The NUS Literary Society Magazine

As the residual dust of examinations is swept away by time, I found myself questioning what needs to be done next. It is not a particularly difficult question as everyone would advise finding a job or planning activities for the society. While those could be enjoyable pursuits, it is too hectic to launch myself into a buzz of activity straight after my exams. In the midst of utter frustration, I realised that the Olympics are around the corner – now that is something that would bring me some degree of pleasure.

I have to confess that my enjoyment of sports is merely relegated to watching a couple of racquet sports. But what really intrigues me about the games would be how it has a sort of enchantment that turns the most stoic among us into a boisterous critic; yelling at the stupidity of the players for not being able to return a rather easy shot. Whether one sees it as a spectacle of sporting achievement and unity or as a flimsy veil that is entrenched in politics, the Olympics certainly has a hold on most of us and the spirit of competition can never be greater.

Now wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a stadium full of people cheering our writers when they recited their literary works? Well, if we could build a time machine, it would no longer remain in the fertile recesses of our imagination for the modern Olympic games from the start of the 1900s to the 1940s did include artistic events such as poetry, drama, painting, sculpture, music and architecture.

While a re-enactment of such events would merely be a foray into speculative fiction for us, we at Symbal firmly believe that we should celebrate the courageous few who dared to present their works for scrutiny and to compete with their peers. Hence, it is with great pride that I present to you our very own version of a literary Olympics – the winners of the Creative Writing Competition 2011! Many thanks go to Aaron Maniam and Alfian Sa’at for judging the poetry and prose categories respectively.

As for you readers, I can assure you that you will not be disappointed if you were to run this race with us and click through the works. An open mind with an enthusiasm for the power of words will leave you greatly rewarded when you finish this race – Symbal Issue Two.

Isaac Tan

Executive Editor

3^rd May 2012

Convenience

When you both agreed to sleep in separate rooms,

each relegated like guilt, lust, or some other regret

to a shelf of capillaries, the heart’s

coded pulse, the life built, then broken

to mimic compromise—when that vow was born

I couldn’t tell the difference. Either,

or both, pointed fingers at the snoring like

it was a puppet we propped against the door and

shot with pellets, the rhythm of achievement

rude in our ears—how rain, unstrung,

meant a good night’s sleep. That night

it probably didn’t rain, or it leaked a little,

or it poured like freedom down mature,

wedded minds, uncoiled from each

other, accomplished, adult minds

sleeping in separate rooms. All I knew

was it didn’t matter to the rest of our family,

not the help, not Grandma who commissioned

your hand in marriage, not that ambiguous weather

or that boy of fifteen, already asleep.

Jerrold Yam Jun Jie

1^st Place

Bei Feng

I don’t often acknowledge power and authority.

But here,

By the north-faced window of a room

tiny in the turbulent strength of your majesty,

I know I’m small.

Roaring in my ears,

Your songs of legendary courage

Tell me of a wild and bitter north

Of vast black seas under cold grey skies

Of stories about the brave and silent

All immortalized and sacred

In an eternity of ice.

I don’t often acknowledge power and authority.

Yet here,

Nothingness in the infinity of your breath,

I concede.

Yeo Yong Seng

2^nd Place

Dreamcatcher

Morning comes, you start to stir

I look at you and then I’m sure

I’ve been down this road before

Then pushed away, kicked out the door

In your light, I shrink, but darkness, I bask

You drew me in, gave me this mask

I ask of you to remain the same

I relish the hunt, live for the game

With my shadow alone I twirl

Be not a boy, be not a girl

The wings you’ve grown are black and broken

So fly, be free, but be unspoken

And when you think you’ve seen the key

Then, my angel, come back to me

I see you wallow in her pity

Do you sense the absurdity?

I collect and count your sorrows and sins

In your favourite game where no one wins

It’s not like you to be afraid

To hide behind your masquerade

So come, sweetheart, show me your face

In your repent I seek solace

Hidden in the petals, a lone thorn

Look, my love, a child is born

But be careful where you tread

One wrong step, the child is dead

I felt the ground shaking before we met

And I knew you were never a threat

But honey, if what they say is true

Then I’m going to Hell with you.

Alexis Chen Weiqi

3rd Place

Seventeen

We construct ourselves like moth’s wings,

Fuse snowflake scales onto our bones

To tuck our marrow away from the cold.

We gravitate towards flickering flames;

too close our wings melt like rain

into the sand of the shore

where things beyond us meet,

where I first met you dancing

freely

around the bonfire.

Koh Jia Ren

Hwa Chong Institution

Honourable Mention

Symbiont

For hours in its withered palm, both rivals

and conspirators, the host in each other

is unacknowledged. Your body perches

on the curious, geometric triangle

drawn by my legs, my arms straddling the bird

in your chest like seatbelts. I feel your sparse, desert hair

grazing my chin, this harvest of padded cloths

not yet its mother’s image, not weight

enough for gratifying sunsets or their

watercolour crimes, their slick interrogations

with furniture. At the hospital your skin

flakes like our favourite spot

in front of the TV, velvety-plastic, my fingers

are running through its debris with all the tenderness

of regret, sifting its cancerous snow for hints,

for what to do and how to keep surviving. The elder child

must take the lead, it is the pencil for scrawling vows,

nothing has changed. Mom tells me all that happens

happens for a reason, reason

slipping through my fingers in the wet of discarded prayers

on nights like this, when I believe, a secret

tattoo, your body seared like burn marks

against my chest, our limbs collapsing in wonder,

this flesh-forged sanctum, this architecture of hope.

Jerrold Yam Jun Jie

Honourable Mention

11.11.11

When your voice soars from its eddying seat,

the reheated dishes are unamused. Moonlight

overtakes the table, hospital white in jest,

it is hoping even surprises have deadlines.

That gelato shop, you persist, eyes

reddening from asking too much

of the present, or Mei Mei’s favourite

carrot cake—it is a very special date, no?

I imagine our family’s history rolled

out, beaten like dough, this instant

our faces brewing in personal enclosures,

once a millennium, too soon expired.

Jerrold Yam Jun Jie

Honourable Mention

Last July I Had A Dream

Last July I had a dream

of a winter night that was

a charcoal cat with starry eyes

glistening like drops of dew

clinging to the underside

of a tattered maple leaf

redolent with the scent of you.

Ng Qingyang

Honourable Mention

Stuck

Mad gestures, obsidian eyes
bright like clear jelly wobbling, slow and
unfocused. That escape from the cognitive mode
of experience, release from that accidental moment of being
shut forth like sticky envelopes never to be opened.
Sealed, clammed shut, a collage of icy smiles
their voices ever resonant, sunlight trickles, drips and
engulfs.

Waking, sleeping, speaking on land but
bubbling helplessly with white noise,
the static that carries the underwater.

Tan Qian Li

Honourable Mention

For Those Lost In Transit

It’s the fish that break

the surface and gasp for air

to drown.

Embroidery ripped from its seams,

it’s fabric unraveling

into wisps of strands stranded in the wind.

It’s the people stolen from our midst.

Breathing in the bittersweet of receding dreams

we collide into the morning as those who have never known the Sun.

Kind eyes with vacant gazes are empty places.

With faces hardened

we learn how to run in the rain.

Koh Jia Ren

Hwa Chong Institution

Honourable Mention

Prognosis

She undresses, eases into the recliner, arms

spilling past its rim, an eager experiment.

Ennobled hands are hiking the mountain

of her inhibitions, as if finding a home

in its vulnerability, spreading gel thick

as placenta. Instruments clink and tinker

their own rituals. On the screen, an image

swells like a ghost, miraculously efficient,

the fruit of compromise not needing to raise

its voice, its arms, not crying, strangely

not at fault for deserving attention.

It shakes your hand in your mind

as the real one, trembling after happiness,

locks itself in your husband’s like an oath,

you can feel his pulse mingling, snug

in joy’s familiar profits. And your eyes

glaze over, underwater vows pushing to

break the surface, the doctor is giving us

a moment and my parents stare

at the image, at each other, kids

in a museum. They embrace.

Irreverent tales are whispered

the way kids scratch oaths into palms

and promise never to do wrong again.

Jerrold Yam Jun Jie

Honourable Mention

Any Dream Will Do

Jeffrey had just returned home from school, and by that time the food had gone cold.

“Jeff, eaten yet?”
“Yeah. Ate dinner with my friends.”

He dropped his schoolbag at the door, and slumped onto the sofa. The TV, a cantankerous plastic box of twenty, was extolling the virtues of detergents and hand cleaners. His mother shuffled into the kitchen. A porcelain spoon clinked into a bowl, and she came back out again, a bowl of soup in her hands.

“Next time, don’t come back so late. Study is important, but don’t forget to have dinner.”

“Okay, Ma.”

She put it beside him, and he nodded appreciatively. The TV went back to its usual: a drama serial of everyday life, as they were supposed to know it. His mother sat down to watch. Their homes, those shown daily on the TV screens, were unlike theirs. Large enough to afford space between the sofas and coffee tables, with room for the actors to give a performance of shouts and cries and screams.

“I make dinner every day, the least you and your father can do is to come back early-”

“Ma, it’s not like I don’t come back at all.”

“Ya, but outside food is no good for your health.” She pushed the bowl towards him, “I cooked some soup for you, drink it.”

He looked at it. Black pieces of boiled-down chicken and the swollen red shapes of wolfberries floated beneath the oily surface, and the heady smell of broth grabbed him in its embrace. He put it aside. A thin column of steam rose into the air.

“Back then, no such thing as going out late. Your great-grandmother would catch whoever who didn’t turn up at dinner. Not that anyone dared-”

“Ma, things are different now. Pa has to work, I have to study. How can we come back so early?”

She seemed to see the point in this, and sighed to herself.

“True,” she said, “Everyone wasn’t so busy then. But how can you get by without money? Last week, when I was at the market-”

“Ma, I’m going to study.”

He reached for his bag, but his mother held him back with a flurry of her hands.

“Wait, I’m not done yet. Drink your soup, I boiled it specially for you.”

He took the bowl. “I’ll drink it in my room.”

“Don’t do that. Drink it here, while it’s still hot.”

He took a sip. The broth seeped into the corners of his gums, overpowering with the gummy taste of chicken fat, each drop wrung from the desiccated meat. He tried not to gag, and downed another mouthful.

“Not so fast. Slowly, slowly-”

He left the dregs. His mouth was still bitter with the aftertaste of herbs and ginseng. But as soon as he put the bowl down, his mother whisked it away into the kitchen.

“I’ll get some more for you-”

“No need, Ma. I’m full.”

She gave him the bowl, all the same, and ushered him into his room. A bed was cramped in a corner, and under the shuttered windows a desk, heaped with books and papers. Jeff switched on the fan.

“So warm in here, let me open the windows-”

“I’ll do it myself, don’t worry-”

The windows opened, and fluorescent light flooded in from the common corridor. His mother switched on the lights.

“You know, back in those days, we were poor, but we had everything we needed. No air-con, TV, Mercedes and all that. We got by on what we had-”

“Ma,” he said, “Things are different. You can’t expect society to change and people to stay the same.”

“I know, but how’s your father supposed to come back early? One month’s bill costs more than a hundred dollars, and I don’t even use that much.”

“Don’t look at me, I don’t even know-”

Jeff scribbled a bit into his foolscap paper, and stopped. His mother continued to stand in the doorway, lit by the dim yellow lights behind her.

“Won’t disturb you now. Go ahead and study.”

The TV was still on in the living room. A travelogue was airing: this time about the gardens of Yunnan, a departure from the snowy landscapes of Seoul. Jeff pushed the door flat – his mother hadn’t bothered to close it – but the tinny tour guide’s voice kept coming in through the doorjamb. He tried a few more times, left it alone, and turned up the fan.

