Bloke, New Bridge Road Bus Stop, Singapore

“What's this place called?' 
He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessently, fatuously for days beyond number, had suddenly been cut short; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as my outraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds: for he had spoken a name so familiar to me, a conjuror's name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight.”
 
Bridgehead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
 

Bloke, Temple Street

Today, I am off to BooksActually to learn how the bookshop works. I will have my best 'retail assistant' face on.

The above image was a Kuala Lumpur International Photo Award Finalist in 2009.

Favourite Podcasts & New Bridge Road

The simple pleasures are always the best. Especially if they are free too. For example, when I am travelling, jogging or walking home, I listen to the following:

• New Yorker Fiction

In the most recent podcast, Nathan Englander reads John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio" first published in 1947 but still wonderful after all these years

• Read Me Something You Love

Like an honest conversation between friends. People read out poems, stories or essays that they love and explain why. Emily Dickinson is discussed in the most recent podcast.

• BBC World Service Book Club

Maya Angelou is featured in an interview from Autumn 2005.

• Slate's Audio Book Club

Very American, brash and . Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist is feature in a recent podcast. 

• Desert Island Discs

There is something so English about DID. I can remember listening to this show when I grew up in England in the 70s. Music makes people open up and present a different aspect to the world. Recently from the archive I listened to Philip Larkin taking the complete plays of GBS to the desert island where he wished spend his time trying to write a novel.

• Nikesh Shukla

This guy is cool and a wonderful writer.

• New Books In East Asian Studies

About to listen to 'White Lotus rebels & South China Pirates'. Hmm … exoticization, anyone? More thoughts soon.

Bloke Playing Checkers & Singapore Literature Prize

The biennial Singapore Literature Prize 2014 shortlist is out.

On the list are some of my favourite Singaporean writers, including Amanda Lee Koe with Minstry of Moral Panic (edited by Jason Eric Lundberg) nominated for English fiction & Joshua Ip with Sonnets from The Singlish shortlisted for English poetry. It's a wonderful achievement to make the shortlist & thoroughly well deserved.

Both write with energy, invention, adventure and humor. People should be reading more SIngaporean literature.

Amanda has a wonderful story, Why Do Chinese People Have Slanted Eyes? in Asymptote. 'Dazzling' is a good description of Amanda's work. 

Some of Joshua's poetry can be found in the August 2014 Singapore Poetry special edition of Blue Lyra Review. Joshua is a prodigious and talented writer. I don't know how he fits everything in. Unfortunately, he supports Arsenal FC.

It is an exciting time for Singaporean literature in English, however I am amazed that none of Cyril Wong's poetry or fiction made it to the shortlist.

Kids Playing, Bangkok

The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?