"Boo!" Said The Critic

An NUS student has reviewed my book Two Baby Hands. The review was extremely negative and I think that many people were surprised by it. In response to the review, one reader even wrote:

"I strongly believe that reviewers are entitled to express their own opinions. Still, to me, this review was really way off. I was very, very surprised by how one-sided it was. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that the reviewer has some personal grudge against Mr Wang. Just my guess."

(The reviewer has denied this).

Virtually overnight, a small troop of Singapore writers also appeared on this blog, to find out what's been going on and/or to chip in with their two cents' worth. Actually I am slightly taken aback at how quickly they all popped up (I wonder how many of them might in fact be long-time lurkers here). The writers included Alvin Pang; Gwee Li Sui; Toh Hsien Min; Alfian Saat; Laremy Lee and Teng Qian Xi.

I was also told that the quality of the review (and presumably the merits of the book) are now being hotly debated on some Facebook group discussion. However, I am not privy to that.

Since the time the review came out, I have received a number of encouraging, supportive emails from friends. I appreciate this, but also expected it - that's what friends do for each other, right? What did surprise me was that a few people whom I've never met before also made the effort to contact me and share their thoughts. For instance, here's a nice email I received from Tammy Ho, a poetry editor in Hong Kong, relaying a message from one Bob Bradshaw, who lives faraway in California:

"Dear Gilbert,

We at Cha read a review of Two Baby Hands at QLRS and felt that it was an unfair analysis. Bob Bradshaw (our former guest editor and regular contributor) has the following to say, for example:

"I don't recall seeing a more cruel review than Gilbert Koh has received at QLRS. Gilbert Koh is a fine poet. I haven't read the book, but I have enjoyed a number of his poems. I was appalled at the attack. Please pass along my feelings to Mr. Koh. He deserves much, much better! ...."

Anyway, we enjoy your poetry and we are sure many many others like your work."

Thanks, Tammy & Bob. You brighten my day. :)

At the moment, I am still feeling quite annoyed. But oh well, in the end, what's a review? One person's opinion. Life goes on.

New Adventures in Real Estate

This year the property market was like a movie with a spectacular and improbable plot. However, the story was all real.

Mrs Wang and I have just sold our HDB apartment. This morning I signed the option papers.

We really weren't planning to sell at this time. Our new home is still under construction and it won't be ready, for about a year or so.

How then did we end up selling our HDB apartment? Well, it was literally a case of a stranger coming to our flat and knocking on the front door. He asked, "Are you interested in selling your flat?"

That was a week ago. He was a property agent. He had a small flock of very interested buyers. They came to view. There were discussions. The offer was good. We sold. And that was that.

Now I shall have to get busy scouting around the neighbourhood, looking for a place to rent. Renting will cost some money. Then again, with an extra few hundred thousand dollars in the bank, I don't mind. I also feel it's safer to lock in the profit now.

ST 24 October 2009
HDB Resale Prices at Record High

Prices of HDB resale flats in Singapore rose to record highs in the third quarter, according to data released on Friday.

The latest data from the Housing and Development Board (HDB) showed that the Resale Price Index rose 3.6 per cent in the third quarter over the previous quarter to 145.2 points. This has raised concern among some potential homebuyers, who fear that prices may continue to rise.

The last time the HDB resale market saw such high transaction volumes was more than four years ago, in the fourth quarter of 2004. Back then, 11,562 changed hands, compared to the 11,649 seen in the third quarter ended September this year.

ERA Real Estate said the typical quarterly HDB resale volume ranges from 6,000 to 8,000 units at most. Eugene Lim, associate director, ERA Asia Pacific, said: "We have seen the HDB resale volume jump to above 10,000 for second quarter and above 11,600 for the third quarter this year. "

The third quarter is a very good month for HDB resale. It's likely to taper off partly because cash over valuation, due to increased demand, has increased.

"HDB homebuyers are a price sensitive lot. So it will probably hit a resistance level. And in that sense we will expect resale volume to taper downwards in the last quarter."

The Bilingual Policy & Its Victims

ST Nov 3, 2009
Bilingual policy was most difficult: MM
It took 30 years to get method of teaching Mandarin correct, he says
By Jeremy Au Yong

INTELLIGENCE does not necessarily translate into a flair for languages.

That was the lesson Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said he learnt in implementing the bilingual policy in schools.

'Initially, I believed that intelligence was equated to language ability. Later, I found that they are two different attributes - IQ and a facility for languages. My daughter, a neurologist, confirmed this,' he said in an interview carried in Petir, the People's Action Party magazine.

