Rah-Rah-Rah

 

I’ve never been much of a fan of patriotism. It’s hard for me to assemble in groups. I don’t like sing-alongs. When you’re in an audience and the host asks your half of the room to scream real loud, I’m always the one who screams just loud enough no one will get mad at me while carefully looking for the quickest exit.

 With all those things being said, it might surprise some of you I had no problem competitng in the FMS staff dragonboating competition. Call it exercise, call it comraderie, call it ridiculous, but there I was, pretending I wasn’t skinny while rowing a boat.

 For those of you unfamiliar to the sport, it involves 20 people (10 on each side) rowing their oars as hard as they can at the same time as everyone else. The less individuality you have– the more you conform to doing the same thing as those around you– the more likely you are to succeed. I scoff at myself for enjoying it so much.

I had two practises leading up to the big day. The first, at the NP pool, involved rowing with my oar upside down while people would come around and tell me to both straighten & bend my arms, and lift my arms up higher while relaxing. At least the second time I was allowed in the boat. It was then that I learned not only is dragonboating hard on the arms, it’s a nightmare on the butt! Those fiberglass seats were not designed for two hours of rowing. But if there was anything we were united in, it was the necessity of $5 IKEA seat cushions (please see the photo below for various uses of IKEA seat cushions)

 While I’m sure this all well and interesting, the question you’re surely wondering is, “Did you win or not?” The answer is most certainly….we did not. We really didn’t come in close. Actually, we may have sort of come in last. There’s something abou that which causes my independent heart to rejoice. Maybe if we had all rowed our own way at our own speed, or maybe if we had had a lovely picnic instead of rowing, we would have felt more successful.

Working Girl

So I’m feeling a bit emotionally torn at the moment. It’s a problem of a romantic nature, I suppose, but not of the Joshua-and-Halle-Barre’s breasts or Jacky and the random slutty girl at the bus stop variety. I’m afraid I’ve developed a crush on not one but two of the canteen worker staff. And like all good reality programs, I suppose it’s the role of my audience to make the final choice of who I profess my admiration to. Call it People-Watch the Movie!

Contestant number one is a charming Chinese woman who works at the Chinese Food stall at Canteen Two by the swimming pool. I imagine you all don’t eat over there so frequently, but this gives you the perfect opportunity to scout out the area and check it out. Just about every time I eat there, she always greets me with a “Why so long haven’t come?” and then questions if I went back to America. She must think I go back to America very frequently, or at least she wants me to bring her home to meet parents HEHEHE. When I pay for my food, the cashier usually makes sure to tell me how much Auntie misses me when I’m not around, which usually makes me blush.

I know what you’re thinking: with such a classy lady obviously flirting with you, why would you even need a wandering eye? I suppose I’m young and adventurous though, and can’t possibly commit myself to only one canteen Auntie!

Contestant number two is probably more familar to you, since she works at the drinks stall in Canteen 1 just down the hill from the business school. She’s a also a Chinese lady (I know! What’s the point of learning Malay if I keep coming back to the CHINESE?) However, it’s not the lady’s looks that I keep coming back for; it’s her amazing counting skills. Have you ever watched her work when there’s a big crowd? She counts out loud in this rapid fire way where she gives us the running total as she completes the final amount. Then we slide our coins on the counter and realize this girl is just as good at figuring out the right coin breakdown for returning change as she is at giving out the total. Any woman that good with money wins an automatic place in my heart.

So this week, attempt to inconspicuously guage their various different qualities and determine who would be the more perfect match for me: wily and flirtatious canteen one auntie or fiscally fantastic canteen two auntie. And if you can sneak any pictures of them with your mobile phones, send then to me and I’ll add them to this post. Then we can finally begin to appreciate women for something other than their minds.

And Now, a Brief Critique

 

I generally try to pepper my posts with wittiness and irony, perhaps in hope it will make my readers enjoy it, but equally likely because I want my readers to like me. Because of these habits/flaws, I resisit including information that my students may read as an attack.

 Yet something has occurred to me in these past few weeks, something which leads me to feel a great sense of concern about the potential of my students (including some of you readers) to transition into a partnership with the entertainment industry.

