Public Address - Yellow Peril (Home)

Threats, violence, scones and laughter | May 31, 2005 00:55

Were you expecting me to say something about the New Zealand First immigration policy? Do I really have to? Can't I just crawl inside a bowl of noodles and not come out until all the old ladies who hate me die off?

It's no fun when your enemies are old ladies. It's not like you can beat them up and feel good about it. But they can beat you up. It has happened to me. That's right, a racist old lady once tried to beat me up.

It was 14 August, 2004. A bunch of local activists had organised a packed meeting at the Newtown Community Centre in Wellington, following the desecration of several Jewish cemeteries. I was called outside to talk to a journalist. Waiting on the pavement was the National Front (all six of them). Offended that they hadn't been welcomed into the meeting, a seemingly insane little old lady who happened to be the wife of the National Front's Secretary, started ranting at me and boob-bashing me, trying to shove me onto the street with the full strength of her rotund body. This was actually rather funny. A little old lady was trying to beat me up. I kept trying to dance around her, but she didn't let up, she just came and came at me. It was like being repeatedly buffeted by a giant, stodgy, poisonous scone. I was laughing in shock, unsure what to do. In the end, a policeman intervened and warned her off.

I didn't press charges.

Taking this anecdote as analogy for the New Zealand First onslaught, I have a range of options:

a) Be angry
b) Be upset
c) Be afraid
d) Laugh
e) Ignore
f) Calmly and rationally expose all falacious, cynical and divisive propaganda for what it is.

Sorry, have to strike out f). As mentioned in a previous post, commonly experienced physical reactions to Winston Peters often delay any articulate response on my part. What with the haemorrhaging and all. And it's very tiring to recycle the same old responses to the same old election-cycle bullshit. Other people with more energy are doing that already.

So let's consider a)-c). The first period, starting around 1993 or so and capped by the '96 election, was bad, real bad. I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to think about it. If you were there, if you were one of us, if you were just a kid like I was, you'll know what I mean. Then in 1999 it was a dormant issue, given the wipe-out New Zealand First caused itself by actually getting into government and being useless at it. Then in 2002 it was merely familiar and dull, and Peters' billboards were way too easy to deface. And finally, now, I think I could happily sleepwalk through, if it wasn't for the refugee witchhunts.

Because who gives a shit what he says about 'Asians' these days? There are enough of us, with enough socio-economic and cultural clout (in Auckland anyway) that it doesn't even matter. So what if a bunch of old folk in Orewa think Auckland is too Asian? What's it got to do with them? And it's quite flattering really, for Peters to compare Queen Street to Hong Kong. I mean, which is a more interesting walk: this street, this street, or ...this street?

I think that covers d).

We 'Asians' have our foothold and we're climbing. I wish Peters would just focus on 'Asians' this election, and leave refugees - the most vulnerable people in the country, and technically, the world - the hell alone. But that would mean shunning cowardice.

The worst thing about Winston Peters is that he doesn't mean anything he says, and we are wired for taking hypocrisy as the biggest sin, always. Can anyone really believe Peters cares about preserving traditional old white New Zealand life? He'd love it if Auckland transformed suddenly into Hong Kong! The booze! The clubs! The shoeshiners! The women! The cigarettes! You can smoke anywhere in China! Smoke in restaurants! In cinemas! In hospitals.* He'd be in heaven.

As for e), it is my firm belief that by the time I plough through this 800 page review-copy of Jung Chang's Mao: the Unknown Story, the entire membership of New Zealand First will have succumbed to generational turnover.

Let's go back again though, to everyone's favourite option: d). Now, who doesn't have at least one racist grandparent? When we brought my paternal grandmother over from Malaysia late last century, the wee Somali kids from the neighbourhood would sometimes trot into our front yard to fetch their ball and she'd practically dive for cover exclaiming 'the black people are coming to steal things!'

Here are two ways to deal with your racist grandparents:
1. Let them all go off together to a semi-rural locale, to be locked in a hall with a political demagogue; or
2. Keep them on site so you can laugh at their ignorant comments and say 'Come on Gran, don't be dumb.'

