Archive for the 'Highlights from Previous Posts' Category

Marina Mahathir, the internationally respected Malaysian writer and journalist, circulated an email to Malaysian bloggers for International Womens Day. She writes, “March 8 is International Women’s Day. In solidarity with women all over the world, we would like to invite all Malaysian women bloggers ( and pro-women men bloggers) to celebrate this special day by appending the attached IWD logo and linking your blogsite to the IWD website (this is a condition of using the logo) at http://www.internationalwomensday.com. We would also like you to dedicate a post (or more) to yourself, the women in your lives or simply to ruminate on the state of women today. Let’s do it collectively and simultaneously on March 8.”

This post is dedicated to the eldest daughters who came before me.

My Grandma, my Mum’s mother, had always been for me a strong, dignified presence in the family. We did not always see eye to eye and as a girl, I sulked whenever she tried to correct my posture whenever I slouched. But I always loved and respected her and loved to hear the stories she would tell about her childhood in China, the clever eldest daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She passed on that love of storytelling to my Mum, her eldest daughter, who also filled my childhood with stories about her own childhood, about our family and also about the books she had read and the films she had seen.

I did not know my Great-Grandmother very well although she lived till I was a young teenager. She spoke Teochew, a dialect of Chinese that I did not speak and I was most comfortable communicating in English. The strongest image I have of her is the story that Grandma told me of how her mother was a young girl washing clothes in a river in China when my Great-Grandfather, a young man studying at the nearby seminary, came upon her while on a walk with his friends. Their eyes met across the dancing waters and well, here we all are, generations later.

I found this photo below of the four eldest daughters. On the far left is my mother, aged 24 at the time. Next to her is my Great-Grandmother, Grandma’s mother, who would have been around 80 then. Then there’s Grandma in the polka dot cheong sam, aged 49. Finally, there is me - just under 1 year old then. Today, I am not far off the age Grandma was at the time of the photo - but still slouching, I’m afraid.

Grandma loved this photo of us all and she would often look at it with me over the years. She would say to me, “You are the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter.” It makes me feel proud still.

Here are some pics from the Readings event on the Saturday afternoon, when I had the privilege of reading my work alongside talented, local writers.

Pic 4: With Sharanya Mannivanan, poet, and Eric Forbes
Pic 5: With Wong Pui Nam, celebrated playwright; Shan Mughalingam, well-known writer and his friend Christina
Pic 6: With Ted Mahsun, writer and blogger and his friend, Amina
Pic 7: With Mike, journalist for The Star and blogger
Pic 8: With Sharon Bakar, literary hub of the KL writing scene and Chet, writer
Pic 9: Reading from my work in progress

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For the first post of 2007 here on Fusion View, I interview the poet James Wood who recently downshifted from a high-octane life in London to the more peaceful and arty setting of Edinburgh to devote more time to his poetry.

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You can listen to the interview using the grey podcast-player at the end of this post.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes - click on the lavender logo just here.

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James also reads from his poem “Thursday” which is published for the first time here on Fusion View:

Thursday

A man walks out of a station to meet his friends,
Not expecting anything - he’s not hungry or thirsty,
The late summer sky is overcast, but that’s OK.
Cars move past, people are shopping, glasses on the tables

And newspapers in their stands. “How nice to see you”-
But it’s not them. It’s her, her from long ago,
When he’d had half a mind to have a life
So different from what he’d cursed, then inherited.

And all the shapely body no tittle gone astray
Is what comes to mind as he tries and fails
To force himself to look into her eyes, says all the wrong
Things too quickly, too slow in getting in there

With that suggested coffee and quick chat
About old times, or what about dinner? Then, like a fairy
From a child’s play-book, she slips away
And his friends appear. Laughter, forks and glasses follow-

They smile and talk about their house prices and careers
Or where they’re going on holiday. He looks
For her to come back past the station, but she doesn’t,
So he sits and waits. Now he’s been waiting for years.

copyright James Wood 2006

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James has kindly donated three copies of his book The Theory of Everything for the Fusion View prize draw, open to all Fusion View email subscribers. To find out how to win a copy, click here.

If you can’t wait and want buy a copy of The Theory of Everything, go to the website of his publishers www.happenstancepress.com. All profits go to the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund.

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Listen Now:

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Poet James Wood has donated three signed copies of his new poetry collection “The Theory of Everything” for the Fusion View prize draw.

Click here, to find out more about James Wood and listen to my podcast interview with him.

Three winners will be picked at random from the list of email subscribers to Fusion View. To get a chance to win a copy of James’s book, subscribe to this blog. Subscribe now.

