Category: People

Singapore’s Urban Sketchers

Singapore’s Urban Sketchers

At Al Waldi Restaurant, I met a Singapore street sketcher. As she sketched the “putu piring” making kiosk and as I photographed it, we had a brief conversation. Just like in KL, there is now a growing community of street sketchers. It is a great way of documenting a cultural activity and heritage architectural subjects. They are also known as urban sketchers and its is usually done on location.

Only people I know into street sketching on my FB are Lim Chin Han, Victor Chin and perhaps Merilyn PL Ng. Let me know if you are one.

Anyone from the community can recognize this lady? I like to credit her and to connect with her to see more of her sketches. I should have sketched her name somewhere. I think I did and lost the coffee shop’s chope tissue.

#singapore #streetsketchers #urbansketchers #sketchers #streetsketch #sketch #streetphotography #artist

Mongolia Matters

Cold As Ice.

I was standing near an ashtray in KLCC Park when a very beautiful woman came to ask me for a light. I didn’t have one as I no longer smoke. Asking for lighter in a club years ago was how gay people determine a stranger’s preference or interest by the way you hand over the lighter. I can’t remember the mechanism now.

Anyway, it was an innocent request and I got to know her. She was Boloro Dendev on Fb (@tina_hk on IG). In-spite of her trademark icy demeanor, she turned out to be a very warm person with a great sense of humour. She spoke English with a Hong Kong accent and she looked Chinese.
After a long chat, I found out she is Mongolian but lives in Hong Kong where she is known as Tina. We became Facebook and IG friends and I saw her posting about being afraid to go outside at her home in her country when temperature was -30C one day in February. Wanted to confirm with her and she replied saying it is can be as low as -65 C ! Yikes. How many can remember the song “Cold As Ice” by Foreigner?

Mind you, she is a native of the country and grew up there but yet she found it unbearable when she is home. Maybe it was her years of living abroad.

I was thinking of visiting the capital Ulaanbaatar during summer one of these days. I asked Boloro for a hotel she likes and she mentioned the Shangri-la Ulaanbaatar. There are many Mongolian hotels listed in MyCen Hotels, should you decide to go there.

Picture of the enormous Statue of Genghis Khan in Mongolia and a ravishing selfie by Bolorov Dendev. Located 54 km east of Ulaanbaatar, the Chinggis Khan Statue is currently the biggest and tallest equestrian statue in the world. Visitors can walk inside an exhibition hall inside the horse’s body.

Find a hotel in Mongolia at http://www.mycen.my/

 

See over 150 hotels in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia by clicking here

#mongolia #ulaanbaatar #genghiskhan #chinggiskhan #asian

 

Go On Mofo… Make My Day!

The other day I was filling up at a gas station in Cheras when I noticed something odd. A lone motorcyclist was darting from pump to pump and the drivers were scampering off, just as quickly. It looked like a botched robbery attempt to me.

Maybe this inept robber was brandishing a butter knife or something, I thought to myself. Anyway, everyone appeared to be very alert and took off faster than P.I. Bala. I was the only guy left standing at the last pump.

As you would have guessed, he came for me. I pulled out the nozzle and pointed it at his direction, with my finger on the trigger. Was going to spray him with subsidised petrol and threaten him with a lighted match. Go on Mofo! Make My Day!

Eh… I forgot two things in the heat of the moment. I have given up smoking two years ago and did not have a single match with me. If I had, I will probably be blowing him up along with my car. And bury us all in a deep crater in Cheras. It should be cheaper handing over my wallet and Galaxy S.

He stopped right in front of me. Seeing a loaded, dripping nozzle pointing at his face, he lifted his visor carefully and asked meekly. “Abang, boleh tanya di mana Taman Konot?” (“Bro, could you tell me where is Taman Connaught?”). I gave him the directions but before I could lecture him on approaching people with a dark full-faced visor, he dashed off as fast as he landed.

A week later, I met a very polite extortionist on a motorcycle. I pulled over by the roadside and was fiddling with my GPS. A macha on a bike rode up next to my car and knocked on the side window. I rolled it down partially and was going to jab his eyes with my Manfrotto monopod, if needed. He asked me in an unconvincing, robotic voice “Boleh bagi dua ringgit isi minyak?” (Can give two bucks for petrol?”).

I got so pissed and told him angrily that next time he should put some emotion into his delivery. Or at least push his bike in order to elicit some sympathy. He burst out laughing suddenly, said he agree wholeheartedly and rode off happily into the sunset. Didn’t see him running out of petrol for sure. Mofos!

Be safe and observant always.

A Sweet Love Story

The joys of street photography is not just in capturing people with your camera. It is about meeting, engaging strangers, to listen to their life stories, if they are willing to share. Inter racial marriages seem to be more common in small towns and I was happy to hear a new perspective. A sweet love story.

Meet The Family.

Puan Saudah’s husband Ameer and daughter Ramizah came to join the conversation. Looking at my pics on the iPad, the man noted he knows one of the guys I photographed. It was Gurcharan Singh from the Sikh Temple in Kalumpang.

I looked up at Ameer’s face again and did a double take. Our conversation went from Malay to English at this point:

Me: Don’t tell me you are Punjabi?

Ameer: Yes (with a grin). I am Ameer Abdullah, formerly Balbir Singh the Sikh.

Me: How long ago was it when you married Saudah and how did your community take it in those days?

Ameer: Some 30 years ago. I fell in love, converted to Islam, discarded my turban and married the girl of my dreams.

Me: That’s so sweet.

Ameer: I became an outcast for leaving my religion, was shunned by my own community and treated as traitor.

Me: I understand. I had a Punjabi classmate who hated singer DJ Dave just as much for the same reasons.

Ameer: Not surprised. Hey. I know Dave and he is from Tanjung Malim (further up on Federal Route 1).

Me: I think things have changed and people from the Sikh community are now more tolerant of inter-racial marriages?

Ameer: Yes. And time heals everything. I am accepted as a friend again.

Me: How do you know?

Ameer: When fellow Punjabis in town call me by my childhood nickname.

Ameer, a civil servant, is happily married, deeply religious and have four grown-up children now. Ramizah is 22 and is a teacher at a Islamic religious school in KKB.

Am honoured to meet such a warm, honest and animal-loving family.

Sony Alpha a7R, ISO 100, f5, 1/80 sec.

#documentaryphotography #sikh #muslim #kkb #kualakububharu #smalltown

In Memory of Uncle Bernard Khoo

On a rainy day, the former South China Sea and Gaya Island were part of a glittering silver landscape. Photographed from our Kota Kinabalu apartment hotel Marina Court with the late Bernard Khoo (blogger Zorro Unmasked) blowing smoke from his pipe, next to me. I told Bernard the landscape may soon become gold. Bernard passed away on 4th April 2014. The hotel can be seen in the previous post.

#kk #sabah #kotakinabalu #borneo #southchinasea #landcape #pulaugaya #monochrome