, making an evocative contrast with the incredible lights of the city.

*

All this nearly made me decide to go down to the harbour myself tonight, despite my having to catch an early flight out in a little over seven hours' time. I daresay that, after Singapore, Hong Kong is the city that I am most familiar with. This is a place, too, that has blessed me with special moments, and my impression of it is enriched (some may say biased) by these memories. But it would have been an unspeakable folly to leave the airport. And anyway, if I had left, I would not be able to blog now.

So here I am, in the middle of a deserted food court in Hong Kong International Airport, its usually bustling thoroughfares rendered quiet in the lull of the early morning. I have the whole place to myself; I could sleep on these benches if I wanted to, and I could blast music from this computer with no ill effects. My closest neighbours are construction workers drilling away at some unseen upgrading project. But the objective for tonight is to stay awake, so that I can rewire my system for New York time.

Some people say HKIA is the world's best airport. They do have a point; it certainly is swanky and impressively designed. But I do think that the people who agree with this judgment are by and large first- or business-class travellers, who can cocoon themselves in the premier airline lounges, and who may very well never realise the lack of the basic amenities that make the normal transit passenger's life better, things like free water dispensers and even convenience stores. Changi Airport has all this; whereas HKIA seems to me to be designed to suck money, for the most part. Nevertheless, it is pretty nice here, in my personal zone in this deserted food court. The surroundings are clean, I have free power and the wifi is dependable. Definitely not outfield, this.

Predictably, too, the place is festooned with Olympic promotional materials. HKIA is the gateway to the equestrian events, and anyway, HKIA is in China, so they use Olympic posters somewhat like wallpaper here, plastering them on construction hoardings, billboards, walls and trolleys. So this is my tiny, tangential exposure to the Olympics. I guess even being in the vicinity of the Olympics at this time is something to remark upon; and I am reminded of G, Y's junior, who may have very well watched the very match that had guaranteed Singapore at least a silver in table-tennis. I should buy some Olympic merchandise while I'm here; event-themed shot glasses seem to be the best bet at the moment.

The Brink of Tomorrow

2008-08-16T02:48:00.002+08:00

Now, writing on the day of departure, I am all ready to leave. The bags are packed - all four of them, large and small, slung and wheeled - and the weight of twenty years of accumulated meaning is a little over 40kg. I am staying up as late as I can to facilitate the switch in time zones - a total turnaround, since New York is twelve hours behind Singapore. And tomorrow, I will pack a few remaining articles, and my toothbrush, and I will be ready to head to the airport. All the preparations that have taken place up till now, that are still taking place (as this entry is part of the process), are the final stages of the long goodbye. And in some really concrete ways, I am already gone.

The big changes in the littlest things bely the magnitude of the impending shift. I am, for example, leaving behind my old wallet, a leather number that has acquired a permanent sheen from being in continuous use for seven years, full of holes, falling apart, but still so familiar and well-used that the tanned surface feels like part of my own skin. None of the old watches are following me; rather, I am bringing all the new 21-year-birthday watches, shiny, impressive and confident numbers that I feel I have yet to grow into. On the other hand, some things remain the same, linger on for a while more. My sole literary concession to the past is Iyer's The Lady and the Monk. My faithful tote bag from the days of Taipei, the canvas having borne the dust and sunlight of many travels and memorable occasions, is also following me to New York. A heavy jacket that last saw the light of day in Lyon, France, six years ago is accompanying me as an indispensible essential item once again.

Such is this departure, then: based firmly on a foundation formed by the past, and facing the future steadfastly; I stand solidly upon my memories, in order to be fully committed to the future. I remember, to hope - and I remember to hope. And it is clear that, on the brink of tomorrow, the memories I carry with me, the mementos that linger on with me, are tools with which to construct and interpret new moments of exhilaration and new additions to my perspective in the days and months to come.

And, ultimately, the hope is to be able to make a good return: that is, to fully appreciate how far you've come. Over the intervening period, things would have changed in me, and in the places and the people that I am leaving behind for the moment; but the hope is not that the changes don't happen, but that they don't happen all at the same time, so that there remains a measure of commonality between remembered experience and the present situation. This forms a sort of landmark, a spot height, from which one can measure the full extent of one's growth, and the distance one has travelled. A good return is thus about self-discovery rather than rediscovery; it is about gaining a more acute awareness of the direction of one's life, with respect to where one has come from.