Maybe when you’re older, his mother used to tell him, when you have a job and can afford to bring us old folks on a holiday. But to him, the hills and flowers were just an image on a screen, while his homework and test papers were there, real, in front of him. He couldn’t be sure of what they said, especially if it came from the TV in the living room.

The voice stopped for a commercial break, and Jeff peeked out from the door. His mother hadn’t kept the dishes yet. He stepped out of his room. It was eight-thirty.

“Ma, you want me to call him for you?”

“No need, he should be back soon. You know he doesn’t always pick up his phone.”

The phone was on the table, the receiver placed neatly on the hook. The travelogue started up again. Jeff felt like going over and switching off the damned thing.

“Ma, why do you watch these shows? It’s not like we’ll ever go there-”

“It’s good to learn more about the world,” she said, hardly taking her eyes off the screen, “And don’t think that you’ll never go there. As long as you study hard-”

“Study hard, study hard,” he said, spitting out the words “Li Ming, De Hui. They didn’t even get in-”

“But that’s what you retook the year for. Is it so hard for you?”

He dropped onto the armrest. The sofa squeaked.

“Yeah, but I don’t know if the university will accept me. Once they see my score-”

“Once they see your score, they’ll know how hard you’ve worked for it. They’ll give you a place. I’m sure of it.”

Jeff fumed. His mother hadn’t gotten the point. They’d look at his score, and they’d reject him on the spot. He might then apply to the nearby poly, but he had no thought of doing so. He could have went there a long time ago, instead of ending up second to a guy with a degree. Another commercial broke the silence, and his mother turned to face him.

“Why so upset?”

“How about Pa? Doesn’t he work hard enough?”

“That’s why we keep telling you-”

“-that education is the way to get ahead,” he said, “I know! But how’s it fair to him?”

“Why should it matter, fair or not fair? We’re giving you the chance to study, we want you to have a better life. What’s wrong with that?”

Jeff didn’t want to be dissuaded, not this time. His mother’s eyes went back to the TV, but he edged in closer, casting a shadow over the footworn tiles.

“What’s it? You’re blocking-“

“Why’s it always about money?” he asked, “Why’s it always about not having this or that? If you can sit here and say so much, why don’t you go and work as well?”

“Jeff!” The travelogue was back. This time, his mother didn’t even look. “I take care of you, I make sure you and your father have dinner to eat. Is that how you’re supposed to talk to me?”

“Ma, it’s just-”

“I’ve been doing this for ten over years. Do you think I like doing this? If it wasn’t for you-”

“Ma, it’s not like that-”

“If it wasn’t for you, I’ll be out of the house working, and now you and your father come home later and later. What more do you want?”

The clock ticked on, uninvolved with the squabble beneath its hands. Jeff looked away. He only wanted to clear up the matter, and ask why it was always about scrabbling after some want or achievement. But that’s how it had always been for her – scrabbling. She had scrabbled from one life to another, from the kampungs of the past to the flats of today. And when that proved to be insufficient, it became about scrabbling towards a bigger and better tomorrow, his would-be degree a part of that dream.

He retreated into his room. The voice came in through the doorjamb, softer now. It wasn’t long before a key clattered outside. The gate creaked open, and there was a pause as his father dropped his shoes outside and came in.

“Pa.”

His mother came out of the kitchen, and placed a bowl of rice on the table. His father muttered something in thanks. She made no mention of the quarrel, except with a disapproving shake of her head. His father didn’t notice.

“Hey,” He pulled a few stalks of spinach to his plate. “How’s school?”

“Okay.”

Jeff waited by the door. His father pulled out a fifty dollar note from his wallet.

“It’s for next month.”

“I don’t need so much, Pa. My exams end next week, I can find a job then.”

His father held the blue-coloured note over the table. His arm trembled over the dishes.

“I don’t want you worrying about such things,” he said, “I don’t have change. Take it.”

He took the note and folded it in his hand. It felt crisp, as though recently drawn from the ATM. His father continued eating.

“Thanks, Pa.”

He grunted. Back in his room, Jeff could hear them talking about their finances. His father was still working, Jeff was certain, but they had come up short for the month. Something about rice in the supermarket, or the price of the food in the hawker centre. It meant that something was on the rise again, and not just “the aspirations of the people”, as he had heard before. His mother started up again, and he listened in at the doorjamb.

“Ask your supervisor for a raise. He knows that you’ve a family to feed.”

“You might as well ask the others if they have a family to feed,” his father said, “Do you know how many Chong has under his roof? And that doesn’t include their maid-”

“Other people got a maid, why should it be my problem?” she said, clearing away the dishes. “We have little enough-”

“His mother lives with him. Other people’s lives are not that easy.”

The bowls and plates went into the sink. Water hissed from the tap, and his mother began to scrub.

“Then how?”

“Tighten our expenses a bit lah, don’t buy so much-”

“But I already buy the cheapest in the market. How much cheaper you want?”

His father had no reply. Nearby, the nine o’ clock serial was starting, and the programmed music tinkled through their little home. Jeff thought the same was coming from his neighbour’s window, but he kept his attention on the sounds outside his door. Finally his father said,

“I’ll look for another job. Pang knows of something I can do. Maybe he can help.”

“But how can you go out to work again? You’re not getting younger-”

“Our boy is still studying, and he must go to university. If we can’t cut back, this is what we’ll have to do.”

The plates clattered out of the sink and onto the wire rack. Another hiss washed the suds away, and his mother patted her hands dry. Jeff moved away from the door.

“Okay, okay,” she said, “We’ll cut back. Just don’t go out to work again, it’s not good for your health–”

And in the kitchen, the tap was dripping. Thud, thud – each drop drumming against the metal basin with its fall, each drop heavy with the burden of their thoughts. Their lives were dripping away, Jeff thought, and the best they could tell him was to sit by and study. Did they think that he was unable to help? Or did they think that they were shielding him from this world, until he was big and ready?

He was tired of all this. The books on his table – who said they weren’t an extension of his parents’ dreams? They knew that studying was the way to get ahead, that the rewards would go to the best and brightest. But they didn’t know that the numbers on the sheet, like the 4D numbers they watched every weekend, were not judged by the infallible eyes of heaven, but by the simple grasping methods of man. Teachers, parents, students; they were all complicit in grading a person by the scores in his hand.

He was no exception. The world held him here, in a small and stuffy room where he kept his papers and the shadows of strangers passed beneath the electric lamps. But there was somewhere else, he was sure. Somewhere real, where success was not a stream of abstractions on paper, but a reward of good and honest work – the work of his hands, the work of others. That was what he wanted, more than any bright and glorious future they could provide. He opened the door, his mind decided.

“What is it, son?”

“Pa,” he said, taking a passing glance at the TV, “I’m going to find a job.”

Tan Jian Xiang

1^st Place

In Transit

I met her in the train going up to London, when I was returning from a trip to the countryside. The weather in town, from what I gathered, had been mostly grey and depressing, but I enjoyed the cool misty showers and the grimy sidewalks littered with trash and broken bottles – they appealed to some part of me that bristled again the unnatural cleanness of a city lovingly swept at 5am by invisible hands.

I had been out the whole day, so I was bone-tired. The countryside had been lovely, but it was good to be back amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. There were so many people here in the gritty drabness of the underground. The ragged hobos, the winos, the businessmen, the teenage muggers, the beautiful women all dressed up on nothing a week. The clerks, the store assistants, the pot smokers with red eyes and messy hair. There was such a glorious mix of life in this town that appealed to me, but also repelled me at the same time with its wild unpredictability.

Such was the London I had lived in for two weeks and thoroughly admired, but from a distance. I had never dared to plunge myself full head on or go out and get drunk on the bars with my friend Toby and his girl Alice. It was not for me – I preferred the promise of a steady, predictable life back home, where things were a guarantee. London was the femme fatale of my city dreams, but then that, as Toby loved to drawl in his alcohol-slurred voice, was “cause you’ve never been to New York, you backward swine.”

When I told him I had no taste for American food, he snorted and blew rings with his cigarette smoke in my face.

Toby and Alice – they were a good pair. I was technically supposed to meet them at the station, but then Alice called and said they couldn’t make it and they were so sorry. In the background I could hear drunken shouts and people crashing into things. I figured it’d be best if I just left them to their own devices.

So while I was there on the train, a girl boarded and walked past me. She was decent looking; straight black hair that fell to her shoulders, tired eyes and slight crow’s feet. When I shifted slightly in my seat, she caught my eye and stared at me briefly. Then she gave a small, hesitant smile, and took a seat nearby.

I leaned back and started snorting through my tickets. I was thinking of planning another day trip, to Cambridge perhaps, when I felt more than heard a small cough beside me.

I looked up and saw her standing there, shyly and awkwardly, rather like a young schoolgirl.

“Yes?” I asked curiously.

She stood there for a few seconds, uncertain and insecure, then finally seated herself in the new vacated place beside me.

“Could I ask you a favour?” From her voice I could tell she was a fellow Singaporean, with that inevitable tenuous connection countrymen have when abroad.

In a resigned monotone, I clutched my wallet tightly to myself and said, a little sharply, “Sorry, no, I’m not a charity.”

She looked surprisingly hurt and somewhat annoyed. “I wasn’t going to ask you for money. I just wanted to know if you had a copy of the train schedules with you.”

“Oh.” I was instantly suspicious again. She was probably one of those elusive pickpockets with nimble, slender fingers that could pick something right out of your jacket while you were turned away.

She caught the flash of doubt in my eyes and shrugged. “It’s okay then, thank you.” She turned to leave, but something in me caught and I blurted “Wait.”

She turned back with an air of wounded pride and cast a hard glance at me. I’ll hate myself for this, I thought almost involuntarily, and then held out a copy of my pamphlet.

She smiled then, a surprisingly sweet smile, and accepted the proffered brochure. “Thank you.” Then she slid into the seat next to me.

I made a small show of counting my money, but after realising it was all there I figured she was harmless. She certainly looked too tried to be able to execute a feat like that, especially in the train. I felt guilty about having condemned so fast and decided to make small talk to compensate for my behaviour.

“So how long have you been here?”

“A week, two. I don’t know,” I thought this was very queer of her – most Singaporeans had a penchant for meticulous scheduling of their holidays abroad. She pretended not to notice my quizzical look and gave a small laught. “It’s nice here, isn’t it? I mean back home, you look at people on the train and they sort of death glare you. But here they actually smile back or nod or something. It’s nice.”

“Yeah I guess so. Never really thought about it that way.”

She cast me a long sideways glance. “You don’t feel kind of alienated in Singapore? I mean, with all those stone-faced people around you on the train. All the time.”

I sensed she expected some sort of approving answer, but I had nothing to say. Her expectant, slightly supercilious air was making me uncomfortable.

“I don’t know,” I finally blurted. “I just never thought about it.”

She turned back to the brochure and continued perusing the schedules while I awkwardly fumbled with my tickets.

There was an old man sprawled in the seat next to us, drool dripping from a corner of his mouth and pooling on the floor. He looked up from his inebriated state to give us a wrinkly, yellow-toothed grin.

“Poor guy,” I heard her murmur. “No family to take care of him. It’s sad what society has come to.”

“He’s just some drunk idiot.” I snapped. I don’t know what it was about her remark that nettled me, but the underlying tinge of piety was a sting. The sense that she was trying to pass herself off as a sweet, kind and caring girl when in reality I be she was as screwed up as any of us.

“This whole town is full of drunk people.” I muttered.

“Thant’s not true.” She snapped back.

We were silent for a few moments, perhaps sensing the awkwardness of our chance encounter. She quietly turned back to the brochure and I, compelled to make amends for my previous animosity, tried to strike up the conversation again.

