A bit about the poems I have put up:
Almost Like Kissing:
One saving grace of my junior college in Singapore was that I signed up for this Overseas Community Involvement Project. The idea was to send a lot of 17 year olds to a nearby country that was poorer than Singapoer to involve them in ‘improving’ a community there so they could rack up a lot of hours of community service and put it on their CV and get into a good university. That, and it was also a requirement to fulfil X no. of hours in order to graduate from junior college.
Anyway, I went on this trip with 30 people of varying levels of cynicism and we went to stay with an indigenous Iban community in a village called Rumah Lulut in Sarawak, a state in Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Ibans are the largest indigenous group in Sarawak, and many now live in the cities, or are moving to the cities. Amidst some confusion and language barriers, we made friends with the people, got fed a lot of catfish and rice wine, and everyone was crying on the last day. The villagers collected snails from the river nearby (Sungei Rejang) and taught us how to eat them. They really did describe as kissing.
I wrote this poem some 4 years later after living in America. It has something to do with the wtf-ness of trying to capture and distill your experiences in ‘exotic’ places. The cool thing is, we still kind of keep in touch with the one guy from the village who spoke fluent English, who went on to work on an ship in the North Sea. In summer 2010, we got an email from him that said the village had been burnt down by some ‘sick crazy’ guy. I don’t know exactlywhat the details are, but I do know Sarawak state government is steadily buying up more and more indigenous land for ‘development’ purposes.
The 29
Basically, strangest 45 minutes of your life between Tottenham Court Road and Green Lanes. There is something about public transport that equalizes people. The other day I saw a man in a business suit passing on his Anthony Robbins book to a more simply-dressed woman next to him, who seemed very excited to read it. He told her, don’t trust everything it says. Then he asked her if she’s seen Shallow Hal. But that was on the tube, not the 29.
The Grandfather Poem
The Oily Man is real. I googled Orang Minyak (oily man in Malay) and its actually kind of terrifying. Even more so than the Bunny Axe Man murderer. But my grandfather is not that scary. I wanted to write a poem about him for a long time. I wrote this some time after the Singapore elections in May 2011, in which the PAP, who have been in power since 1959, lost a massive 2 constituencies to the Worker’s Party. There is growing support for the opposition, but many people, and a lot in the older generation, are grateful for what the the PAP have done to develop Singapore and are afraid to see them lose power. In a few words, I think this is utter nonsense. But then again maybe I am brainwashed by Western ideals about the meaning of democracy., I mean, if they really believed in the country they created one might think they would have enough faith in their people to rule themselves……BUT ANYWAY….
What Isn’t
Living in Ohio was a surreal time, but I would not have had it any other way. Though I thought I knew a bit about American culture from TV and movies before I went there, and had experienced enough debauchery in Junior College to not be shocked, it was still a shock to move into dorms for the first time. And being in a tiny university with 2000 people and only 60 non-American students kind of made student life a fight for survival (assimilate or become super-tight with all the other Internationals or hate everyone and die or all three). I survived by moving to the woods later on, but thats another story. Ok maybe ‘fight for survival’ is exaggerating. But being an international student is always a weird experience: I often feel like I am forever looking over my shoulder, trying to balance being ‘them’ and ‘us’, constantly re-evaluating who you are. I have yet to perform this one because part of it could sound like whiny middle class foreign kids whose parents can afford tution fees complaining nobody understands them . But maybe the question is, do your personal Third World Problems become First World Problems just because you are IN the First World?
The Hokkien Mee Poem
To those who don’t know what Hokkien Mee is, I feel sorry for you. For those of you who do and have taken more than two pictures of Hokkien Mee in your life and put them on your facebook, alongside everything else you have eaten since the digital camera was invented, I feel even sorrier for you. Kind of a long ranty eye-roll at Singaporeans who are obsessed with food (yes I know someone called it our National Pasttime but they were being ironic! Realise this!). I enjoy Hokkien Mee as much as the next person but I just don’t believe in being passionate about noodles at the expense of everything else. I performed this in a roomful of Resorts World employees but they were not offended at the idea of Resorts World being flooded.