And as I stand on the brink of tomorrow, eagerly looking forward to the end of the waiting, for this new adventure to begin properly - even as I yearn, starstruck, in this breathtaking state of ignorance, in awe of the opportunities and unaware of the dangers - even as I look forward to the good goodbye that I hope will happen tomorrow - a part of me is already trying to imagine what a good return from New York can be like.

*

And so far, it has been a good goodbye, I think - a splendid goodbye, one that has let me savour it, one that I feel has done due justice to everything that has built up to this. The last few days have been absolutely beautiful, the light intense and sharp on this well-loved place, so that every vista seemed to burn with meaning, and every scene seemed to me to be yearning to be remembered, and carried away to another place in one's heart of hearts. And today started in a similar vein. It being a day of obligation for Catholics, got up early to take a walk to the nearest church, where a spartan mass for people who had yet to start the working day was taking place. It was a bare-bones mass, stripped down and therefore more incisive, I felt. And then, in the golden light of 7am, I took a slow walk back to Simei, and stopped at the local kopitiam for breakfast.

A soft morning, then, made up of a walk through the soft light, sounds filtering through the cool air softly. Soft boiled eggs and a sweet, warm drink for breakfast; soft toast with kaya. The voices of a group of aged friends lowered, soft in the trading of daily gossip. The trains gliding overhead along the concrete viaducts, the thrums and hums softened by the solid bulk, awakening memories of waking up to those familiar whirrs and clicks - mechanical good-mornings.

Later in the day, went out for one last lunch of the season. Met with C again, and went prata-hunting along Thomson Road, and between the two of us, we gave into temptation and ordered too much food, so that the heartwarming sight of a table covered in edibles became a little daunting. And after that excellent lunch, went down to Borders and indulged myself by picking up the new Theroux book along with a guide to New York. It was a sequel to The Great Railway Bazaar, a book that is fondly remembered for being my faithful companion during Army training in Taiwan. There was no question about getting it. And later that evening, ended up in a cinema, watching the new Singapore Film, Jack Neo's Money No Enough 2, with family. It was a show that was in essence a 159-minute soap opera episode, and yet, it was done with such an exuberance and eagerness that was endearing in their guilelessness. Its honest effort elevates the movie into something that is surprisingly worth watching.

And so, this day forms the capstone to the long goodbye to this place. How can I properly say how much all this has meant to me? The words are dulled by tiredness (it is 3am, and I have been up for almost 21 hours now), and also by the usual aversion to sentimentalisation. But I can say this much: now, standing as I am on the brink of tomorrow, when I look back over the instants and events of the past year, at the incredible coincidences, the unexpected surprises, the heartwarming reassurances, the people, the conversations, I am hit by an intense clenching in the chest. It surprises me that the feeling is so intense, this nostalgia for some precious thing, now past, mixed with the fear of losing this experience forever with this departure. And yet, it would be positively criminal, I think, to care less than this for what has preceded today.

Thank you all, then, for your well-wishes, your help, your teaching and your patience. And know that I will remember all this.

*

I will try to write once more, before departing, but on the off-chance that errands and real-life farewells crowd out the time to record, let me leave some details:

My new mailing address is now on my Facebook profile. I will be at Termina One from 3pm onwards. I will probably not be back until July next year. And at latest, I will write again, come Sunday night in New York.

Bluesky

2008-08-13T20:40:00.002+08:00

Yesterday night, went down to Bukit Timah to this cute little joint called Bar Bar Black Sheep, an establishment with good background music tastefully reduced in volume to be ambient without demanding the attention of patrons, and with Stella, Hoegaarden and something else on tap at remarkably low prices (for Singapore standards, at least). Got together with quite a few of the dudes from the secondary school days, and spent the evening laughing over old stories and new scandals. It was a really refreshing feeling, to once again feel at ease enough to range over topics of conversation that are at once inspired, and at other times lewd. It takes a specially acute form of engagement to participate in such conversations that jump from the philosophical to the profane with such speed and dexterity. And it takes a certain special faith in the friendships around the table, a chronic willingness to take nothing personally, to sustain one in such conversations.

