Living in Singapore is not easy, one can quickly see. Could it be that we tire quickly from our programming — the PSLE, the Os, the As, the university, the serving the nation, the feeding your family and all these things? Or is it that we pack the rush hour morning and evening trains daily, increasingly unable to recognize our neighbours or the languages they speak?

If you thought the living was uneasy, just you wait and see.

Being dead in Singapore doesn’t seem particularly different.

As if being alive and drawing air here didn’t already call for us to live packed closely together in high-rise public housing, since we lack “space” in the corporeal sense, not two hours after you’re gone your family members will be making plans to pack you into spiritual equivalent of the flats you’ve lived in all your life, as I found out last week.

– “Ah Gong will be living in Block 206 ok? Any objections?”

– “What level?”

– “Level 6.” (No lifts or floors with lift landings here, I’m afraid.)

– “Unit 281.”

And on and on it goes, debating the merits and the cons of the block (C, D, or A?), level and unit, direction it faces (”sea- or ‘mountain’- facing?”), until somebody, i.e me, goes, “Explain to me what the difference is between Ah Gong ‘living’ there and in another block, level or unit?”

– “$200. The uncle say ah, if you want to choose the unit, must pay.”

Turns out it wasn’t just $200 that made all the difference. The Chinese/ atheist/ Buddhist/ Taoist dead (categories which tended to overlap with each other) got the lower floor. The Christians — who tended to be Chinese, Indian, and Eurasian — were upstairs. Upstairs seemed to get a bit more air, a bit more sunlight, and didn’t heat up too much at mid-day, unlike at the other blocks I’d been to. Not that it mattered to Ah Gong. Ah Gong survived poverty and hunger in his childhood in China, a cleaver-attack on his head in mid-life, and a smart alec grand-child in his late years… he’d adapt.

– “Sorry, if you want to put him in a Christian block, you need to show a baptism certificate for him or for an immediate family member.” Unbelievable — racial/religious quotas… for the dead? Turns out the Christian lots are in such high demand, like our schools, that everyone, even non-Christians, wanted to be there.

Keeping your urn in a randomly assigned spot: no extra charge
Wanting your urn to be in a specific spot: $200
Pre-booking your urn spot next to your loved one: $1500, depending on religion, site, and race

– “Better not to pre-book lah! Sekali here also kena enbloc then how?”

– “Then die lor. Oh budden die orreadi hor.”

It read like there was a statutory board (with an appropriate death-related acronym) administering this thing.

The funeral director was a man named Fred who, like all and sundry who call our sunny shores ‘home’ these days, was foreign talent. He worked long hours, spoke perfect English, left the Chinese dialects to the middle-aged Chinese men he hired, and unlike these middle-aged Chinese men, seemed to genuinely care.

He, and everyone involved in this, was so efficient that within 3 hours of Ah Gong’s passing at the hospital, he was returned to us at home — embalmed, coffin-ed, dressed, ready to go. Ready to lie down for a few days while people sat around pretending to look at him, eating peanuts, collecting money. Even the cartons of Yeo’s packet drinks, in winter melon, chrysanthemum and lemon barley flavours, had been bought.

Because our estate is currently in the throes of HIP (Home Improvement Programme), having recently undergone HUP (Home Upgrading Programme), there was no space at our void deck for the wake. So at 10 am, all of us lined up at the opposite block, uniformly dressed in our funeral whites. The tentage had been up for hours, the chairs and tables had been put out, as had their corresponding plastic sheets and peanuts.

Some dramatic music sounded from the back of the hearse, out of its improvised 2.1 system (speaker+flower+coffin).

We lined up to welcome Ah Gong home. Except that in this homecoming version, he wasn’t breathing. And he was in a shirt and tie, which convinced me something had REALLY gone wrong this time.

The shit hit the fan several times, but he always came home in his white singlet — the only thing he bothered to wear, in all the 24 years I’ve known him. He only wore a suit once in his life: at his wedding, or rather, when his wedding portrait was taken. Even at my brother’s wedding he compromised only slightly by wearing some kind of short-sleeved shirt over his singlet (unbuttoned so his Flying Goose brand singlet was unmistakable). I never thought I’d see him in a tie.

