20 posts tagged “writing”

A summary of the reasons why writing Singaporean literature is so difficult, if not impossible, according to Joon and Yasmine, or why all the existing novels written by Singaporeans that we have read are so unsatisfactory.

1. The language. Singaporeans generally speak, well, Singlish, and even if we don't, we often mix languages even within the same sentence. As Joon pointed out, sometimes when we want to really express ourselves truly and honestly, we automatically switch to Malay even though we speak English 99% of the time. How do you translate "ghetto step kental", "YA ALLAH (must be all caps)", "amik kau ubat" and the hilarity of the word "snek"? How do you explain why the word "korek" is so dirty-sounding, when the direct English translation, "dig", is not? Or "sumbat", which means "stuffed"? You either write in English and sound really fake or write the way people really speak and alienate 90% of potential readers. Unless you can find a publisher daring enough to print a Singlish version of Trainspotting or A Clockwork Orange. Otherwise, film is a better way to portray the country.

2. The urge to explain everything about Singapore and living here. A lot of the Singaporean novels/short story collections out there cram all the cultural references they can into one sentence and history lessons into one paragraph. We picked up a book just now that had a story about a fashion student who was dyeing batik until "his fingers turned red, like a Malay bride's". So unnecessary. There are descriptions of HDB flats in all of these books. There is always, always, an old Chinese person feeling disconnected from their offspring, who were English-educated and don't understand the traditional ways. If someone takes the MRT, there will be a description of the cleanness and the crisp announcer's voice. At some point we have to stop telling and start showing.

3. A lot of these books have also been written by people who don't seem to know all that much about Singaporean life across all classes and ethnic groups, and hence have to prove their knowledge by dropping as many cultural references as they can. (We have insider knowledge that the author who wrote about chinese boys playing "sepak tawak" at community centres once asked a colleague, "Where is Yishun?") The authorial voice is always of someone from outside Singapore looking in, not of a local writing while living in Singapore itself.

4. Good grammar does not equate to good writing lah ok.

Did I leave anything out, Joon?

The next time I whine about how I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, tell me to shut up and write. As with most everything in my life, answers to big existential mysteries are to be found from movies, TV and friends with logic.

Run away from home, spend more time with grandma, write. Actually, spend more time with grandma first, then run away from home.

I need to stop working in an office. No matter what someone promises you, if they're making that promise in an office, you can bet that it won't come true.

Case in point: I turned down the Reu.ters offer partly because I didn't want to spend my days doing hourly stock market reports. And when I told my boss that, he said yes, that sounds terrible and isn't it better if you stay here where the work you do is more varied and fun and exciting. Well guess what the fuck I've been doing for the past month. Just guess.

Makes it so depressing to read a book like The New Kings of Non-Fiction, filled with brilliant journalism that really tells stories, enlightens you about things you'd never even thought about, that is filled with the writer's own excitement and interest in the subject.

Me? I'm making up reasons every hour for why the stock market has gone up or down, as if I know! But if there's one thing I've learnt this past month monitoring brokerage reports, it's that nobody knows why the stock market behaves as it does. Financial analysts are wrong ALL THE TIME. So, you know, if you've ever thought about being an investment banker or a stockbroker, I'm telling you now -- all you need is maybe three to six months of tutoring (which I can give you for a small cut of your first future commission), and you're set for life.

I'll write a book. It has to be about my grandmother, or about war, or about the relationships among women, or how Malay girls still think of marriage as the key to freedom. It will have a village, or a post office. And lots and lots of trees. It must have a woman who gives birth to a crocodile. And another woman who is blind from crying too much. It will be magically surrealistic. Or maybe just historically fictional. It will have a fucking cool vending machine. And a man who pisses on a train. And an old woman who talks about it too loudly at a funeral.

My research will involve: historical accounts of Singaporeans living through World War II, black and white Malay films, Pak Pandir stories, talking a lot to my grandmother, and crying a lot about everything. Everything.

But I'm scared the book will turn out crappy. Or worse, liked by people who liked The Joy Luc.k C.lub and Tues.days with Morr.ie.