Do people usually have conversations like this? I would like to think so, but the eclectic combination of personalities among these people seem to indicate that this form of synergy is less common than it should be. The sheer uniqueness of the circumstances that brought us together and kept us together defies chance itself to reproduce them in another group - and I say this with a feeling of regret rather than elitism. In other words, though I hope that I will find friends of like minds and hearts in the future, I cannot avoid the apparent conclusion that I will never again make friends who are like these. I hope this conclusion is wrong; but I cannot avoid making it.

And certainly, I will miss this kind of conversing - the good-natured sparring, the teasing that would be seen as vicious except through the lens of our shared past, the stark contrast between the sophistication of the points made and the language used to make them. I will miss the artistry, the easy camaraderie, the uncanny spontaneity. And these conversations will join a long list of other memorable encounters, over the years, along rivers, on long walks, near the seaside, over dinners, over drinks, over books, in the midst of both anxiety and celebration, on the eve of departures, and on the cusp of reunions. I remember these encounters, and they sustain the hope that more of the same kind will come in the next few years.

*

Today, I reckon, was the last of the full-day outings of this season, and it was a spectacular day, a bluesky day that was so clear that it stuns one into stopping to stare at the sky. It was a sky that inspires poetry, that empowers the imagination with a sense of deep wonder. And in this city of small spaces, a sky like that liberates one's spirit by being so wide, so open.

Went back to school for one last time, and it was good to be able to see old colleagues and my old classes again. It does remind me of those days, days filled with conjuring lessons out of thin air, days spent griping over grades, days spent in awe of work that made me feel redundant, and thankfully so. Days which I still count as the most worthwhile days of this year so far. And it was good to see that everyone was still carrying on fine, from the teachers to the students. It is comforting to see that the transition from my lessons to those of a real teacher has taken place without hitches; and, I find myself once again drawing an inordinate amount of solace from the fact that I have been easily replaced. It feels to me like my job has finally been completed in full.

And after meeting as many people as I could, went down to URA to complete some paperwork. Picked up a hefty sum of money in the form of a bank draft, meant to tide me through the first four months in New York, and handed over some accounts to be reimbursed. That part was straightforward enough. Also clarified some conditions imposed upon my programme in Columbia, and have discovered, somewhat to my dismay, that my options are in fact more limited than I thought. It turns out that, really, the best perspective with which to approach my university course is really as vocational training for the job that's waiting for me in 2012. So long, then, fanciful plans to take random courses in film or Spanish. It was a tad disappointing - it still is, I think - to realise that in effect, I had to approach this course as an employee rather than as a student. But, after all, I figure that it really was a job that I signed up for when I signed the deed, and this revelation is not an injustice to work against but a set of circumstances to work within. After all, if my bottom line for these 3.5 years is for the time to be spent enrichingly, it is better to spend the time working with the system rather than rebelling against it. That part may come in later.

Popped into the office to look for old colleagues who made my seven weeks at URA so pleasant. It felt great to be back there too; and I was reminded yet again that, after all, there are good pe€ople working in this organisation, and no matter how tough the system in the organisation may be, good coworkers tend to make everything worthwhile in the end. And among all the nice things that you can get out of working life, good colleagues must rank among the most important.

After that, took a bus down to Borders in Orchard to meet up with Mrs. N and Mr. L, two old teachers, the latter of which has been studying for his doctorate in Stanford for the last two years, and as a result I had not seen him since...well, since graduating from CHS. But this was one of those perspective-shaping teachers, one of the breed of real "O Captain, my Captain"s upon which the Dead Poets' Society was based. And now, after my stint relief teaching at CHS, and his stint as a (postgraduate, but nevertheless...) student in Stanford, we could talk about a lot more things, and the three of us had a therapeutic session expounding on the scandals in staffroom politics, the direction of education in general and the antics that we used to get up to in class. Years ago, our classroom interactions had already been remarkably...cutting-edge, I guess. But now, after these years of experience on all sides, we could approach one another with even more common ground, and it was a pleasant surprise to discover how easily all this fell into place.

And, over the course of the day, a strange idea occurred to me. What with so many people sending the customary well-wishes, enquiring inquisitively about life over there, and reminiscing about salad days, I am starting to feel as if I am expected to enjoy myself there - in the sense that it is a requirement that I must fulfill on their behalf. In other words, it is my responsibility to like it there, and to come back laden with remarkable stories and experiences. I know that all this is at least partially attributable to social convention, and that it is presumptious to think that it means something more. And yet, it does bring out one important point, I think: insofar as enjoyment in a set of circumstances can be generated by force of will, it will be positively criminal not to do everything in one's power to enjoy it.