What attracts many people into studying film is that they love to watch movies. I use the term movies on purpose, because people who love to watch television don’t seem to gravitate towards production in the same way. Many no longer feel a kinship with the movie theater itself, preferring instead to buy, borrow, or steal their movies and watch them at home. I don’t see any problem with watching movies at home, nor do I feel any emotion about the film vs. video debate.

However, the fear I have is that few if any of my students are preparing for the transition into the film business, which has little to nothing to do with product consumption, and everything to do with product creation. This not only means are you able to create unique and profitable content, but you are able to communicate the ways in which content becomes profitable.

Let me give you an example: let’s look at the American film Spiderman, released in 2002. I suspect it will be quite easy to tell me the stars of this movie: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst. Those of you who have taken the leap to being film students can also tell me the director, Sam Raimi. Maybe some of you know the source material is from a Marvel comic book written by Stan Lee. These are all part of the knowledge of film consumption. By watching a movie, we learn these things. Ultimately, other than those of us with millionaire parents who own the Goodwood Park Hotel, we don’t go to school just for fun. We’re trying to advance our ability to work in the film business, and that requires us to know something more.

How do you raise the money to make a movie? We can talk about shot order in Fight Club or Pulp Fiction all we want, but unless you can understand the relationship between producution houses and distribuition houses and financiers and film markets and foreign pre-sales and British tax incentives and merchandising profitibility, the chances you’ll get to make your mark in film are limited.

It sounds a little scary, because many of you have been separating the people in your cohorts between those who truly care about entertainment from those who didn’t want to take a diploma course with a math class. Now comes the next step: the separation of those who like to watch movies from those who have the knowledge and savvy to make them. The choice is yours.

Just Who are You People?

Rather than think of my own creative post for this week, I’ve decided I’ll simply parasite off of another person’s. My victim this week is Sabreena, who started to make generalisations about the type of people Singaporeans are in her people watch assignment.

 I tried scouting out the city, trying to figure out distinctive Singaporean behaviours, evaluating if Singaporeans really are rude like we criticize them. Are Singaporeans pushy? Are Singaporeans submissive to government authority? I roll my eyes at a lot of these stereotypes, because they’re so bland in their inability to really define anything. But surely there must be some kind of national identity at work here.

Then, while I was hanging out with my Malaysian friend at the library, it hit me. I can’t tell how Singaporeans are, because I have no idea WHO the Singaporeans are. I don’t have a clue which of my students are Singaporean and which ones aren’t. It wasn’t until Sabreena made that comment about the nice bus driver and how he’s so different from the usual rude “Malaysian” bus drivers in Singapore that I realized, ‘Perhaps my bus drivers are Malaysian.’ My friend Mao Shun is Malaysian, but I’d never know that by listening to him or looking at him on the street. He mangles English just as much as any Singaporean does. He was chatting in Chinese with another guy at our library table, and he mentioned that guy is also Malaysian. How am I supposed to know this?????

We went and had dinner at the Ang Mo Kio market, and he started to ask different hawker centre employees where they were from. He was being a bastard, mainly picking on my inability to speak Chinese. Nonetheless, over half the people he asked were from outside Singapore: Malaysia and China mostly.

 Then in a teacher training session I went to on Tuesday teachers were discussing cultural variations in our students, and it turned out my group partner was Indian. Now she certainly looked Indian, but I have no reason to assume that she’s not Singaporean. I don’t think anyone else in the room knew that either. So what’s my point? How can people make statements about how Singaporeans are so kay-poh or kisasu when we don’t know if the people we’re stereotyping are even Singaporean. The only people who seem to not be allowed to be SGs are whites, like me or Mike Burchell-Davies .  . I mean, how more Ang Mo can a family name be than Burchell-Davies .  ? But guess what folks???

Mike is registered in school as a Singaporean!!! Ai yo! I can’t ever win. How can I begin the process of creating stereotypes when I can’t even figure out who meets the criteria?

Almost Famous

I spend a lot of time being white*. Generally I spend all my time being white. Sometimes it’s significant. Like when people are prejudiced and believe white people make more fun lecturers, or when they have this resentment towards foreigners who come in and work in Singapore.

