Jakarta Selatan

Jakarta Selatan, September 2017

Monyet

Please support the Jakarta Animal Aid Network and their campaign to end this cruel and inhumane practise. Please donate here.

"Long Tailed Macaques are extremely popluar in Indonesia as they are used as Dancing Monkeys, Topeng Monyet is what they are called in the Indonesian Language.
Therefore this project has a major focus on the Dancing monkeys. This extremely cruel practice is where juvenile Macaques are forced to perform (dance, ride bikes) in the loud and very crowded busy streets of Jakarta. An illegal trade in wild Macaques has built up around this phenomena known as ‘Topeng Monyet’.

JAAN observed a worrying increase in the use of these monkeys on Jakarta streets since 2009 and has started to campaign against this abuse ever since."

Hari Raya 2016 - Warning Disturbing Images

Images from Jakarta Selatan, September 2016

WARNING: These images show the slaughter of animals in detail. Not for the squeamish or the sensitive.

My life as a goat

Sophia, Jakarta Selatan

My favourite books I read in 2016:

1. The Emigrants, W G Sebald

2. Beauty is a Wound, Eka Kurniawan

3. Why be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson

4. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro

5. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

Jakarta Selatan

Thinking of Indonesian family and friends today with a pivotal demonstration happening in central Jakarta.

Separately, it is great to have Eka Kurniawan at Singapore Writers Festival this year. I'm really looking forward to listening him speak.

Meanwhile, I am appearing on a few panels and at a book launch:

WRITING FROM THE DIASPORA
5 Nov, Sat 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM The Arts House, Screening Room
With Catherine Torres & Robin Hemley & Moderated by Eric Tinsay Valles

SG HORROR: ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?
10 Nov, Thu 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM, The Arts House, Blue Room
With Ng Yi-Sheng, Audrey Chin & moderated by Jeffrey Lim

Singapore Love Stories Book launch
12 November 2016 Sat 1pm to 2pm The Arts House, Gallery II

Do come along. It would be great see you there!

Jakarta Selatan

"The “Muslim” has come to be a hollowed, emptied term that functions as a trigger for white anxiety. Little surprise then, when you add Muslim next to another anxiety-laden word “immigrant”, the result equates to half the country reaching out for the treadmill’s emergency red stop button.

Modernity’s pace seems too quick for some, but the keen reader would have noted that in my opening agreement I put the Muslim in scare quotes. I do this for a reason. The word “Muslim” belongs to a conversation born out of the “war on terror”. I distinguish it from the quote-less everyday Muslim whose complex life is beyond the headline and Hanson’s narrow parameters.

Any one simplified and generalising statement about Islam betrays the religion and its communities’ diverse contests, betrays Muslims’ internal debates on how to best articulate Islam’s universality. Whereas, the “Muslim” functions in a pure simplicity. It simply means them. It represents an abject figure that has to be excluded from the circle of us so to imagine a supposed pure integrity of our culture."

The Word Muslim Belongs to the War on Terror it has little to do with me, The Guardian, Sept 2016