Option 2 is the one I've always employed, and I have a fair bit of hope for it. If you are a Pakeha reader, and would like to help me personally in some way, I request that you indulge in Option 2 as often as possible. Old people don't like to be laughed at. It reminds them they're old and out of touch, and still have to keep learning things. When people get a certain amount of living out of the way, they naturally think they're entitled to shut down their brains and not let in anything new. It might well happen to you soon, or maybe it has already. Just hope like hell that when it does, that you're still in meaningful contact with the rest of society.

Speaking of rebuilding connections with reality, it's nice to see that the SIS has come clean. They really do fantasise that they are the Mukhabarat. Is this surprising? I wonder if they call themselves the Gestapo when they question Germans.

Which segways perfectly into this. I managed to pick up from Fightdemback before hackers crashed their site once more tonight, that in the wake of Kyle Chapman throwing in the towel there has been a spate of lesser members jumping ship, some to the New Zealand Nazi Movement, some to a peaceful, apolitical life. Fightdemback bids them good luck with good grace.

I also mentioned earlier that the National Front had been ineffectually flaming the comments page of a Landfall essay of mine republished by The Big Idea. Last week, a (Pakeha) Herald journalist was enraged enough to complain to the site, demanding that the comments be removed, which they duly were. I was a bit dismayed, as the comments so neatly summed up everything that needs to be said about the National Front. Aside from the awesome comment I quoted in my earlier post, about how I shouldn't be taking essay-prize money away from hard-working illiterate white men, I only managed to save this gem, signed by Kerry Bolton himself, long-serving senior member of the National Front, lover of the giant poison scone:

"That she should be lauded as some kind of writer of repute is typical of the kind of society NZ has become, rotten form[sic] the top downwards; a reflection of the West's cycle of decline."

Shucks, the guy knows how to swell a girl's head.

I don't think it's really fair or entirely relevant to make fun of mad right-wingers and neo-nazis based on the inadequacy of their spelling, grammar and punctuation. So I will note that Kerry can use a semicolon very nicely, that he believes the Holocaust to be a "blood libel" against the German race, and that he is a Satanist. The last minority. Sigh. Gold, all of it, and all gone.

However, there has been one new comment which I've grabbed before The Big Idea moderators pull it off the site. A girl always needs to remember the first threat of violence she receives on the internet. The anonymous commenter took exception to my description of "a little slow-moving qi gong", and possibly not just because it was a clear tautology (shame on Landfall for giving a prize to such a solecism-packed tract).

Anonymous comment May 28, 2005 - 02:19 AM
"How about i try a little fast-moving fist on your face[?]"

If it was a little old lady making this comment, it would be okay of course. Anyone here have a grandmother who surfs the net at 2:19 in the morning? No? Oh. Well in that case, maybe this is illegal, I'm not sure.

I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Given the aforementioned Mao tome, the Banana conference, and a bunch (ho ho) of other stuff, I'm taking a short break (unless I really can't help it). Until then, I've started a rudimentary website - the Emergency Invasion Kit - for you to browse if you're really bored. It's a place to keep resources and writings that people have suggested I make more readily available, such as the tip-sheets Tessie Chen and I prepared for our recent session with the Herald on 'Asian' stuff. Have a good week. And on Saturday, spare a thought, if you can, for the fallen of Tiananmen.

Digg this Scoopit!

early election | May 27, 2005 17:43

Come on, click through, it's time to vote! Don't you love voting? I vote every chance I get. Dad took me into the polling booth with him in 1984, put the highlighter in my hand, and suddenly, I was complicit in the New Right Revolution at the age of six.

Ever since then, I've been addicted to voting to try and reverse that blot on my record.

But how often do you get to vote for something you actually believe in? Here's your chance: Vote by June 1st in the Reporters Without Borders Freedom Blog Awards.

Where Burma sweeps the Human Rights Documentary industry, Iran has long been dominating the persecuted political blogosphere with its killer blend of one of the most vibrant, outspoken, educated, grassroots democracy-movements in the middle-east, and a regime on the back foot that just won't quit. Iran actually has its own category in the Freedom Blog awards - although because nearly all political Iranian blogs are in Farsi, the only criteria you may have for voting could be based on the amount of time each blogger has spent in prison lately.

As for the Asian category, I'm predictably and parochially torn between Mainland China's angrychineseblogger, Malaysian Jeff Ooi's Screenshots, and singabloodypore.

