imaginary gardens

If poetry is imaginary gardens with real toads in them, well, right now i am tired of imaginary gardens, and, also, i don't know of anyone who would be insane enough to want to have real toads in their lives. That is not to deny the inevitability of these toad-like presences. i just don't think anybody would actually go out of their way to invite them into their lives.

The Straits Times ran a special report today on the greening of Singapore. i found this of particular interest, not least because i've always wondered about the people behind our garden city, and also because i like gardens. i remember the very real pleasure i felt when i first read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, with its descriptions of the wild beauty that lay hidden behind the high brick walls of that forbidding country manor. And, of course, that essay i wrote way back in secondary school, the one i laboured over and lost when i left my file on a bus, where i described an ideal secret garden of my own, one that i wished i had, that would offer me a little piece of peace and beauty that was all my own and nobody else's.

So now once again i find myself craving a garden - a real one, with real flowers, real trees, and yes, inevitably, real mud, real toads. This is no time for vague abstractions - i want something as real as the good earth under the feet, something solid and grounded in the real and everyday.

i want i want i want.
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urban oasis

If you ever find yourself looking for a safe haven amidst the cacophony of the Orchard Road area on a Saturday afternoon, try checking out Kuriya, a Japanese restaurant in Shaw House. Its restful ambience, excellent cuisine, and attentive but discreet service make this place a gem of a find for lovers of Jap food seeking a quiet refuge from the horrors of conveyor-belt sushi chains.

I recommend, in particular, the chawanmushi, easily the best chawanmushi i've eaten in Singapore. The egg custard is unbelievably smooth, and it comes with generous helpings of sliced mushroom, chicken chunks, and even a succulent prawn, and all of this is garnished with parsley that miraculously doesn't offend the palate.

Also, any restaurant that can actually make towgay taste good has my definite vote of confidence.
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oldies and goodies

Old songs can sound so innocuous. So there i was, thinking that 'Father and Son' (by Cat Stevens, though this is something i've only just found out) was about a father giving some good advice to his son. The tune sounds happy enough.

And then when i finally look up the lyrics after more than 10 years of liking the song, i find that it's far more nuanced than i ever gave it credit for. It's a song about the conflict between a son who wants to go away and a father who wants the son to stay. About the young wanting wings and the old wanting... well, wanting to keep the young for themselves, or thinking, in all honesty, that they know best how the young should use their wings. About the impatience of youth and the waiting that comes with age.

The other thing i found out is that in the original version (it appears that i may have been listening to a Boyzone cover - the horror! the horror!), Cat Stevens sings the part of the father with a tone of craggy world-weariness, and the part of the son with all the passionate fervour of youth, powerfully soaring and longing to be free. What takes this contrast from merely clever to freakin' brilliant, though, is the counterpointing and juxtaposition of the two voices in the last two verses of the song, where the dialogue becomes a simultaneous debate between age and youth. Listen out also for the barely-concealed bitterness (the father's) and anger (the son's) at key points in the song: "For you will still be here tomorrow / But your dreams may not" becomes not so much a piece of wise advice as a slightly regretful reflection on the ephemeral nature of our youthful aspirations; and who would not be familiar with the explosion of frustration when the son sings, "From the moment I could talk / I was ordered to listen"?

Anyway, i now like the song even more than before. Which just goes to show that one should always look up the lyrics of songs that one likes, just in case. And that originals are almost always better. (Except, perhaps, in the case of Joni Mitchell's beautifully mellow cover of her own 'Both Sides Now', which i feel is decidedly better than her psyched-up original). And also: All Hail Google! Search Engine of Search Engines!

[Edit (15 Jan 06):
Hmm. Methinks this song might even have wider relevance to Singapore in general. Think our paternalistic government, the 'stayers vs quitters' debate, even the attempts to get our young people to marry and start families earlier... See the resemblance?]


Father and Son

Father:
It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.
I was once like you are now,
and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow,
but your dreams may not.

Son:
How can I try to explain,
when I do he turns away again.
It's always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk
I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way
and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

Father:
It's not time to make a change, (Son: Away, away)
Just sit down, take it slowly. (away.)
You're still young, that's your fault, (I know)
There's so much you have to go through. (I have to)
Find a girl, settle down, (make this decision)
if you want you can marry. (alone.)
Look at me, (No.) I am old,
but I'm happy.

Son:
All the times that I cried, (Father: Stay, stay,)
keeping all the things I knew inside, (stay.)
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it. (Why must you go)
If they were right, I'd agree, (and make this decision)
but it's them they know, not me. (alone?)
Now there's a way
and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.


(Cat Stevens)
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what a girl wants

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What i would really like, right now, is to be back in my kitchen in London, and to have a whole week to do nothing but experiment with recipes for stews, soups, curries, pastas, cakes, pastries, pies, desserts, ice-creams, you name it. And i want to be doing all this with two or three good friends who enjoy cooking too, and at the end of this week of wild orgiastic culinary experimentation i would like to invite all my good friends who love good food and fun conversation to a dinner party that will be the mother of all dinner parties, and we will eat and talk the night away, and we will talk of real things, not abstract intellectual stuff, and we will swap recipes and sing silly songs to the accompaniment of some really good guitar, and at the end of all that we will be happy and tired and we will wash up and clear the tables and go back to our normal lives knowing that This is not all there is, and that the next dinner party is just round the corner, just a hop, skip and a jump away.

But, more than anything, i want to cook. In my own kitchen. To be doing something real with my hands, instead of playing with ideas.

that is the question

Found in The Sunday Times, (1 Jan 2006).

Obviously, one of the most pressing questions of our generation.


Pigeons: Smart or plain dumb?

.....I refer to Dr Ng Chung Wai's letter, "Why run over an innocent pigeon" (ST, Dec 20), where he got all hot and flustered over a dead pigeon.
.....Although I was not that driver who commited the "appalling act of cruently", I reckon that it may not always be the driver's fault.
.....As a driver encountering different bird species feeding on the road, including pigeons, mynahs and crows, I have found pigeons to be the dumbest of the lot.
.....Why? Mynahs and crows will fly off and clear the path before my car reaches them. Try this experiment: The faster you drive towards them, the speedier they flee. But not birdbrained pigeons, which are either slow to react or plain greedy. And for the life of them, they cannot equate a passing car with danger.
.....Apparently in some quarters, pigeons are thought to be smart enough to solve problems. They are known to be able to peck keys in a certain pattern, distinguish between a symmetrical and non-symmetrical object, and even pick out a series with an oddball in it.
.....More impressively, a pigeon distinguished a Picasso from a Monet painting in experiments at Cardiff University in Britain.
.....Here's the one that eludes me: Pigeons are found to be phenomenally good at spotting a human face in a picture. However, nobody can explain why they are not smart enough to recognise a car driving dangerously close to them.

Amos Wu Pom Hin
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what the new year really means

With thanks to W, who took this photo of a sign outside a tapas restaurant in London, and who kindly agreed to let me put it up on this blog.
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a new year

A New Year - fresh and washed by rain, glistening with promise either false or true. Another 365 days for us to make or break as we choose.

And, to compensate for the general New Year cheesiness, here's something a friend wrote in an email:

"I hope 2006 is decent. Actually what the hell, let 2006 be what it wants to be."

Also, a poem. i never thought that Sylvia Plath would ever make it to these pages, but, here it is: written for her child just over a year before her suicide:


New Year on Dartmoor

This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you
Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There's no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

(Sylvia Plath)
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