Food from my bowl

Food from my bowl to yours. Quietly, quickly, like I’m not hungry. This is what it means to love where I am from. I give you the food from my bowl.

Chinese New Year 2011, welcome to the year of the rabbit…

Roots

My father. All he did was work. Work and spend time with us. I didn’t have him around for half of my childhood, lost to the office in another country, the office that was a home, where he worked, slept, ate. Those long weeks where I cried myself to sleep every time I got scared that he wasn’t coming back. He built for me here. Everything I have.

A shophouse near Clarke Quay | Singapore

Body from the reservoir

He told me that he had to pull a body from the reservoir the other day. Bloated, afloat, stagnant water and the tropical green, almost visceral. A concerted effort to remain stoic. It’s all part of the service apparently. Ruff, Shaf and Nat – halfway through their mandatory term in the army.

National Service, Singapore.

Going places

It’s become a different beast for me, being on the move, going places. It used to be this embarkation to some mysterious unknown, or thoughtful homecoming, one of the two. Now the idea of home is a strange creature. At once less familiar and more amorphous. Old faces that grew older when I wasn’t looking. Grey hairs, smile lines, deeper from events that I wasn’t around to witness. Friends weaving through the cyclical landmine of love and heartbreak, I stop just in time to see the blur of the revolving door of girlfriends and boyfriends, never really around long enough for me to really get to know them, or them me. Maybe I’ll make it to the wedding, maybe not. Maybe I’m getting tired of being on the move so much, living the half life. Getting to know you, part time.

If it’s too loud, you’re too old

Saturday night | Singapore, August 2010

He learns love

Sembawang, Singapore – Back to The Heartland

I go back to Singapore and pay a visit. Ah Ching’s baby cousin grows a year older. He discovers words like “kiss” and “outside”. Ah Ching still lays immobile and ridden to the floor.

 

 

 

 

Big little India

Little India, Singapore – the Sunday eve of Deepavali

 

The underclass of Indian labour in Singapore. Unappreciated and unseen. Taking over a bright little corner of the sterile city state and filling it to the brim with big colour, sounds, sights and smells. Reclaiming the street one day a week.

 

 

 

 

 

An age

 

Clarke Quay, Singapore – an old shop house that has served as the living and office quarters for a family business spanning four generations.

 

See him for what he really is. A reluctantly aging man whose dwindling purpose in life is to see the end of it as best as he can. A man who looks upon the face of his grown children, searches for things he might still teach them, and perhaps some small way to keep them by his side.

 

 

 

 

The Heartland

(work in progress)

Sembawang, Singapore – away from the bright lights of Orchard Road and within the heartland.

 

Ah Ching is 15 years old. She is bedridden with cerebral palsy and unable to feed, bathe, or move on her own. Ah Ching’s mother, Jackie, used to work nights at a factory and is now forced to stay at home to look after her daughter full-time, earning extra income through babysitting her 4 month old nephew and cleaning the apartment next door. Tommy works irregular hours as a security guard. 

Neither Tommy nor Jackie have gone beyond secondary education, a factor that pushes them both to the margins of Singapore’s meritocracy.  

Government subsidies in housing and education ensure an affordable home and also equal opportunity schooling for Vincent, Jackie and Tommy’s 14 year old son. 

Cultural prejudice over mental and physical disability keeps Ah Ching within the confines of her home and will most likely do so for the rest of her life.