“So where are you headed to?” I asked her, her head deep in the list of train departures and arrivals.

Her head jerked up and I saw her fists involuntarily clench and unclench. Then she grabbed her right hand with her left in an effort to quell some sort of repressed emotion. “Oh, um, nowhere really. I mean Cambridge.”

I couldn’t help but snort a little, she was obviously lying. What did she have to gain by lying? Or maybe she really was a scammer. Nonetheless, I decided to oblige her.

“Me too, actually. When are you thinking of going?”

“I don’t know,” she laughed. “That’s why I need the full schedule, you see.” And she looked at me, a little critically.

“I’m sorry, I guess I’m just too wary here. Lots of pickpocket, you know.”

She nodded sympathetically. “Some guy stole ten bucks off me the other day when I dropped a note on the ground. Ten whole pounds. I was so pissed.”

I laughed, more so to ease the atmosphere between us than out of genuine amusement. She gave me a slightly appraising look, as though she were sizing me up. I tried to appear as nonchalant as possible, but the truth was she fazed me a little. Her eyes eventually dropped back to the schedule list, and I figured that was the end of the conversation. I dug up in my bag to look for a novel to while away the time.

“So, what do you work as?” She asked suddenly. She flicked back a strand of her hair and looked me full in the face for the first time. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, but her eyes seem to hold an edge of scorn.

I felt my face flush a little. She had no right to criticise me, not after I’d helped her. Stop feeling embarrassed, I mentally urged myself.

“Just a desk job, nothing special.” I replied, a little bitterly.

She nodded slowly. “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

“Not really. I did hope to go into engineering but I wasn’t smart enough.”

She looked at me with a slight sympathetic air. I hurried to add, “At least it puts food on the table.” I didn’t want to sound ungrateful.

“Yeah,” she stopped, lost in thought.

“So what do you do?”

She considered. I wondered if she was going to lie to me again. “R&D sector.” She said after a brief pause. She named a fairly well known research hub near where I worked.

I sized her up. She did look quite the type, with her studious dark eyes and neat black hair. Yes, very likely.

“R&D for what?”

“Can’t say,” After a pause, she gave a dry laugh. “Not like it matters now, anyhow.”

I caught the break in her voice and looked at her. “What happened?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Nothing worth mentioning, really. Hey where does this train stop?”

“Elephant & Castle.”

“What stop are you getting off?”

“King’s Cross. And you?”

“I don’t know.”

“For a scientist, you sure don’t seem to know a lot of things.” I said, a slight edge in my voice. This girl both bemused and annoyed me- her evasive manner, the way she leaned slightly forward so that her hair obscured her face, her aimless direction of travel, her appraising eyes. Who does she think she is, I thought irritably, it’s not like she has anything to go on.

As though sensing my thoughts, she turned to me and quietly said, “It’s not like that. I’m not just some sort of vagrant going around picking peoples’ pockets. Really. I’m just having a break here. You know, get away from routine and schedule and stuff. To be free for a while. I feel like I can be myself here, you know?”

She looked at me as though she expected me to understand.

I sighed and inclined my head slightly. I didn’t see the sense of her reasoning, or how exactly she wanted to “be herself”. London was beautiful, yes, but I could never fully assimilate into that sort of culture or ever feel like I belonged. I looked around for a person to prove my point, when my eye lighted on a man across from us. No one batted an eyelid at his outfit- long flowing black dress with jeans underneath, shiny red handbag and eyeliner so thick it made Marilyn Manson look tame. He kept walking back and forth- from the glass door to the railing and back again, long, slow strides that emphasised his deliberate walk, as though he had a purpose in that aimless tread.

“These sort of people? Really? They’re insane. Nobody dresses like that,” I ventured forth the question, gesturing at the man. Or at least what I thought was one.

She looked him over and I saw her smile a little. “No. That’s just who they are.”

I rolled my eyes. “For crying out loud, they just need to pull themselves together.”

I couldn’t have anticipated that she would turn on me so violently. She practically spat at me, “What do you know anyway? Have you ever felt left out and lonely?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I dress up like a woman and walk around scaring people,” I retorted.

“Maybe some people are just different,” was her tart response.

I was tired of talking to her now- she was by turns gentle and scornful, and it confused me. I didn’t want to vex her any further than I already had, so I turned back to my novel.

The train continued whizzing on through altercations of light and dark, through tunnels and platforms packed full of people getting on and getting off. It was wearing late into the night, and the noise in the train was dying down to subdued, tired murmurs and the occasional interjection of laughter.

I was in fact starting to doze off, ensconced in the warmth and in the soothing rattle of the train’s movement when I heard her voice break through the veil. She seemed to be coming from very far away, her voice sometimes broken by- was it tears? I couldn’t tell, and pretended to be asleep while she continued speaking, very softly, under her breath, almost to herself.

“I lost my job last week. They fired me for being incompetent, though God knows I am as qualified as any of those idiots there. I was so drunk then, maybe it was my fault, but I just didn’t know where to go or what to do. Then my friend invited me to go for a trip in London. So I said yes. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just couldn’t face it. I ran away. Like a stupid kid.”

Her voice was coming from further away now, and the wind whooshing past the train windows seemed to carry her words off into the cold winter air. But she continued talking, not caring if I was listening or not.

“My friend left a few days ago. I told her I couldn’t take the return ticket, couldn’t go back. I’ve managed so far, but I don’t know what I’m going to do. And then I met him. This man.” Her voice started to choke up for real this time. “He was a really nice guy. Tall, dark, good looking. Didn’t mean any harm. He said he could give me work. So I followed him to this restaurant on the East End and we sat down for a drink. Two drinks. And it was pretty cold and dark and he invited me upstairs to where he stayed.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper now, tired and sad. “I think I may…” Her voice trailed off and she didn’t finish her sentence. After some silence, she added, like an afterthought: “He gave me some money and a place to stay though.”.

I didn’t respond, unsure if she knew I was sleeping. And what would I have said anyway? Eventually I felt her turn away and sigh, a deep, exhausted sigh filled with fatigue and despair.

The train suddenly came to a shuddering halt, jerking me fully awake. A robotic voice sounded over the intercom: “King’s Cross Station.”

I blearily collected my belongings and did a perfunctory check of my valuables. When I got up to exit the train, she stood up and followed me. I didn’t turn around.

It was cold on the train platform. The wind was unforgiving tonight. Even in my thick coat, I was shivering. What more her, dressed so lightly, frail as a reed and half as slender, yet there she stood unrelenting and unswayed by the cold.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m fine,” She said brusquely. Then she quietly said again, “I’m fine. Sorry.”

“No no, I wasn’t angry or anything. Do you need any help? Can I, you know, buy you a coffee or something?”

She sighed a little, and I saw her frosty breath coming out in small white puffs. “No, it’s okay. I can manage. I should go home soon. Singapore, I mean.”

I didn’t ask her how she would get the money for the plane ticket or even where she was staying. I took out my wallet and pressed a few tenners into her waistcoat pocket.

“Just so you can sleep warm tonight.” I told her.

She looked down at her pocket, reached her hand in to feel the money and looked up at me again. Her face suddenly went dark.

“You know what? Forget it. I don’t need your help. I can take care of myself just fine.” she retorted, passing back the money.

“So says the girl who got herself knocked up,” I muttered, mostly to myself, but loud enough for her to hear.

A look of consternation swept across her face. When she spoke her tone was icy. “Forget all I said. You’re just the same as everybody back home. Goodbye.”

With that, she turned and left the station.

I sat down on a nearby bench, feeling the weight of a day’s exertions upon my shoulders. Her presence had irked, and strangely enough, disconcerted me.

I stood up to go when I saw a lanky, greasy-haired twenty something standing in a corner of the station strumming his guitar and singing. He was off-pitch, his hair was slicked back and sprayed bright pink, and he badly needed a belt to keep his pants up. All of which I usually would give a scathing glance and then ignore. But for no reason, I went up and dropped a tenner into the beat-up hat at his feet, to which he gave me a toothy, cigarette-yellowed grin.

Then I left, bewildered at what I had just done.

The rest of my holiday in London was fairly uneventful. When I got back to Singapore I tried Googling her workplace to see if I could locate her position in the company but the results turned up nothing. I also tried to find her by browsing through their list of employees, but this proved impossible because I didn’t know her name.

Sherilyn Chew

2^nd Place

Sunday Mass

It was nearly noon by the time the sermon ended. The people streaming out of the high-ceilinged hall were strangely silent, and there was a sanctimonious air about them that made me wonder, not for the first time today, what I was doing in a place like this. In fact, I had half made up my mind to leave when I felt a pair of eyes staring at the back of my head.

People who say you can’t feel someone staring at you obviously don’t know what they’re talking about. Her gaze was so intense, I could almost make out the colour of her eyes, which were, in this case, a lovely chocolate brown that shimmered in the sunlight like stained glass. The rest of her features were arranged in an incredulous stare that perfectly mirrored my own feelings.

“Alex? What–”

“A coincidence,” I finished.

Of course, this was a place where people didn’t believe in coincidence, where everything happened for a reason, and everyone was conceived for a purpose–just like the characters of a well-scripted play in which I was not cast. But I guess a part of me was still hoping that she was different.

“Do you… come here often?”

“Yeah, pretty much every week. I’ve never seen you around though.”

“I used to come every week too. But I stopped.”

“Why?” she asked inquisitively. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, which I thought was adorable; suddenly I realised I wasn’t looking her in the eyes, and as I shifted my gaze accordingly, I was inadvertently reminded of three things: how beautiful they were, how I was drawn to them from the very beginning, and how foolish I was to have thought that I could forget them so easily. The realisation that nothing had changed in the past year was accompanied with a burning sensation in my cheeks–one that must have been quite visible to her, because she, too, reddened slightly, and for a few moments there was an awkward silence that stood between us like an invisible stranger.

And in the briefest of those moments, that quantum of time, there were a million things I wanted to say, but couldn’t; a million questions I wanted to ask, but didn’t. I wanted to know how she could believe in an omnipotent creator when half the world was in a state of tumult; I wanted to know how she could accept that everything happened for a reason when I lay in bed every night, dreaming of a love that was as forbidden as the fabled fruit itself. But more than anything else, I wanted to sidle up to her, caress her rosy cheeks, and inhale the autumn scent of her hair, because that was how beautiful she was.

Eventually it was she who broke the silence, in a voice that was slightly too cheerful.

“Oh, my boyfriend is here too. You’ve never met him before, have you?”

I had never met the lucky bastard, and neither was I particularly anxious to do so, so as she skipped off to get him, I decided that this was as good a time to leave as any.

And this time, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back, just like how I knew the pervy old man that sat beside me later that day was trying to see down my blouse.

Ng Qingyang

3^rd Place

Don’t Rain On My Parade

Almost as if they are acting on their own, my hands knock on the cheap, painted white door and turn the knob before even getting an answer. I take my usual seat, place my feet on the coffee table and ignore the eye contact being initiated by her. She seems to be used to it, because she no longer clears her throat before speaking. Instead, she waits until I take out my nail file, like I always do, as some sort of security blanket.

“So, do you know why you’re here today?” she asks, finally.

I look up at her, and she smiles at me a little too warmly, and gestures with her hands, as if it would somehow prompt me to partake in this so-called conversation. She is wearing the same crisp, white shirt and dowdy grey pencil skirt as she always does. She only dares venture deeper with her five different sweater vests that are all seemingly identical, except that upon closer inspection, you’ll realise that the shades of blue differ slightly from each other. Today, it is navy. Her hair, greying, is in the same bun, and her black-framed spectacles have the same chip on the top left corner.