And Then

2008-08-12T14:59:00.003+08:00

...and so, now that departure is within sight, I am going through my last week here at home, with the acute awareness that I am probably visiting all these places, doing all these things, seeing all these people, for the last time in a year. It still strikes me as incredible, this impending and total shift in environment, the most fundamental shift in the assumptions that make everyday life possible since enlistment. It is something unimaginable, unthinkable: and so, in the empty black void into which the experience of the next year will go, I now fill with fanciful ideas from what I read and what I see, vicariously. And I have grown used to these fantasy images of what college life is like, of what life in New York is like, and to contemplate that the fantasies will transmute into reality soon is still something incredible to me. The inertia of familiarity and habit tugs strongly at me.

But anyway - for all those who are concerned, I am returning to Chinese High tomorrow from ten onwards, one last time in my old school before going to my new school. I am also returning to URA later that afternoon to complete some administrative tasks, and perhaps to pop in at the Physical Planning office for a while. And though my flight is scheduled to depart on Saturday only at 6.30pm, my intention is to go through the glass gates at Terminal 1 by 4.30pm, partly because I want to get this whole process of relocation started as soon as possible, but also because I want to take this rare chance to explore T3 before I go.

Add to this the daily excursions for meals with old friends, scattered packing, and preparatory reading for next week (yep, we aren't even official students yet and the school's already given us homework), and you have a general impression of how these final days will play out. Of course, everything is still steeped in the acute awareness brought on by a feeling of finality - and yet, it seems rather underwhelming for the final pre-departure week, if you list it out like that. Maybe it would be more poetic, more artistically fitting, if I were to spend every day wandering the streets of this well-loved city, torn between my wanderlust and a nascent homesickness, enthralled and heartbroken equally by the prospect of departure.

But then again, this is an idealised version of events, borne out of the ame sources that gave me those fanciful ideas of New York and Columbia. That would b a goodbye fit for a biographic film, a regular tear-jerker. That option is not open to me; rather, I have the long goodbye, a leave-taking from this place that is characterised by slow walks and open eyes, a feeling of amazement and amusement at the incidental things that this city throws at me. Does it make sense that this way of leaving means more to me, precisely because it doesn't mean anything to the place I am leaving? Singapore will continue to exist after I am gone; and somehow I find myself taking a surprising amount of solace from that.

I guess it's also the same idea with old friendships and connections: the biggest solace is not from a showy and cathartic farewell, but from the assurance that the old friendships and connections will still persist even when we are all gone. Then, there is no loss in departing. Then, departing loses its preeminent fearsomeness. A good goodbye, then, is not so much about saying a proper goodbye, but more about laying the foundations for the next reunion. Rather than being a resolution to what has happened up to that point, a goodbye is thus a resolution to meet again in the future: an act of faith, and an expression of confidence in the relationship that has led up to this, and what is to come.

This, then, I think, is the meaning behind the last send-off of this season for me, as we went down to the airport to send Y's junior G on her way to the Olympics (the lucky git!). Standing in the expansive, cool space in Terminal 3, looking at the plasma screens with their magic-word names that are really incantations to transport you in a flight of fantasy, and seeing a flight to New York - not mine - and the flight that some of my other friends will be on to go to Paris, I suddenly had this image of what Saturday would be like. Not an end, but the beginnings of a beginning. Not the capstone that is the finishing touch on an era of friendships that is fading away, but the foundations for the continuation of that era.

*

...and this departure seems to me to also be a mind-boggling trip through time. Two years ago, when my people started to depart for their studies, strewn across continents and oceans, I had had the feeling of having been left behind, stuck on a dead end, on a path through NS that was tangential to where I wanted to go. Since then, that path had become better integrated into the greater scheme of things, or at least I would like to think so. But now, finally on the eve of my own departure, I realise that some people have changed over the last two years, having faced experiences that I cannot even begin to imagine in an environment that defies my conceptualisation. And so, to some extent, this departure is now an attempt to finally catch up with these people, to make up for time that has been spent elsewhere.