I never thought I’d see him dead.

I never thought that behind the white tents of the void deck, the ones I’ve walked past often in all my years living in a HDB flat, would lie someone I knew, someone I loved.

I never thought I’d be, three days later after the fact, walking glumly and sullenly through the carpark not because I hadn’t done my homework and didn’t want to go to school, but because my uncle was carrying a large photo of the man I’ve come home (and left home) greeting every single day of my life: ah gong ah ma wa tyng lai leoh! That we’d walk lock-step to the hearse, that I would find myself making a mental note to remember to tell my children to pick a non-peak hour when I “chuk sua” — the impatient Singaporean drivers would really annoy me even when I’m dead, honking the way they do in trying to overtake a coffin while people are crying behind it.

It only seemed right to share with the world what the recently deceased were known for. In writing his eulogy, I hopped about with a notepad and a pen tucked above my ear, asking all my cousins: “what did Ah Gong always say to you?”

Da Jie said, “si sua ta!” (”Anyhow say!”)

Er jie said, “sark suk!” (”Silly!”)

My brother, his favourite grand-child, said, “Dua cha.” (”Big blockhead”.. which was his nickname)

To my other cousins who spoke Mandarin instead of Teochew, he took great pains to translate his terms of affection. “Ben ben!” (”Stupid stupid!” in Mandarin) “You mei you mai liu lian?” (”Did you buy durian?”)

So I wrote him a eulogy and I got to say si sua ta, sark suk, dua cha and liu lian all at the same time.

I stood before the crowd and I introduced myself. I cried instantly.

I tried to say my Teochew name for the first time in my life (vastly different from my English name and my Mandarin name), but I could not: Ah Gong had sabo-ed me, again! The only time I ever heard my name being said in Teochew was when he talked about having named me. He always said it in a way which rhymed with the hour. jit tiang, nor tiang, sa tiang! So I stood there and introduced myself as li- ‘hour’. People in the audience laughed loudly and my uncle, who reminds me most of Ah Gong, called out: and your name is also two o’clock and three o’clock! And si- tiang too!

Ah Gong, ni you pian wo! His eulogy was delivered, not entirely flawlessly, in Teochew by me and in English by my brother. I wrote an essay in Teochew called “Torchlights and Alarm Clocks”. I talked about how it’s going to be weird not having him tie pink ribbons to my backpacks so I can see them come out of the baggage carousel, how he’d write my Chinese name on everything I owned, even the cool ones; my brother and I both said growing up with him was about having a torchlight shone on your face at 3 am every night, just so he knew we were there. I cried a lot. I laughed a lot. He was a silly, funny man and he made us all laugh. We said in heaven he’s cursing all day on sweet potatoes (his only bad words were Teochew vulgarities about stuffing your mouth with a sweet potato, and something about your mother’s eggs). I think in heaven Ah Gong is back in his singlet, shaking his leg like the China-man he is, with Bruno his favourite dog. And his alarm clocks are going off all at the same time, and his torchlights never need their batteries replaced.

ah gong wa tyng lai, lv zu kee loh.

I never got to say goodbye.

I miss you so damn much.

I’ve never had to deal with it, never thought about it, possibly because I never had a pet, and never had family or friends who’d passed on or contracted anything major. People lived, in my family, and lived quite long.

Especially my grandma and grandpa, who seemed to just go on and on. If that’s a skewed perspective of old age that might be because I have seen them go on everyday from the moment I was born: they have lived with us forever.

Ah Gong was always in the next room. He never laughed; he sniggered, he chuckled slyly, he was grumpy as hell — in the most endearing way possible. He was a traditional Chinese man — born in China in 1930, adopted then brought to Malaysia, saw his adopted father beaten to death by Japanese soldiers during the war — who, for most intents and purposes, kept his feelings (and thoughts) to himself, avoiding actions or words of affection like the plague, but was the sort of man you warmed to anyway.