I look away, and gaze around the room. Everything’s the same as it was when I first came in two years ago. I guess I’d call myself a regular. But unlike cool, overpriced coffee joints or boutiques with unpronounceable French names (that everyone always says loudly when they’re sure it’s really pronounced that way, with a face that screams ‘Duh, how could you not know that?’, even though they only just found out), being a regular at the school counsellor’s office is so not cool.

I’ve been seeing Miss Kinder (pun not intended) for nearly two years, and she always, always gives me the same false smile and asks the same questions. With my eyes still lazily searching the room for anything new or remotely attractive, I respond, “Well, Miss Kinder, I think-”

“Oh, how many times do I have to tell you? We’re friends, just call me Jenna!”

Friends? That’s interesting.

“Well, Miss Kinder, I think that maybe you asked me here today for redecorating advice. But judging from the same eight motivational posters, the weird, smiling stuffed llama, the purple and maroon chairs that clash so terribly with the green walls and the curtains with dancing sunflowers, I say don’t bother. You needn’t change a thing.”

“Always the same sense of humour. Let me get the ball rolling then. Let’s talk about your problem.”

“I don’t have a problem!”

And I mean it. I don’t have a problem. Everyone has a little unhappiness in his or her life, but that’s just what makes us human. It just depends what you choose to do about it that makes you have a problem or not. For me, it started when I was just a toddler.

My parents tried for years to get a child, so when my mom finally got pregnant, they swore to treat me like royalty. Apparently, this included feeding me with everything they could buy. Chocolates, cakes, chocolate cakes, cookies, burgers, pasta, chicken, ice cream and everything else that made Rosie O’Donnell become the happy woman she is today. And yes, all of that happened when I was just a little kid, which meant that I wasn’t little for long.

“So, how was your day today? Did it start well?” Miss Kinder asks, with the same smile.

I’ve always wanted to tell her that it was sort of creepy, the way she looked at people, and that she should feedback to Counsellor School to remove the smile training programme from their curriculum. But I always decide not to be cruel. After all, boring as she is, she’s one of the two in this school who’s never picked on me.

“Well,” I respond, almost routinely. “I woke up late today because my phone died and my alarm never rang. I had to run out to the hall to check the time. I don’t have a clock in my room. I only overslept by fifteen minutes, so it was okay.”

“You say it was okay, but you were late anyway. Not that I’m here to judge.”

“Well, obviously if you woke up late, you’d be late too.”

“So what makes it okay?”

What kind of question is that? But of course, I bet she has never heard of being fashionably late. I do her a favour by standing up, fluffing my brown shoulder length hair, and giving a little twirl on my five-inch stilettos without moving a muscle out of place. “This is why it’s okay,” I say, summoning the sweetest smile I could.

The first few friends I ever made in my life already knew at the age of five that it was not normal to be such a big, blubbering child. And as sophisticated as five-year-old kids were, all my friends called me Fattie Pattie. Yes, the horror. It was Fattie Pattie this, Fattie Pattie that, oh look at Fattie Pattie, still eating so much! Who ate the cookie from the cookie jar? Fattie Pattie ate them all!

As I graduated from The Underworld, I thought that things would be better in grade school. Boy, was I wrong. The name-calling got smarter, and the jokes got meaner. Why does Fattie Pattie love math class? Don’t be fooled, she’s just here for the Pi. However, the most common greeting would have to be, “Would you like some fries with that?”

It wasn’t like I wanted to be Fattie Pattie. It was just so hard to lose weight.

“You were two hours late though. What happened?”

“Well, I decided to try my new teeth whitening strips. I had to leave them on for half-an-hour, so I couldn’t do anything. If not, I might’ve swallowed them and died of blood poisoning.”

She smiles and nods, prompting me to continue. Her eyes don’t even twitch the slightest bit with judgement, but I always think that if I’m judging her, surely she’s judging me too. I try not to tell her too much.

“So, after that was done, I curled my hair as usual. It’s kind of short now, but I’m growing it. I burnt my fingers on the curler this morning, but it’s okay. Better than having flat hair. No offence.”

“None taken. What did you have for breakfast?”

I shift uncomfortably in my seat, and she breaks her smile for a second. “Of course, I’m sorry. I forgot for a moment.”

After three consecutive summers of FAT Camp (Freakin’ Awesome Time Camp), I had enough of sweaty, smelly and sad kids who only moped about how they looked. I needed change. I started to starve myself, as all aspiring dieters who wish to see change do. As of two years ago, I only ate two apples and nine grapes a day. Also, I made it a point to jog for a couple of hours in the evenings. I’ve fainted about thirteen times from this, but it’s all good. I lost all my excess fat, and the Fattie Patties stopped. This made me very happy, but it made Miss Kinder worried.

“I went on to do my make-up. Concealer, foundation, bronzer, blusher, eye shadow, eyeliner and mascara, as usual. It’s important to look not only flawless, but also, like a Goddess. Clothes are always quite easy to pick out, but I’m way fussier about shoes. These are one of my favourites. I never wear anything shorter than four inches.”

“A lot of your peers say that you indeed wear too much make up. They don’t think it’s normal. And they say that your shoes, well, are not the most appropriate for school. How does this make you feel?”

First of all, who the hell uses words like ‘peers’ and ‘indeed’? They’re bad enough on their own. But used in a sentence together? Wow.

After I lost all the baby whale fat, I still didn’t feel accepted. I still didn’t feel me. Then I realised that maybe it wasn’t just the weight that made me feel down about life. It was my whole look. I then turned to hours of Youtube tutorials on how to apply make up, style hair or walk in heels effortlessly. I really wanted to get rid of the feeling of emptiness, and this seemed ideal.

All the videos worked wonders. I looked awesome. I felt awesome. Everyone stares at me all the time, and I know it’s with envy.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t dress up for school. Is it better to come sloppy? I don’t think so. Anyway, everyone always talks shit about people-”

“Language.”

“-when they’re jealous. It’s a fact. A known fact. Everyone’s jealous of me. I’ve suddenly turned from an ugly dumpling to a beautiful swine. Can you blame them?”

“It’s ugly duckling, and a beautiful swan. A swine is a female pig.”

“Oh. Whatever, I don’t care.”

Secretly, I am very embarrassed at my mistake, because she already knows so much about me. I don’t want her to figure out I’m not smart either. She probably knows that already, but for some reason, I refuse to let her find out from myself.

“It was raining this morning. Is that why you were so late?”

“Yes,” I lied.

On my way to school, with my Miu Miu on my left shoulder, and my polka-dotted umbrella in my right hand, I struggled to flag the bus while keeping my balance and trying not to slip. The bus pulled up too closely to the sidewalk and splashed dirty water at the ends of my jeans. That always makes me upset. But today, the pain of something else made me barely pay attention to my damp and dirty designer clothes.

Two stops after mine, she got on. With her waist-long chestnut-brown hair with light blonde highlights, her super long legs that went from her waist till next Tuesday, her huge, doll-like eyes in the most piercing shade of electric blue, Samantha is gorgeous. I mean, she really is perfect.

Fucking bitch.

Even though I blame the whole school for having the same fucking stupid herd mentality, I blame Samantha for making my life hell. People like listening to perfect people. People like mimicking what perfect people did. And Samantha, being perfect, decided that being fat and ugly was something to laugh at, to spit at and to torture. She started Fattie Pattie, and I will never let it go.

After seeing her perfect beauty for years, and seeing her be chosen over me for every thing imaginable, I’ve become used to the fact that she is truly an evil bitch with a black hole as a heart. She found joy in making my life miserable. I also think she steals lunch money from the kids at school, and uses them to buy explosives to destroy orphanages and animal shelters. I can’t be sure, though. What I was not used to was the fact that she was dating Jake.

Scratch that. I didn’t know she was dating him till I saw them today. He got on the bus after she did, playfully grabbing her waist as she released the most heinous sound from her mouth, which I assumed was a giggle. She does not deserve him. No one in the school does. Jake was the nicest person I have ever met, without any exaggeration or biasness on his extreme hotness. Thick, curly brown hair, deep, intelligent and overwhelmingly sexy eyes and possibly the best upbringing in the world, Jake was both beautiful inside and out. I don’t know how he resisted, but he was the only person to have never made fun of me along with the crowd, other than Miss Kinder.

All the name calling, mean jokes, and sometimes even physical abuse could never amount to the same hurt I felt when I saw them both skipping class together that morning. He is not one to cut class, not to mention fall for witches. My suspicions were right all along. Samantha is a Succubus.

I got off a stop after they did, and flung myself into the nearest public toilet, crying my heart out. My immaculately applied make up smeared all over my face, but it didn’t matter. The pain was building up so badly that I vomited all over the floor. The acidic taste burned my throat and my tongue, and the pain I felt was almost relieving. It’s amazing, what the heart does to you. Seeing the love of your life walk off with someone you hate with all your might, knowing that he will never love you back, for more reasons than one. It makes you wonder… was it all worth it?

Eventually, I pulled myself together, reapplied my make up and dragged myself to school. I shoved all my emotions back into its little container in my brain, like I always do. All the hate, the sadness, the jealousy, the anger and especially the fear. I walked on, trying to look like a million bucks, even though I knew I was no more than a dollar.

“Miss Kinder… I mean… Jenna. Have you ever… Have you ever been in love?” I ask, immediately regretting it.

“Patricia, you’re only eleven. I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. You have more important issues at hand,” she says, with the smile back in its usual spot.

Alexis Chen Weiqi

Honourable Mention

No Man’s Land

They say that with a cigarette in your left hand and a beer in your right, the world becomes momentarily perfect. I was in the middle of appreciating this momentary perfection one Sunday evening when something funny happened.

This was quite some time ago, around mid-November, and the only reason why I remember it was Sunday is because my then girlfriend, who isn’t my girlfriend anymore, had tried in vain to drag me to church that morning. Because I was in a higher state of awareness, it took me awhile to realise what was going on between the couple.

“Is it Abby? I swear we’re just friends, but I’ll stop seeing her if that’s what you want.”

“I told you, this has nothing to do with Abby at all.”

“Is it my parents? I know they can be difficult sometimes.”

“I think your parents are perfectly reasonable, David.”

“Is it the dog?”

“David!”

Anyway, it was funny because even though they weren’t all that far away, neither of them seemed to take much notice of me. In fact, as far as David was concerned, I might as well have been invisible–although the same couldn’t be said for the girl, who shot me the occasional nervous glance. She was very attractive; her foxlike features looked out of place beside David’s plain countenance, which was in turn crossed by a look of exasperation as he uttered his next words.

“What exactly is the problem then? If it’s something about me, just spit it out. I swear I won’t get offended.”

“David, can we please do this somewhere else?” she cast me another nervous glance.

“Don’t worry dear, he’s as drunk as a pig–”

“David, please.”

“–now if you’d just tell me what’s the prob–”

“Stop it!” the girl shrieked. “The problem is that you’re too nice!”

While nice has always been a popular euphemism for boring, my instincts told me that the real problem lay elsewhere altogether. In fact, I was willing to bet both my remaining beers that there was a third party involved in the equation–and that this third party wasn’t Abby. Exactly how accurate my hunch was I never got to find out, because David now pulled a bunch of flowers out of nowhere and said, “That’s only because I’m in love with you, Susan.”

By now I was starting to think that Susan’s concerns might be genuine after all, and that didn’t even have anything to do with the flowers. Meaning, I think flowers of all shapes and sizes are silly, because if you think about it, they only represent good things, like friendship, or innocence, or a nuclear-free world, and there are no flowers for bad things, which doesn’t really make sense because any third-grader who knows his idioms will tell you that life isn’t a bed of roses. So I hardly ever give people flowers, and if I really have to, I give them paper ones, for the simple reason that they’re cheaper.