Another useful tidbit about my race is it makes me marketable as an actor. I should preface this by saying that I hate acting. It gives me no pleasure to see myself on camera, and I find film shoots tedious. Give me my lonely computer to write and I’ll pick that any day over a Hollywood film shoot, or a Ngee Ann student shoot. Yet there are sometimes when the plea becomes overwhelming, and I can’t help but to offer my whiteness to the screen. For example, you may be familiar with some of my earlier work playing “killer white puppet.” Due to scheduling difficultiesI was forced to turn down  the role of “white Japanese internment camp prisoner.” Below I’ve enclosed photos of myself playing the role of “generic white businessman.” I was told that my character has to be white, because when you see a white man with an Asian man, your immediately assume they’re doing business together. Funny, when I went to Thailand and saw 60 year old white men hanging out with 18 year old Thai boys, it certainly didn’t seem like they were conducting business. Oh wait….

 For example, in this scene I’m playing the role of: White-businessman-who-is-so-impressed-with-Singaporean-business-skill.

Pay no attention the adept Singaporean businessman’s shoes.

 Didn’t recognize me? Well perhaps you’re more familiar with my role as “Back-of-White-man’s-head”?

 And while I’m being a bit ridiculous about this whole thing, there was one fun perk about the job: Hazel.

Hazel was in charge of making us look glamourous. I told her I wanted her to follow me around town dilligently. She was so committed to her job she even scraped the dead skin off the inside of my lower lip. Just in case there might be an Extreme Close Up of “Inside-of-white-businessman’s-mouth.”

 Despite my blooming popularity as an ethnic stereotype, I suffer the same pains as other under-appreciated actors: my best work ends up on the cutting room floor. In the finished video, I have just under 3 seconds of screen time. Don’t blink.

This got me thinking about the type of roles I’m ready to bite my white teeth into.

What about:

Fishball Noodle Hawker
Kelong Fisherman
Bus Driver (I prefer SBS 52 if choice is given)
Suria romantic lead

Feel free to join the game. Where else are my talents being ignored while I continue to be pigeon-holed as an artist?

*(Note: I hate the word caucasian. It feels so politically correct and awkward. Please don’t call me caucasian. If I can’t call Chinese people Oriental, then you can’t call me caucasian.)

Is it the filmmakers’ faults or the audiences’?

I read this editorial in the LA Times online edition this morning. I’ll probably have us look at it in class this week if there’s time, but it’s awfully relevant to the film industry today.

 Another thing I like about it is it’s a REFLECTION! The writer not only describes a situation, but he thinks about it, and offers some theories as to why things are the way they are.

 Have a read.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-goldstein8may08,1,591390.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews

Stranger than Fiction

Boy do I have a miracle for all of my students who struggle to write anything worth reading on their blogs. I discovered the easiest escape, which is this fantastic interview system. It takes all the stress out of thinking, since you simply try to give interesting answers to someone else’s questions. It’s sort of the “blog” version to my Openers assignment. Someone else gives you the creative idea, and you just run with it.

These questions came from my friend Cheryl in the US.
 

1. What would surprise Americans the most about Singaporeans?

They don’t live in China. I secretly worry many of my family members still think I’m living in China. They probably get Shanghai and Singapore confused. It doesn’t help when I send pictures of myself doing things in Singapore, everyone seems to be Chinese.

2. If you had to live the rest of your life in just one city (god forbid!), what city would you choose?

While I don’t know anyone who lives there permanently, the most enjoyable city I’ve ever visited was Fort Portal, Uganda. Everything from the friendliness of the bus drivers (who’ll drive out of their way to drop you off at your hotel) and the amazing bargains at the second-hand clothes market to the kindness of the people in local restaurants, who gave me towels to dry off with after I was caught in a freak rainstorm. I can’t imagine the staff at California Pizza Kitchen doing that for me. It has a lovely cool climate with a view of mountains in the distance, as well as a nearby national park with chimpanzees, hippos, and crocodiles. Life would be good.

3. Of all the American movies you’ve seen, what one translates the worst to an inte rn ational audience?

I tend to live about a 50/50 life, where I like about half the movies I see. I think I’ll talk about the most recent movie I hated, which is generally my response when everyone else seems to like a movie that I’m not impressed by. For me, it’s BABEL, and that’s because the movie sits on this politically correct high horse of claiming like it’s accurately representing the reality of people around the world. The director, Inarratu, is Mexican, and so I’m willing to give him a certain amount of leverage that he depicts issues facing Mexican immigrant workers in California today. However, he wallows in cliche when it comes to dealing with any other race. So Inarratu, what do you think about Arabs? Oh, they’re all very religious and prone to irrational violence. And what about Asians? Oh, they’re all hyper-sexual yet constantly lonely and detatched. And audiences around the world swallow these stereotypes as though they’re actually informing our understanding about foreign cultures. So until I watch the next movie I hate, this one will have to be the worst translation to a foreign audience.