I like to think he waited for me long enough, given how well-timed the whole incident was — he only fell drastically sick when I was due to return, and I at least managed a week or so with him, despite his sedate state, despite how he was barely there at all. I had expected my trip to the Middle East and London this last time to be like any other — I’d be back, he’d pretend he barely cared, but he’d get quite quickly to the only way he seems to know how to show any love: verbal-sparring with me in our secret language, Teochew.

Instead, I got back this time and found the house strangely empty. No Ah Gong pottering about finding things to amuse himself, no Ah Gong waking me up with 8 alarm clocks and 1 mobile phone call, no Ah Gong to play hide and seek with when it came to the subject of how cigarettes mysteriously appear in my bag all the time, in increasingly strange (or secret) compartments or methods of concealment. He always found them, he always out-talked me, he was always right, he figured out stuff quicker than I could think, and he laughed and smirked because he liked being right much more than the fact that I was doing what I shouldn’t. In his last days Ah Gong sat mostly on his wheelchair, his mind still sharp and observant, and his temperament still endearingly grumpy.

But life and love doesn’t go on and on, I’ve come to find the hard way, and as he lies there I can imagine him saying: every single time you go abroad you buy me a clock, and the one time you haven’t I’ve really gone.

In Mandarin to “gift a clock” can also mean to send someone off at their funeral. It’s thus taboo to give your elders time-keeping devices of any sort. But we had a special relationship based on the two great loves of his life: torchlights and alarm clocks. He never said I love you, or I care about you, but when he did, he gave you a torch. Or two.

Or if you prefer, the YouTube version.

If you’ve enjoyed this, please think about heading over to watch more episodes of the DIY travel show that I do for fun and absolutely no profit. Whenever I update, it’s a video about the Middle East/India. Whenever May does, it’s about London or other European cities. Simple as that.

Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey, was stunning at any time of the day, especially at the witching hour.

From top: all roads point to Iraq (and Tartus and Homs) from just outside Palmyra, Syria; I take the quadbike out for a spin around Cappadocia, Turkey; BYOB picnics in London.

I came to the Middle East to do just one thing: see a part of the world that I felt I needed to learn more about. Its language was alien, but familiar - many Malay and Hindi words have roots in Arabic. Its customs and food strange, but not dissimilar - much of the Indian subcontinent that I love and call home was influenced, for the better and the worse, by centuries of Mughal rule. Dubai and Singapore had many things in common, and then not at all.

My months through the region are coming to an end. As I travelled through Dubai I fell hard for the United Arab Emirates, but not for its most famous, brashest city. I loved Abu Dhabi and I loved Al Ain. I loved the weekend drives into the desert, and camping trips to Oman. I discovered the lengths people will go to for bootleg alcohol, when liquor licenses and hotel drinking start to dry up (driving to Ajman to get bootleg supplies etc).

And as I embarked on my quest to see the real middle east, after giving up on Dubai - I was in for a treat. Yemen, bombs and all, shook me; it was like nothing I had seen before. Then my ambitious overland journey, beginning with Beirut. That’s now drawing to an end.

The last month or so that i’ve been properly on the road, I’ve navigated my way around Lebanon through Syria through Turkey, without once knowing how to drive a car. I’ve met ridiculously awesome people. I’ve had countless cups of tea with strangers. I’ve seen some sights.

And the sights I’ve seen, I’m amazed by the opportunity - and good luck I’ve had in seeing some of these wonders. From a castle built by one man, still alive, in Beiteddine, to the phenomenal Kraks des Chevaliers in Syria (the embodiment of all childhood castle jousting fantasies, says Theroux, and he’s right - again). The ancient cities of Damascus and Sana’a. The friends I’ve made all through Beirut, Damascus, Palmyra, Aleppo, Antalya, Cappadocia and Istanbul.

