Archive for November, 2006

Inspired by my father’s guest blogging stint, his younger brother (Uncle No. 2) has offered a book review of the memoir by Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson about her “fusion life”. Uncle Boon-Teck is a Canadian citizen and I am pleased to learn something about Canadian current affairs from this book review. Also, this seems particularly apt given my post on Monday about Canadians…

He writes:

Nowadays, not only cabinet ministers, freshly out of office, feel impelled to write memoirs to defend their record but heads-of-state too. In the latter part of her Governor-Generalship of Canada (1999-2005), Adrienne Clarkson was criticized for extravagance in her state visits. As the Liberal party in power was herself embroiled in a corruption scandal, the Prime Minister was in no position to take a stand on her behalf.

I am happy that Adrienne Clarkson wrote HEART MATTERS because a memoir cannot just be a justification of public decisions but there must be an accounting of a life leading to them. I find her biographical part interesting—the story of a girl born Adrienne Poy, escaping from Japanese capture of Hong Kong in 1942, becoming a TV hostess of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, having her own show “Adrienne Clarkson Presents” and finally becoming the Governor-General.

Before her Governor-Generalship, Canadian-Chinese had as much disowned her as being “not enough Chinese”. This “ostracism”, not that she would care, was totally unjustified because her father was an Australian born Chinese and her mother’s family was from Dutch Guyana (now Surinam ). Of course, after reaching the vice-regal status, we did not claim her as our own fast enough.

Whereas most immigrant stories have been about the first generation adapting to a new culture, Adrienne Clarkson’s story is a rarity because her family has already been accustomed to English culture. The documentation of her experiences is valuable because they correspond to those of the second and third generation English-educated Malaysians and Singaporeans.

The colourful person in her memoir and a key person in her life was her father, William Poy. He was a survivor who took risky gambles. As a boy he rode horses bareback in Australia . In Hong Kong , he owned horses, rode them in flat and steeple races and became a member of the social set of the Jockey Club. He had lady-killer good looks. One family photo shows him in jodhpur with a hat tilted rakishly. Another was by Yousof Karsh, famous for his portraits of Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. I did not know that Yousof Karsh did portraits of nonentities.

Somehow in 1942, he managed to have his family listed with the Canadians to be shipped out of Hong Kong by the Japanese to be exchanged in Mozambique for a ship load Japanese nationals captured by the Allies.

The memoirs let slip the sense of values held by the Poy family. From Mozambique , their ship crossed the south Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro before working its way to Canada . At Rio , the Red Cross gave them ten dollars each. They went on a shopping spree–alligator shoes, alligator handbags, a silk frock for Adrienne and a silk shirt for her brother. Whereas another family would have squirreled away the money, this family preferred “elegance”.

Settling in Ottawa , William Poy was a doting father who read to the growing Adrienne a bed time story every night. He made believe with her that when she grew up they would go to the opera together. He imagined for her the balconies and the curtains of the opera hall, the beautiful gowns and jewelry worn by the audience.

All these fineries, which he dreamed for her, came true.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Written by Guest Blogger: Prof. Ooi Boon-Teck

~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can buy a copy of “Heart Matters” from the Amazon.ca (the Canadian Amazon site).

Update: Micheal Beck’s blog, The Sovereign Journey, offers some further thoughts on the Chinese in Canada with a discussion about dual citizenship issues.

Photo: thanks to dfait-maeci.gc.ca

“The Spectacular Adventures of Noggin and Izzy” is a great blog created by Barbara Gibson, an American media trainer living in London. You can contact her and she will write a little story all about you, featuring you and her dog Noggin up to all kinds of adventures. This is such fun especially if “you” are a kid.

I came across this blog ‘cos I met Barbara in London a few weeks ago and as bloggers, we bonded immediately and bored everyone else at the party with all our blog talk! Anyway, here is what she told me about how she came to be inspired to create “The Spectacular Adventures of Noggin and Izzy”:

Barbara writes:

I first got the idea when my husband and I and a group of our friends (along with kids and dogs) went away together for a few days of holiday, staying at a big, old house in Wales . During the trip, our friend’s daughter, Isabelle, attached herself to my dog, Noggin, and they became best friends. One of the days we all went to visit an old gold mine, and it got me thinking about writing stories about adventures they could have together. It was around the same time that I had just begun experimenting with a blog, and it occurred to me that a blog could provide a great medium for writing stories, and building a reader base of kids and parents. When I told Isabelle about it, she got excited and began working on ideas for stories, as well. I then realized that it could not only provide stories for reading, but could become interactive, perhaps sparking in older kids an interest in writing. Then it also began expanding to include other kids, first the children of friends I stayed with in my travels, because as they took me out sightseeing, we were having adventures together. So many of the stories are at least loosely based on my own experiences with Noggin, Izzy and the other kids written in. I’ve also encouraged readers to write in, either contributing whole stories, story ideas, or just names of kids, pets, etc., to be included in future stories. The most recent post about baby Ryan came from a reader posting a comment. So far, the kids who have been in the stories have absolutely loved reading about themselves and seeing their pictures on the internet. At some point, I hope to edit and publish Noggin & Izzy books, but for now, the blog is a great way to get ideas, and it provides some built-in discipline for me to write semi-regularly.

