孔子说：父母在，不远游

陳木南, 70, Plaza Singapura Starbucks Cafe

When I saw 陳木南, I thought he was a Malay gentleman. Then he started greeting me in Mandarin which somewhat caught me by surprise. I asked him if he comes here often and he says not everyday. He has a friend who was fined S$50 for peddling tissue papers in the area, and so he has to be extra cautious about his location. “Bless you bless you,” he repeats himself in Mandarin more than five times during our brief encounter. I was late for a movie and  I told him I will return with his photograph and I hope to see him at the same place again. He shook my hand and said “Bless you bless you, I wish you good luck.”

Some pictures from the birthday dinner we had for Stanley who turned 26 on 20 April this year

The second casino (our government calls it an integrated resort) in Singapore is finally open. I was on assignment for the Associated Press to cover its soft launch on Tuesday. This iconic building – its hotel wing – is something that Singaporeans cannot miss. Darren Soh, a friend of mine and a photographer who professes to be most interested in buildings and spaces, has been obsessed with documenting the place since construction began some three years back. It is amazing how fast the process took. The structure jumps in scale every time I drive by along the expressway running just beside the site. My friend’s uncle is currently documenting it for Nat Geo’s “Megastructure” series and I think it is quite worthy of being included in that league. I am looking forward to the sky garden which will open in June this year.

The Quiet World

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

By Jeffrey McDaniel

Katherine McCoy said: “”Graphic design can never rise above its content.” Stefan Segmeister said: ” If I have nothing to say, then the best design won’t help me.” At the Time magazine, Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz asked me point blank what is the difference between sending someone like me to Nepal to document an uprising versus another photographer who can do the same work, assuming that our contacts, knowledge of the ground and photography skills are the same. “It is your point-of-view. We want your point-of-view!” he revealed after I struggled to give a clear answer. Kay Chin, a Singaporean photographer who was an early influence in my photography, always asked me: “What upsets you?”

I think all these messages are finally getting into me. I wonder if I have been too wishy-washy with my conscience. I have a weakness in committing to a point-of-view, always sitting on the fence when debates occur because I try too much to see things from both sides. Has that made my photography wishy-washy as well? I think the only way to put that to test if to find something I really feel about and work on it. And see if this work is profoundly different from what I have been producing so far.

The eight rules to writing short stories, by Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

But great writers tend to break all these rules, maybe except one.

Thanks Pranaya for highlighting this. Some quotes by Kurt Vonnegut  here.