The long bus rides. I left Damascus last week and 36 hours later arrived in Antalya, but not before being stranded in Adana with too many Syrian pounds but no Turkish lira - and no money changer or warm clothes in the freezing cold of an eastern Turkish morning.

Done with my last bus ride (12 hours from Goreme to Istanbul), I now sleepwalk through Taksim Square at 7 in the morning, pleased to be back to one of my favourite cities in the world. One that makes me thankful for the beautiful people I call my friends, who last shared this city with me
- Alp, Z and gang. It was the city where Fortylove.tv was conceived, at the start of this tremendous journey.

But journeys never end, only their chapters do. It strikes me now that for all my complaints and grievances about the middle east, this region is truly special and needs to be seen to be understood. And I’m glad I had the chance to see it while I could.

If I could do it again, I would do a few weeks in Iran. But that will have to wait.

For now, long Turkish bus rides and what’s left of my Istanbul days - one filled with lots of ‘midye dolma’, wet hamburgers, fish sandwiches, Bosphorous views and raki when the sun goes down, I’m sure.

Then London. Then moving into my new pad in Kuala Lumpur. Then a new chapter in life, love, and adulthood. I think I have airtickets booked or planned for every month from now through January, though, so the adventure doesn’t end - it’ll be the last of the middle east and Europe for some time, but more awaits.

Time to finish breakfast, put on my heavy backpack, and walk the last 1km to my hostel. It shall be the last hostel in awhile - I’m not giving up backpacking, I’m just… Upgrading. Life, travel, trading in my hobo life for the chance of getting to own things beyond my baggage allowance for the first time in a while.

I’m happy.

Notice I don’t say 4. as a gay woman, because what I am about to say would still hold true even if I wasn’t.

I seldom discuss religion here and this may surprise many, but I grew up in a Christian home. My family is moderately religious. We are all involved in church to some extent. I attended Christian schools for 8 out of 12 years of formal education. We had compulsory chapel and morning prayers (waived if you were Muslim). We sometimes host prayer meetings at our house and when we don’t, we attend them once a week somewhere in the neighbourhood. I do this out of my own free will and personal conviction. I was not forced into this religion. Like every Christian my walk with God has wavered, particularly through the murky periods of late adolescence, but I have found peace and renewed faith. My return to the religion, after a period away, was a happy one. My family can be considered religious but they are also some of the most wonderful, non-judgmental people I know. We — and the church we attend — have a problem with the idea of ‘religion’, and see the idea of ‘religion’ as a trap that distracts from what Christianity is about, i.e. our personal relationships with God.

All through the Christian schools I attended, we had prayers every morning followed by a short sermon. This, I can safely say, nobody minded. We always had a handful of teachers who were ‘religious’. They never once crossed the boundaries of our secular nation, only sharing the Word when asked, and never in an offensively evangelical manner. In these people, I — and other students, including many non-Christians — found tender, unjudging voices to turn to in our times of need. Occasionally non-Christian students would even ask for a prayer, out of class hours, and I saw for myself how these people unconditionally provided love, care, and guidance.

‘Sex education’ in my school days was still teethering on the brink ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. In our Anglican school the official line was that we should not have sex. By the time we talked about it we were 18. Half the people I knew in junior college were already sexually active. A good handful of us, and I think the teachers knew this too, identified as ‘homosexual’. Being fairly bright people, my schoolmates, I think most of us knew what to do. Condoms, et al. I even remember holding court with some girls once — we were trying to figure out what ’safe lesbian sex’ meant (condoms on toys, and water-based… stuff, if any). We were lucky. We had the internet. We then had one or two Civic Education lessons in which we filled in a ‘test’, and just about everybody found the questions silly and stupid for they toed the official line: that sex in any form should not be had before marriage, and it was to be abstinence all the way. There was uproarious laughter. We filled in the ‘right’ answers anyway so that we could go out and watch the football.

