Flippin' 'eck, that's a lot of Art!

May is a good month to celebrate arts and culture in Singapore, what with the many activities planned out for residents on our dear l'il red dot.

The National Heritage Board (NHB), for example, is obviously bent on getting us Singaporeans and Permanent Residents to visit their 7 museums and heritage institutions at least once in our lives. Not that the goal is not a noble one, mind. From May 18, in other words this Saturday, the NHB is throwing its doors open to these sites to all Singaporeans and PRs for FREE. 

Yes, you heard me right, FREE. That bit of news should get us--the value-loving local--all tingly inside. Don't believe me? Here's what the NHB has to say: 

"Citizens and PRs enjoy free admission to NHB's museums and heritage institutions all year round. Through free admission, NHB hopes to give citizens and PRs greater access to [these sites] to enjoy their offerings."

The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is always good for a leisurely stroll to whet one's artistic appetite. (Credit: NHB)

In case you are wondering, the 7 sites are: Asian Civilisations Museum, National Museum of Singapore, Peranakan Museum, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore Philatelic Museum, Malay Heritage Centre and the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall. Thank you NHB!

Flip for joy!

In other news, the Esplanade is also currently holding its annual Flipside arts festival. In its own words, Flipside is a festival that "presents the lighter side of the arts, offering fun and quirky theater, and music and dance programs. Audiences can expect unconventional, imaginative work and eccentric humor".

Credit: Esplanade

Flipside runs from May 17 to May 26, and there are plenty of free programs to enjoy in and about Singapore's durian-shaped arts destination. 

The chamber music group, Tze n Looking Glass Orchestra, will be one of such free acts and they will be looking to stir people's emotions and jog our memories as they play famous film music and soundtracks such as Psycho's iconic bath scene. This will be held at the Esplanade Concourse on May 22-23, with two sets each night starting from 7.15 p.m.

Another one to watch out for is the American brothers of Nate and Jacob Sharpe. It's not every day that you get to watch a circus act here, and when you do, it tends to tear a hole in your wallet. So when an opportunity presents itself to watch "character comedy, world-class juggling, death-defying acrobatics, and bad puns", I would suggest you make a beeline to catch the act. It will be on at Esplanade's Outdoor Theatre from May 17-19, starting at 7.30 p.m.

But here's the one performance that has me intrigued. Touted as Japan's answer to the U.S.'s Blue Man Group, Siro-A is a 6-member performance group that hails from Sendai. If you take your mime with a strong dash of optical illusions and technology thrown in the mix--or techno mime, as I call it--then I think this is a show not to be missed. 

Check out the group's video below (I especially love the humor in "Hole", beginning at 5:08):

Siro-A's Technodelic Visual Show is a ticketed event though, so if you're interested, be sure to visit SISTIC soon as there are only three sessions scheduled for the festival, starting from May 25 at 8 p.m.

For more information on what's going on during the rest of Flipside, check out Esplanade's Web site.

Have an art-filled month ahead! 

Mother Father Gentleman

I would have very much liked to blog about Psy's new song Gentleman when it was released, but unfortunately my column only comes once a month. Better late than never they say!


If you don't understand Korean, it sounds like Psy is repeating a cuss word over and over again. But this is actually what it means...

I don't know if you know why it needs to be hot
I don't know if you know why it needs to be clean
I don't know if you know, it'll be a problem if you're confused
I don't know if you know but we like, we, we, we like to party

Hey there
If I'm going to introduce myself
I'm a cool guy with courage, spirit and craziness
What you wanna hear, what you wanna do is me
Damn! Girl! You so freakin sexy!

Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...
Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...
Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a mother father gentleman

I don't know if you know why it needs to be smooth
I don't know if you know why it needs to be sexy
I don't know if you know darling, hurry and come be crazy
I don't know if you know, it's crazy, crazy, hurry up

Hey there
Your head, waist, legs, calves
Good! Feeling feeling? Good! It's soft
I'll make you gasp and I'll make you scream
Damn! Girl! I'm a party mafia!

Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...
Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a...
Ah Ah Ah Ah I'm a mother father gentleman

Gonna make you sweat.
Gonna make you wet.
You know who I am
Wet PSY! Wet PSY! Wet PSY! Wet PSY! PSY! PSY! PSY!
Ah I'm a mother father gentleman

I'm a, ah I'm a
I'm a mother father gentleman
I'm a, ah I'm a, I'm a mother father gentleman

Mother father gentleman

No hidden meaning behind the song like Gangnam Style. This song is indeed brainless, but a fun song to dance to at clubs, I guess... The MV also shows Psy being a total douchebag to girls he dates, until he meets a girl who is as much of a douchebag as he is.

Personally, I felt that originality was... barely there. This song was like a mash up of LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem, the Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style all mashed together. Maybe he was trying to do reverse engineering with the song after the success of Gangnam Style. But well, Psy's free to do his thing and it isn't THAT bad a song. So... alrighty then. Also, Gangnam Style had the horsey dance, and I supposed Gentleman has the hip shake - which was actually the crux of the Abracadabra dance by Brown Eyed Girls back in 2009.


Psy definitely did reference this dance well, getting Son Ga In of the Brown Eyed Girls to star in this MV with him. I reckon this song is going to be a hit with it's catchy beat and cheesy dance steps, but I'm not sure if it will do as well as Gangnam Style did.

What do you think about Psy's new song? ^^

This is The Kimchi Fairy signing out, PEACE!

come what may!

our signature KB CACC standees!

it's been slightly over a month since this blog has been launched. while we have not seen much writing on this blog per se, a lot has gone on over in the kaki bukit division for the community arts & culture club. it was definitely a busy month. here is a quick recap of all that has gone on:

1) 'eat your art out!' - passionarts village

enough has been mentioned on this blog about the village and if you want to take a quick stroll down memory lane, do click here! being the forward-looking person that i am, i actually have a concept for next year's village but not giving anything away for now. 

2) singing kakis' night

this is one of the signature roving activities that you will see and hear a lot of within the kaki bukit neighbourhood. since this is the first time i'm talking about it, singing kakis' night is essentially a night of karaoke that occurs every last friday of the month. what is unique about this is that it moves around the entire neighbourhood.

big thanks to the chairperson of green rc, fannie!

so in april, we partnered with one of our residents' committee and went over to green rc. what a night it was! as a part of their singing kakis' night, they had a block party complete with food, dance, games and exhibition booths. so if you've missed april's installation of singing kakis' night, fret not! it's the month of may already.

3) 'shall we dance?' - hotspot programme

another of our monthly features are the hotspot programmes. once again, these are activities that occur on the last weekend of the month. whilst singing kakis' night is on a friday, our hotspot offerings are on either saturdays or sundays. in addition, the programme duration is much shorter so blink and you will probably miss us.

shall we dance @ kaki bukit?

so in april, we decided to invade a rather tranquil area of the neighbourhood. we plonked ourselves right in front of sheng shiong and macdonald's, danced our hearts out for four hours and made a lot of new friends. if you haven't seen us gyrating to the tunes of justin bieber, you need to click here! 

yes, it was a busy april BUT we are not about to slow down our engines. in the month of may, there are more offerings coming from the kaki bukit community arts & culture team.

other than our regular singing kakis' night (24th may) and our may hotspot programme (26th may - morning), we'll be launching a couple of programmes and partnerships. more updates in my next monthly update. of course, you will be hearing from the kimchi fairy and mr couchsurf critic over the month and in june, we will be adding a third contributing writer to our humble blog. =)

if you want the latest news, just join our facebook page or follow us on instagram (@kakibukitcac).

engage us online! ;-)

catch the hARTbeat @ kaki bukit!

edwin

Let's talk about Pi.

It's not every day you find the compulsion to splash the cash on a play you like, or a concert you want to catch. We tend to blame it on too little cash or time. So there will be times we make do with a movie at our neighborhood theater to satisfy our need for some art in our lives.