“Oh David, why must you make this so hard for me?”

About this time I accidentally let out a huge belch–to which Susan reacted by casting me an exasperated glance, and then running off with her face in her hands. To my surprise, David, instead of giving chase, simply stood there and shouted after her, “I’ll be waiting for you to change your mind!”

And he stood there for a long time after that, with his arm–the one holding the flowers–slightly extended, as though Susan were going to come back any moment and take them from him.

And then he just walked away. He didn’t throw the flowers on the ground and jump on them, nor did he toss them into the bin and make rude signs with his fingers; he simply walked away with the flowers cradled in his arm, his face slightly crestfallen but still full of hope. And in that face I saw a shadow of my past self, someone who believed that faith and sincerity could solve all the problems in the world. Consequently, I found that I could read him like a book: a book in which he would wait for months, maybe even years, for Susan to accept him, until it became crystal clear that nothing of the sort was going to happen, after which he would finally give up, because not even the nicest guy in the world is stupid enough to wait for something that’s impossible. Most likely he would console himself by saying something like, “God has better plans for me”, or “her part in my story is over”, but the funny thing is, had Susan decided to accept him instead, then he would no doubt attribute it to God’s grace and wisdom and whatnot. Which is stupid, because obviously if you flip a coin it either comes up as heads or tails, and if you flip enough coins some will come up as heads and others tails, and it has nothing to do with God at all.

Anyway, I must have drunk more than I realised, because when I tried to get up I ended up puking all over my shoes, and when I groped about in my pockets for a napkin or something all I found was some change from the beers I’d bought earlier. And then my phone started to ring, which made my head hurt, but I didn’t feel like talking to my girlfriend so I just threw it in the fountain. Then I looked at the coins in my hand, and you know what they say about coins and fountains and wishes coming true, which is stupid, too, but I threw them in just for the hell of it, and nothing has changed since then.

Ng Qingyang

Honourable Mention

Show Me The Money!

Money, money, money! Always sunny! In a rich man’s world!

The alarm blasts in my ear again, interrupting another perfect dream. I’ve been having the same dream for months now. A really hot guy takes me out on a series of dates, where he proposes to me in different ways, but always with the same diamond ring. It is fate that something like that would happen to me. The evidence is there in the form of a recurring dream.

Okay, maybe it’s not really evidence. I once read that if you keep thinking of your troubles before you sleep, you’ll end up dreaming about them, making your sleep restless and interrupted, and making you even more stressed out when you wake up. So, if thinking about a problem before you sleep will make you dream of it because it’s the last conscious thought that enters your mind, then thinking about a really great thing means that you’ll dream about it too. Then, not only will you have an amazing sleep, you’ll wake up all shiny and happy inside.

That’s why I like to think about hot, rich guys before I sleep.

I roll over, turn my alarm off and rub my eyes sleepily. All this waking up in the morning for school isn’t worth it. If I weren’t already in my third year in a Polytechnic, I’d give it up. I stay up late doing projects, and I wake up early for school. In the weekends, I even work part time at Toys ‘R’ Us, where I have to interact with bratty kids who like to scream in my face. It’s terrible. All I want to do is to bum around without having to worry about anything, and there are only three ways I can do that: 1. Have a rich family to inherit everything from. 2. Work hard and earn lots of money. 3. Marry a rich man and spend his money.

I sit up, rub my eyes further, find a morning glory in the corner of my eye and flick it at my younger sister, Maya, who is sleeping soundly on my left. I turn to my right, and see my older sister, Jess, also sleeping. Three grown girls having to share one tiny bedroom. I hate the claustrophobic feeling of this room. I hate the lack of privacy.

1. Have a rich family to inherit everything from.

I slowly get out of bed from the foot of the bed so I won’t step on Jess. I walk on pieces of unwashed clothes strewn onto the floor on my way to the bathroom, which is a mere four steps from my room. My bones make strange cracking sounds as I sit down to pee. I have to get to school at 9am for some stupid lecture. I’m always exhausted. There isn’t a point for me to go, or even to study for my final exams anyway. My GPA is too low to get me into a local university, and my parents could never afford to send me overseas. Just as well. I really hate school anyway. It’s too tiring, and honestly, I’m too lazy.

2. Work hard and earn lots of money.

That only leaves me with a final option if I want to be happy in life.

3. Marry a rich man and spend his money. ÖÖÖ

Sometimes, however, things are easier said than done.

I meet my best friend Kai at the bus stop outside school. We light up our cigarettes to get us through the morning lecture, and confirm our plans for the afternoon. We are going over to the National University of Singapore (NUS) after school for a little field trip. We stub out our cigarettes after our last puffs and head for lecture.

It is our fourth trip to NUS, and we are certain that this will be the time. Like we always do, we head to the bathroom nearest to the main entrance. We touch up on our make up (several times), and as she is undoing a couple of the buttons on her tight blouse, I fold up the hem of my shorts twice, and put on the pair of heels I kept in my bag this morning. I look in the mirror and check out my new super-long legs. After inspecting each other’s hair, face and teeth, we walk out and head in different directions: she, to the School of Business, and me, to the School of Medicine.

As I loiter around the School of Medicine, my phone rings.

“Lisa. Oh my freakin’ God it’s so warm today,” she exclaims loudly into the phone, and I know she’s found a target, and is probably leaning over, fanning herself and popping another button open. I love that girl.

I giggle, and let her continue her one sided conversation as I light up a cigarette. I take a slow puff and glance around. My eyes dart around the courtyard for a suitable candidate, and land on a guy in a lab coat. Short, well groomed hair, rectangle, black framed glasses, out-of-fashion baggy blue jeans and a pair of hideous track shoes, he looks boring as hell, which pretty much confirms him to be both single and an easy target.

With Kai still on the line, I poof my hair up with my hands and walk over to him slowly, saying into the phone, “John, I will tell you one last time. No means NO! I’ve had enough. I will not be your plaything… a subject of your abuse anymore. We’re through!”

I add a dramatic sniff at the end, and Kai whispers, “Got him?”

My eyes flick up for a moment, and as expected, Nerdy Boy is looking at me with concern. I give a small grunt of affirmation before I slam my phone shut. His half step towards me followed by a hesitant intake of breath is my cue to inhale deeply on my cigarette, exhale with a huge sigh and burst into tears.

As if it is all planned out, he runs towards me with his hands rummaging through his pockets. Because he is Nerdy Boy, he pulls out a handkerchief and offers it to me. Without looking at him, I take it, dab the corners of my eyes, and slowly look up. I open my eyes widely and innocently and look deep into his. “Thank you,” I mutter softly, without looking away.

I’ve just passed first base.

“Are you okay?” he asks, with genuine care in his voice.

“Y-yes, I’m okay…” I respond with more sniffles.

“Erm… Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I don’t want to bother you with my troubles. You’ve been so kind.”

“Boyfriend issues?”

My eyes fall to the floor, and I say softly, “Ex. Ex-boyfriend.”

Second base: cleared.

I take another puff on my cigarette, and move off to a nearby bench, still holding his handkerchief. This tells him that it’s okay for him to follow me, which he does. I let out a small cough, and of course he says, “You know, you shouldn’t be smoking. It’s bad for you. Trust me, I’m a med student.”

I look at my cigarette and whisper, “Things haven’t been easy… But…”

My eyes move up again to meet his, and I add on more firmly, “But maybe I just found a reason to quit.”

Third base: passed without a doubt.

Just a second more of looking into his eyes and I get up, stubbing my cigarette out on the bin next to us. I turn around and give a sweet half smile, and stretch out my hand with his handkerchief.

“Oh, you can keep it if you like,” he says, not even bothering to hide the hope in his voice.

“I would like that very much, thank you.”

I keep the handkerchief in the back pocket of my short denim shorts, and reach my hand out again. “Just the hand, this time?”

He reaches his hand out quickly and shakes mine, and says, “MartinmynameisMartin.”

“I’m Lisa… Are you studying to be a doctor, Martin?” I ask, still holding his hand, while my eyes express interest in his lab coat.

“Yes. I’ll probably be a doctor in about a year or two,” he says with such pride.

“That’s so cool,” I say, slowly retracting my hand, with my fingertips brushing the back of his hand slowly.

Probably forgetting he has a lab coat on, he asks, “Would you like to get some coffee?”

While we walk off, I drop Kai a text message.

Homerun. Will tell you how it goes tonight J

Three seconds later, my phone vibrates and displays her reply.

See you online at 8pm. So much to tell L

Lisa © (8:11:03 pm): Why’re you sad, babe? Didn’t get the guy?

Kai (8:12:23 pm): Almost got him. Remember Benjie? The dentistry student who brought me home to meet his family after 2 dates?

Lisa © (8:12:35 pm): Oh yes, Eager Beaver Benjie, with the little pest brother. What about him?

Kai (8:12:38 pm): WELL.

Kai (8:12:57 pm): I was having a nice conversation with Sam, the biz student I met today, when all of a sudden, Benjie strolls by with his piece of shit little bro. He pointed at me and yelled BENJIE, IT’S THE TREASURE HUNTER!

Lisa © (8:13:01 pm): Huh?

Kai (8:13:14 pm): I was confused too. Benjie was like, what??

Kai (8:13:32 pm): Then he shouted, YOU SAID SHE WAS A GOLD DIGGER!!!

Kai (8:13:40 pm): STUPID LITTLE SON OF A BITCH.

Lisa © (8:13:48 pm): HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Kai (8:13:52 pm): NOT COMFORTING AT ALL!

Kai (8:14:41 pm): Argh, forget it, forget it L L Anyway, how was it on your side? How was whatshisname?

Lisa © (8:15:12 pm): Martin. Ugh, it was terrible. The first half hour I had to listen to him talk about why smoking is bad. I think he was the one who wrote that Reader’s Digest article, you know… But okay, that wasn’t so bad. He was actually quite nice.

Kai (8:15:16 pm): Then what’s the problem?

Lisa © (8:15:45 pm): His MOTHER. She kept calling him every few minutes to complain about her back or her teeth or her kidneys or whatever. I mean, what’s the point of marrying a doctor when he will obviously choose Mummy over you? Bet all his high salary is gonna go to her and her bills anyway!

Lisa © (8:15:59 pm): Sigh. Sometimes I think the money isn’t worth all the crap we’ve got to go through. I mean. People calling us gold diggers and all…

Kai (8:16:31 pm): Don’t let others drag us down! They’re all jealous and stuff cos we know from a young age what we WANT. They’re all bitter cos they didn’t think of it and they can’t do it too cos they all think they’re so cool and they don’t wanna look like followers. I tell you, they’re worshipping us on the inside. And the money is definitely worth it.

Kai (8:16:54 pm): Yup! Okay NUS obviously isn’t playing for our team… We need a new battle strategy.

Kai (8:17:46 pm): Okay!

It’s like I’m living in a bad classic fairytale cliché where the totally elegant princess-to-be awaits her prince in her lovely gown with her little ferret friends. Except that I’m not elegant and I don’t wear gowns. In fact, I admit that I’m a little on the skanky side. But hey, it’s 2011, and guys are into different things now.

“It’s probably best if we go in different directions. That way, we can play the lost girl card, and ask them to bring us to quiet places where our ‘friend might be’,” says Kai, as we walk in to Sentosa Cove.

She is one of the wisest people I know. I truly admire her.

We both stop dead in our tracks when we reach the houses by the sea. Each house has a dock with their own yacht. Some had several yachts. I have never used yacht in its plural form before.
The gardens all have identical palm trees with leaves in identical shades of bright, rich-people green. There is even an air of island-appropriate music that calms and relaxes you because the aura is so intensely wealthy.