I’d love to get contributions from your blog’s readers, so send ‘em on. I’d also like to hear from others who have either story blogs, or blogs aimed at kids and parents – it still seems pretty rare.”

You can visit Noggin and Izzy at http://barbgibson.typepad.com/nogginandizzy/
If you do and Barbara writes a story about you, please let me know and I will post a link to it for all to visit!

Photo: shows Noggin and friends - from Barbara’s blog.

Working on the Malaysian English of my third novel has made me think about that peculiarly Malaysian word “-lah”. It’s not really a word, I suppose - more a suffix used from time to time in colloquial Malaysian English as an emphasiser. “-Lah” is used only in Malaysia, as far as I know.

There’s a great entry in Wikipedia about Malaysian English with a section on the use of “-lah”. The entry implies that it derives from Chinese rather than Malay, although there is a suffix “-lah” used in Malay. I believe that the usage and context of the sound in Malay and Malaysian English are different - the “-lah” of Malay is a grammatical element that is integral to the language whereas “-lah” in Malaysian English can be dropped without changing the meaning. This is my lay person’s understanding - if there are any linguists or academics out there who would like to comment or deepen our understanding on this point, please do add a comment!

There’s also long discourse on Malaysian English - aka Manglish to afficionados - at Malaysia Uncut.

I speak in Manglish with my family and Malaysian friends and happily slip into “-lah” this and “-lah” that. If an English friend is also present, I can switch to full English English in the same breath as I turn towards them. My English friends who have visited Malaysia use “-lah” when remembering the fun times they had on their visits - but it sounds weird when tacked onto a proper English English sentence!

I’d love to hear from Malaysians living in Malaysia or abroad about your emotional connection with “-lah” and/ or Malaysian English. And also any migrants to Malaysia from other English speaking countries - have you got the hang of Lah-Lah land?

Photo: thanks to gamleys .co.uk

I’ve been blogging here at Fusion View since June this year - and before that at a blogspot site. In the few months since then, I’ve been very fortunate to have had many diverse visitors and contributors from all over the world, helping me build a cross-cultural community. I’m delighted to share with you some very generous reviews about Fusion View… See the links below:

“an incredibly rich and inspirational literary site that has gained recognition from fellow artists, writers and the literary web community in general” - 9rules Network

“A truly cross-cultural blog on writing and a whole lot more” - Imagined Community (http://imagined-community.com/blog/?p=29)

“Yang-May Ooi’s excellent East-West writing blog. Well worth a visit.” - Will Buckingham

Photo: from flickr thanks to Pete R

UPDATE: Unfortunately, this video has also been taken off YouTube. I considered just deleting this post but decided to leave it up as a testament to the change that is now happening since YouTube was sold - and also since YouTube has now hit the mainstream and everyone who reads regular newspapers has now heard about it. My take on it is: creativity is being stifled now that the mainstream has moved in. Let us see what happens to the rest of the web - and to blogs. Will it all just become a bit marketing mall dominated by messages that businesses and corporations want to disseminate while the creative efforts of individuals are shut down?

Last Monday’s film made me nostalgic for the good old Star Trek days of Brylcreemed hair and polyester tunics. So I went in search of Kirk and Spock - and found this.

The truth at last about their friendship…

——————–

——————–

There’s something about Brokeback Mountain that has inspired hundreds of mashups to bring out the underlying homoerotic theme in many geek sci-fi movies. A few months back, I showed Brokeback to the Future on Film Mondays - no doubt there’s a Brokeback Star Wars somewhere out there…

I’ve been re-working the draft of my third novel Tianming Traviata recently.

The novel is an off-beat family drama with a cast of quirky, colourful characters. The main character is a 70-year old cabaret singer, Evie, who is still going strong in her sequinned gowns and feather headdresses. She owns the only nightclub in a small town in Malaysia and sings old show tunes, with the “grand dame” air of days gone by. Her neice Kit-Mei works as software programmer in Kuala Lumpur, a blogging, city-slicking modern young woman who is very much part of 21st century Malaysia. The family are thrown into crisis when Evie’s daughter disappears and the clash between the old and the new generations are brought to a head.

I had been writing it in Standard English using a third person narrative structure. It was zipping along nicely - but it just lacked “oomph” and I was finding that I was getting bored. The dialogue bits were fine when Evie was in the thick of the action. But the narrative was just lacklustre. Now, if the author is bored by the novel, there’s no hope that the narrative will be able to grip others!