Asked to pick policies he would have implemented differently, he cited the teaching of bilingualism, especially in English and Mandarin, as the most difficult policy.

'I did not know how difficult it was for a child from an English-speaking home to learn Mandarin,' he said.

'If you are speaking English at home and you are taught Mandarin in Primary 1 by Chinese teachers who teach Mandarin as it was taught in the former Chinese schools, by the direct method, using only Mandarin, you will soon lose interest because you do not understand what the teacher is saying.

'You spend time on extra tuition, and still make little progress. Many were turned off Mandarin for life.'

In the end, the Government recognised that students with the same ability in other subjects may not be able to cope being in the same second language class. It took 30 years for the issue to be resolved.

'Eventually, we settled the problem in 2004 by teaching the mother tongue in the module system. Had we done this earlier, we would have had less wastage of students' time and effort, and less heartache for parents,' he said candidly.

He took 30 years to see that "intelligence does not necessarily translate into a flair for languages". Wow, that is so ... not quick.

But the biggest problem with the bilingual policy was not the way the Chinese language (or for that matter, the English language) was taught in schools.

The biggest problem was the government's rigid insistence (that lasted for many years) that a student who wished to progress to the next higher stage of education would have to pass both English and Chinese - entirely regardless of what he wanted to study, at the next stage.

So for instance, let's say you are outstanding in mathematics. In the A-levels, you score distinctions for your maths and maths-related subjects. You have always scored distinctions for your maths. And you wish to go to university to pursue a maths degree.

However, you flunked your Chinese paper. Therefore you will not be allowed to study maths in university.

That was the way it used to be, in the past. The bilingual policy was characterised by a very striking lack of logic.

Well, on the bright side, the system is more flexible now. Yes, it took the government a few decades to fix it. But better late than never.

Poetry and Politics and PhDs

Sometimes my poems travel to slightly odd places, and it takes me a while to find out.

Just discovered that a few years ago, a certain Simon Benjamin Obendorf discussed a poem of mine in his PhD dissertation. Obendorf was then pursuing his Doctor of Philosophy degree, at the University of Melbourne, and is now a lecturer at the University of Lincoln.

The appearance of my poem in a dissertation wouldn't be that unusual, if it were an English Literature dissertation. However, Dr Obendorf's area of academic interest is actually political science and international relations.

His 287-page dissertation is entitled Sexing Up The International, and somewhere around page 41, he begins to discuss my poem. The relevant passage is below:

I had a small part in a
Big show of a great little nation.
My uniformed mates and I were
To march out, swing left,
Turn twice, and get off the grounds
In twenty seconds flat.
Meanwhile the music boomed,
The lasers splashed,
And the darkened crowds hit
A new high of pre-planned,
Programmed excitement.
Later at home, my mother replayed
The video tape five times
But couldn't tell her tiny toy-
Soldier son from any of the rest.
"That one is me," I said,
Pointing at the screen.
I couldn't be sure.
Still, we laughed and clapped
Our hands like children,
Knowing that it was not
Supposed to matter.


Gilbert Koh's poem, "National Day Parade" depicts the thoughts of a young Singaporean national serviceman regarding his participation, as part of a military unit, in one of Singapore's spectacular independence day parades. These parades are held annually, either at the historically significant Padang (field) near Singapore's colonial City Hall and Supreme Court buildings or at the National Stadium. The presentation of the parades has been identified as a strategy by political elites in Singapore to both craft appropriate national identities and to strengthen popular support for government ideologies and the political status quo. Indeed, the Parade organisers are extremely open about this aspect of the Parade's raison d'etre. On the official National Day parade website for 2004, one feature essayist writes that "there is a need for the rituals of patriotism, so as to galvanise an entire nation into remembering our past, to celebrate the present, and to remind us that the future is yet to be." Commenting on the tendency for the Parade to highlight or refer to key moments in Singapore's history, she goes on to exert that "by writing history in this manner, the idea of nationality is made definitive and official." While commentators have, in recent years, identified a shift in the visible role played by the military in these parades (from one of demonstrating military might through the parading of armoured vehicles and weaponry to one of emphasising the combat skills and professional discipline of military personnel through demonstrations such as skydiving, parachuting and choreographed bayonet drills) the Parade, both in its presentation and its organisation, remains a thoroughly military affair.

.... Kong and Yeoh have explored the ways in which national identities that are consumed in, and constructed through, the staging of this elaborate national ritual are marked by "an acute awareness of the need to survive in a neighbourhood of regional hostility". This gives rise, they argue, to the "military flavour of the parades, asserting the capabilities of a small island in defence." This aspect of the parade has perhaps been captured best by Devasahayam, who argues that the National Day parade, held annually on 9 August (the date of Singapore's expulsion from the Malaysian Federation in 1965) is a symbolic dialogue with Malaysia in which Singapore, in an overt display of sabre-rattling, demonstrates its military might both to Malaysia and to other regional powers.