For Middle East/Africa, who could possibly touch riverbend? You might be interested in the Zimbabwean nominee - but the site is down. Not a good sign.

While you're feeling spoiled for choice, check out the schedule for the Asia Film Festival currently on at the Academy, also until June 1. Stick with the online version - the printed schedule has a lot of errors, and looks like a Cathay Pacific inflight menu. But the fare itself is excellent.

Digg this Scoopit!

CrazySexyKoreanCool | May 25, 2005 01:04

View the gallery for this post

If you had to choose, how would you spend your Saturday night? An evening with media commentators pondering whether blogs are actually important, and thinking about drugs but not taking any? Or an evening getting down with a bunch of totally hot Korean guys? Hmm. Tough call.

If you managed to fit both in, you would have found one experience rather lovely, the other merely mindblowing. However, the evening didn't start well - word had got out that Jin, our Chinese hip-hop golden boy, had quit the game. Burnt from the lack of support from his Ruff Ryders label, bowed from carrying the hopes of the US pan-Asian youth communities on his diminutive shoulders, he pours his pride and frustrations into this one-take cri de coeur 'I Quit'. The extended version might make you concerned and maternal in the angry mid-section, then invigorated by the snap-freestyle conclusion. Let's hope that he's just a little bit tired. That he just needs some hot congee like we all do in times of trial, and will be bouncing back to the battlefront soon. He's not even twenty-three yet. Oh Jin, it can't be over! Think of the good times! The glory days!

Words of mourning from Asian America:

he was one of the few positive Asian American figures in the media..." (yellowworld comment)

Thanks for opening up the world for us... And not that I was ever ashamed but you were the first that really made me proud to be asian. (myspace comment)

Could it have been Jin's penchant for Nikes that summoned this US$9000 pair of 'self-doubters' to stomp him down? (Hanzismatter's bust of this new customised Nike design really is beyond belief. It could surely only be the subtle revenge of sweatshop workers.)

A leaky portion of my sorrow will only be assuaged by an all-out splurge on Notorious MSG merchandise. As Hong Kong Fever says: "Much love to our brother Jin - we got to stick together as a people."

Yes, I namecheck a lot of Asian-American sites. Their 'movement' is advanced, yet in some ways they're behind us. Both these things seem due to the fact that their critical mass youth-culture demographic is predominantly American-born. They're confident, savvy and funny, and yet often out to prove that they can be as American as anyone else - that they speak English fluently, without Asian accents. That they aren't 'foreign'. And man, the guys sure can be kind of bitter about being perceived as uncool and not sexy. Of course, if you really were cool, you wouldn't care if people thought you weren't sexy. This isn't so relevant to what's happening in Auckland, where the creative industries are being rinsed-out and recoloured by a generation of 1.5ers and international students from the yellow lands and beyond, who may 'sound foreign' but are undisputably sexy and cool-as-fuck, and not ashamed to draw on their countries of origin for pop-and-street-culture inspiration. Here, Auckland's Asian hip-hop vanguardists Daemang Productions (DMP) rap in fluent Korean, Japanese, and ...uh, Ebonics. This critical mass is changing people's ideas about what Asians do and don't do. Last Saturday they showed, for example, that what Asians do do, if they feel like it, is bust some seriously ruthless shit on the mic.

Chatting later to cool-sexy-sane Josh Jang aka Daemang, DMP-founder and host of Planet FM's Monday night hip-hop show, Esteelo, I asked:

Do you feel proud that for the young Korean kids at your show, you're providing something here that New Zealand-borns like me couldn't get before?

That's our whole motivation, about giving to the second generation. There isn't much of a second generation of Korean people, we're all 1.5 generation, so it's a really good thing to do to show the second generation what could happen for them, an inspiration, motivation for the kids. At the concert on Saturday a lot of parents came with their kids and stayed at the back. Then later they were trying to get my number, like 'Can you train my boys to be rap stars?' That's a really good thing to start off. Parents don't want them to be just doctors and lawyers anymore, they know what's right for the era. Media, all those cultural things are the most powerful things for this era - they think these things are really positive now. That's what we need for the second generation. Someone's gotta do this kind of thing at some stage, to open this thing up, so I'm proud we're doing it with DMP. [Pause] Oh shit that's too cocky! Don't make me sound like all arrogant... But it's kind of true though.