4. What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?

There are very few things I actually feel guilty about. I’m getting old now, so I prefer to think of them as quirks. However, many of my students would be amused to know this was the first question asked of me at my interview for my job at Ngee Ann. She wanted to know something unique about myself which wouldn’t show up on a CV. For me, the answer is easy: I love Dance Dance Revolution. She didn’t know what it was. So I explained it, and I suspect by the end of my discussion about DDR, she was sufficiently impressed by my lack of shame about loving a video game clearly meant for people 10 years younger than me and wanted to give me the job. The rest is history.

5. If you had to share your flat with a monkey or primate (a real one—not just a slovenly flatmate), what species would you choose and why?

 Gibbons are my immediate response, because I’m fascinated by the way they have these ridiculously long arms that make them appear to be so huggable. There are many adaptations I find myself jealous to be missing–wings, a tail, high cheekbones–but watching those gibbons swing their arms always makes me smile.

 Now, if you want to play the blog openers game as well, here’s what you must do:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.” If I don’t know who you are, you’ll have to leave me your email address too.
2. I will respond by e-mailing you five questions. I get to pick them, and you have to answer them all.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

And just like that, a week’s homework assignment is finished.

The Godfather

Andrew Millians is the course manager of FSV. In certain ways, I suppose that makes him my boss. Therefore it makes me a bit more willing to do favors for him than for the average Ang Mo on the street. Those who’ve been reading my blog since last acad year (ie- both of you),  may remember the time I wore six pairs of underwear, a jumper, a suit blazer and a leather jacket through security at Changi Airport to help him out at Christmas. This week, I’ve become Godfather and babysitter for his cat.

Now at first one might wonder, why would he need a catsitter when it’s the middle of the term and he’s here teaching classes. As it turns out, his young son is allergic to cats, and so the cat, which has been with Mr. Millians longer than either his wife or his kid, has to go. I suspect he paused for a moment when he had to decide whether to abandon his cat, or sacrific his family. So, until the new destination is decided, the cat is living in my guest bathroom.

This is Okra, and I’ll be the first to admit he’s a pretty cute cat. He has a soft, thick coat and he’s not bad-tempered or mean. He’s a bit noisy, but one time I was locked in a bathroom, and I got pretty noisy myself. As for his name, Okra is the American word for ladyfingers, but you can’t name a boy cat Ladyfingers unless you want all the other boycats to kick his ass on the void deck.

Even if okra could hold his own in a gang fight, I’m left with the aching reminder that I’m just not a cat person. There’s an arrogance to cats that I find disconcerting. I really want  a pet to love me, and cats don’t seem to provide that affection. Cats are too much like people, with quirks and moods.

Does Singapore have the same dog/cat divisions the US does? Are men here more likely to love dogs while women love cats? And do that many people have dogs when their flats are so small? I’m not firmly convinced by the small dog, which I suspect is something of a dog/cat combination. The idea of a dog carted around in a purse is a bit adsurd to me. How is it that dogs began to be associated with men, and cats with women? Is it something with tradition, where the dog would be a hunter with the man, and the cat would remain in the house with the woman?

So are you a dog person or a cat person? And if you just love cats, do you have any space in your bathroom for a spare one?

A Tale of Two Cities

  

On the border between the Sultanate of Oman and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi are two cities. There is really no reason for there to be two cities, seeing as it’s the middle of one of the world’s most inhospitable deserts. However for these cities, it is certainly the best of times, since they experience the joy and irrigation endless barrels of oil can provide. The city on the Emirates side is called Al Ain, and it’s the city I was in. The city on the Oman side is called Buraimi, and that’s the side Kevin was on.

 

But before I go into detail about the border, I should first introduce you to my car. Her name is Wadi Shab, named after a delicious Omani oasis with a perfect temperature swimming hole. 