And reading the introductions of my fellow CUE (that's the community-service programme that is letting me go to New York a week earlier) participants, I also have an eerie sense of having to step back in time as well. These people are young, mostly younger than me (whereas in 6SIR I was among the youngest in the unit). It is folly to fault them for being younger, and yet I cannot help but notice the difference in perspectives and attitudes. The proliferation of exclamation marks and onomatopaeia in their self-introductions; the urgency and even impatience that I read in their short paragraphs and sentences; the rambling content that speaks of the beguiling spontaneity of their lives, the exploding richness of every event that baffles someone who tries to record it sequentially. The breathlessness of being on the very cusp of life, on the very forefront of their endeavours. The youthful self-satisfaction at the impression of having accomplished all this by one's own strength. The faith in a sense of entitlement that is impressive in its intensity, and yet disturbing in its narrowness.

It does worry me that I feel that I have outgrown all this. It seems like a sign that I will have trouble getting fully involved in all the happenings in undergraduate life, that I will far too easily dismiss perfectly understandable indulgences as frivolous and childish. And it is clear that this is a problem with my own perspective, rather than with their approach to life. Thankfully, though, since the problem lies in myself, it makes it more likely that I can solve this myself. Nevertheless, I have no real idea of how to even begin to correct this defect in my perspective. And time is running out.

T-Minus

2008-08-10T23:21:00.004+08:00

International affairs suddenly started brewing over the weekend. First, Georgia is invaded by Russia, and I find myself following this story with a sort of dreadful fascination, unavoidably imagining myself as one of those Georgian infantrymen retreating from the ridiculously overpowered Russian invasion force. This is one lasting side-effect of the Army period: now I can read battlefields technically, rather than only vicariously, and therefore "artistically". I can begin to comprehend the mechanics of warfare; I imagine it is like discovering exactly how a poison shuts down a human body, and finding yourself perversely intrigued by the process. And one wonders, as one watches the Georgian president plainitively appealing (even begging) for a ceasefire with the Russians, what it would be like if Singapore was on the receiving end of an invasion.

And second, there is the opening of the Olympics. Wasn't at home to catch it, and thus missed what I hear was an absolutely spectacular show. And, accompanying it, was an outpouring of Asian nationalism so intense that it was rather shocking to me. Singaporeans, who had always been told to be Singaporean first and to identify with their ethnicity second, seemed inordinately proud of the Chinese accomplishment; even historical enmities between China and Vietnam, Korea and Japan were put aside as Asia gazed at Beijing lit up by citywide fireworks. It certainly has signified that China is definitely on the rise on the world stage, and I guess it is natural for anyone who is an audience to such a spectacle to want to be a supporter of its producer, rather than an opponent to it. But really, what right has the rest of Asia to be proud of the Chinese spectacular? Most of them did not add their efforts to the show, and China did not take up the Olympics as a representative of Asia (as far as I know - though I may be wrong about the Olympics not holding some sort of Chinese Pan-Asian aspirations). It is as valid as claiming a reward by birthright; it strikes me as a very feudal sort of thinking.

On the same ticket, the criticisms of China's policies that are tacked on to the end of Western coverage of China's Olympics seems to me to be equally artificial; the criticisms strike me as having the somewhat tired air of an obligation being carried out, as if the West, by default, has to find fault with China just because they cannot claim some sort of kinship with the Chinese achievement. The coverage at times strikes me as rather disappointing (as if we cannot remember by ourselves China's Tibetan issue and Sudanese involvement, but must rely on the media to keep these in the public consciousness), or presumptious (as if the endless reminders will actually contribute to any concrete improvement on any of the issues). Basically, credit should be given where credit is due; and both the Asian attempt to claim affinity with the Chinese achievement and the Western tendency to belittle it deny the Chinese that due credit for achieving something special on the 8th of August.

*

But anyway, closer to home, watched the National Day Parade last night with extended family, who had gathered for the sort of party that we usually do not see at my place until Christmas. I have to say that the parade was a tad of a let-down, not least because everyone was comparing it to the Beijing extravaganza, and pointing out the inadequacies at Marina Bay. Also, approaching it as I did with the awareness that I was departing in a week's time, I had also approached it with the expectation of something more memorable.