It's okay Josh - you can be proud. When you see a kid like Chan from Kelston Boy's High (excuse the blurry photography) get up on stage in an impromptu beat-boxing giveaway contest, and channel Rahzel the Godfather of Noyze, you're awestruck by not only the precocious skill, but the feeling that anything now is possible.

Says Josh:

Maybe people say there's a lack of opportunities down here… but anything here is going to be like a pioneering thing. Everything we do is the first thing, the first time!

It's a good time for keeping your eyes open.

DMP's album launch packed the SkyCity Theatre with about 500 Korean kids, probably on the strength of the Esteelo following alone. It was Korfro-fever! DMP's Mr Koh (Roskill Represent!) should be officially accredited with the maintenance of the highest national proportion of 'fro to body-weight.

If you remember Aya taking the freestyle crown at the Jin show, she made her debut on Saturday with the DMP crew, stepping up to rap in Japanese and English. Half Japanese, half Pakeha, totally hot.

There was an explosive energy that night that only comes with youth, optimism, and a certain litheness of body. I ain't saying the DMP boys could take on Dawn Raid in a scrum but they sure as hell could outrun them.

Because I had to duck out to The Great Blend, I missed The Dynamic Duo, one of South Korea's biggest hip-hop acts. I don't know, maybe this is why Amanda Wheeler thought I looked 'angry' that evening. Generally, I like to think I'm more of an angryasianman.com kind of 'angry'. From Daemang's account, The Dynamic Duo tore up SkyCity - and I don't mean the pokies or the blackjack table.

I'll post more photos in the gallery as soon as DMP sends them to me, and as soon as I figure out how to, like, use the gallery. But for now here's a cute shot of some of the younger DMP boys and friends from outside the afterparty, at... well, where else?

TM: "...and I don't know what the fuck you were saying man, but it was dope shit."
Mr Koh: "Much love!"
TM: "Asian pride!"
Mr Koh: "Asian pride!"

Digg this Scoopit!

incidental non-incidents | May 22, 2005 16:37

Planting a book is not like planting a bomb

Of all obscure experiences nested within other obscure experiences, how fares the finding of a well-thumbed English language paperback of 'The Mind of Adolf Hitler' planted on a random shelf of the Chinese Language Bookstore in Balmoral?

I was with a friend who can read a substantial half-assful of fanti, whereas I can read rudimentary jianti. But at that point, thrown off by the sudden appearance of, not only the mind, but the face of Hitler, we were between us unable to quite figure out what section of the bookstore we were in. 'What the fuck is this doing here?' I wondered politely. 'I don't get it,' said my friend Al. The store clerk was also baffled: 'Uh... it's not ours...' he said redundantly. He took it and leafed through it for about five seconds, then put it under his desk like a confiscated porno.

Ever get the feeling you're being left clues to someone else's slow mental breakdown?

Morningside for rife!

While stuffing face at QQ Rice, Al and I watched real-life 13-year old replicas of the bro'Town boys mucking around with their basketballs in the forecourt, except with Jeff the Maori replaced by Jeff the Chinese (and he wasn't no Wong from Hong Kong). We watched them from the window, giggling, and they looked at us watching them, and giggled back. Then they took off towards Yummy Court.

Buddhist street-preachers really are less annoying than Christians or Hare Krishnas

'Excuse me, are you from Auckland? I was wondering where I could find..." It was a cute, cheeky little East or Southeast Asian guy wearing a cap, jeans, an orange polar-fleece Kathmandu jacket, with an armful of books and a kiwi accent. "...all the intelligent women wearing black raincoats and ...black boots with short dark hair and wearing hats...'

I shook my head grinning and stalked onwards with a swish of my raincoat.

'Nah nah, hold up, just kidding, I'm not like that,' he protested, 'I'm a monk, see?' He lifted his cap to show his shaved head.

Ah. Orange. Kathmandu. It all seemed to make sense. Kind of.

'Do you do yoga or meditate?' he asked.
'Um, sure.'
'Are you a buddhist?'
'No, but my family is Chinese, so we use some traditional practices, but not in a religious way. You know, gong fu, qi gong, they have some overlap with Buddhism, but they're not 'religious'. But anyway, don't worry about me, I'm good.'