I never once watched a ‘lesbian-themed’ movie. There wasn’t “the L Word” or “Spider Lilies” back in the day. The first time I ever saw a ‘lesbian-themed’ anything was when I was 14 and I went to watch the Taiwanese movie “Tempting Hearts” with my first boyfriend (yes, I’m getting to that in a bit). I identified wholly with the falling for your best friend thing but could not, at that point, imagine being with one. I promptly forgot about it and went back to holding hands with the boy. Years later, another gay girl in junior college downloaded a Swedish movie called “F*cking Amal” (go Kazaa!!) and we watched it together. There were no subtitles. It was about two young Swedish girls who had fallen in love with each other. We didn’t make out after watching it. I highly doubt that I would have been prompted to think “I should try being gay” if I had gone to see “Spider Lilies” in a movie screening at the time. Most likely, as movie screenings go, I would have read the synopsis and known of the plot and I would have chosen to go.

(I know this is taking a while to get to what I’m trying to say, but be patient.)

Of my friends in school who are now openly gay — male or female — we had a tacit knowledge of each other’s sexualities. The only thing we had was each other, and furious searches on the internet. If nobody taught us that being gay is “OK”, how did we come around to that? I think we got pretty lucky because we had each other. There are plenty of young gay people who never come around to realising that they are not alone. Some even attempt suicide: from taunting, from furious questions about ourselves, from “what the fuck is wrong with me?”. Some succeed.

These are things that you cannot wish away. These are things that you cannot close an eye and say “they do not exist”. These are things that are real that some people pretend don’t exist, but the only thing they ever come close to establishing is that “this should not be”.

So what did 8 years in Christian schools do for us as young gay people? For the most part, it was a non-issue. The Higher Ups tacitly knew that we existed and that this is what we were, but they had no grounds for intervention: most of our relationships were off-campus, not with each other, and in our own time. We were well-balanced individuals. We didn’t go running off to toilets to make out with each other, the same way you don’t expect your average straight couple in school to do that. The only time it was ever an issue was when I went through a year-long period of turmoil — with myself, my sexuality, my head, my family, my schooling. I was a wreck and everybody knew it. I fell behind in my grades and instead of busying myself with scholarship and Ivy League university applications, I was sorting out my head and a heartbreak. I wrote an angsty email to a teacher and explained that I was having difficulties reconciling with my sexuality and that I needed time to get over a particularly wrecking relationship. She said: “OK. Let me know if you need to talk.” I got over it. Nobody ever said it’s okay to be gay. Nobody ever said it was wrong either. It helped.

Seven years on, I think I’ve finally reached a certain equilibrium and that has nothing to do with being gay, and everything to do with being a young adult, unsure and insecure about the future. From running this blog I know many young people are struggling with it too — I get several emails a week from it. And I think I may have unwittingly become some sort of figurehead that these young people look up to that you don’t have to be miserable — you can be quite fulfilled, accomplished, and you can have happy relationships. If people see that I’m a fairly well-balanced individual with some semblance of sanity, career and accomplishment, then so be it. There are many more like me out there. They include people in every sector of society. They are your brothers and sisters. They are your cousins. They are your classmates and they are the weird boys who sat around struggling to find the appropriate response to the collective ‘ogling at nude women’ activity that goes in our boys’ schools. They are girls like me who didn’t know what to say when they found themselves surrounded by swooning girls, swooning over some hot jock. Like them, I don’t actively go out and spread the message. I’m only doing what I know best: being myself. And I am happy to be not miserable, to lead a fulfilling life concentrating on all these other things that make up who I am. Things that have nothing to do with the fact that I am gay.