Subscription is free and you will receive free email notifications once a week with the latest updates on this blog. You will automatically be entered into the prize draw to win a copy of “The Theory of Everything” and also all future prize draws (unless otherwise stated). For more about how to subscribe/ unsubscribe and my subscription policy,click here.

The closing date for this prize draw is Friday 16 February 2007. You can still subscribe after that date and you will automatically be entered into the next prize draw.

Please read the Rules of the prize draw below.

Yes, please enter me into the prize draw - I want to subscribe now. Click here to subscribe now.

The Rules for the prize draw
1. The closing date for this draw is 16 February 2007. Within two weeks of that date, 3 winners will be picked at random from the list of subscribers.
2. I will notify the winners by separate emails and ask for your name and land address to which to send the prize. I will be entitled to assume that the name and address given is the name and address of the winning subscriber and I will not knowingly post the prize to any other person.
3. When I receive a winner’s land address, I will post the prize to them and delete their land address from my records.
4. I will post the name of the winners on this blog (but not the land address or email address) .
5. I will not enter into any other correspondence or discussion regarding the winners or regarding this or any prize draw and my decision on the winners and prizes is final. You may not substitute the prize offered for anything else.
6. I will post the prizes by the public postal system. I am not liable for any acts or omissions of the postal services in the UK or any other country.
7. Where the address is not in the UK, I am not liable for any taxes, duties, or customs or excise or import requirements that may be applicable in the country of receipt nor for ensuring compliance with any other laws, including but not limited to laws relating to copyright, censorship or any other matters that may arise regarding or in connection with the prize. These remain the liability of the recipient and it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure compliance with the laws of their country.
8. By subscribing / entering this prize draw, you are confirming to me that you are over 18 or that you are over 13 and have the permission of your parent or guardian to subscribe/ enter this draw.
9. Your email address will remain on the subscription list (unless you unsubscribe) and will be entered into all future prize draws (unless otherwise stated). For my subscription policy, click here.

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The 1950s was a golden age of repertory theatre in the UK. That was a time when an actor might be playing Shakespeare one week while rehearsing for a Noel Coward play the next week and audiences might see Laurence Olivier in the lead role one night and as the second spear carrier the next night. It was also a key transition point as John Osbourne’s kitchen sink drama Look Back in Anger burst onto the scene to the challenge the established expectation of what theatre should be about. What was it like working as an actor at that important time in English theatre?

This is a special Fusion View podcast for the London Theatre Blog. To hear first hand about life in the theatre in the 1950s, I’ve coaxed actor Walter Plinge out of retirement to tell us about his experiences in repertory theatre during that golden age.

You can listen to the podcast interview by clicking on the grey player at the end of this post.

Or, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes.

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The London Theatre Blog was created by Andrew Eglinton and is full of information, reviews and opinions about all aspects of theatre, with a special focus on the London theatre scene. To find out more, go to www.londontheatreblog.co.uk.

Photo: scene from Look Back in Anger, thanks to www.gre enspot.info

Listen Now:

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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

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.

I was listening to The Food Programme on Radio 4 the other day and they had two experts on who were debating heatedly about the date when the potato first came to England. They also featured a Slovenian group of Chefs called The Association for the Recognition of Saute Potatoes and Onions as a Main Dish, who travelled round Europe to Potato Festivals cooking up their signature dish. Having a preference for rice generally, I had no idea that people could get so passionate about potatoes.

And then I started thinking about all the recipes that I knew for different types of potato dishes and realised that, for someone who claims to be not so fond of potatoes, I knew quite a number dishes involving the spud. So here is the first in a series of posts all to do with potatoes.

This is a recipe I invented one frosty November lunchtime. It was a Saturday and I was reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, revelling in the heat and atmosphere of the Deep South, while outside, it was grey and chilly. By lunchtime, I was starving and longing for something hot and warming that I could cook and eat quickly so I could get back to my book.

We looked in the fridge and there was very little food. Damn. I needed to go to the supermarket later that afternoon. In the meantime, there was some cheese, a few peppers and onions, a few slices of ham and frozen chips. Everything apart from the frozen chips were ideal for pizza - but I couldn’t be bothered to get the flour out and make the base.

Wait. What about chip-pizza?

1. Lay out the frozen chips on a baking tray as you would normally
2. Sprinkle on top of the chips chopped peppers and onions (and in fact, any vegetable that would go well on pizza) - and garlic
3. Tear up and sprinkle the pieces of ham on top (or any other meat that you might put on pizza eg salami, pepperoni etc)
4. Grate the cheese (cheddar works well) and spread evenly over the top of it all
5. Bake in a medium oven for 30-40 mins

When you take it out, you will have melted bubbling cheese over the chips and pizza ingredients. Serve with tomato ketchup a la Jackson Pollock squirted all over the tasty pile.

