it’s been hectic.

there have been days sitting in ‘meetings’ and visiting sites and wondering why i ever agreed to help. but there have also been other days of sitting around and reading and writing (although much fewer). and other evenings of catching up and chatting about all the inconsequential and yet all-important things. karaoke and drum n bass too.

i still sleep till noon, which doesn’t help the jetlag much, but i don’t really have to be up anyway. the food’s good, although some have been disappointments. the mythology of singaporean food probably grew into a over-sized totally delicious monster in my head, either that or my friends are failing in their duties to bring me to the best places.

photography’s fallen off the radar. it’s just too hot to be standing around in the day trying to take photos of the things i see. i really want to photograph it all, but the heat! the humidity! i can’t balance a bag in one hand, an umbrella in the other, a bottle of water as well as a camera. it’s all too complicated.

it’s been a week and a half of history and the future.

this is my new hobby.

it’s all a bit free-style and whimsical, and i don’t think neat crochet is my forte. i’m kinda just going with the flow and exploring how many knots in a loop i can make, how linking this loop to that knot and that loop to that other weird sticking out thing can make some other thing. i can’t be bothered to learn from a book, so gut instinct is all that’s guiding me.

it’s not bad, though. i’m pretty impressed by my productiveness. i mean, i only started 2 days ago and i already have enough crochet flowers to fill a crochet basket (not that i’d actually a crochet a basket - that would be much too twee even for me).

i’ve just watched Martyn See’s film Zahari’s 17 Years, and i had/have so many things to say about it and Said Zahari and Martyn See. but then again, the whole thing makes me very sad and very angry, and more than a bit empty inside.

Said Zahari says of Lee Kuan Yew, that whoever is not with him is his enemy.

and somewhere in the middle of the film, Said Zahari says “i’m still a singapore citizen. i was born in singapore, i grew up in singapore. i love singapore, singapore is my country“.

and perhaps that is what the government has to understand. i might not agree with everything that they do, and i will continue to critically assess their actions. but this is not because i’m communist or i’m anti-singapore. in fact, it’s because i love singapore so damn bloody much that i’m doing it. who else, if not singaporeans, have a right to question the way in which we are governed? who else, if not singaporeans, have a vested interest in the governance of singapore? who else, if not singaporeans, should speak up?

it’s not about the government, it’s about singaporeans.

but y’know, i don’t think they care. they’re in power, and they’ll do whatever it takes to stay in power, and reap all the benefits that come with it.

the other day kim and i were talking, and we were saying what makes a successful politician: is it one who does what he/she says in his/her mandate that got he/she elected, or one who is in power term after term. obviously, if you ask the electorate they’d say the former, but if you ask a politician, it’s the latter. and never the twain shall meet.

anyway, it all makes me feel so very pathetic and wishing that i had the guts to do something. really really do something. but instead, here are pictures of pretty things.

couple more berlin photos are here.

p/s: there you go, dolly!

the second day out there i reloaded my little lomo lc-a, and as often happens to my cranky camera, the winder got stuck. i took the film out, put it back in, tried to wind it, but no luck. so i left it in the apartment for the rest of the week, and only took pictures on my digital camera.

usually, i carry 2 cameras around with me. one film one digital, just in case one or the other dies, runs out of batteries, film, memory space, or just refuses to co-operate. this makes my bag doubly heavy, but there’s no substitute for the chemical smell of a new roll of film popping out of its cylinder, or the shiny brown plasticky look that’s slightly sticky. i use the digital camera for documentary, and the film camera for the romance of photography.

and when i return from a holiday, i absolutely love sending my film off to the developers - i use a mail-order film processing service, i send the film off and they send my photos back. they’re much better than the film processing counters available in chemists, and i don’t trust the high street shops because i’ve seen how they use shoddy paper and are generally just rubbish at working the machines. anyway, i like the whole process of waiting. the build-up of excitement and anticipation, will they come out alright? did i get the light just right? was my choice in setting the camera at ISO 200 but using 400 film right? were the images overexposed? did i manage to GET IT? the feel, the location, the smell, the mood?

and when the pictures come back, i like picking out the ones i think best represent my vision of the holiday, then putting them together in a photo-album. although photo-album isn’t perhaps the right word. it’s really just a scrap book, pictures stuck on black card paper with pritt stick (like UHU stick, but with a sickeningly sweet smell), and bound together by punching holes along one side and weaving string or yarn or twine through the holes. or, in a pinch, stapling them together, and then hiding the staples with a strip of colourful paper/fabric.

so, this time, because there aren’t any photos from my lc-a, there won’t be a photoscrapbook. and my memories will only be partially supplemented by the photos taken on my digital camera. which is a shame, because i enjoy the process of it all. and it’s also annoying because when i went through the rigmarole of loading it with film on the last day, just for fun, it decided to work again the damned thing.

matt suggested i could print the digital photos and put them together, but i know i’ll never do that. whilst it would result in the same product, it’s just not the same thing. y’know?