I am this way because I have been since I was four. I only “came of age” was a gay person at 17, when I dumped my boyfriends and decided to be true to myself. At no point in my life did anybody tell me “this is OK”. I simply figured it out for myself. For the most part, I think my friends and family, even the Christians among them, have never once treated me differently because of who I date (a very smart and beautiful girl, if I can say so myself). None of my friends treat this as a big deal. It is as negligible as the fact that I am Chinese and that I travel a ton — as negligible as the fact that I write and photograph for a living. They mostly find the other parts of me a lot more interesting: things like where I’m going next week, when I’m going to be back home, things like how I can possibly afford to travel as much as I do, and the latest gossip about our friends :P

I consider myself lucky to be surrounded by people like these. People who, regardless of their cultural backgrounds and political leanings, are very much accepting of others. This is important in a society like ours, one that is multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-everything. The Christian schools I went to accepted that. The Christians I live with and worship with accept that. My very Christian father is a big fan of AWARE and aspired that I might one day be president. My very Christian father is a big fan of a certain lawyer who once hosted a certain talkshow (and known lesbian and playwright) and used to sit me in front of the telly to ask me to learn from her, her skill, grace, eloquence, and most importantly her ’strength’ as a woman. I consider myself very lucky to have a father like that.

The fine line that I think is the breaking point in present day Christianity is the efforts of a few trying to split the religion by emphasizing overtly on just one topic: what other people are doing in bed. Brought up as a Christian child the most important lessons I ever took home from church were that we should strive to be Christ-like in all things, and that God loves us. Those of you who don’t know me here might jump on this as the chance to say if you want to be Christ-like, shouldn’t you not be homosexual? To this I only say this is my own cross to bear, and I myself am admissible to God in all things — just as you are. And that coming from a very Christian home (that works, is very well put together, and more functional than most families), I am surrounded by people in happy marriages who are good fathers and mothers, including my own very Christian brother. I don’t know if they see it yet, but I do not see my relationship to be any different from any of theirs. We have the same relationship milestones and the same struggles and triumphs. We are well-balanced individuals committed to our careers, and to each other. That includes everything you would expect of a committed relationship, including what we are going to do in the next year, five, or ten. One day they will have to come around to seeing that my choice of the person I want to grow old with is the best one, and that any other option (male, or another female) is not even up for questioning. (But then they read this blog… so…)

The Scriptures make mention of many issues: unbelievers, menstruating women, idols, other religions, theft, robbery, adultery. And occasionally, homosexuality (although if you read some leading Bible scholars on the topic they might tell you that the word used does not translate accurately to “homosexuals”, but rather to male prostitution). But I’m not here to argue Scripture. As a Christian I believe the Word is final. As a Christian I also believe that you are all entitled to your own interpretations of what it means, because if we didn’t have disagreement we wouldn’t have so many disparate schools of Christianity. There are some among us who believe that we should not marry unbelievers because we should “not be yoked with unbelievers”. There are some among us who believe wholly that women have to submit to their husbands. There are some among us who believe that all non-believers will go to hell. I think we all unequivocally, Christian or not, believe that adultery is not right. There is no joy in any of this debate. This debate distracts from the joy that is the worship of God.

But who are these modern day Crusaders, and who are they to say they have the last word on how other people should or should not live? Why take issue with just homosexuality? Isn’t divorce, adultery and pregnancy out of wedlock more startling issues for the family? Why focus just on this one topic? What is your stand on that, and what organisations are you starting to deal with these issues (other than the heinously evil Focus on the Family)?

Singapore, as a society, has made considerable progress. There was a time when interracial marriages were spoken of as the unthinkable, and now it is considered backward to do so. Despite all that, there is still outspoken opposition from some quarters to the idea of we can marry out of our race. But it is now fairly commonplace to stroll down Orchard Road and see the most unlikely combinations in dating couples, happily walking hand in hand. I grew up in a time where “family” isn’t always clear-cut, and I am happy that is so. I have friends of all races in many countries across the world. I have friends who are straight, gay, and transgendered. I have friends who are happily married — through arranged marriages. I have friends who are never going to marry. I love them for who they are.