Oh but he hustled and bustled (so cheeky! so adorable!) and started spinning some charming line about the different guises of spirituality using clothing as a metaphor (Orange, Kathmandu, the joke just got better and better), trying to work the ethnic angle a little, and then said:

'If you want to have a look at this book, we're trying to hook people back into ancient Eastern thought and wisdom...'

He flipped open the cover of his book, and the end-papers were a busy pastel hippy-montage of the advancement of the human spirit to enlightenment, as represented by rosy-cheeked blondes rising out of the primordial sludge and replicating in ever-more-Aryan ways towards nirvana.

'But dude... those people are white.'
'Oh... you know, we're trying to appeal to a Western audience.'

I laughed some more, and he laughed too, and let me walk off into the rain.

Digg this Scoopit!

Toki must die | May 19, 2005 00:37

Watch Ghost in the Shell if it's retro anime-tits you're after. But as for Auckland artist Hye Rim Lee - let's be frank here: Super Bunny she may be, but her video art sucks big bunny-ass. Conceptually shallow to start with, it has also been exactly the same crap animation for the last three years.

I wish they'd give her money to her compatriot Jae Hoon Lee instead. He could say they're related and just switch the bank accounts. If you get the chance, visit the blustery forecourt of Wellington City Gallery to spend a very long time mesmerised in front of 'Leaf', which Tessa Laird writes about in the Listener with her usual finesse. Bunny ass it ain't.

Still, the re-opening of the Everlasting Toki Show provided me with the opportunity to catch up with fellow Singaporean 'LeRoi Middleton' (name changed to protect LeRoi from repercussions from the Singaporean gahmen and from Hye Rim Lee). That's right, this is yet another post about Singapore Rebel - hah! Sucked in! You thought it would be all art-bitching and manga!

Well okay, like me, 'LeRoi' hated Hye Rim's art, had also caught Singapore Rebel at the Human Rights Film Festival, and had been moved to email the documentary-maker Martyn See a message of support.

'I found it pretty moving. I was getting teary,' I confessed.
'Yeah? It just made me angry' said 'LeRoi'. And he's a medical specialist of chill.
'Oh I'm always angry.'
What were we talking about? The awfulness of the art, or the awfulness of the repressive state apparatus of Singapore?

There are plenty of states that are more repressive than Singapore. But nothing festers under the skin quite like ongoing injustice in the Old Country, especially when that country is constantly held up here as a paragon of social order and economic modernity. I know, I know, 'Singapore Rebel'? Would that be like, 'Remuera Rebel'? Or even, 'Reserve Bank Rebel'?

From a Herald interview with The Don, a longtime member of Amnesty International.

Herald: Name one of your heroes
DB: Am I allowed two? Lee Kwan Yew [former Prime Minister of Singapore] is one.

Funny spelling of Lee Kuan Yew the Herald has there. They probably didn't want to mix him up with Lee Kuan Yew the eugenicist, or
Lee Kuan Yew the executioner, torturer, and terroriser of political opponents. Or this Lee Kuan Yew:

I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yet, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

Don Brash goes on:

Another [hero] is Nelson Mandela.

Well, that's all right then.

I've had a bit of an exchange with Martyn See, although as he's under police investigation for making his fairly restrained and straightforward low-budget short, it's best that I don't publicise any of his private comments. He did ask if he could put some of my remarks about his documentary and Singapore on his blogsite http://singaporerebel.blogspot.com/, and even offered to give me a pseudonym, such is the pervasive climate of political fear (it's only paranoia if your fear is not well-founded). "Dude!" I wrote before lapsing into Singaporean syntax, "I'm New Zealand citizen only! So is my whole family here. I don't need to use a pseudonym."

The freedom to say and write whatever you want in good faith is a universal human right - but it often feels like a privilege. 'LeRoi' felt the urge to do more for Martyn and for Singapore as a whole, but he's still actually a Singaporean citizen. And this is why he's 'LeRoi' here today. I always liked the name 'LeRoi', for Fame, and LeRoi Jones, who also changed his name for political reasons.

singabloodypore has the trailers and the link to the bittorrent download of Singapore Rebel.

Digg this Scoopit!