Generally, the parade did not deliver on that front- is it just me or are National Day Parades becoming even more painfully self-conscious as the years go by? Close-ups of performers show expressions that seem to cry out mutely: "What am I doing out here, dressed as a rainbow-hued cockatoo in the middle of the rain?" On the screen was not so much nationalist fervour as existentialist angst at being forced to be part of an absurdist performance that seems to be carried out more due to obligation than passion. This is, of course, not to slight the very real dedication that the participants put into the performance once they came to terms with the fact that they were involved in it, for better or worse, and that they'd better make it for the better, lest all their time is wasted. There should be no question of the kind of technical skill that can be mobilised from these people regardless of their philosopical standpoint; there is a kind of professional resignation and detachment that is heartwarming in itself too. But I do think that, as Singaporean society matures and comes to contemplate what position it wants to occupy in the wider world, it is inevitable that it should look at these yearly extravaganzas self-reflexively, and wonder whether such behaviour is becoming of a society that wants to show itself as cosmopolitan, complex and free.

Well, nevertheless, I have to say I was rather amused at the way everyone was so sharp about pointing out the flaws and shortfalls in the parade. There is a sort of genuine sincerity in the Singaporean style of complaining, the barb of the very real perceptiveness tempered by a natural resignation borne of te default ssumption that the complaining would never make any concrete difference. As such, even the most valid critical observations tend to come wrapped in a disarming sense of triviality, an almost instinctive readiness to indulge a lack of improvement, that tends to portray the complaints as harmless and meant in good fun rather than in earnestness. This is something I think I will miss - this seemingly instinctual ability not to take important remarks seriously. As such, I think perhaps the earnestness of Westerners in their emphasis on freedom of expression, and their tendency to debate everything as if every statement had equal validity, may be rather grating after a while...

Heh well, cynicism aside, I do expect that I will continue to watch National Day Parades no matter where I am in the world. After all, there is a more innocent, younger part of me that still delights in the simple pleasures of mass unity, in the instinct-level appeal to a sense of belonging to a larger group. This is the part that enjoys immensely joining in with fellow watchers in "Wah's" of amazement at the fireworks, that hums along when the classic National Day songs are played, that urges me to my feet during the pledge-taking, even as a more cynical part of me tries to disguise this standing up as a bout of stretching. This is the part that knows the meaning behind the simple words: "This is my country; this is my flag. This is my future; this is my life. This is my family; these are my friends."

*

And with that, I enter the last week before departure. August is well and truly here; and it is time to start packing. I made a list today of all the things that I want to pack, and it doesn't seem to amount to much: clothing, footwear, electronics, reads, toiletries, decorative items. I will bring everything that everyone has given me for the trip. And yet, I find that I will quite possibly be able to squeeze everything into the duffel bag that we got in the Army, and that everything may yet come under the 20kg weight limit. What does it mean, when twenty years of living in the same spot only produces a bagful of essential items that must be brought along in a major shifting of domiciles? Isn't it proper to instead be caught up in the painful decision about what to leave behind, rather than wondering about what else is worth bringing along?

Perhaps this is a symptom of cold, unrelenting practicality, which is able to even sacrifice sentimental value to the goal of ultimate efficiency. And, certainly, I've been contemplating this departure for so long that I practically worked out the packing list last year, which frankly would make such agonising over priorities redundant. But I would like to think, rather, that the things that are really of value to me are things that don't take up space in a duffel bag: pictures, memories and, most importantly, the continuation of old relationships in new contexts. It is a recognition, then, that material things are merely symbols of meaning, and if one can keep a firm hold on the meaning that gives the material thing its value, then the thing itself is valueless and thus dispensible.

Anyway, went out for dinner with Y again, finding out that the Katong laksa at Marina Square's food court does a decent impression of the original in Katong. After that, went for the performance at the spanking new outdoor theatre at the Esplanade. We were treated to excellent covers of classic tunes by a band who apparently has been together for "three and a half decades". Certainly, the skill and camaraderie of those well-spent years showed through on the stage. The music was pounding so powerfully that I could feel the hairs on my arms being buffeted by the sound; and the performance did something really rare: it convinced a Singaporean to get up and dance (agogo, no less!).

But tonight was made doubly special for being the first time in almost two years that I've attended a performance at the outdoor theatre, because it has been under refurbishment for that time. It had been my favourite spot on the River; and, looking through the new latticework of light booms and arches at the city skyline at dusk, I am reminded again of what had captured me at that spot, and of all the friends who had shared that spot. And once the new Marina Bay developments are done, the outdoor theatre will have a stunning backdrop of architecture and lights. Already, from that spot, the city looks so cloying and enticing; once the rest of the construction is done, I wonder whether anyone will be able to resist the feeling of standing in the midst of the city on a weekend evening. I admit: I do have high hopes for the area, founded upon a perspective biased by the URA. But I also find myself in the happy position of being able to fully expect those hopes to be fulfilled.