Oh wait, no. That’s just music coming from speakers disguised as rocks. Wow, they have speakers disguised as rocks to play ambience melodies!

“We. Have. To. Live. Here,” Kai says, practically drooling.

She turns to face me, and says again, “We have to live here!”

This time, she slobbers as a small drip of saliva leaves her mouth. She doesn’t even bother to wipe it off as shoves me towards a row of houses, before sprinting off in the opposite direction, where a young Caucasian man is walking his cat.

This place truly has everything.

I take the map I took from the guest entrance out of my shorts and open it, trying my best to look confused and lost, while still looking cute and approachable. I was never good at maps, and after fifteen minutes of walking around trying to find anyone that could be my age, or actually, anyone at all, I find myself genuinely lost. There is not a single person in sight, except for the occasional security guard driving around in his buggy. I guess rich people don’t walk. They’re probably being chauffeured around in cars that cost more than my whole flat. The buggies here have taupe leather seats.

I spend a good ten minutes posing outside a house with a Maserati and 3 Porsches. No one comes out. I give up, and walk towards the bay to sit down on a steel bench with floral engravings. I put my legs up, and my chin on my knees, while I enjoy the view for a moment.

Click. Click.

I immediately turn.

It’s like life is finally being handed to me on a silver platter.

Dolce & Gabbana gold-framed aviators. Navy blue polo-tee with the classic Burberry print on the collar. Armani black denim cropped jeans. Ferragamo leather loafers in toffee. A large, black DSLR camera with a huge lens. All on a sexy Chinese male who looked about 21. Or 25. I am not really looking at him, so I can’t be sure. My eyes are fixed on his platinum Rolex.

“I hope I didn’t startle you,” he says, flashing the brightest, whitest smile I have ever seen.

He has a platinum Rolex.

I have to try to be less obvious here. “That’s a nice camera,” I say, as if it’s the most interesting thing on him. “What are you shooting?”

“I hope you don’t mind,” he says, flashing the same dashing smile, “but you make a beautiful subject.”

My heart skips a beat as he hands me the camera. In the display screen is a picture of me.
Except that you might not be able to tell it’s me because it’s all blurry. And because the picture is so dark. I’m no expert in photography, but I’m pretty sure that half my head isn’t supposed to be cut off. “What do you think? Beautiful, isn’t it!” he exclaims, his voice full of hot air.

“Photography is my passion, my true love. It’s the only thing in life I see myself doing.
This camera costs over $8,000. But what’s a little money for a lifetime of happiness?” he says, wiping his camera.

Because feigning interest is my forte, I say, “That’s great! I really believe in following one’s passion, and not letting anything get in the way of what you love doing. So, is being a photographer rewarding on the wallet?”

There is no way photos of that quality can fetch him even the gold frame of his sunnies.

“Oh, yes! I earn about $50 to $200 per photo that is selected for use. Of course, I’m just getting started, so I’m only paid by my dad for photos I take of the events and parties he hosts.”

“Oh, for like events coverage and stuff in magazines and newsletters?”

“No, not really. He sends them out to our relatives, so that they can enjoy them too.”

So, Richie Rich here comes from a wealthy family and holds a fake career, sort of like Paris Hilton being a singer. That could work out nicely. Inheritance is key. So what if he’ll never get a paying job in his life? He’s got everything covered. “How rude of me! I haven’t introduced myself! I’m Lisa!” I say, reaching my hand out confidently.

“Like, Elizabeth?” he asks, shaking my hand after keeping the cloth back in his pocket.

“No… Just Lisa.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Dan. As in Dannon.”

“Oh, not Daniel?” I say with hopeful laughter, trying to hide that fact that I have no idea where this is heading.

“No… That’s awfully common. My older brother is Danby. Our parents have good taste in names.”

An elder brother? Automatically, the giant cheque presented to him (and to me, as his wife) in my head has been reduced to half. In marrying a man with a huge potential inheritance, it is important that he is an only child. Rich people have too much politics in their family, and having siblings could potentially even rid all chances of getting an inheritance at all. And obviously, Dannon here isn’t planning to take over the family business anytime soon.

“Oh, wow,” I say, hiding my disappointment well, “I’ve always wanted an older brother. All I have is two sisters.”

“I don’t have an older brother, I have three. And I have three sisters as well.”

I think I can actually hear the sound of my heart shattering as I turn to leave.

Alexis Chen Weiqi

Honourable Mention

One: Milestones & Beginnings

Editor’s Letter

25/250 Challenge

Reaching the end of a search for –
Michelle Peh

The 25th Hour
Bryan Chong

Commencement
Annabeth Leow

Twenty-five Words
Ray Chan

Aubade
Anurak Saelaow

Life Beyond Happily Ever After
Loh Soon Hui

Maturity
Leoson Huay

Beginning of End
Prasatt s/o Arumugam

Only Pretty, What a Pity
Rachael Anne Goh

Grandma
Huynh Khan Ngoc Han

Between Two Milestones
Chua Xin Rong

Before We Begin
Lee Zhi Xin

A Make-Believe Dream
Denys Tan

Coma
Jerrold Yam

The End is Just a New Beginning
Mabel Chan

Beginnings
Isaac Tan

A Bold Play That Goes To The HEART Of The Matter
Isaac Tan

The Savitch and the Starship
Justin Tan

Eighteen
Lee Zhi Xin

Milestone and Beginnings
Jovita Wong

Awakening
Amanda Ho

Editor’s Letter

When I was asked to write this, I was hard-pressed to come up with something that I both wanted to say and was expected to say as an editor, and that for days, resulted in a series of nervy back-and-forths in my typing, which I assume tested the patience of the Executive Editor, Isaac, who has compiled all the works included in this issue, and who has every reason to be pissed with my long silence.

Many questions stifled my progress.

How do I strike a balance between expressing the humility I instinctively felt was appropriate for a fledgling initiative in a field that has long been esteemed as an element of – God forbid! – high culture, and the audacity or healthy irreverence usually required to produce anything of quality? How to have a sense of ambition and yet be all too aware of a pantheon that includes Harper’s, Granta, and The Paris Review, which have featured the likes of Faulkner, Calvino and Borges, without being paralysed by the kind of smallness even Woolf felt after reading Proust?

Most of all, how, you may ask, will we source for quality works in a field so niche, in a country so small, on top of its being plagued by a cultural cringe palpable enough to warrant desperate buzzwords like “support local talent”?

A few days ago when I was on the train home with a friend studying abroad who had just returned on term break, she told me, “You need to get away from here”, a paraphrase of what I knew to be her bleaker meaning: there is nothing here. Watching the sterile architecture that zipped past us – blocks of flats reeking of an almost grotesque utility, all too neat, too angular, liveable but lifeless – I, fresh from reading Proust and full of frustrated escapism, couldn’t help but agree with her and dreamily lamented to myself the lack of an Illiers-Combray, a place in here that dripped enough magic to have inspired something as magnificent as Swann’s Way.

But that sense of futility was quickly dispelled by my memory of what Proust himself had said – “…genius consist[s] in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected”. Or, as a non-literary but nonetheless creative individual has put it:

I think that traveling happens truly in your mind: it is a way of thinking, of looking at things. People think that traveling is taking an eight-hour flight to some far-flung destination. For me, it’s taking a car and turning off where you have never gone before, or maybe looking at something you like in a new way. Traveling means opening your eyes.”

- Dries Van Noten

In a word, there is never nothing.

Every particular experience, no matter how banal, carries within it something special that needs only to be perceived and disinterred from the inertia of its surface. We (or I) often seek inspiration elsewhere, preferring histories richer, older, and above all not our own, restless from a search that always consists in taking flight, away from because disillusioned by the seemingly unpromising first scraps of a creative tradition which to be fair, is only in its teething. Often crabby from frustrated wanderlust, and despite a shelf full of foreign literature – with regrettably, almost nary a local work – taunting at my hypocrisy in writing this, I still have a small but insistent idealism about this place, believing that its dry spells stem more from potentials never realised than talents never had.

But that is our aim – to put aside excessively neurotic concerns about quality that the spectre of our literary idols may compel us to cower in the face of, so that we might come into our own, to in some way enrich a culture whose barrenness we bemoan but don’t feel like doing anything about, and above all, simply to get something started, so that the magazine will eventually take a life of its own as contributors come and go, being ultimately a dynamic outlet for better things to come, chronicling inspired works from the student body of NUS as well as outside of it.

And so for now at least, as a timely commemoration of the society’s 50^th anniversary, the works selected from the entries of the 25/50 Challenge, memorialise the storied imaginings of individuals, each exploring differently the vast mindscape of creative possibility that lies dormant in – one can hope – every one of us.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

— Vincent Van Gogh

With that, we believe that this first issue of Symbal is merely the beginning of a gathering of more and more people to sit by those blazing hearths.

Joan Theng

6^th January 2012

25/250 Challenge

The task: twenty-five words in verse exactly or approximately two hundred and fifty words in prose on the theme of Milestones & Beginnings.

The result: sixteen literary works that gives us a peek into the minds of the writers who wrote them.

The works are written by students of NUS unless indicated otherwise.

reaching the end of a search for:

– dawn
the smoke climbs,
shifting serpent-like;
knifing (gunmetal-grey) clouds.
gold shades of infinity dance through
with success
hidden in the fringes
this is: a new –

Michelle Peh

The 25th Hour

the snores of fitful sleepers do not hesitate.
tick. tick.
resound the clocks that mark the twenty-fifth
and zeroth hour of each new midnight day.

Bryan Cheong
Raffles Institution

Commencement

The hall is much too cold. My joints hurt. I feel too old, for eighteen.
I fell here, scraping my knees on rough carpet, on the first day. The skin scabbed over, was shed in time.
Six years of scabbing over; I am surprised I do not have a carapace by now.
Things I do not have: Sunrise on Tioman, where the beach gave way to froth, a perfect Kodak moment for best friends forever and star jumps. Rollercoasters, ice cream at the movies, conversations lubricated by frappucinos, fraught with banality and dancing to a tired K-pop beat.
Things I have: Scrambling through wet sand in borrowed slippers as the noon burned salty bodies and melted away violence for the nonce. Bus rides, fried sweet potato, over-warm water on short jaunts into the rainforest, the threads of philosophical arguments holding bodies together.
Things I do not have, did not ever have: That elusive creature Normal.
Things I have, nunc et semper: You.
When we leave this hall, it will be a departure for the rest of our lives. Ten pages of paper in a fake leather folio will set us in motion through that excruciating game: a dog-and-pony show, a rat race, metaphors that remind us we are beasts of burden. I am not a number. You are not a number. For now we have this thought to comfort us, and then – a camera flash pops, my cue nudges me.
Forward unto the waiting dignitary’s handshake.
Exit stage right.

Annabeth Leow
NUS High School

Twenty-Five Words

twenty-five words
for a beginning startles much,
ripples stone

one loses ink at fifteenth
and then scrambles to find words,
before the end-gine cuts (blank)

Ray Chan (Nom De Plume)

Aubade

I wake to the undrawn curtain,
the chewed pulp of words
drying against the tongue.
Outside the sun calls my name
like a distant lover.

Anurak Saelaow
Raffles Institution

Life Beyond Happily Ever After

Dearest, Happily Ever After wasn’t the end.

It’s a quarter after one. I should sleep, but peace has eluded me ever since our last parting. The emptiness of the room weighs heavily on my heart, and the silence is loud. This space we’ve built to house our dreams and hopes for marriage feels drab; for none of our tasteful furnishings animated our home like the sparkle of your laughter did.

Tonight, I passed over the furnishings in favor of the photographs. They were minute and many, each glossy frame encapsulating a memory from the days of our courtship. In your absence, these Kodak prints have gained an overlarge significance, as if to compensate for all that time spent in sight but out of mind. I looked at them all in turn, flitting in and out of the past.