And that's fine. Nothing wrong with spending $9.50 to watch Les Miserables when you'd otherwise have to spend $95, or more, to catch the same production live and on stage. Granted, the experience is different, but the story gets told. Better yet, if it stirs you enough to want to watch it live some time in your life, then the movie has done its job right?

So what movie should you watch? Or affordable (read: cheap) plays to catch? Or free concerts to attend? That's where I come in. Each week, as you log in to this blog, you'll find one of my pithy recommendations waiting--whether you agree with my assessment or not, I'll leave that decision to you.

Roger Ebert, may he rest in peace, I may not be, but there should still be some food for thought deposited here for your reading pleasure.

This month, let's turn our focus on Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi and the subsequent silver screen retelling by Ang Lee, the Taiwanese auteur who won an Academy Award for Best Director for his efforts this year.

I must admit, when the book was first released here in 2001, I didn't give it much thought. "A boy on a life raft with a huge tiger, really?" went through my mind as I gave the book cover a cursory look-through before moving on to other more interesting fare.  It turns out I was the one who missed out on a good yarn after all. But enough about me.

The overarching theme of Life of Pi is about faith--faith in terms of religion, and ultimately in the people around us. After all, it takes faith to stay alive on lifeboat for an indeterminate length of time, but more of that later.

A snapshot of faith was represented in this dialogue between the unknown Canadian author, played by Rafe Spall, and the philosophy teacher Piscine Militor Patel, represented ably by Irrfan Khan (stop scratching your heads. Yes, he's the police inspector in Slumdog Millionaire), at the start of a meal.

Spall: "I didn't know Hindus said 'Amen'".

Khan: "Catholic Hindus do."

Spall: "Catholic Hindus?"

Khan: "We get to feel guilty in front of hundreds of gods, instead of just one."

In another quick-fire conversation between the two characters,

Khan: "Faith is a house with many rooms"

Spall: "And no room for doubt?"

Khan: "Oh, plenty, on every floor. Doubt is useful. It keeps faith a living thing. After all you cannot know the strength of your faith until it is being tested."

And tested it was. The Japanese cargo ship Patel and his family and their zoo took to migrate to Canada met with a huge storm and capsized. By a quirk of fortune, only he survived together with a zebra, a hyena, a female orang-utan and a gigantic Bengal tiger called Richard Parker onboard the life raft.

What followed were scenes of the teenage Patel, played by Suraj Sharma, driven to despair--first by the loss of his family and life as he knew it, then by the struggles and subsequent deaths of the zebra, orang-utan and hyena.

Credit: Fox/Official site of Life of Pi

The Bengal tiger Richard Parker subsequently took over to play a dominating presence during the time when Patel was shipwrecked, at once aloof yet demanding and never wanting to share the boat--and its resources--with the poor young man.

Then when all seemed lost, Patel and Richard Parker found land in what appeared to be a life-giving island filled with fresh water, abundant food and no inhabitants. I shan't spoil the movie for you at this point, but suffice to say, the island was not what it seemed.

If all I've told you so far left you incredulous, imagine the surprise felt by the two Japanese insurance executives, who were sent out from Japan to Mexico where Patel was eventually found and nursed back to health in.

So incredulous, in fact, that they asked Patel to tell them another story, a simpler one, so that they can report back to the company without "looking like fools". Tell us "the truth", as one of them implored.

Again, not wanting to give away the plot too much, the second story Patel told was short, brutal and a survival-of-the-fittest recounting without any animals involved. It made for a less charming account of his 227 days floating around the Pacific Ocean.

Faith and spirituality came full circle then, when the older, wiser Patel asked the unknown Canadian author which story he preferred now that he heard both accounts.

Spall, after a pause, said: "The one with the tiger. That's the better story."

Patel replied: "Thank you. And so it goes with God."

The author told Patel early on in the movie that he sought him out because he wanted to hear the "story that would make him believe in God".

If you're looking for such a story, with a twist in the tale not seen since M. Night Shyamalan's Sixth Sense, then I recommend you either make a beeline to the nearest bookstore and grab a copy of Martel's novel, or fire up your movie app and check the movie listings for the next screening of Ang Lee's cinematic masterpiece. 