Fresh from visiting the amazing Crusader’s castle (Qalat al’Hosn, or Kraks des Chevaliers) in Syria, I am reminded of one simple fact: as a religion our best bet, history has shown, is to do what we do best. Be Christ-like and to love. Not brandish swords and stir up hatred among people who don’t believe in the same things we do. I expect many readers to take issues with my sudden profession of faith and sexuality. Fine. But we would all do well to hold tightly to let he who has no sin cast the first stone. Because this culture war is underway, and religion should have nothing to do with it. That is my right, and yours, as a citizen of this secular nation. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Singapore’s small Arab community came hundreds of years ago as traders and they almost always came from Yemen. Not just Yemen, but from Hadramaut (the area with “that bomb”, some weeks ago).

I’m not sure how but I’m convinced the local Malay cooking that I adore has seen a fair amount of influence from Yemeni food. For the first time in the Middle East, the food felt like something I really knew, with familiar spices like turmeric, and a heavy emphasis on intense flavours, as opposed to the fresher (but blander, to me) cuisines from the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, primary providers of Middle Eastern cuisine, even in, say, Dubai) and Iran. I like them all, but I’m particularly partial to the heavily spiced, full-on flavours of South, Southeast Asia and Yemen.

Travelling there alone was beyond anything I had ever done. With zero expectations, not having anything to count on or build up ideas about, other than “don’t go there!” — I fell into my favourite way of travelling: not expecting anything, but walking away with a wealth of riches. The experience I had in Yemen was incomparable.

I had the rare opportunity to live with a family in an Old City house, and the woman who hosted me was a phenomenal cook. My welcome feast, I did not know yet, would be lunch every day in the country: salta.

And I am such a fan.

Salta is a chicken stew dish topped with a froth-like fenugreek paste. Served piping hot in a madr, a heat-resistant stone pot, it is made by stewing chicken with spices and potatoes for hours, then transferring the potatoes into the madr. The by-now amazingly intense chicken soup is poured over the potatoes, which are crushed. Meantime, the ‘hulba’ (I think it’s fenugreek paste) is whipped repeatedly until a meringue-like consistency is obtained (minus the stiffness). Chillis, tomatoes and some local spices and blended together to form a salsa-like dip. Fresh bread, the hallmark of every Yemeni meal, is folded into a scoop and used as a spoon to scoop up the chilli-tomato mix, and the whole thing dipped into the piping hot salta.

Never one to turn down a well-cooked chicken, or any chicken by-product (I would have a soulful chicken soup, preferably the clear Chinese herbal sorts, or the Yemeni salta, as my last meal, thank you), I tucked into it with remarkable enthusiasm, and chased the salta from Hiyat’s Old Sana’a kitchen to Aden and Tihama, eating it at every restaurant and dusty highway rest-stop I unwittingly found myself in.

And of course, I made a video about it.

The things we eat — food and life in Yemen, part I in a series. The next one is about qat, the narcotic leaf chewed after lunch every single day :) Yes, still pimping the online travel show that I run with M. (Currently working hard on travelling, both of us, shooting videos, and also doing some behind-the-scenes revamps to the site — we’re announcing a tie-up with one of our favourite travel companies online, soon.)

Like we say in Hokkien. Mai keh kee! Kwa wa eh hee!

I don’t know why my peekture is so skewed in the video frame. For more details on salta and other Yemeni adventures, please see full post over at fortylove.tv

If you have any questions about Yemen, my friend and trusted travel agent in Sana’a, Ziad, is one of the country’s best, and will be pleased to take any questions or queries (even if you’re not about to book a tour with him).

Meantime, quick trip update: Lebanon really is all that. Roman ruins, interviewing men who literally built castles with their own bare hands (he dreamed, as a poor boy, of living in a castle and was taunted and beaten up for dreaming. Ever thought living your dream was hard? Moussa’s story makes me gasp), hanging out with Beiruti handbag designers (the fashionistas amongst you may know her: Sarah Beydoun of Sarah’s Bags! I hate fashion-y stuff but was so bowled over by her work), spending afternoons chilling with winemakers in the Bekaa Valley, or otherwise eavesdropping on the tortured artists at the Torino Express, an old-style crazy atmospheric cafe in Gemmayze, Beirut’s new so-holey-it’s-hip district. I’m now in Damascus, Syria. You know what this means? Sana’a, Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Istanbul… the idea of setting foot on a great deal of human history makes me so happy. In case any of you ever go to Syria: yes, if you hold a Singapore passport you WILL get a visa at the border for US$33. It’s for 15 days, but you can extend it for up to a month. (They won’t issue it to you at the border if your country has an embassy/consulate.) And when you get there — eat the ice cream at Bakdash! I’m off to Palmyra to see more ruins (going to be completely ruined-out after this), then on to Aleppo, Lattakia, before bussing or train-ing it into Turkey. One day I will write a blog entry about how to do all that for S$350 a week.