26/06. The gilted frame next to the telephone held the first photo we shared after becoming an official couple. We were standing side by side among friends, very much in love and so self-conscious about it.

25/12. Orchard Road. Our first serious argument ruined Christmas that year, but we couldn’t have left this out of our story.

24/09. Our marital photograph. We smiled widely, a vision of perfect happiness. I still recall your words from that day, “This is our Happily Ever After.”

But Happily Ever After wasn’t the end of all milestones. We’ll make this work. Tomorrow will be the start of the rest of our lives, post conflict. Together.

Loh Soon Hui

Maturity

Slips of paper
Slowly
Leading you into adulthood.

Numbers, formalities
Addresses
The name of your college and

Dollar signs phasing out cheerful
Letters to
Friends.

Leoson Huay
Serving National Service

Beginning of End

Fresh out of fifty,
I awoke sniffing,
wondering where this odor
of decay came from.
I found it creeping, fouly
from beneath my age-worn skin

Prasatt s/o Arumugam

Oh Pretty, What A Pity

Tokyo locals celebrate first year milestone of Nightfall phenomenon

2006/12/04
The Asahi Shinda

Nightfall. When night falls, the soft rustling of the dusk veil, come to relieve daylight of its torturous role, can be heard through the walls by the lonely. Extraordinary people do not hear it because their hearts are too full. The slightest of sounds may, let me correct myself, will slide down their ears to their chests and cause their hearts to brim over. Before they know it tears are spilling from their eyes. This very humane and natural response will only serve to elicit bewilderment and incomprehension from them. Thus, only the ordinary and alone. Only the lonely can afford to hear nightfall.

Nine miles north from where the veil falls, a distinct shadow where a woman should be rests along the shores of a beach. If you hide behind some wiry bushes or peer from a cliff long enough, the moon will reveal through darts of light the woman to whom the shadow belongs.

Just as she is revealed, a small crash of waves washes over her feet

‘Aiko. Aiko, come on. Listen’ the woman whispers, musically dissonant with the light crashing laughter of the waves. She lies on the beach for a reason. There are no walls that impair her hearing, no thick air that blocks her mind. Aiko is alone on the beach with no unnatural distraction and she starts to cry from frustration. You see, Aiko is an extraordinary.

Rachael Anne Goh

Grandma

Grandma reached home on a sunny afternoon. She pushed her scooter to the front yard, picked up her green basket and hurried to her room, still wearing her purple velvet hat. I could see her whimsical smile.

- Grandma’s home.
- But she’s dead.
- Oh yeah! Then why is she here?
- Perhaps she wants to visit home.
I walked closer to her room and watched her.

That was my dream shortly after grandma passed away. She collapsed as she was walking to the tour bus to head home. She died a happy person. No suffering. For her and the people she left behind. Just suddenly. She left.

Grandma was rarely at home. The scooter gave her a lot of freedom. People thought perhaps mom would not feel so sad. But there are many words left unsaid and many things left undone. Mom could only ask why.

One year on, I still cannot understand how a person whose images are so vivid in my mind and heart no longer exists. It is a peculiar feeling to be walking around when the origin of life has vanished. But we just have to do one of the hardest things we ever do. To continue living without grandma. Because grandma lived.

Huynh Khan Ngoc Han

Between Two Milestones

stretching across sun-warmed stone with a sibilant sigh,
ignoring the shadow spreading black, feathered wings across the sky.
now, we live;
for, soon, we die.

Chua Xin Rong

Before we begin

I am too wild for you, I think, myself with my lustful thoughts and itch to write, hungering after extremity far up on the shore where the waves never lap. I show you ochre, cobalt, plum and orchid; eggshell, cornsilk, cream and lace; you smile or don’t smile but never say yes or no. I sit beside you wanting you to be the sea but you return me a pond glassy with my reflection. How do I start knowing you, when I can only know movement? Where do I even begin?

One day we stood in a room full of blinking clocks, every clock a different minute, twelve simultaneous hours. Time washed past us, past and present congealing thickly. There was no sound but our heads creaking left, right, a metronome keeping rhythm for the clocks. The room was dark with possibility; the room shone bright with time; the room tossed back and forth on various timelines; the room paused still with us inside. And all the second hands struck twelve as we chose that time to lift our heads, eyes a slit, stomachs squeezed with laughter as we lumbered out of the room: This is art! This is art! and for that second, perhaps I didn’t need to make sense of you to begin.

Lee Zhi Xin

A Make-Believe Dream

It had been the night before, and in a sense it was still was, for sleep never intervened to make the distinction.

As he walked around the house, making sure everything was in order (yes, the stove was off, so he would not return to an inheritance of Too Much Charcoal), I noticed that he trembled violently in spurts. Was it the cold, or the fear? He would not say, but the latter was palatable in every sense. It certainly was tangible, yet it also spurred him on, for it gave the proceedings an air of fecklessness, one that he reveled in.

The packing had been completed hours ago, and his sole companion sat in a corner; all zipped up and only half-full. It struck me then how little one really needs to survive on the road.

He opened the curtains and together we peered out of the window, ostensibly to get a gauge of the weather at five A.M. Secretly, I hoped that in that act, some excuse would be found to reverse his course. It looked ominous, though promising by most standards if one wanted to stumble upon a corpse (or become one).

Still he left, for he had already set his mind on it. I watched him from the porch: the part of him who dared not follow in his dream of taking off on a journey, alone.

Denys Tan

Coma

Voices steeling your grief
in oaths, consciousness

tipping like errant snow,
accelerating into legacies

of courage as your eyelids are
freed, shouting back our love.

Jerrold Yam
Serving National Service

The End Is Just A New Beginning

To Karen

I don’t know why I specifically mention you in my note. It’s not as if there’s anyone else in the house to see it.

But really, I felt I should leave a reassurance so you don’t think I just decided to leave you on a whim. This is going to be the beginning of my new life, so I’m rather happy about it. It’s one of those times in your life, you know, when you feel you’ve got to put down the unpleasant memories and start anew. I just thought you should know that I saw Cain the other day. I think he’s gotten married again.

I feel light suddenly. The thought of beginning afresh is intoxicating. It’s been in my mind for a week now, bet you didn’t know that. When I start my life over, I’m going to use the Atkins diet earlier. Study hard and get into law school. Not hook up with the first guy I meet.

Can you imagine me not being fat? I’ve been shamelessly playing with Photoshop, indulging my fantasies. I realize I can be quite fetching if I shed 40 kg. Do you think Cain would have stayed then?

Please don’t regard this as the end. The end of one life is the beginning of another, isn’t it? And when you see me again I’ll be confident about myself.
I’d like to be cremated, please. I don’t want to start a new life with the same image.

Time to go.

Mabel Chan

Beginnings

There is no such thing, for
it is done.
What is left are

Cycles of times past;
Beginnings shed light anew
on well learnt wisdoms.

Isaac Tan

A Bold Play That Goes To The HEART Of The Matter

A Review by Isaac Tan

Mata Hati
Teater Ekamatra
Drama Centre Blackbox
15-18 December 2011

The spirited imagination of the human mind often leads us to push boundaries and construct alternative scenarios as part of our cognitive endeavours. When the need to explore the “what ifs” of society meets the endless possibilities that theatre could provide, we get a play that is daring, insightful and chillingly honest. Mata Hati, the latest offering by Dr. Robin Loon (Assistant Professor from the English Language and Literature (Theatre Studies) Department), poses a simple question: What if a well respected Malay politician in Singapore gets embroiled in a sex scandal?

With all the hype that one had experienced in the General and Presidential elections, it is understandable that one would expect the play to be tiresome. Mata Hati is anything but tiresome. In the course of raising questions about gender roles, sex, race and politics (which makes it deliciously taboo), the trajectory of the play brings us closer to uncovering Amir’s (the Malay politician) humanity; his aspirations and beliefs. The various confrontations and interactions between Amir and the other characters, which ranged from his daughter to his subordinates and close friend, reveals various facets of Amir’s personality and thoughts as we sympathise with his struggles to rise up through the political ranks while being shocked at his audacity in engaging in sexual escapades even during a holiday with his own family.

As Amir continues to unravel, we are being led into a paradox of having an initial illusion that we are getting closer to knowing him but one would soon realise that Amir becomes an increasingly complex character as he gradually reveals some of his motives. Though some would say that it was an overly ambitious script that did not dwell enough on the various issues, I personally feel that it is an interesting reflection of how the externalities of politics and the internalities of one’s beliefs and aspirations are so intertwined that it is hard to differentiate between them.

As for the cast, they certainly tackled the rather complicated script well. Johari Aziz nailed the character of Amir with his measured performance despite of the episodic scenes which sometimes demand an abrupt change of intensity in terms of emotional quality. Eleanor Tan brought about much tension to the play as Mrs. Rebecca Tan, the civil servant posted to assist Amir, as she taunts him about the end of his career and brushes him off in the name of bureaucratic necessity. Eleanor played it viciously well so much so that it compelled an audience member to say “I hate you, Mrs. Tan” during the post-show dialogue. Anwar Hadi gave a credible performance as Amir’s close friend. The strong chemistry between Amir and his character resulted in a great performance as their interactions gave the audience an insight into who Amir was before rising to prominence as a politician.

Tan Shou Chen did not pale in comparison as the much abused assistant while Isabella Chiam, who plays a journalist interviewing Amir (who also happens to be a Chinese immigrant), does show that prejudice is not only limited to people of a different race. And Shaza Ishak, playing Amir’s daughter, rails against her father for being irresponsible and, by extension, the paternalism of society that she is living in. While the exchanges between father and daughter are poignant, Shaza could have reined in her outburst slightly as as part of it was lost on the audience.

Unlike the typical storyline in which a complex character gradually unravels upon confrontation and retrospection, Mata Hati bucks the trend as it ends with Amir being incredibly distraught but still managing to hold it together and not revealing the innermost reasons for his actions. With no resolution in sight, what new light does this play contribute to our national discourse about race, politics, sexuality and gender? Truth be told, nothing much as it voices out what has been said or should have been said. Yet, its biggest takeaway is that while our society has several problems that need to be addressed, in the grand scheme of things, it all boils down to what we truly believe and stand for which would influence the political and social dynamics of our society. It is only after a harsh and honest self-reflection that we could attempt to address the bigger issues that affect our society.

True to its title, Mata Hati certainly gives insight into the heart of the matter with regards to the questions it raises.

Intrigued by what I saw, I wrote to Dr. Loon to find out more about his inspiration for the play to which he graciously gave this email interview.

1. What inspired you to write this play?
RL: After watching CHARGED last Dec, I spoke to the director of the play who is also the Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra, Zizi Azah, about how I would like to follow on from CHARGED and NADIRAH with a piece on Sex and the Malay Politician. Zizi was enthusiastic about the premise and the idea and we decided on the collaboration. Another reason is that I really like the courage and commitment Teater Ekamatra has shown in the past 2 years and would like to be part of it.

2. What were some of the challenges you faced in writing this play?
RL: The biggest challenge is to reach back into history and create a character who is a unique product of a specific time. I conducted thorough research with the help of my research assistant, former TS grad Muhd Ridzal, and tried to piece together a climate of the times. I was also very aware of the problems and responsibilities of a Chinese writer writing a play about a Malay Politician but as I forged on, with a lot of chat with Zizi, I found many of those problems to be more pre-emptive than real.

3. What were some of the insights you have gained in writing and researching for this play?
RL: I discovered a different perspective on race relations after ploughing the research in relation to power and politics. Race relations in Singapore is even more complicated when it is enmeshed with realpolitik. The play is a conjecture created from the classic ‘what if’ scenario backed by the research.