Christchurch: Job discrimination forces migrants into prostitution, journalism | May 12, 2005 18:08

How lucky we are in Auckland - at least three budding Chinatowns, two little Koreas, and two Chinese reporters ensconced at the Herald itself (and I don't mean the Chinese Herald). One of whom I may not actually be related to. So let's hear it for the plucky invaders sticking it out in Christchurch, where independent journalist Lincoln Tan is a lone voice in the milky wilderness.

Lincoln, a Singaporean (yes, on a roll here...) became so frustrated at being denied job-interviews when he arrived in New Zealand, that he set up his own paper. iBall is Christchurch's only bilingual newspaper, and tackles angles that mainstream media doesn't care for. According to Lincoln, there is still not a single Asian journalist in any mainstream paper in Christchurch.

Some of us like to think this is a fair-minded country, but... Got a Chinky name? Speak fluent English? Good luck getting a job interview. I've been there. To show you how bad it is, I actually wrote this story but had to change my name to Julie Middleton to get it published in the MSM.

And not all migrants discriminated against in the job-market change their name or start their own newspaper. As this month's just-released issue of iBall reports:

['Mimi'] first came to New Zealand as an international student in Auckland, and responded to an advertisement looking for women to work in a gentlemen's club.

However, Mimi said that she was unprepared for what the working conditions were for massage parlour girls – which was even worse for girls from foreign countries.

...

She said that she had tried to get a proper job after graduating, but all she received were rejection letters. She then went through a period of depression.

"Nobody wants to become an escort or a prostitute if they have a choice," Mimi said. "But if we want to support ourselves living in a foreign land, we have to make money. Working underground as a kitchen hand is not going to pay my rent."

iBall's website is still under construction, but you can email their office and put yourself on the mailing list. Lincoln will be speaking in Banana Auckland on Banana Freedom of Banana Speech & Banana Expression in the Banana Republic session of the Banana Conference. The conference website went live this week, and registrations are filling up fast - be in quick.

Southeast Asians seem a comparatively feisty bunch when let loose on the West. S'porean Lincoln led the Christchurch anti-racism rally of 2004 along with Hock Lee, a Malaysian lawyer. Going down the list of the Asian massive that headed the Wellington repeat of this feat later that year, and you had:

Pancha Narayanan, NZ Federation of Ethnic Councils (Singapore)
Silvia Zonoobi, Multicultural Services Centre/Alay Migrant Community Centre (Philippines)
Lee Tan, Service and Food Workers Union (Malaysia) and,
Me for Multicultural Aotearoa (Singapore/Malaysia/Roskill).

Nanyang represent.

We are probably freaks though. As Lincoln says in the current iBall editorial:

I received a telephone call last week from my mother in Singapore. She received a copy of the Asia Down Under report on iBall, and she had seen some of the front-page news items which made her concerned.

"Don't you get into any controversy, don't forget you are not in your own country, so don't meddle with other people's affairs" she warned, reminding me of the time I got into trouble with a Singapore MP on a story I did at the start of my journalism career in Singapore. It is sad - but what she said actually reflects how many migrants feel.

Meanwhile, it has been brought to my attention that the National Front has been rallying its membership to flame the page on The Big Idea that hosts a copy of an essay I wrote. It confirmed what you might expect - that there are only five people in the National Front. My favourite comment:

F[*]CKIN HELL!
Give prize money to some random asian immagrant when a hard working white man gets nothing! Why come to NZ and write an essay... Write one in your own country and get their prizemoney! !!!!

...um, well...

Aw hell, it's just too easy.

Digg this Scoopit!

Uncanny sites from the Other side | May 10, 2005 17:44

Ever suspect that the Tyrell Corporation is popping thousands of Mr Browns out of clone pods straight into country-specific political current affairs techie-geek blog stardom, with regionally appropriate names tacked on the front? Singapore hasn't even bothered to add the usual 'Kevin', 'Kelvin', 'Calvin', 'Steven', 'Martin', 'Marvin' or 'Mervin'.

Here he is: Singapore's Russell Brown. Mr Brown. Really. Mr Brown is Singapore's most popular and possibly longest-serving blogger (...after their version of Bizgirl of course, who just knocked him out of the water at the Asian bloggies. Well, I don't think Xiaxue is a real person...)

Like ours, Singapore's Mr Brown also has print-media interests, has been instrumental in setting up a Singaporean blog hub, and blogs personally on Singaporean life and times, other bloggers, techie geek developments, his partner of 16 years, his autistic kid, and as much on politics as is actually possible in Singapore without being sued for defamation.

