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As with my post on the (all-too-recent!) , this is a summary of links on the Singapore government- and establishment-led inaccurate characterising of dissent as traitorous behaviour, and thus of activists, artists and independent journalists and scholars who express dissent as traitors to Singapore. If I've missed anything meaty, please let me know. The information here was last updated on 13 October 2019.

It began when news broke that a Yale-NUS enrichment programme, "Disse...

I've had a crazy-busy-unstoppable week that involved the fantastic , a little downtime in Nashville, then coming back to Boston to move apartments---in the midst of which, every morning I woke up to find that my phone had exploded with the latest (and increasingly ridiculous) developments in what I'm going to call the brownface saga in Singapore.

As the title of this blog post states, Singapore wonders: is brownface racist?

The longer version: In 2019, in the midst of...

(Picture from January 2019.)
Today, I handed in the last piece of new fiction I'll write as part of my MFA programme. My first hand-in was on September 9 last year. In the seven months in between, I've written eight short stories from scratch and 50 first-draft pages of my novel. One of my stories won the , for which I still feel very lucky. Another story is out on submission, and there are a few more I'll revise over the summer.

Other achievements of this period:
Surviving a dry-but-still-very-cold Boston winter with the aid of solid winter boots (thank you, ) and all manner of Uniqlo Heat Tech garments.Managing several winter hikes (snow, ice and all), thanks to the abovementioned winter boots. I wish I'd squeezed in a few more before the snow all melted.Learning not to overthink (still learning; my website domain name still stands).Coping with the unexpected volleys life throws at you.Making friends in the MFA classroom---and in unexpected places beyond.Mastering the comma before the independent clause.
Meanwhile, the magnolias are flowering, and the daffodils are coming up, whether in flower beds or as part of the  project. It's like a switch flipped in the ground after the spring equinox. I have to start paying attention to flowers and learning the different species again (I was doing it in the fall, until there were no more leaves to help me make identifications on ).

I still have plenty of writing to do over the summer. The MFA creative thesis requires...

I've been in Boston for two weeks and in my apartment for one. It's been a little unreal, living between identities: no more in work-writing mode, not quite in tourist/traveller mode, not yet an MFA student proper; away from Singapore, yet not familiar enough with Boston to avoid mixing up Beacon, Brookline and Boylston Streets. Living in interstitial spaces: a comfortable but soulless Airbnb room for a week (add that to your list of ), then a small apartment that I spent the last week pulling together--diligently, deliberately making it over into a place where I can live and write.


How to ease entry into Boston when moving on one's own:
Move a couple of weeks before the annual hellish moving extravaganza (because the vast majority of Boston apartments turn over on September 1)---before the Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond stores are overrun with anxious parents and their antagonistic freshman-offspring, before the internet installation services are all booked out, before the banks and mobile phone service shops are tied up with international students needing new accounts.Walk everywhere. If nothing else, one soon figures out which road is which and which road leads to where (I quite like the fact that Boston isn't on a perfect grid).Have a helpful property manager who has a stockpile of Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons and other handy neighbourhood tips.Price things by going to shops and taking notes---which confirmed, for instance, that when it comes to Asian groceries, H Mart is indeed more expensive than Super 88, which is more expensive than C Mart (which also sells refrigerated   that one can re-steam at home, be still my beating heart!).Have a friend who's lived in Boston for years, and is helpful with money-saving/dollar-stretching tips and adept at karang guni'ing stuff.Also have a friend-of-a-friend who generously handed down a kitchen's worth of barely used household items even though we've never met.Trawl Facebook Marketplace obsessively every few hours for apartment stuff. Buy only what one needs, not all the cute/unusual/quirky/amazing stuff that's out there.

Unexpectedly, what I've often thought of as the Singapore-honed skill of spotting where the shade is and sticking to it has come in handy in Boston. It's been fiercely sunny almost every day, and this week it's been 30ºC and up, with a heat index of 37ºC to 40ºC, according to the National Weather Service. I even had to buy sunscreen.

I know it won't last, the weather, this limbo. University stuff starts on Thursday, classes start on Monday, I have to write a complete short story for one class...

Dusting this off to say: I’m moving to Boston. Next month. To work on an MFA in creative writing. At Boston University. For a year and a bit. During which I hope to finish my novel as well.

Obviously, I don't remember how to blog anymore.

I haven’t touched my novel since Xmas because of work and I miss it dreadfully, as I’ve been saying to anyone who asks. Don’t ask me when it’ll be published, I need to finish the manuscript first.

Other things that excite me about Boston: the Boston Public Libr...

At Vermont Studio Center, they feed us three times a day: 7:30-9:00 am, 12:00-12:45 pm and 6:00-6:45 pm. At home I usually wake up at 8 am, but here I try to be at breakfast by 7:45 am and try not to linger beyond 8:30. I figure since the dining hall is a one-minute walk from my residence (two minutes in the morning if I have to wait at the T-junction for the elementary school buses to pass), and since the residency has freed me from the time I would spend cooking or thinking about...

I'm not one for writing obligatory New Year's posts, but I told myself this morning that I would tack something here for posterity, so here it is.

I'm going to spend the year being a "writer" writer. By which I mean I'm going to work on my novel and take on very little commercial freelance work. To that end, I'm very lucky that I've been accepted as writer-in-residence at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for six months (commencing tomorrow!), as well as at a couple other foreign residenc...

I woke up to the news that Carrie Fisher had passed away, and a thousand voices crying out online about it. Inside my head I keep hearing the solitary, soulful notes of "Luke's Theme" from the soundtrack of the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope (the music piece officially known as"" and later, as "The Force Theme"). In my mind's eye, I see the scene from last year's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, when General Leia Organa (played by Fisher) walks slowly towards Rey a...

On vacation in Japan. Spent the day at Arashimaya, thinking about the past, the present, and future pasts and presents.


And kept running into ojisan (grandfather) types ...



Or maybe it was just me.

It's National Day next week, so naturally the government propaganda machines are working at full tilt, drumming up interest in the annual . When I saw some posters at bus stops and other public areas recently, I was surprised to see that this year's parade storyline seems to be focused on Badang, a figure from Malay folklore who was renowned for having extraordinary physical strength.

Okay, maybe not that surprised, now I think about it. In the last decade or so, official go...