(All ideas above copyrighted. Please don't steal them, they're all I have.)

Hey if you remember any Pak Pandir stories or know of a place I can find them, please email me. If you don't have my email address add me on Facebook. If you don't know my full name to add me on Facebook, leave me a message here. If you don't have a Vox account and don't want to sign up and therefore can't leave a message, I honestly don't know what to say.

Except maybe please. I really can't remember any Pak Pandir stories from my childhood.

Blame it on Facebook. I've spent so much time there that I've neglected to update this blog, or my book reviews on GoodReads. I keep thinking I should write a daily journal but I never find the time. Also I realise I really don't like the iMac keyboard, doesn't make for smooth typing.

Speaking of which, I have to buy me a new computer. My Oskar's screen is spoilt. There's a thick white band running vertically down the screen, just a bit to the right. It makes watching videos really irritating, it's always covering one actor's face. A guy at the Mac store told me it would cost between 600 and 1000 dollars to repair it, so I might as well buy a new one.

I want to buy a laptop this time. I actually considered getting a PC because of the price but... once you go Mac you can't go back. I think I'll buy a secondhand Powerbook. I'll name it Konstantin, after the writer in Chekhov's The Seagull who shoots himself after a life of misery. Something light, easy to pack into a bag and make a quick getaway with.

Escape is all I think about these days. I watched Waitress today and it was perfect timing. You know how you fall in love with some songs only because you just happened to be experiencing something similar to what the singer's singing about? Or that special moment while reading when the narrator describes a feeling that you had felt before but never had the cleverness to put it into words? It was like that today. The film in itself is lovely. It's funny, well-written and thought-provoking, but it also struck a special chord with me: Like Keri Russell's character, I'm making plans to run away. Unlike her, however, I haven't decided to leave for sure, on a certain date or whatever. I'm more making preparations for the inevitable break that will come. I hope it won't come, but I have a strong feeling it will.

In other news, I've bought plane tickets to Ho Chi Minh City but I haven't booked a return flight. This trip could mark  either of two things:

a) another great travelogue (not to be an asshole about it, but you guys did seem to enjoy reading my entries on Cambodia), or

b) me being kicked out of the house before I'd fully prepared for it.

Watch this space.

In the meantime, let me know if you'd be willing to lend me space in your room to store some of my books temporarily. (I have about 200. I can't carry them all into the dark, stormy night with me and I certainly won't leave them behind.)

Start time: 10:27 p.m.

Monty the Mouse woke up one morning and realised he'd turned into a robot, quite all of a suddenly.

"Well this is... Kafkaesque," he squeaked, for he was a rather well-read mouse.

Except it wasn't so much a squeak anymore as a tinny, electronic rasp that came out from his new metal voice box.

Finding that his joints still mostly functioned, he hopped out of bed to look at himself in the mirror. He saw: a small boxy head on top of a big boxy body and rectangular arms and legs poking out of the boxy body where arms and legs usually poke out from.

So surprised was he to realise that he was standing on only two legs that he squealed and fell on his back.

Except it wasn't so much a squeal as a thunderous metallic squawk. It was so loud it had awoken his brother Mitch in the next room.

Mitch came shuffling in, yawning and rubbing his eyes while saying in a complaining voice, "What the fuck, dude?"

"Ummm could you help me up please?" Monty said. Had his voice not been so... robotic, his brother would have been able to hear his frustration and desperation. For of course, Monty could not roll over anymore. Not on this boxy body. And he had not learnt how to use his hands and elbows to push himself up into a sitting position. He had no concept of sitting up.

Mitch's eyes widened and he exclaimed, "What the fuck, dude?!"

"Help! Me! UP!" Monty yelled.

Mitch was too surprised to do anything but obey the talking machine man in front of him. He nudged Monty's body over with his nose. Robot Monty was heavy. Monty pushed and pushed and sweat broke out all over his always-smelly body. Once or twice he managed to get Monty's boxy back about 45 degrees up from the floor but always he lacked the strength for that final push.

Throughout his exertions Monty the Robot cheered him on, "Come on! Come on! Just a little more!"