4. Mata Hati raises several political and social questions about our society. In your opinion, what is at the heart of this play?
RL: While I do not want to essentialise anything about humanity, the core of the play is actually about the corrosive nature of power and how that problematises race relations in Singapore

5. As a professor, you have mentored several batches of students that would form the ranks of a new breed of professionals in the theatre industry. What are your hopes for the local theatre industry in years to come?
RL: My biggest hope is that we will be able to talk about issues that matter to us in an open, frank and creative way. And this means that the authorities need to trust that the artists will deal with the issues in a responsible manner. I hope that the Arts will become far less regulated.

6. Finally, are there any pearls of wisdom that you could impart to aspiring writers or actors?
RL: Three words: train, research, practice.

THE SAVITCH AND THE STARSHIP

Amid the wide rolling verdure of the Iaran plains the swarthy clan of Narecc have made a discovery. For a week they have tramped toward it; for a week they have whispered, speculated, stewed along in thinly-veiled disquiet; they have thirsted and hungered as their stores dwindled and their canteens drained.

But now – as they at length draw nigh – a ghastly silence settles over this august and mighty company of twenty-eight. Men and women, tribal elders, children, clutching infants… the bedraggled ensemble shares but one hushed consensus, one overwhelming mental narrative:

The God-thing is immense.

They’d descried it first, seven nights ago in a blue tropical moon; seen a star flicker deep red and begin (barely perceptibly, at first) to grow. The sages squabbled all evening over its import, the women dawdled over their chores; the babes grew restless and could not be induced to sleep. From his liqueur-slumber the Chieftain was roused; he burst, livid and bellowing, from the stygian recesses of his hut.

Fortunately for the goat that strayed into his path, he’d emerged into a world swept awash in a crimson glow. He looked to the horizon… and saw the star fall. Though it was steeped in flame its heart was lunar pale – soft, solemn, heartrendingly pure. It made no sound when it settled, though the hills thither were bathed for a time in searing white. Presently the earth trembled, as if Mother Terra had caught a chill traversing her cold, black void. There came a curious squall of furnace-heat, so fleeting that the Chieftain put it down to the spirits he had quaffed… and then darkness rallied once more, save for a fell incandescence, black-red as lambs’ blood, pervading the lands where the star lay dying.
The Chieftain was great and sagacious and clairvoyant; he marked that the thing was no star, but a gift from the gods, a saviour of their race, a deliverer borne of faith and ritual and sacrifice. Perhaps it would confer deathlessness; perhaps it would make him a King of men. He would do well to reach it, ere it went out forever…

The clan of Narecc crests the last rise. They look up, and it is all they can do not to cower. It is dark as night in the shadow of the titan; it is disagreeably hot as well, and there is a reek of brimstone that makes their eyes water. But the men are doughty; they raise their spears, tighten their loincloths, stand in a line before their women. The little pot-bellied despot steps to the fore, clears his throat, opens his ample mouth… but the words will not come, and there is silence. His people are thoroughly cowed, they can do little but stare.

The God-thing is a black wall a half-mile before them. No end to the hulk is discernible; it stretches interminably to either side, it is so lofty that craning one’s neck is not enough to take it all in. Its mighty surface is wrought of matter akin to gleaming obsidian, trellised and carved into a confounding grid of canyons, ridges, gorges, ovoid plateaux; the whole is interspersed with what look to be battlements, towers, ramparts, entire citadels. The clansmen stare at the fires that roar and rage and do battle across the boundless vertical plain of the behemoth’s hide; they stare at the smoke which shrouds it, the pinprick lights of amber – thousands, tens of thousands of them – that smoulder on in the gloom as if pupils of coal. As there is no question that the gods own this leviathan, there is likewise no question that it is dead. Its surface is pocked and scarred, ravaged by rents and fissures that gape as wide as valleys and plunge yet deeper, into realms of abyssal pitch…

The clan of Narecc stares, and struggles to come to terms with the scale of it all. Their Chieftain, though, is of sterner stuff. He brandishes a finger and points to the right. Everyone snaps to it, and walks.

An afternoon’s march, and the rightmost bound of the God-thing is in sight. In this region the titan is vaguely cylindrical in form, tapering subtly as the last of it looms into view. By degrees they approach its very end – keeping a wary distance – and peer around the corner.

What greets them is beyond what the lesser souls among them can bear. It is, nonetheless, precisely what the Chieftain seeks. There is a feral light in his eyes as he drives his people forth; he cuffs the children, jabs at the men, hisses abuse to all. They fear him, he sees – as they should. He has earned it.

He lets them off only when they are huddled in terror a mere hundred feet before what he has already dubbed the Celestial Portal. For the God-thing’s retral quarter, it seems, is far from solid.
A vast, open maw yawns in hideous, infernal majesty before them. It is fully a quarter-mile across; greater than three or four hundred yards down its throat, though, no light will intrude. Therein lurks a black with a life of its own, an agent more sinister than simple lightlessness. What they can see of it is lined with innumerable rows of charred teeth, each the height of a man. The rows file and spiral on into the bowels of the God-thing; there is no end to them, no telling of their design. Bass groans issue from the depths, deep and sonorous and mournful… they put the Chieftain in mind of the colossus said to dwell beneath Cavetown.

And so Narecc quails before Doom incarnate. An infant whimpers, the women sob, the men cast their palms at the sky and ululate. The hogs snort and root and tug at their leashes, the hounds yelp… and the Chieftain stands as tall as his stature will permit. None of them, though, can know how small they truly are. They are specks lost amid the might of creation; they do not figure in the grand scheme of things.

The Chieftain trots forward, and does not look back. His reign is ending, and he wants a legacy. Upon these plains his days are numbered; he can feel it in his bones, can see it in the rheum of his eyes. He does not wish to die like those afore him, he does not want a stately pyre or a maiden to be torched with. Whatever awaits him in that Portal will herald a new age, an epoch of his ushering. Beginnings are endings by extension, and he will not miss this world when there is a new one to be had. Mother Terra has room for only so many souls – why wait for her to terminate his?

The Chieftain is now twenty yards into the leviathan’s maw. His friends and minions stare wild-eyed at each other; they plead and wail and beckon at his retreating back. Then he vanishes behind a tooth, and they scramble to follow.

Justin Tan

Eighteen

How did everyone grow
so tall, look so old
suddenly? Leaving me

behind, still a child.
There is something about this world
of theirs

that keeps it in a photo,
faces
as big as a fingerprint

smiling, smiling away.
Somehow it feels
they’re not the ones trapped in a photo

but I, unmoving,
managing only a shot
of hands, faces, feet

in their flurry of movement.

Lee Zhi Xin

Milestones & Beginnings

Jill had never known anything else other than the race track. As far as she knew, since the beginning of her life, it was the very sole purpose of her existence. Like other professional racers, she was housed near the race track and had her own personal trainer, Mac. The life she lived as a racer was no doubt demanding, yet it thrilled her in many ways and she owed it to Mac, who had put her to race and had given her the chance to do what she was born to do. For that, she loved Mac dearly.

Such was her life: the days consisting of endless rounds on the oval race track, pounding on the packed dirt under the sun, working against other racers. The nights where she dropped abruptly into the blissful abyss of deep sleep, burnt from the exhaustion of the day but raring to go the very next day. She had learnt that money was important to Mac and she was indispensible to him as a source of income. He worked her excessively hard and she reciprocated with such boundless, explosive energy summoned from the very core of her being and fuelled by her instinct and passion to run.

Such passion for racing intensified when Mac showed—on rare occasions—some form of real affection towards her. Such times made her happier than the hollow praises she received when she clocked unprecedented timings and won him lofty sums of money. Those were the times where Mac was distracted by the roaring applause around the stadium, the trophy he was holding on her behalf and the prize money in the form of a large cheque. It made Jill sad to watch him counting money after a race while she waited patiently by his side for her drink of vitamin and glucose. But on the rare occasions when Mac caressed her head with his hand and murmured low sweet words to her, she felt genuine affection and it strengthened her determination to do better to bring his hand back to her head once more in that gentle, sincere caress.

Jill could see her life laid out in front of her—endless days galloping on the packed dirt of the race track; sprinting, chasing and winning. At least, that was what Jill imagined doing for the rest of her life with Mac. Yet fate, like life on the race track, was often cruel.

The pain began deep in her joints which left her twitching in her sleep for nights on end, panting in silent agony. In the daytime it eased off and she was able to race, running as she did before. Nevertheless, the gnawing pain seeped gradually into the daytime as well, until an inevitable limp appeared in her lope as she went through her rounds on the race track.

Mac’s mood worsened as her condition declined. His rising panic mirrored hers as the pain worsened. She began to taste the sting of his hand more frequently than the gentle caresses. The word “faster” haunted her, ringing in her ears even as Mac screamed the order mercilessly, day after day. Mac drove her harder and harder in his desperation. The deafening roar of applause from the crowds grew to be associated with other champions as she never progressed beyond the preliminary rounds. Still, Jill wasn’t trained to give up. With fiery optimism she tore through each race, allowing the thrill of running to numb her pain.

But Jill could not battle the pain.

One day Jill collapsed in a heap on the hard ground of the race track amidst a warm-up as the bone in her foreleg snapped under the strain of running. The other race dogs shot past her in a cloud of dust and wind. Jill’s instincts screamed in fury, but the pain of her broken bone screamed louder. Jill felt Mac’s hands on her collar, pulling her to her up and leading her out of the race track where she fell, limp, to the ground. He squatted over her in silent contemplation while she whimpered in agony. Jill stared up into his eyes, searching for comfort. She found only cold resignation.

People in white coats came to look at Jill in her kennel. Jill welcomed them because they lessened her pain with sharp needles. Sometimes Mac came with them and they held conversations in front of her kennel while she thumped her tail happily at Mac.

“Your Greyhound has been overworked and underfed, Mr. Macgregor. I hope you realize that it is inhumane to drive them over their limits and that her injury has reached such a state due to your negligence.”

“I just want to know, can she race again?”

Most of all, Jill loved the times when Mac visited her alone, though such times were rare, and though each time he came alone, he gazed at her and said nothing.

“The test results are out, Mr. Macgregor; the dog has canine osteosarcoma.”

“What is that? Is it curable?”

“It is a form of bone cancer that affects mainly giant breeds. Due to her highly vigorous racing life, Jill is especially prone to it even though she is barely six years old. Broken bones are common in dogs with canine osteosarcoma due to the gradual replacement of normal bone with tumorous bone. I would recommend an amputation followed by chemotherapy to prevent metastasis. However, there isn’t a hundred percent guarantee of-”

“Forget it. I cannot keep her.”

Long sentences made no sense to Jill. She was used to short commands from Mac. Nevertheless, she was happy to hear Mac’s voice. Feeling the pain dim after her injection, she limped over to the door of her kennel to get a better look at Mac. There she sat on her haunches, gazing up at him, awaiting a familiar command from him. He did not turn his eyes to her.

“She loves you a lot, Mr. Macgregor. She runs for you. Why don’t you consider amputating her affected leg and finding a home for her retirement…”

“Look, you must understand that I race Greyhounds for a living. They cannot become a burden to me. I would rather use the money for her amputation to purchase a new greyhound. The beginning of a disease is a sad milestone in a race dog’s life; it is the beginning of an end. She is of no use to me anymore.”

Reluctantly, Mac reached through the bars to caress her head. Jill’s heart leaped with canine joy at his acknowledgement of her presence. Surely it wouldn’t be long before he took her running again!

“Let her sleep.”

Jovita Wong

Awakening

Awakened moment:
Loud cry in the silence—
Cymbals resonate.

Amanda Ho