You could bake the chips bare for 20 mins first to get them a bit browner and then take them out and action items 2-4 above. Then put it all back in for another 10-15 mins.

Either way, you end up with a quick, yummy dish that’s great to eat on your own or for sharing with friends (especially while watching a DVD at home) - but hideously naughty if you are worried about your figure…!

My father has recently been inspired into a spate of creative activity. He submitted a Fusion Story a little while back, about his first experience of coming to study in England. He is of that generation of men - particularly in the Chinese tradition - who were never encouraged to share personal moments publicly. And he has never been known to write much creatively. So I am really touched that recently, he has been sharing his personal reminiscences with us in writing - and really proud of him.

This piece about his grandmother also gives us a flavour of a Malaya of a different time - before the freeways and high rise buildings and Starbucks.

He writes:

My earliest memory of Grandmother was when I was four or five when we moved to Cheras. I had gone with her to clean the house before the family moved in. Some day she would buy durians from the Malay vendors who came with a huge basket of the fruits stacked on the back of his bicycle. We would eat them squatting at the front door. She was very fond of durians.

In the little garden in the front of the Cheras house there was a pomegranate tree to which she seemed very attached. She would water it with water which had been used to clean fish and would hang empty crab-shells on the branches because they would help the tree. It seldom bore fruit and when it did she was very pleased with it.

She doted on his grandsons and I think particularly me. She would make sure to buy Nyonya kuih from the Indian vendor who would come around with his 2 huge baskets on a pole across his shoulder hawking his wares. And very often he had a pot containing assam curry with a charcoal stove underneath it - for making assam laksa. A word about this Indian gentleman. He was already quite old then, I would say at a guess about 50 years. He would carry these two baskets and the pot and walked many miles a day to sell his food. It must really be a very hard life. I still remember his gaunt but cheerful face wearing a brown felt hat like an inverted flower pot. He would disappear every now and then for 3 months or so and then he would appear again saying that he had gone back to India.

There are two things which Grandmother wanted me to do which caused me some pain - as little boys would have when they are asked to do things which caused them to stand out amongst their peers. The first was to part my hair on the right side because she said that if I used the left side all the time, the hair along the line would drop out. The second was to wear braces to hold up my shorts. It was, of course, a sensible thing to do but little boys did not do sensible things when the others do not do it. I can’t remember how I got her to allow me to revert back to normal. May be I complained to Mother who must have stepped in.

She would tell very earthy stories to AHC and I heard some of them which I can still remember but it is not suitable for re-telling as my secretary types all my letters.

When Mother went out with Father she would bring back Hokkien mee about 11.00 at night and Grandmother would eat the mee with me in the bedroom. As far as I can remember my brother BT never joined in the eating. Was it because of my known greedy nature that I was that she woke me up. Grandmother was full of common sense and it was she who told us that Queen Victoria had lots of children whom she married off to all the royal houses in Europe and thus she was related to them making the likelihood of disputes or war less likely. (Although it did not prevent the First World War.)

I had always thought she had a noble face with good cheekbones and bone structure. She did not chew betel nut but she smoked self-rolled cigarettes but did not have the dirty habits of the smoker. I remember using up my savings of Japanese paper money to buy her, just before the Japanese surrender, tobacco in packets and the cigarette paper.

Later on when we were in secondary school she lived in the Imbi Road temple and we would see her when we visited the temple on the first and fifteenth day of the Chinese month and other feast days of the Gods. Still later on when she lived on top of the dispensary we would see her on Friday evenings after going to the Rex and Madras cinemas.

She was so effacing that she would not stay with anyone of us for fear of disturbing our lives. I remember saying to myself on her death which occurred on a Saturday that she is so understanding that she would not want to inconvenience anyone and have them to take leave to come to her funeral.

Written by Guestblogger: Ooi Boon-Leong

As part of my series on Getting Published, I spoke to UK Literary Agent Lucy Luck about the process of submitting your manuscript for publication. She gives her advice and answers questions emailed by Fusion View readers and listeners about how a literary agent can help an author, what to put in your covering letter, what’s hot in the publishing world right now and much more.

Listen to our conversation using the embedded player below.

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Or, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes.

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If you would like to submit your manuscript to Lucy, go to her webpage at www.lucyluck.com - please mention Fusion View in your covering letter.

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To enable as many of my readers and listeners to benefit from Lucy’s advice, this post will headline Fusion View until Thursday 24 August 2006 8.30am (GMT+1) when the next post will be uploaded.