 

She has a choice sound system, comfortable seats & fantastic 4 wheel drive for perilous mountain roads and sand dunes. Despite my liberal guilt at the poor gas mileage, she is easily the best car I have ever driven.

I was no longer driving that car. I left Wadi Shab and her 75 USD a day rental fee in Oman, then flew to Dubai, and picked up the Toyota Echo, a $25 a day crap car that completely sucks all the fun out of driving, from its manual windows to its AM/FM radio. (A tape player? Really! Who uses tapes any more?)

The plan was for Kevin to take the Omani bus to Buraimi, then I would drive to pick him up from the bus terminal. We had to do this because I couldn’t get the cars insured for more than one country.

 The drive to Al-Ain was uneventful. It’s expressway the whole way, with camels and dunes in the distance (exotic, right?) I’d agreed to meet Kevin at the Buraimi bus station at 3pm, and I was possibly going to be a bit late, but only a couple minutes. And then I got to the border. Actually border is a bit excessive of a term. I say border and you think Woodlands checkpoint, with drug-sniffing dogs and guys in crooked hats. No, this was a four lane road with some cones in it and a guy in military clothes waving everyone through.

Everyone except for me of course. He made me turn around. Even though the Buraimi bus station was apparently only a few hundred meters from the border.  I tried to explain that I only needed to go a tiny bit over the border, but he wasn’t so interested. That, with a combination of not speaking any ENGLISH, prevented a dear friendship from blossoming.

So I turned around. What do I do? My Lonely Planet writes that Buraimi and Al-Ain are essentially the same city, the customs border checkpoint is actually 24km deeper into Omani territory, and Buraimi is the only area to find a cheap place to stay. I go to the Al Ain shopping mall, thinking maybe I can email Kevin. We’re only about 3km apart, and since he already finished customs 24km ago, he can come to Al Ain any time he wants. But I have the car, and I can’t come get him. I email and I wander on foot, since I don’t want to move the car from the parking space I told Kevin about in the email. Of course, he’s never seen the ugly little car, so I don’t know how he would recognize it anyway. I decide to spread my dirty laundry over the back seat so maybe he’ll recognize one of my shirts.

I visit the Hilton and drink a $12 orange juice, and look at some of the world’s most ridiculous roundabout architecture. And I wait…and wait…and wait….What if I never find him again? Will we spend the next week of the vacation wandering the country aimlessly, writing poetry of longing and loss?

About 10:30pm, there’s an email from Kevin. He’s found my email! I am overjoyed when I see him, feeling like a long day has come to a close. By this time, it’s about midnight, and I’m in a nasty mood. I hate Buraimi and I hate Al-Ain and I have no interest in spending any more time there. Technically I’ve never spent any time in Buraimi, but I still hate it. So we drive and drive, deeper into the desert, looking for somewhere isolated enough we can pitch our tent and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day.

We find a paved road and veer to park on the side of it, at which point, the Toyota Echo gets stuck in the sand. Wadi Shab crossed vast expanses of unpaved desert, and this stupid compact car gets stuck in sand only 2 meters from paved road.  We try deflating a tire. We try putting the coolbox lid under the tire to give it some traction. We try lifting the car and moving it. No luck. So we pitch our tent and go to bed, circa one thirty in the morning, thinking good riddance to the crappy day we’ve had so far.

It’s still sometime in the middle of the night when I get woken up by honking. “Hey, you need a tow?” I leap out of my sleeping bag, desperate for help. I have to trust somebody, because I’m not going to move this car by myself.

Our tent is surrounded by pimped out SUVs, and men in traditional Arab dress. They’re our age, maybe younger, and they’re out 4×4 driving in the dunes. “In the middle of the night?” I ask. I suppose why not, since it’s so much cooler in the dark. As for the Echo, it takes them about, oh, 10 seconds, to pull it out with a tow rope and their monster truck. And then, like hospitable hosts, they ask, “You guys want to come along?”

 So that, dear readers, is how I ended up making friends with Emiratis, bouncing over sand dunes in the middle of the night until I asked them to pull over so I could rest my dizzy head. They were very proud of me for not throwing up. Without the madness of those two cities, I would have never made the personal connections that so few people get in their travels.

When we woke up the next morning, our campsite was surrounded by a giant herd of grazing camels, and the magic of the Middle East had returned.