Koh's poem - with its references to the author and his "uniformed mates" marching in the "big show of a great little nation" - captures much of the tenor of these analyses but it is also a deeply personal response to the enforced homogeneity of military and national identities as well as a comment on the ways nationalist propaganda serves the ends of social control in, and for, the modern state. This personal response is informed not only by the author's participation in the conceptions of identity reinforced and celebrated by the parade, but also by a critical personal reflection on those identity formations and the methods used to compel adherence to them. References to "toy soldiers", to the submersion of the self in both the military unit and the nation, and to the crowd reaching new heights of "pre-planned, programmed excitement" suggest a mode of reading Singapore's preoccupations with domestic social control and international vulnerability that begins not with the state, but starts with, and works out from, the individual.

The fact that these insights can be derived through critical reading of a piece of contemporary Singapore poetry demonstrates the nexus between literature and personal responses to the international. Philip Darby has argued that "many facets of the relations between societies can be related to lived experience" and further that "literature's concentration on the personal can be a corrective to international relations' preoccupations with aggregates, its mechanistic presumptions about international processes and its positivist approach to outcomes." Allied to these opportunities are the benefits that might flow from the application, to real events and to everyday life, of modes of enquiry drawn from textual analysis. Gender analysis comes immediately to the fore, here. Scholars working in postcolonial literary studies have long drawn on literary materials to illustrate the ways in which external and internal exercises of power and hegemony have acted to shape gendered subjectivities within postcolonial polities ....

... the parade's significance is not merely due to its position as a state scripted ritual. As a reading of Koh's poem suggests, the parade references idealised, state-endorsed visions of everyday life and gendered subjectivity. Yet it is also a space in which Singaporeans participate in and consume such identities and messages. And it is such a dialogue between the elite and the everyday - marked by processes of resistance, cooption and volunteerism - that acts to shape the nature and contours of Singaporean everyday life. What I am interested in exploring here is how, or to what extent, everyday life might stand as a productive site of analysis for those interested in unpacking, or gaining new perspectives, on the penetration of international issues into Singaporean everyday life, on the ways in which the international concerns of the Singapore state are reflected, consumed and played out both in domestic policies and in everyday settings; and the ways in which the international can be theorised not merely from the familiar analytical standpoints of state and nation but in ways that build out from individuals, subjectivities and the processes of everyday life ...

I feel somewhat pleased with my little poem, for making it into a political science dissertation. I like crossing walls and borders.

In fact, it's a little ironic that it takes a political scientist like Obendorf to point out the connection between literature and the real world, at the personal level. Good poetry is all about that connection - it's all about real people, real events, real life. Good poetry has a soul.

In contrast, I'm often bored by the likes of, you know, some typical young smart-ass undergrad Lit student from NUS, attempting to comment on my works. I shouldn't generalise, but they tend to be oh so literary, oh so clever, and oh so hopelessly trapped within the formal framework of their own academic discipline.

When they try writing poetry themselves, aaaaack. They are so eager to impress with their "craft" that they cram every line with big words, flowery phrases or some original and entirely ill-fitting metaphor. "See, look at me, I'm so clever" is what they're trying to say with their poetry.

In the end, their poems feel like a model answer to a 10-year-series math question. Technically correct, occasionally even technically excellent. But also inauthentic, pretentious and quite lacking any genuine insight.

I shouldn't be mean. Maybe they are just young and immature.

One For The Scrapbook

Stephanie Yap is a sub-editor for the Life! section of the Straits Times. She was also one of the 12 writers invited to join the recent Ubin writing retreat.

Last week she wrote an article in Life! about the experience. I'm posting the article here, as a little souvenir from the trip.

ST Oct 29, 2009
Ubin for inspiration
No TV, no Internet, but plenty of creative energy when writers get together on a five-day island retreat

By stephanie yap

On a sweltering Monday afternoon, while the rest of Singapore was cooped up in air-conditioned offices battling food comas, a dozen of us were herded to a quiet offshore island. Among our number on the bumboat bound for Pulau Ubin were winners of the Singapore Literature Prize and other assorted literary awards, prolific authors with double-digit bibliographies, Singapore literary pioneers and one Straits Times journalist.