To whet your appetite further, you can check out what Martel and Lee had to say about surmounting the different challenges to get this film made in this YouTube clip:

the eating continues...

after three months of planning, the PAssionArts village came and went. if you didn't get a chance to experience the ongoings of 'Eat Your Art Out!', you can still be a part of the village via the special moments captured by the army of photographers. all the photos (that are not too scandalous!) are either on our facebook page or running on the instagram feed on our blog! if you are a fellow instagrammer, just search for either #kakibukitcac or #artsvillage.

but what a journey and experience it has been to bring this village from concept to execution. nothing is ever perfect and i am probably my own harshest critic: this could have been arranged better, that could have been pushed back. this could have been placed here! 

a picture speaks volumes: colours, sun, sweat, thumbs-up

however, like i told the team running the entire event, you must enjoy your own village and what you are doing. whether it was giving out peanuts to residents for them to eat then prompting them to toss it into our art installation or helping children with their (sometimes messy) cupcake decorations, it has to be an event where the working team has fun memories as well.

'Kopi Kaki Korner' before 'operation'

happy people, happy sandwiches!

i do miss my village. i miss residents walking by, (literally) wondering what was going on thus giving me an opportunity to walk them through the village. i miss the pandan rosette bouquets that residents made and were passing around. (there was a lot of 'i make one for you, okay?') 

i miss little leroy who came to our village around 4.20pm, which was almost our closing time. in conversing with his mum, i realised that they came by to our village specially to take a look. there were no workshops left for him to be a part of, no giveaways for him or no food demonstrations that he could watch except our peanut art installation. 

so i sat him down and taught him how to crack peanuts. it was the first time that little leroy (from horizon primary school... yes, i did ask the usual age and school question) cracked the shells of peanuts. it was also the first time he stepped on peanut shells and heard the shells crackled under his feet. this  encounter made all the late nights, meetings, emails and sweat worth it.

like i wrote in a script recently: a gift from the heart will be a treasure for the generations. 'Eat Your Art Out!' is truly a gift from the hearts of an extensively long list of people but we truly hope that we have created treasures for you and your days ahead.

anyway, before i run off for some kleenex, i would like to encourage you to visit this little application that we have. it's a photo contest that we are running on facebook so do pop by before 19th april 2359 and vote! till our next encounter...

catch the hARTbeat @ kaki bukit!

edwin

안녕하세요 (Ahn Yeong Ha Seh Yo)!

HAPPY SUNDAY Y'ALL! This is the Kimchi Fairy bringing you all things art and culture from the land of the morning calm, South Korea! Yes, I know tensions are rising from the North, but trust me, it's still business as usual in the South.

Since this is my first post, it's going to be about two things that took the world by storm coming from the South. Yes, you guessed it right, the first would be none other than Gangnam Style by Psy. I'm sure all of you are very well aware of the horsey dancing Psy with his war cry of 오빠, 강남스타일 (oppa gang nam se-ta-el). If you've been living under a rock, this was the video that garnered over 1 billion views - yes, ONE BILLION.


And if you didn't know, there was also a version of Gangnam Style (that I would think) is catered for the boys. Psy collaborates with Hyuna and in the (annoying) song, Hyuna sings 오빤 딱 내 스타일 (Oppa dag na se-ta-el), which loosely translates to Oppa is just my style. Erm, I'm not too sure about that, Hyuna.


So this was last year's news - what about this year? I would like to introduce you.... to the 귀요미송 (Gwi-yo-mi song), otherwise known in English as the Kiyomi Song. And I guess anyone who does it, is a Kiyomi Player. It basically means (in Internet slang) that someone is cute. Cute in Korean is 귀엽다 (gwi-yeop-da) or 귀여워 (gwi-yeo-wo). So how did this new internet sensation come about?

It actually started with this guy - Jung Il Hoon, from Kpop group BTOB (pronounced B to B).

Yes, him. He started Kiyomi player back in October 2012 on a variety show BtoB MTV DiaryMany (don't ask me about the English..) where he did actions which was considered cute by many Kpop fans.


