singapore

My mind skipped to a sunlit Saturday morning a few months ago when Noah was supposed to be revising for his exams. I caught him looking out the window instead, distracted by a roving butterfly. __oah, you__e supposed to be studying!_ I scolded.He replied languidly, __ am! I__ studying what__ out there.

There used to be a rubbish heap under the great tree in Dhoby Ghaut with a sarabat stall parked next to it. It was a low, sprawling rubbish heap made up of the usual things__efuse from dustbins, paper, old tins and slippers and leaves from the tree above. Then one day, people forgot about it. They found a new dumping place and the old rubbish heap settled low on the ground. Time passed and its contents became warm and rich and fertile and people living in the area would take away potfuls of it to plant flowers in.Somehow, a rose cutting, slim as a cheeping chicken__ leg and almost brown, appeared on the rubbish heap one day.

The rain is a screen that changes the colour of the sky, causing a sepia filter to fall over the city. It is as if the city has gone back in time, to the age before the invention of full-coloured photographs. Light becomes suffused and quiet.

His wife had also studied art in her hometown, and she could paint, but depending on such work for her livelihood was just not possible. As far as appearances went, she was definitely a real beauty. When she was young, she looked a little like Gong Li, but now that she was middle-aged, she had put on weight and gradually taken on more of a bell-shaped look, resembling Li Siqin. But no matter what, a wife always looks better than her balding, broadbellied husband.

It was past midnight. From the carpark of the apartment blocks, a human figure with an unsteady gait emerged.

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk.

She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn__ heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.

The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a __oundless music_. It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.

Pak Karman hugged his wife__ gravestone tightly. __ou left without saying farewell!_ The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.

Brian organised for the body to be flown back.

English. That was where I met him.

For him, the kampung was a place to live and work that was based on a steadfast and intimate relationship between man and nature. The village was a true reflection of life in the tropics.

Everything has been planned. The ascent will be completed in two days_ time. He will climb another one hundred floors today. Another hundred the next day. He does not want to take the lift. The rush of life causes people to drown in the temporary. He wishes to dip into eternity before he leaves.

To assure him, Peter Lim decided that the newsroom adopt this approach: it was better to produce the best story than the first story. He had good reason. Finding scoops in a Singapore with many OB markers carried a real risk: the story was sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes had to rely on official spokesmen. But once they knew you were on the story, they either prevailed on the editors to hold it until the time was right to release it, or gave it to every newspaper. The edict went against the grain. No journalist could resist the temptation to be first with the news.

I like to see you in a sari, with your long hair dressed in a single plait. Don't forget that I married a girl from India because I like my wife to be conservative and feminine.

In a few years, it is very likely that this series will be considered a milestone in the history of Singapore photography.

Looking at Loh__ photographs, it is obvious that there is nothing simpler and richer than a face when stripped of all effects and affects, poses and postures, stances and pretences. The Singaporeans featured here are almostexpressionless, as if the photographer wanted to leave us clueless about them. What do their faces tell us? Why are they so familiar? Why do we feel we know this auntie that we don__ know? And this guy with the nondescript look? And this girl with no distinguishing mark? Have we met before?

The sensation of the ocean bearing my weight was the most carefree lightness I__ ever experienced. When we were halfway across the strait, the sound of an engine approached from a distance__t was probably the police coast guard. We quickly ducked under the surface of the water, exposing only the tips of our trunks so we could breathe.