And fiinally, finally, Mitch managed to roll Monty over.

Onto his robot stomach.

"Err.. now what, dude?"

Monty realised the problem. And he knew what it meant.

He sighed and said, "I guess now I wait to die by the melody of a mournful violin."

"Right," said Mitch, "Maybe I should call mum and dad."

Monty's parents were naturally shocked at their son's transformation. They could scarcely believe that it really was their son. They only decided to believe him when he said he was Monty because he now had scary looking pointy hands made of metal that looked deadly.

Upon his request, they all three together turned him back over onto his back. It was more comfortable that way, he said.

"What are we to do?!" Monty's mum squealed, a proper squeal.

"Well," Monty's dad said as he cleared his throat nervously, "I don't know."

Monty, despite being rather well-read, was useless. All he did was quote sad, lamenting passages from Keats and Woolf in his new robotic voice.

Eventually the family tired of staring at Monty helplessly, and tired of listening to one more electronic delivery from the great works of Thomas Hardy. They left the room and scavenged for food.

Of course the news of Monty's transformation spread far and wide into the mouse community. Many came to visit and gawp at the spectacle that was Robot Monty. And because nobody else knew enough to tell him to sit up, Monty stayed there all his life. Lying on his back, quoting Shakespeare for the visitors by day and having someone read to him at night.

Monty eventually died at age 93, giving way to rust and disrepair. There was no mournful violin playing but he died a happy mouse.

End time: 11:05 p.m.

The signs are not good, they don't speak of an auspicious beginning to a blissful life. I made my way home stifling sobs among strangers because I've been asked to get married. It wasn't a proposal, and they were not tears of happiness. They were tears of the opposite of happiness.

At once and the same time I have these thoughts: How can anyone yearn all their lives for an occasion such as this?, and What do I do to join the society of the yearners?

If I did I could start a new blog, all pink and purple. Call it my Wedding Wishes in Writing or something equally alliterative. It would have pictures of chocolate cupcakes with fairy dust frosting, slave-picked flowers from Jupiter, wedding furniture that sing.  

The truth is, there is no point.

The tragic confluence of circumstance and choice is such: The only people whose thoughts and tastes I would trust to help me begin a new life with magic and meaning are mere peripherals.

I am merely peripheral, just a pawn in a power play of ideologies. The only consolation I have is, so are you. But is a shared impotence augary enough of an everlasting devotion?

Well perhaps one can't ask too much from two people in a union that feels more like farewell.

Well I didn't get the $50 book voucher from the very short story contest, but I did make it to the "best of" shortlist!

Second try, voucher. Then: world domination.

Livejournal ate my suicide note. Goodbye.

(For the Culturepush contest)

Let's say you were a girl who had a boyfriend who insisted on riding a motorbike. You beg him not to because it's so dangerous. He shrugs off the risks, saying he'll be safe. Of course you aren't convinced, because you've heard all the stories. So he says, look, if I ever get into an accident you can break up with me, I won't hold it against you -- in fact, it will be your right. And you realise there's no dissuading him from the killer two-wheeled machine, and so you say, ok, whatever.

Every once in a while you ask him to stop riding, and he says no.

And then he actually gets into an accident, a very bad one. The doctors say he's going to be paralysed from the neck down. You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you. You know no matter how much you love this guy you do not, realistically, do not, want to spend your life cleaning his shit and bedsores. This man who refused to listen to you when you were rattling off statistics, telling him not to ride in the rain, nagging him when he rode too fast, suggesting he buy a better helmet.

You're sad, of course you're devastated. You also feel betrayed. You blame him for it, even though you know technically it's not his fault (it's the slippery road, the swerving truck, the impaired visibility). But you know, you can't help feeling like he never cared about what you thought, your life, when he chose the bike over your fears.

And so you visit him in hospital and say, I'm sorry, it's over. You walk away feeling guilty as hell, but you know there was no way the relationship could have survived anyway. Better not to give him false hopes right?

But why waste time thinking about this? You have bigger problems now. From now on, everyone thinks you're a cold, heartless bitch.

