and no, leaving, unlike repression, or making love, is not easier the second time. it seems everything contrives to make me sad the few days before I leave, from the unhurried silences at home, to the way the grass in Pasir Ris screeches under the heat, as it did when I was a kid. But … Continue reading the word for love is forest

Today I filled up an electronic form as part of an unsolicited script submission to a theatre company. The prompt had been to describe myself, and so I typed the following: I'm a Singaporean playwright and performer based in London. I want to write plays that speak globally and intelligently, across borders, and to the … Continue reading describe yourself

Winter is gone, and Spring 2018 is doing a five-steps-forward-eight-steps-back sort of shuffle in between sleet-rain and sun shimmer. Coming from the tropics, this sort of ballet of the weather does make me wonder a lot about how much of my consciousness is constituted by the climate (I think A LOT)... but anyway, for those … Continue reading Springtime

It is the long road to 2019, the year where Singapore commemorates its colonial past like a benevolent inheritance. This is a series of ruminations on empire, which is after all an ongoing spiritual crisis disguised as an economic miracle. 1. I think of all the languages I love. Cantonese is the sound of my … Continue reading Empire is an ongoing spiritual crisis

1. ... the way my neck stretches up to reach the mouth of this skyscraper boy with the floppy hair, wonky smile, and concerned-looking Polish eyes. It’s the first time I’ve had to climb for a kiss. How simple the prelude had been, some small talk about art and moving to Athens like all the … Continue reading I want to catalogue it all

What am I supposed to make of these ghostly winter dreams of woodfires and hotpots, when I've grown up in the tropics? My ancestors seem to haunt me through a thick fog of forgetting. They will themselves past my incomprehension, nattering away in languages that are barely intelligible, like childhood memories, but I tell them … Continue reading Hotpot

I've now been in London for a month, which calls for a sort of 满月(full month) moment of reflection. 1. First off, 满月is exactly the sort of sudden over-demonstrative Chineseness that has lately possessed me. I am working through it with some amusement, to see how far it can go. It started with me very … Continue reading 满月

1. I saw two statues at the Great Court of the British Museum. The plaque on the plinth described them as Guardian statues, from China, from several centuries ago. They were installed, marginally, at some corner of this indoor courtyard, a space so massive it dwarves you. It is architecture that evokes divinity, or, at … Continue reading Some Observations from my first two weeks in Albion:

1 The day of departure is a study in normalcy, with subtle variations. My mother potters across the house in her pajamas, but places a cup of coffee in front of me as I type this. It’s the first time she’s made me a hot drink in a long while, not since the milo waiting … Continue reading Leaving home for the first time at the age of 30

is the fat boy's love. He cannot speak it but, grunting, lards his verses with it. He scratches his arms to bleed the grease, its oily sentiment. At night, he grinds his love into his teeth. The words strain out, are gelatinous, wrung out like an apology for the vessel in which it comes. Because … Continue reading The love that dare not speak its name