Furniture

I like looking at nice furniture and buying them if I can afford it. They don't have to be functional, sturdy or even reliable. Pretty and elegant is good enough. And skinny legs are the best.

Phone Seat via Design Sponge

Japanese Tea Ceremony

Foreground: Guests invited to a Sado ceremony.

Background: Host preparing the tea.

With the objective of leveraging its soft power to extend influence, Japan has pushed forth a number of initiatives in its overseas embassies, one of which is the Japan Creative Centre set up at the Japan Embassy in Singapore. To prepare for its official launch sometime next year, the JCC has lined up a series of events, mostly cultural and social in nature, to celebrate and bring attention to the official opening. The Fuku No Ne Ensemble's performance held at Victoria Concert Hall a couple of months ago was the first event I attended. This time, we also took part in a mini-presentation of Japanese Sado which featured a live demonstration. Other upcoming events include Natsu-Matsuri (Summer Festival), Rakugo (humorous story-telling), Noh (YES!), Shamisen concert (YES YES!) etc. What would have rounded up this series of exciting events/performances nicely would be Kabuki (similar to Chinese operatic performance). I have written to JCC to express this wish but so far there are no plans for it. Nevertheless, whatever that have been lined up are already good enough, especially if we note that admission is free. What impresses me most is that the Japanese never compromises on quality and effort just because it is a free event. For them, the mantra is either we do it well or we don't do it at all.

The Woman in the Dunes

Another disquieting, strangely terrifying Japanese novel: Abe Kobo's 砂の女 (Suna no Onna). Don't know why but Japanese contemporary novels always have this amazing ability to freak the hell out of me. The story is simple enough: a man journeys to a remote seaside village to search for insects for his collection. He is taken prisoner in a pit home of a widow by the desperate villagers who needs him to help keep digging to stop themselves from being buried by the encroaching sand dunes. The story chronicles his frustration and his futile, frenzied efforts to escape. Gradually he succumbs and loses his will to fight against the villagers. When the chance comes for him to escape, he chooses to stay on. After 7 years, the courts declares him legally dead. Abe's writing is so vivid that I constantly have this gritty taste in my mouth as I read on. Yucks. The thought of losing my freedom terrifies me to no end, which is probably why the read created so much turbulence inside me.

Erast Fandorin

Read the first of the Erast Fandorin series of historical detective novels: The Winter Queen (or Azazel in Russian). I like it given that it has a mix of spy intrigue, crime and historical backdrop which lends it a bit of depth but at the same time is very engaging and easy to read. The protagonist Erast Fandorin is a police officer with the Criminal Investigation Department of the Moscow police force. What interests me is that the author Boris Akunin conceived the series to demonstrate each of the genres of detective fiction, of which he identified 16 of them and hence the series is supposed to run through 16 books. The first few books have been translated into English.

Semakau

So it's been a while since I posted anything. We went to Pulau Semakau over the weekend for a half-day walk around the intertidal zone which was brimming with life. It first took an hour boat ride from Marina South jetty to reach the landfill dump Pulau Semakau, off the west coast and next to Bukom, that massive Shell refining juggernaut. Semakau is an island housing 11 "cells" which are deep dumping holes to store incinerated rubbish transported twice daily from the main island. Each cell apparently takes 3-4 years to fill and 4 have been filled by now. So the remaining cells should last us till 2040. Beyond that, no one knows where our rubbish is going. Anyway, the main attraction of Semakau is its intertidal zone which has been left unspoilt (for now) and is open to public visits organised by the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research under NUS. The research museum, funded by HSBC, is undertaking "Project Semakau", a 3-year long biodiversity study which will be submitted to the authorities once completed to lobby for the conservation of this island. We went on a morning walk which started at 5.30am and here's what we saw.

Wading through the waters with a keen eye to spot something. Bukom with the Shell refineries in the background. First time I had such a close-up view of Bukom and I was really excited by the heavy industrial muscular smoking mass of steel. I really like this industrial stuff.

My favorite find of the day: Sea Cucumber. And apparently this is the kind the Chinese eat. But it was too cute for me to think about it as food then. It was wet, soft, spongy and slightly rough to touch.

Knobbly Sea Star. According to the guide, sea-stars have no brains. They just eat and poop. It was stiff like a boomerrang.

Its underside is full of mini suction-cups (hidden) which transport food along the lines into the centre where the mouth is.

An unidentified Sea-Biscuit look-alike. Hard and Scratchy. Beautiful "prints" on it. Reminds me of a big cookie with a little something inside when you bite into it.

Soft spongy coral. Apparently you can't just touch any coral because some of them have stings.

Forgot the name of that clam. The brown stuff next to it are Sea Sponges.

Carpet Sea Anemone. They come in many different colors. No touch - they sting.

Green Sea Anemone. Looks like moss.

The intertidal zone and a lone mangrove tree on stilts. The roots will be covered once the tide comes in.

Dark clouds started to gather mid-way into the walk. Completely changed the feel of the landscape.

Quote from Sunday's Lianhe Zaobao article that captured how I felt towards the trip:

生命原本就是来自自然也属于自然，人与自然接近时，会撩起一股在生命本质里的亲切感，因为阳光的无私，是美好的感觉；水影的悠然，是平静的暗示；绿色的蓬勃，是健康的提醒；花朵的灿烂，是生命的鼓励。

Painting

Watched “I am Sam” on DVD when I was in Bangkok a couple of days ago for a weekend trip with some friends. It’s an old movie starring Sean Penn about a mentally retarded man fighting for custody of his 7-year old daughter played by Dakota Fanning. In case you wonder why I was watching DVD on a holiday trip, I was bloody ill for the entire trip and spent the first day doing nothing but lounge in the nice Ascott apartment.

Anyway, the movie was good as expected since it won some Oscar, probably for Sean Penn but what I remember from the movie was a scene of Dakota painting at her foster parent’s home. Looking at her paint, I feel an urge to go back and pick up my brushes again. She was just painting like in a totally random way or what the art world would call “abstract”. No drawings, patterns, anything to guide her. She was really “just dip brush in paint and put brush on paper” and then repeating it all over again.

I was never taught to paint like that. I spent many years as a kid learning painting/drawing under a professional art teacher (whom I realized later when I was an adult that he is actually the current Vice-Chairman of the Singapore Chinese Painting Association) who signed me up for all sorts of local art competitions. He always said that I was an impatient kid (he could tell when I was that young – I started learning from him when I was seven) and painting would make me less so. I wonder if it helped. But what I clearly remember were his instructions on how to paint. Painting to me is always deliberate, structured, orderly and purposeful. It’s about discipline. It’s also demanding. Demanding because I always need to be fully concentrated or I might make a “mistake”. So sometimes, painting can be stressful, although it’s still mostly enjoyment to me.

I want to try doing it again but this time without plan or purpose. At the end of it, I want to see what I would get and how I would feel. And I’ll blog about it. :)