'Uncanny' is the translation of Freud's notion of the Unheimlich - exactly like, yet not like, home. This particular incidence of uncanniness is strangely comforting for me - two versions of home have merged in a dreamworld. During this steaming Auckland subtropical summer just gone, the downtown CBD even smelt like the Singaporean monsoon season. Am I awake as I type?

Russell might find it a bit freaky though.

There are however, bits of Singapore that I and my parents would be pleased to leave in Singapore. Check out the original CNA story about the Singaporean blogger Acidflask who was threatened last week with a defamation suit for blogging. Here are some signs that you're in trouble because of your blog in Singapore, and Singapore Ink and Mr Brown's entries on and links to the ensuing blogosphere frenzy.

Being sued for defamation is the Singaporean version of the Sudanese State Security white pick-up truck pulling up outside your community centre, or the Public Security Bureau arriving suddenly in its Gong An vans on the Mainland. When you can sue for defamation, why bother with the handcuffs, electrodes and baseball bats? To give you an idea of what they like to sue for in Singapore: if an opposition politician suggests to an international newspaper that the Singaporean government stifles dissent through the use of its compliant judiciary, the government will utilise its compliant judiciary to uphold its own reputation, by suing for defamation, and winning.

So: the snake eats its own tail, and wonders why there's a rattle in its throat. Don Brash's favourite place, this.

Thanks to Angry Asian Man for the link to this article, which precipated all this Old Country net-communion. Do have a look at this interesting exchange between Simonworld (Hong Kong's Mr Brown) and Mr Brown on language, outlets for political and social expression, and waning colonialism - structured around a Hong Kong vs Singapore blogosphere throwdown.

It has given me great pleasure to give out these introductory calling cards of the English-language East and Southeast Asian blogosphere. But there's more that you're missing out on, which I can't help with at this stage. Like Mr Brown and others of the Singaporean 'ACS' school, "our Chinese very lousy." I sure as hell don't read Chinese language sites, especially not the old-form/fanti used in Hong Kong. Maybe this is a job for everyone's new favourite Wellingtonian ex-Howick Hongky 1.5er, Keith Ng, who can read and speak Chinese but not type it. Whereas I can speak and type Chinese, but can't read it. How is this possible? I will attempt to explain this further in an occasional forthcoming series of resource entries for the querulous invadee.

Singlish though, I can still dip into. I mean, all-da-time this grammar-grammar! Why you still talk so like dat-ah? Your dictionary so lagi-some-more?

Don't forget the banned film Singapore Rebel is playing this Friday at the Academy. Can't come is very rugi only.

New find: The maker of Singapore Rebel blogs on his ongoing troubles with the police here. His name is ...ahem ...Martyn.

Digg this Scoopit!

All in the family | May 07, 2005 12:28

Obviously, I am related to all Asian people, and I represent all of Asia. To prove my point, I will now demonstrate how I am personally related to every single Asian film in the Human Rights Film Festival (Auckland 12-19 May, Wellington 25 May-1 June).

Behind the Labels, about sweatshop workers on the US territory of Saipan, and Children, about sweatshop workers anywhere. Actually, in the publicity photos they're all Chinese workers. Obviously we're related!

Mercy, AIDS orphans in Thailand. My paternal grandmother was born and raised in Thailand. I still have relatives there. We're related!

Reframe, a New Zealand documentary about a New Zealand Human Rights lawyer in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Director Jo Luping and lawyer Dianne Luping's parents are Malaysian Chinese. My dad's Malaysian Chinese! We're related!

Also, with regard to the other Palestinian/Israeli films in the festival, such as Promises - Palestine is an associate-member of the
Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutes, along with Afghanistan and Jordan! We're related!

Greed and Grievance, Aceh's War (short film). Hmm... My Malaysian grandfather's fourth wife is from an old Indonesian Chinese family... but probably more pertinently, I once resettled an Acehnese refugee who had a mullet which made him look just like my brother in 1986. We're related!