We were the guinea pigs of the first Catalyst Creative Writing Residential Retreat, organised by non-profit organisation The Literary Centre in collaboration with the British Council and supported by the National Arts Council. The pilot for what is intended to be a continuing series of writing retreats open to anyone interested, last week's camp was modelled on Britain's renowned Arvon Foundation creative writing courses.

But where Arvon's courses are held in the majestic Scottish highlands or the bucolic English countryside, this retreat saw us sequestered at a solar-powered Ubin chalet compound, beside a beach strewn with litter thrown up by the busy Johor Straits.

With no TV, Internet access or - gasp - air-conditioning, for five days we were freed from all distractions so that we could get cracking on the Great Singapore Novel.

Nudging us on our literary way were daily group writing workshops and personal sessions conducted by our intrepid and patient tutors, British writer Courttia Newland and Singaporean writer Suchen Christine Lim.

This will seem odd coming from a journalist, but one of the things the workshops taught me is how much you can actually write when facing a deadline.

During the workshops, conducted in an open-air pondok or hut, we were tasked to write short pieces based on various stimuli, ranging from something as intangible as a childhood memory to the physical prop of an empty chair placed in the middle of the pondok.

In one memorable exercise, we paired up and took turns walking around blindfolded so that we would be forced to experience our surroundings with our other senses. (We were kind to each other: Newland said that when he does the exercise with kids, they usually end up making the blindfolded ones fight each other.)

Though what we wrote was ostensibly fiction, naturally some personal details crept into our works, which is why we, the self-proclaimed Ubin 12, have this pledge: What happens on Ubin stays on Ubin.

In between our daily activities of writing, swatting mosquitoes and making illegal phone calls home, we were also expected to take turns cooking for the group.

You have not supped unless you have tasted instant noodles made by three poets and a novelist. My guess is that none of them will be coming out with a cookbook anytime soon.

Heheh, I was one of the three poets. To be fair, we were not cooking mere instant noodles. We were attempting to do mee goreng. It was disastrous.

And during the long afternoons, the scorching sun having dried up what little creative juices we had to begin with, we would sneak out of the compound to explore the rest of the island.

Salvation from each other's cooking came from the nearby village and its motley assortment of restaurants, including a seller of ice-cold Thai coconuts and a former opium den-turned-coffee shop.

The more adventurous among us even rented bicycles and ventured into the jungle, which holds enough histories, secrets and wild boar to fill several epic novels.

Once, three of us stumbled upon a Taoist shrine devoted to a German girl who died after World War I, when she fell into a quarry while fleeing the British soldiers who wanted to imprison her family.

Now a deity with the power to bestow 4-D numbers on her loyal worshippers, she is represented by a blonde Barbie doll in a glass case, who smiles beatifically amid offerings of pressed powder, face creams and lipsticks.

Another day, a group of us checked out Chek Jawa, one of Singapore's last wetlands. As planes from all over the world flew overhead on their descent into Changi Airport, we cast our eyes downwards and spotted jellyfish, mudskippers and fiddler crabs with monstrously giant claws which they wave to attract females and intimidate rivals.

But in truth, we did not even have to venture far from our beds to encounter wildlife. Back at the chalets, the compound was ruled by a pack of stray dogs, led by an alpha male and his favourite companion, a female who managed to coax chunks of our dinner from our plates, thanks to her heart-meltingly liquid eyes.

But it is the nights around the barbecue pit that I remember most fondly. With the sun down and a breeze coming in from the sea, we would stuff ourselves with roasted meat and alcohol, then sit around and read each other our stories.

In Singapore, few writers are full-time wordsmiths, most having to hold day jobs to make a living. Among us on the island were practitioners in the fields of law, finance, education, arts management and the media.

Our varied experiences came to play in our stories, which featured student riots, school bullies, flashers, courtroom dramas, gerontophiles, army days, magic stones and tigers roaming HDB corridors.

Some works were in a raw state, others already highly polished. But in the diversity of offerings, it was clear how much the Singapore literary scene has to offer, if only writers are given the time and opportunity to write.

At the ongoing Singapore Writers Festival, alongside a host of international and regional stars, I look forward to home-grown literature being celebrated in symposiums, readings and book launches.

But I am also grateful for programmes such as Catalyst, which recognise that before audiences can be grown, writers must be nurtured. And there is no better way to help them develop their craft than by giving them some space, time and good company.

ysteph@sph.com.sg

Some of the participating writers will talk about their experiences at the retreat in The Creative Writing Experience at The Arts House, The Hall, on Saturday at 6pm. Admission is free.

I did go to the Arts House last Saturday evening, to do the talk, together with the other writers. A very decent-sized, interested crowd showed up and asked many questions. In fact we ran out of chairs.