So I've been trying to keep a daily journal (Lia.nyi, I typed it "tryo" twice before I got it right) because I realised that I like reading about the minutae of my own past.

Like when things were rough with Ben, I looked back on some old journal entries and it helped me remember things that had happened before, and that helped me see some patterns in his behaviour, like how he tended to take out his anger on me, just general anger at his crappy life.

But also reading old entries helps me relive happy times. Old emails too, which was why it was so important to me to be with someone who never used cliches. The Russian is eloquent and brilliant even when he's sad or fucking pissed off at me. That's an important quality, to me.

Also he doesn't take out his stress, frustrations and anger on me, which is also very good. More important than being able to write well, most people would say. I'm not sure about that though.

Because, you know, all we really have are words. You have to say things before people can like you, and then say some more things before they sleep with you, or trust you or decide to marry you. And you can never trust anyone a hundred percent, so when you choose to believe them all you're really holding on to are their words. If they're speaking out loud, instead of writing to you, then their tone of voice would matter too, in your decision over whether to believe them.

But what you'll remember much later on, are the words. Voices fade. You'll second guess your own memory of the tone of their voice if you ever change your opinion about the person.

And it's words that will keep sustaining any relationship. A relationship lasts as long as there's communication. And that means talking. Chats with people you love don't usually involve breaking the code to the meaning of life. They're just words, mostly. But that's not a bad thing. We crave words, they're good for our health.

"Tell me you love me!"
"You never say you miss me back!"
"Oi why you never write back to me one!"

are things that both of us occasionally say to the other. We know what power we have when we withhold them.

"I don't want to say."
"I love... chicken!"
"I lazy ah. I where got time."

And when that happens we're rendered speechless; we're left only with onomatopoeias.

"RAWR! Bark! Woof!"
"Meow. Moo. Meow meow meow. Cry."
"Sniff."

Words also keep us together. Sometimes when I talk to the Russian and he says, you know, the weirdass things that he says, I know I can't find anyone else like him. Or when I read the SMSes he's sent me over the past year and a half. Who else would send an SMS like this:

Hurrican love is heading towards Yasmine island! What are we to do? Oh no! Hurricane love has hit! Giant waves of passion are sweeping Yasmine's shores! Winds of longing are blowing down Yasmine's houses! It's awful! Yet Yasmine's government does nothing! The people are wailing! More reports! Pelted by unrelenting rain, the sexmonkeys are fleeing Yasmine's trees, running havoc in the streets, throwing wet poop of desire at innocent bystanders! It's chaos! News flash! Floodwaters are now groin high! (Yasmine's citizens are exactly one point six metres tall.) Amid images of destruction broadcast worldwide, Yasmine's government releases press release: there is no love hurricane. It is all American propaganda. The United Nations of sweet sweetness follows by condemning Yasmine's government and declares humanitarian disaster on scale not seen since last Barry Manilow album.

Sometimes, when I feel any niggling nugget of doubt whatsoever, I read his old emails to me, and his old blog posts and I am reassured that he is sex, drugs and rock n roll. I've tried breaking up with him many, many times but always he dissuades me just with his words. (Sometimes I think I should hold out until he actually does something, like turn up at my doorstep unannounced or buy me lunch or something, but his words always get to me first.)

So, you know, I think love is really just finding someone who wants to talk about the things you want to talk about, who sends you messages and emails that you think are brilliant, whatever your idiosyncratic definition of brilliant is, who knows how to arrange words just right so that whenever you are convinced you must banish them from your life, you change your mind.

And in this respect, in deciding whether or not a person is worth it, I think a blog serves as a resume of a sort, a portend of conversations to come. (In her tenth post in a month about her hair, has she written, "I luv my galfrens for being there for me all diz while, their so kewl!!!"? Maybe you can take a raincheck.)

And then later on, after the relationship has been established, there's always that blog to remind you why you ever fell in love with this person, if you ever need reminding.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying, Li.anyi, how about resolving to update your fucking blog more often you lazy bastard? I spent 2 hours crafting this post. I have held my pee in for half an hour! If you don't update your blog more often I will die of gall bladder for nothing! *Chicken move*