And so, this is the nearly-complete outdoor theatre, with the darkened weekend skyline in the background. And remember, these shots are not so much good pictures of scenes, as they are pictures of good scenes. I only happen to be at the right place at the right time: the rest - the colours, composition and context - are a gift from the city itself.

The Long Goodbye

2008-08-08T23:22:00.004+08:00

Spent the last two days in a bout of photography and videography, making records that I expect will come in useful when I need to tide over the cold, gray North American winters that I've heard so much about. Ultimately, the intention is to bring as complete a visual record as possible of all the places in Singapore that are meaningful to me. It is a process of catching up with old connections, tidying up loose ends, rediscovering forgotten links; it is a process of reconciliation. As KHwee rather presciently pointed out before, I find the future's meaning in terms of the past, and in order to give this particular future as solid a foundation as possible, I have partaken in this long goodbye to this city.

Today, went down to the Esplanade to grab a few more videos for an upcoming project. To my surprise, I found that the outdoor theatre, a long-time favourite spot for me, had finally been rebuilt and reopened, after a year of delay. Now, it's a more imposing structure; it seems to have lost some of its elegance in the process of expansion. Nevertheless, it was with warmth in my heart that I regarded the new structure, and now I find myself looking forward to more concerts and performances in the sunset, against the much-loved skyline.

And the skyline this evening was particularly splendid. Usually, I can't rightly find a reason to be on the bayside at sunset, and when I do find the time to go down, I've found that, lately, the weather has not been conducive to spectacular colorations. But this evening was markedly different. There was plenty of cloud cover, but there was also a strong wind, so the clouds were scudding across the sky quickly, and here and there, the wind tore holes in the clouds, so that the slanting sunset rays of the sun could spear through in luminous beams. And, right on time, at seven-oh-seven, the lights of the city started to show through the gathering dusk. You look away from the skyline for a minute, and when you clap eyes on it again, you can notice the change in colours; and the time of day gives way to the time of light.

So, spent a good hour gazing at this familiar sight being transfigured by the shifting light, taking shots with my little camera every now and then. It filled me with wonder, just like it used to, two years ago, when I was writing elsewhere. After all this time, the city still casts such a spell on me. Watching it go through its transitions - so splendidly and yet so unselfconsciously, its beauty merely an incidental byproduct of the many intersecting and hidden purposes of the people who inhabit it and enliven it - watching all this, I find myself once again filled with a sense of deep wonder and contentment. I feel lucky to have been in the right place and at the right time to witness something like this. I feel that where I was and where I needed to be coincided this evening, in an instant of rare clarity of purpose. I feel (and I know this sounds presumptious, but still...) that I and the city were on the same wavelength, carrying out a conversation; or at least, that I could just understand the meaning in what I saw this evening.

And, as far as the long goodbye goes, I feel that tonight's view was the city's own farewell to me; a parting gift, if you will.

Is this a bit too fanciful an interpretation?

*

Speaking of parting...had lunch with YS at Newton Circus on Thursday. Newton Circus, the first venue of the large-scale class reunions from secondary school, before it was reconstructed and became tourist-pricey, was largely closed, it being lunchtime and the tourists still being cooped up in the city. Nonetheless, got my hands on a plate of rather good duck noodles, and another cup of sugar cane juice, thereby fulfilling another pre-departure food craving.

And over lunch, we talked about the States (since she's there this year on exchange, and thus has been one of my primary sources of what life after departure is like), and I slowly came to terms with the fact that this is the last time I'll see her before going off. For the second time in the week, the departure date, so much anticipated and longed for, has loomed as a sort of experiential terminus, a clean break with a present that is already well on its way to becoming part of the past. It still boggles my mind that this year, I am on the other side of the equation, since my earlier departure date puts me before the glass gates at the airport before anyone else I know. It feels strange to have to go around saying proper goodbyes to everyone, to consider whether every meeting may be the last, and to properly tie things up in a setting that is not the airport departure level. I have always regarded people as present up till the moment they step through the departure gates, and to bid farewell over a meal seems premature, somehow.