Shipbreakers. The world dumps its worn out machinery in Asia, in this case, the Alang shipwrecking yard. Alang is in Gujurat, and my blood-sister, united by chilli pickle, the Kumar to my Harold, is one Rina Patel. Go see her in the Lambuji and Tinguji show this week at Bats. We're related! I also have an Aunty from Kerala, but that's Kerala, so it doesn't count.

Singapore Rebel (short film) - ok, this one I'm excited about. The story of opposition politician Chee Soon Juan, constantly imprisoned for championing democratic change. The film was banned in Singapore. My mother's Singaporean! And my cousin is a Singaporean human rights lawyer who worked in the same building as JB Jeyaretnam, who also used to keep being fined and imprisoned for being an opposition MP and whenever she bumped into him in the lift, he looked really grumpy and sour, and it's no wonder why! We're related!

And now for the big league. Hong Kong may lead the region and the world in both quantity and quality of its kung fu extravaganza, and no-one can touch Bollywood for musicals. But the award for top national producer of Human Rights documentaries (comprising 63.4% of GDP) is Myanmar. Or, as it was called when my mother was born there, Burma.

Sacrifice, four Burmese girls trafficked into prostitution in Thailand, Burma Report - the May 30th Incident (short), eyewitness accounts and footage of the 1988 military coup, Entrenched Abuse: forced labour in Burma (short) and No Place to Go: internally displaced people in Burma (short).

My mother's family fled Burma in 1954, and it wasn't even that bad yet, comparatively speaking. I still have relatives in Burma, and I don't even want to say where, or what their names are. I've never visited them, and I don't know if I will ever be able to. If I did visit them, I don't know what would happen to them for having contact with foreigners who are known to do things like promote Human Rights Film Festivals, or who have admitted to working for refugee agencies and human rights organisations. I don't know what would happen. I know what could happen of course - I used to be a refugee status officer. We're related.

Who knows what kind of joke I've been making here, or whether it's been very funny. Families are like that; they throw you off.

Digg this Scoopit!

Stop the cruelty | May 02, 2005 22:21

Good god. Lynnette Forday turned 'hostess' after years on the scrapheap as last-century's token Asian. Nicky Watson in her knickers with a lampshade on her head. It could only be... Yet another campaign to stop atrocities against animals, by instead committing atrocities against people.

The classy event in question is 'Moonbear Madness', a fundraiser for such an obscurely specific animal-welfare cause that you can only assume it was randomly picked as an excuse to throw a pricey Orientalist backroom-stripper party for the confused rich. Yes, crap things happen in China, to animals and people. But when the China Democracy Party was in Aotea Square last week, raising awareness about human rights abuses on the Mainland, did they fundraise with a soft-core bestiality show starring shaved Pandas and Pekinese puppies?

Ah well, maybe they should have. Nicky Watson might have turned up. To, like, protest.

If it had just been dear Nicky getting her tits out again, even with that absurd Chinese headpiece on this invader's ire would not be raised more than is usual. But when the invite follows this up with: "Three maidens from Mongolia will contort themselves for your delight", it's no wonder the word on the street is that not a single one of the purported 'prominent young Asian Aucklanders' invited from a lengthy contact list RSVPed to this. We would have been all pretty worried that John Banks' mates would mistake us for Mongolians and try to stuff twenties down our pants in prospective exchange for some backroom contortionate Asiatic delights.

Fuck. Off.

It was nearly as ridiculous as the time I received a New Zealand First pamphlet in the junk-mail. Do I look like the target market for this crap?

I would however recommend that any real underpaid East-Asian and Southeast-Asian prostitutes who happen to be reading this blog, kit themselves out in extreme bordello glamour this Tuesday night, bowl on up to Opium as 'the help', and exploit the clientele for all they're worth. Take their cash, their food, booze and dignity, get their pants down, take photos and sell them on the net. And dedicate it all to the House of Nancy Peterson/Feng Xiukin, who occupied a far less glamorous position on the spectrum of the Oriental-fetish industry.

On a more positive note: a shout-out to my Aunt Jo Li Ping, who was airlifted out of Saigon thirty years ago. Nice timing Ayi. The anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War also marks the start of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in the States.

That's right, not only do Asians get their own month in America, they also get to be categorised under the same double-pan-ethnic label as one of the hip pan-ethnicities. How did they manage that? As you'd imagine: hard work; early starts. (Note: guy on the left in this photo totally looks like my dad)

Digg this Scoopit!