{"id":160,"date":"2015-07-06T13:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/?p=160"},"modified":"2015-07-06T13:05:08","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T13:05:08","slug":"im-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/general\/im-back\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not a blogger but I understand its usefulness to vent the \u201cet cetera, et cetera\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>So here is my first blog \u2026 ever \u2026 in celebration of launching Exactly Foundation. With this, Exactly&#8217;s website goes live!<\/p>\n<p>Upon my return in November 2014 after three years studying at SOAS and Goldsmiths in London, I am reminded of what\u2019s new (for me) in Singapore:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It\u2019s really humid and hot, if you don\u2019t have an office to escape to. \u201cMad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun\u201d, circa 1931. I stay in, find a hawker center and chill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>New friends, new spaces, new conversations. I started immediately to register Exactly Foundation and get to know the Singapore photography and photographer scene. There are so many things and buildings unknown to me (the 1930s Capital Building is re-named <em>Capital Piazza<\/em>, oh please) plus so much construction on the roads. Other whoa moments: we have a stray dog problem? And a rat problem? We have wild pigs in town areas? There is a nursing home for the elderly in Bras Basah Complex and Waterloo Center? Rochor Center with its hundreds of residents and shopkeepers is going to be demolished \u2026 for a highway? Why are the hedges and railings so high at the Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street? All the sand used for Singapore\u2019s land reclamation is stored like sand dunes in Punggol?\u00a0\u00a0 <em>It is all so surreal. Sometimes, I can\u2019t believe this is Singapore.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I also decided not to go back to driving my own car but to take public transport (London trained me well). I just couldn\u2019t make the math work: for all that I would have to pay to fund driving my own car in Singapore, I could hire a private car to take me <em>every day <\/em>to and from Johor Bahru (the southernmost part of Malaysia closest to Singapore) and still have change leftover. And I don\u2019t even like driving, especially with all the ever-changing road diversions from construction of new subway stations. Qualifying as a senior citizen this year, most of my rides are 56 cents or 90 cents \u2026 can\u2019t even buy a cup of coffee with that. So what about riding the bus: I see the racial diversity, many in their dress of choice; 4 out of 5 are scrolling their mobile devices; I must have time (most trips take at least 40 minutes); I avoid peak-hour crowds (I\u2019m not working so why rush; shops and museums don\u2019t open till 10 am); the bus\u2019 over-the-top air-conditioning is <em>so<\/em> appreciated in this tropical heat; no eating or drinking on public transport (what a drag, had to change my London habit); I have found every spot of shade between my apt and the bus stop.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I walk a lot. And love it. You see, feel, smell, eat, drink, fan so much more. So many new shops and eateries, much quirkier that I remember and clearly small biz owners, there\u2019s entrepreneurship happening \u2013 Istanbul Gourmet? Ameba with its <em>Kongsimi<\/em> (translation: \u201cwhat are you talking about?\u201d) series of notebooks. Boxes and notebooks from Prints Swedish Design but actually from Singapore, with Euro prices. The SOTA Shop of screen-print everything. Strangers Reunion caf\u00e9 with cartwheel-size waffles and spam fries in gentrified Kampong Bahru. Northern Chinese dumplings by real northern Chinese people. That last thing has made my day on many days.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019m people watching all the time. On the bus and subway, I mentally reel out my critique of who needs a pedicure: many people (local and foreign, me included) look like they\u2019re going on some city tour or to the beach. With so many clothing shops in Singapore, can\u2019t we look better put together and still survive the heat? And what\u2019s with the flip-flops?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019m still annoyed by some things: hair and food bits in sinks of public toilets. I\u2019m now often in hawker centers, food courts, malls, libraries, all kinds of restaurants, all kinds of offices &#8230; I just don\u2019t think Singapore is <em>that <\/em>clean. \u00a0We are not clean, period. Kishore Mahbubani wrote in his <em>Can Singapore Survive? <\/em> that Singapore looks clean because of the battalions of cleaners around us. But not everywhere, and where they are not is where the real habits of Singaporeans show up. Diners are now being requested to clear their trays in food courts, this is 2015. And some even think bad hygiene habits are from the tourists and new immigrants \u2026 not true, it\u2019s us.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019m still surprised by the command of English of some so-called well-educated, well-placed Singaporeans. I love taxi-driver-Singlish: \u201cWhy so high Gee-Gee-P, <em>siao lah<\/em>\u201d = why focus on GDP growth, it\u2019s crazy. What kills me is \u201cYou went to PinkDot? (Singapore\u2019s Gay Pride). I suppose we need to accommodate those born with defects\u201d. Whoa?!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201c\u2026 I\u2019m confused \u2026 what do Singaporeans want?\u201d was the best and last question after 1.5 days of listening to the highest-ranking luminaries of the land in the \u201cSingapore at 50: What Lies Ahead? (SG50+)\u201d conference organized by the NUS Institute of Policy Studies. The end of the meandering answer was: \u201cI\u2019m just as blur as you are\u201d. Are we (state and citizens) \u201cinterdependent\u201d or \u201cco-dependent\u201d? As in we\u2019re comfortable and uncomfortable with each other and since we haven\u2019t thought deeply about it, we stay put and self-centered. One speaker repeatedly harped on \u201cthe center must hold strong\u201d to sustain Singapore\u2019s future success &#8212; which \u201ccenter\u201d, who \u201ccenter\u201d, what about the peripheries, aren\u2019t there more \u201ccenters\u201d now? After listening to a friend lament about her partner, I said \u201c \u2026 but you love him, right?\u201d and she conceded, \u201cYah \u2026 what to do?\u201d We\u2019ve made precarity a lifestyle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes, everything in Singapore is fast-paced, efficiently done, chop-chop \u2026 even conversations are efficient. An issue is phrased in one sentence, analysis in the next, short 2-part-ping-pong exchange. Then, we\u2019re done. Next topic. And in that flash of an encounter, the blame is said and set. Done.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which is why I have started Exactly Foundation. I want to slow things down and scale things down especially on discussing difficult community issues. No mega, mind-numbing seminars. Max 15 photographs, max 15 people around my dining table. No selling. We talk. If one person is changed for the better, even years later, because of one photograph he\/she saw at an Exactly dinner, I\u2019m happy.<\/p>\n<p>Two to three projects a year. Rest of the time, I stay out of the sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not a blogger but I understand its usefulness to vent the \u201cet cetera, et cetera\u201d. So here is my first blog \u2026 ever \u2026 in celebration of launching Exactly Foundation. With this, Exactly&#8217;s website goes live! Upon my return in November 2014 after three years studying at SOAS and Goldsmiths in London, I am [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.exactlyfoundation.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}