So I put it away for several months. Then a few weeks ago, Evie’s voice kept coming back to me. In the dialogue bits, she is in full flow, loud and raucous and full of energy - speaking in Malaysian English. In contrast, the third person narrative was in measured, proper, sensible full sentences with proper syntax, grammar and punctuation.

And I thought, why not try writing the narrative bits in Malaysian English? Yah, why not-lah? So stupid I was before. This one is Evie’s story-lah so, of course, got to tell it with her voice, isn’t it?

Since then, I’ve had such fun getting the narrative down in the voice of a 70 year old cabaret singer who will not let her arthritic hip stop her doing high-kicks and whose language is full of verve and peppered with “-lah”s.

When I’ve got a bit further along with the text, I will upload a podcast reading of the first chapter so you can see what you think. In particulary, I would be interested to see the response of Malaysians to the use of our form of the English language in fiction.

~~~~~~~~~~~

To hear what Malaysian English sounds like in contrast to Standard UK English, listen to my podcast “Two Voices” about my “schizophrenic” relationship with language.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I will write more next week about “-lah” and its use in Malaysian English.

At last, we have hard evidence of the reason behind the UK pensions crisis (the crisis that is about to hit my generation as more and more people are getting older and there are fewer and fewer young folk to pay into the pensions fund). A BUPA-commissioned survey this week revealed that Britons would give up sex if that meant they could live longer - see the report on BBC News here.

But then we always knew that Brits were not that keen on getting all hot and sweaty anyway (unless it’s to do the gardening). George Mikes in his book “How to be a Brit” has a chapter entitled “The British and Sex” and it contains only one line: The British don’t have sex, they have hot water bottles.

I was interviewed by Elizabeth Tai of The Star newspaper, Malaysia on Friday for an article on writing and blogging. She asked for an update on what I’d been doing since my two novels were published (answer: taking a break from serious writing, changing jobs and moving house) and also if I was working on a third novel (answer: yes, very slowly. It’s called “Tianming Traviata” and is an off-beat family drama told in the first person by a feisty, old lady - and is mostly written in Malaysian English). I also talked about Fusion View and the joy of blogging (creating an online community of international writers and artists, including Malaysian writers Lydia Teh and John Ling, to name a few well-known names). She asked what advice I had for Malaysian writers (answer: read widely, keep writing and keep learning. Also, I referred them to my Getting Published series on this blog, which I started when a Malaysian writer asked me how to get published in the UK - although it gives advice to anyone wanting to be published in the UK, I try to focus on issues that would be of particular interest to Malaysian writers).

Elizabeth asked me for my reaction to the statistic that apparently, Malaysians only read two books a year. Well, as a writer, it makes me depressed. But after I came off the phone, I wondered: can that really be true? There are lots of bookshops - and they are big, too - in all the shopping malls in Malaysia. Can they really be doing hardly any business?

I estmate that I read more than 20 books a year, both fiction and non-fiction - although this year, non-fiction seems to have dominated. How many books do you read a year? Let me know, especially if you are based in Malaysia. Can we prove this statistic wrong?

Even if you’re not Malaysian, please try out the poll below (it’s anonymous) and add your comment as well, if you’d like to share more details about what you are reading or if you have views about reading. I am really curious now to get a sense of how much people are reading - all the more interesting in today’s world of video games and home entertainment centres. Are Fusion View visitors more likely to read books or less so?

I’ll review the results in a couple of weeks and report back.

PS. Elizabeth couldn’t confirm when the article on Fusion View would appear in The Star - if you are based in Malaysia, can you keep an eye out for it and let me know when it comes out? I’m curious, naturally, to know what the article says.

A young British-born Chinese guy based in London contacted me last week to tell me about his British Chinese Blog at http://british-chinese.blogspot.com/. He has posts on happenings in the news from a British Chinese perspective. He’s only just started out so let’s give him lots of support.

Photo from British Chinese Blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I also came across Vicky Lee Wei Kay’s Irish-born Chinese blog at http://kaykays.com/. Vicky blogs about Chinese interest issues as well but this time from an Irish perspective. She has a forum/ messageboard on her site and is building a great network/ community.

Photo from Vicky’s flickr profile.

Some of my best friends are Canadians. I love their sense of humour and self-deprecating wit. This Film Monday, we have two films for the price of one.

The first one is an ad for Molson Beer from a few years ago. It’s funny and charming in itself.

—————-

—————-

The second one is William Shatner, outer space heart-throb, doing a parody of the Molson ad. And, yes, amazing, I didn’t know he was Canadian either…

—————-

—————-

Disclosure: I used to be a Trekkie when I was seven. My mum adored William Shatner with his golden hair and tan and we all used to watch Star Trek together. Jean-Luc Picard and even Capt Jannaway just don’t have that same hammy sex appeal!