And it doesn't really matter that, after all, my departure this time round will only be as permanent as their departures in previous years; that is to say, sooner or later, we will meet again, either Stateside or back in Singapore. Although I know others will be going to the States to study as well, the departure date still seems like a blank wall to me, a cutoff point. I think it is because I don't know what the future will hold for me - I can't even begin to guess. As such, whereas previous years have been dominated by the worry that I would be welcoming back people who have changed so much as to become effectively strangers again, this time round, I find myself ironically worrying that I may change so much that I would also find all these old acquaintances as quaint as strangers.

Anyway, all this is rather new to me, and I do find that these de facto sendoffs in everyday environments bother me, on the one hand, because they signify the acknowledgement of and submission to the unknown that is looming ahead of me, and, on the other hand, because they are somewhat embarrassing. After all, the departure isn't really so momentous as I make it out to be in these writings; it can't be. So, on the one hand, I appreciate deeply everyone's well-wishes, and on the other hand, I have no idea how to rightly accept them, or even if I should accept them in this way.

*

And tonight, coming out of a dinner with my uncle's family, there is an all-pervasive feeling of self-consciousness. Running through my usual repertoire of pre-departure topics, laughing about childhood memories, and inviting them to visit in the winter, I couldn't help feeling that, on a certain level, I am conning them into thinking that this departure is more significant than it really is. And, in a certain sense, this sort of feting is a form of distancing as much as it is a form of lauding, in that this may be seen as a social obligation that has to be fulfilled before the social ties can be neatly cauterised.

And tomorrow, the rest of the extended family is gathering, in effect for a large-scale going-away party. I don't know what to make of it, really. I don't think all this is called for, or that I rightly deserve this. It makes me feel bad to compel them to go out of their way like this, and it makes me feel as if I owe it to them to live up to the hype. But I guess all this is really irrational worrying, fundamentally. If anything can survive the trauma of departure, then it would be familial ties. I can't even seriously consider the possibility of becoming estranged from my family, so all this griping is really a form of self-satisfaction of my tendency to think that carefree moments are a prelude to catstophes caused by carelessness.

I wonder, though, how the others are dealing with this - how the others have dealt with this in the past. Was it as cringe-worthy for them, so that when the time to depart came, they ran the gauntlet of friends and family lining the way to the glass gates with suppressed haste, and crossed the immigration line with a sense of nostalgia mixed with a not insignificant amount of relief? Perhaps the key to defusing that discomfort is to remember what it is like to be on the other side of the equation: the longing to accompany the one who is leaving, the wholesome and unresentful envy, the feeling of obligation to make it a special occasion, and the sincere feeling that the social obligation should be transmuted into something memorable through voluntary and additional effort, because the friendship with the one who is leaving warrants it. A good departure is a good catharsis for both sides; it is important to remember this.

*

But for some other people, there is still time to meet again in the remaining seven days before departure. Got C to agree to a food foray into Geylang on Wednesday evening. I was looking for one last taste of a childhood classic, Yong He Tau Huay, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was also a childhood staple for C too. So we set out into the lorongs and five-foot-ways of the notorious food street, discovering to our dismay that the stall had moved, and rediscovering it to our relief further up the road, in an expanded premises.

The beancurd sold at Yong He is simply comfort food, warm and silky, and going well with their homemade you tiao, the beancurd combining with the oily fried dough in a sort of alchemy that summons memories and a deep satisfaction founded on an awareness of returning to a comfortable place. Also introduced her to the other fare at the stall: besides their renowned beancurd, they also sell snacks that I'm told are Taiwanese in origin, though I've never come across them in Taiwan, things like pork floss biscuits and you tiao wrapped in glutinous rice.

And this being the first time that I was eating there without my family, the feeling of returning to childhood was combined with a feeling of growing up, in that we could now seek out these memories ourselves, independent from our families. Spent a long time there talking about plans for the coming year, and Vietnam, and the possibility of meeting, somehow, Stateside. These are conversations that I will miss - conversations that are distinguished by their ease and frankness, that develop organically, founded upon a solid and mutual awareness of where we stand.

Thankfully, though, it is perhaps not yet time to say this summer's goodbye to C, and to other people who I still look forward to meeting in the coming week. This, I think, is what I would like next week to shape up as: meal after fantastic meal, conversation after memorable conversation. The long goodbye to the city is well under way; for my people, though, the goodbyes cannot be as luxurious; but they must be done properly all the same. And I think this is the right way to go about doing it.