Findings, vol. 4
Postcards from Singapore + letters new and old + readings + joy, wherever it is found.
Hello, I’m Emily, and this is a newsletter about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a rapidly changing world & our personal and collective place in it.
I was in Singapore for a few days over the Lunar New Year. Besides attending family reunions, I tried to see a bit more of the city, crisscrossing different neighborhoods. Most of all, I enjoyed being able to get around almost anywhere by public transport and on foot. It’s as hot there as it is in KL, but Singapore feels like a more walkable city, thanks to its abundant tree cover—the city has been doing a lot of planting over the decades (“It’s now a city in a garden, not a garden city!” my Singaporean uncle once relayed)—and sheltered walkways (also made fun of on this Facebook page; Malaysia not spared either 😆) that help you get around even if it’s too hot or raining, and I guess the ubiquitous air-conditioning wafting out of shopping centers, though that isn’t doing the environment any favors. A friend recently said that it all feels too manicured, too curated, for her liking, and I can sort of see what she means: there is a designed wildness about it all… but, I like it? Especially the dense green creeping up the hulking elongated-H concrete trestles of road bridges? Certainly, it appeals to something Ballardian in my imagination. In KL’s urban areas, you often find beautiful craggy trees lopped off, sometimes for suspicious reasons and sometimes apparently so they won’t block the facade of a building—what? But it’s the stumps that mar the view, cast a building more flatly against the sky, its facade undappled by plays of shadow and light usually filtered through dancing foliage. When I was growing up I disliked Singapore, because all I knew of it came from following my parents or relatives around, waiting for them to finish their social rounds or their errands. (That time with family feels formative and precious now, but back then I dreaded the routine and the repetition 😅) It wasn’t until about a decade ago when I started to experience Singapore more independently that I grew to appreciate it as a place, for what makes it different from KL—just as I appreciate KL for what makes it different from Singapore, though it would surely be more livable with more integrated public transport and more trees!
On a shift I’ve been feeling in my writing, with some thoughts on journalism. I’m hoping this will set the tone for my 2024.
1/ Worried that by the time I got back to KL, Abang Adik, a Malaysian film by Jin Ong, would no longer be screening, I went to watch it at The Projector, an indie cinema in Singapore housed in an old cinema inside the Golden Mile Tower, with all the delightful kitsch that vintage entails. They have an eclectic mix of east and west in their programming, and they re-run old classics! And yes, Abang Adik is as good as everybody says. I have mild reservations about what I felt was some contrivance in the plot, but still I think it’s one of the best Malaysian movies ever made. Go watch and support!
2/ I also hurried to catch Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, the only Ghibli film I’ve seen on the big screen. I felt deeply immersed in it, right up till the end, but I can’t say that I knew immediately what to make of it. I still don’t, and I’ve avoided reading reviews or criticism so I can take time to figure it out for myself. I do love, though, how his creatures manage to be cute or whimsical yet diabolical at the same time: like that heron, and the nasally little duck man it seems to swallow and lets surface from time to time? They linger with me. (Also, if you haven’t already, watch this documentary detailing Miyazaki’s creative process.)
3/ I’m still making my way through some of the books I mentioned in my last Findings digest. But having finished John Wyndham’s Trouble with Lichen (1960 novel) and Elise Hu’s Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital (nonfiction), which, serendipitously, dovetail quite well together, I think I’ve got a letter about anti-aging and the age-old pursuit of beauty brewing…
4/ I’ve started on Vanessa Chan’s The Storm We Made, set against the Japanese Occupation, a period I once researched in depth as part of a series of historical documentaries for Nat Geo and History Asia. I’m also potentially looking to read a couple of other works of fiction set during this epoch, particularly from Malaysia and Singapore, so if you have any recommendations, please share.
5/ A book I’m still reading that has rewired my brain in a small but perceptible way is Kate Zambreno’s Drifts. I was similarly feeling like I was in a writing rut, had started taking comfort in the minutiae and little animals, and didn’t know if what I wanted to say was necessary compared to what is happening in the world. This book of autofiction unlocked something cerebrally and emotionally for me, in a way I don’t think it would have at a different time.
Sometimes, I’m partial to a cafe simply because of the arrangement of a particular perch—such as this inside-outside nook for two 💛
For now, only for readers based in Malaysia as I’ll be sending it out by post.
Whoever first replies to this email to claim it, will have it!
… if not the dogs, then other animals we share our world with. Even if some are common sights, I want to learn to name them, to better name my surroundings.
At a coffee stop one afternoon, a Javan Mynah—a juvenile, I think; it looked to have a youthful, lurching amble—came really close to us, looking for crumbs. An omnivore that is highly adaptable to different environments, it was completely unafraid of people! Brought to Singapore in the 1920s via the pet trade, it is now the most common bird in the city, having led to the decline of other species such as its close cousin the Common Mynah, which is differentiated by the yellow patch of skin around its eyes. Its Malay name—Gembala-Kerbau Sawah Jawa—hints at where else it would have been found, in the paddy fields of Java as a “buffalo herder”. Are they the ones perched on top of buffaloes, pecking the insects off their backs?
Another morning, we watched a flock of Javan Mynahs battling a flock of larger crows for more human leftovers. One of the crows, though, had a marked penchant for the sugar cubes you might drop into your coffee. They were encased in transparent plastic, but that presented no obstacle. I watched as the crow held the tiny packet against the back of a chair with both feet, pecked it right open.
E.
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I find Singapore to be the antithesis of KL. Malaysia is still wild and deeply flawed in a human kind of way. While Singapore represents order out of chaos, and structured design out of nature.
Other than the weather, Singapore is one of the more livable human habitats in the world. And unlike Dubai, Singapore has at it's heart charm and personality, and not just new buildings.
Like Dubai of twenty years ago, most westerners don't know Singapore from Newark New Jersey. Which I suppose is a good thing. But the rest of ASEAN knows it, and that explains why housing costs are through the roof. Being an island doesn't help, but being clean, safe and economically stable adds to Singapore's luster.
Keep writing your postcards. They are a great way for a writer to process what you are going through.
Rene Jax
extremely thorough!