Yes, that's the video that started the whole Kiyomi player wave... Following the success of this that prompted many netizens to upload their own version of Kiyomi player, Il Hoon's agency CUBE Entertainment made a MV of him doing Kiyomi player, just for the fans.


I bet many fangirls have already downloaded this video and have it in their smartphones (but not me, HA!) Towards the end of last year, many other famous Kpop bands also had their brief forays into becoming a Kiyomi player. For example, Girls Generation, Miss A and Super Junior-M to name a few. Finally, this is a video that most of us would explain because it's in Mandarin with English subtitles. Check out Siwon's reaction at 3:07, it's the general reaction of male Kpop idols when being made to do Kiyomi player - disbelief and embarassment HAHAHA.


And you think you've seen enough Kiyomi players? I'm gonna link MY FAVOURITE ONE!!!!


Yes, that's my kryptonite. No version of Kiyomi players gets me like this. Ladies and gentleman, that's Brian Joo with the Kiyomi player.

So, this internet sensation has finally caught on in Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia and I reckon it's going to be seen on our local TV shows in a while. So, I will leave you the lyrics of Kiyomi player and the song, sung by Indie Korean singer Hari. You can go learn it and be all cute, or 애교 (ae-gyo) in front of your boyfriend or girlfriend and have them either melting from your cuteness or have their goosebumps at full attention. Here's a top 10 Kiyomi compilation (lyrics at the bottom of video). I gotta say this - I found #9 extremely freaky.


1더하기 1은 귀요미
(ildeo hagi ileun gwiyomi)
2더하기 2는 귀요미
(ideo hagi ineun gwiyomi)
3더하기 3은 귀요미, 귀귀귀요미, 귀귀귀요미
(samdeo hagi sameun gwiyomi, gwigwi gwiyomi gwigwi gwiyomi)
4더하기 4는 귀요미
(sadeo hagi sado gwiyomi)
5더하기 5는 귀요미
(odeo hagi odo gwiyomi)
6더하기 6은 쪽쪽쪽쪽쪽쪽 귀요미
(yukdeo hagi yugeun jjokjjokjjokjjokjjokjjok gwiyomi nan gwiyomi)

It loosely translates into...

1+1 = Cute
2+2 = Cute
3+3 = Cute
4+4 = Cute
5+5 = Cute
6+6 = Cute

OBVIOUSLY SOMEONE FAILED MATH!! This is the Kimchi Fairy, signing out. PEACE!

no man is an island

the perception that people have towards grassroots work is always interesting. i do enjoy the stunned silence whenever i tell people that i am involved in grassroots work. more often than not, i will get the 'so you are a (ruling party) supporter?' that is when i explain to them that one can be involved in grassroots work and be politically distant but that's not the point of this post. 

i always believe in using available platforms to bring attention to causes or movements that otherwise would be heard but not seen. i'll be sharing two of them with you. the reasons are simple: i'm partnering both for our upcoming arts village and they are causes that i believe in.

the first are the family life champions. we have been raised in a society that sees family as dad, mum, children and the occasional grandparents. however, when i was first introduced to the existence of family life champions, it got me thinking about the true definition of family. with the changing trends of today, what exactly is family? well, the definition of family differs from person to person but one thing is certain. it is the family unit that gives us support and keeps us going. 

some of our FLC giveaways

in order to get everyone thinking about what a family is and what meaningful family life is, we are giving out quite a few premiums with the family life champion logo imprinted on it. not just to remind everyone about the importance of family but also, each individual is a family life champion. it starts with me!

another organisation that is a part of the 'eat your art out' village is about building hope. i get acquainted with this organisation when i was a volunteer years ago. the organisation? SCORE. when you visit our village, you will get a chance to sink your teeth into some food items. well, a large majority of them are from score. just doing my part in bringing prominence to a cause i was once heavily involved in.

i won't go into further details about the mission of score but do take a few seconds to visit their website and feel free to partner them!

catch the hARTbeat @kaki bukit!

edwin