It’s about to change.

AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research) has been the foremost voice for women in my country, Singapore. Despite its shortcomings (and there are many), we have always been able to count on it for one thing: it was non-partisan. It spoke for all women, regardless of religion, sexuality or race. That’s especially important in a country like ours that lacks a culture of civil participation.

Although I am now many miles away travelling the Middle East (Beirut, if you must know), I am deeply concerned by the recent hijack of the organization’s leadership by what we believe to be fundamentalist Christians.

Yes, AWARE’s constitution was lacking, and its leadership perhaps too complacent in not being able to prevent such a thing. Yes, that sort of thing can happen. And maybe AWARE does need new blood. Whatever the case is, the facts are there and it’s up to you to decide. The circumstances in which the new leadership gained power were more than suspect — most of its members were new, and the new committee, beyond being more unproven in civil society, were complete strangers whose only claims to fame were militantly homophobic letters to the national press, and a shared membership in a certain actively homophobic church (which, if you must know, is Church of Our Saviour — the one that once audaciously hung the dastardly “Gay But Not Happy?” banners on their grounds along the MRT).

I don’t care what you think about homosexuals or about homosexuality. But I think we can all agree that an organization who speaks for all Singaporean women would suffer under such a leadership. The noted playwright Ovidia Yu mentions in her blog that “At least two people mentioned receiving emails warning them that to protect their daughters from the lesbian influences they should join Aware & and help vote out the old committee”. My personal sources within the NGO movement have enough grounds to fear that the organization, under such a leadership, will actively seek to overturn any progress we have made as a society for our women — in particular on sexuality and reproductive rights.

One important note. AWARE is not, by any stretch of imagination, a campaigner of gay rights. They have never once stood up for lesbian or bisexual women. (See this for more background reading.) We are interested because if you have been around Singapore often enough you will know that the militancy of the fundamental Christian right has, in recent years, been shockingly antagonistic, not only towards gay people, but towards anyone who didn’t fit their ideology. And that is dangerous. (Note: if you want to quibble on religion, forget it — I have been and am Christian all my life. And the Christians I grew up around are nowhere like this bunch. Anyone with a problem with my sexuality and my religion would do well to read their own Bible, short of telling me to read mine.) You need to be concerned with this if you believe, like I do, that our NGOs and bodies of governance need to be secular. And that if they are not, they need to explicitly state who they are, and what their aims are.

Here’s what you can do, if you care enough. Please pass this on. (Ripped off from Pat Law from here on, since she has all the details.)

There will be an Extraordinary General Meeting (EOGM) come 2 May, Saturday, where all AWARE members will get a chance to vote. I won’t instigate for you to cast a no-confidence vote against the new administration but I’d like to urge for you to get that voice back together with all of us concerned citizens of this country. After all, we’ve lost our voice once. Let’ not lose it again.

Sign up today as an AWARE member in order to vote and drop me a comment at the end of this blog post with the message you want displayed on the wallpaper. Remember, every vote counts.

Details of the EOGM is as follow:

Date
2 May 2009, Saturday

Time
1400h - 1700h (do not be late else you might not get a chance to vote)

Venue
First Choice Auditorium
3 Lorong 6 Toa Payoh
#01-01 HSR Building
Singapore 319378

Other things to note:

1/ Only FEMALE members who are Singaporean & PRs above 18 years old are allowed to vote. However, men who are associate members are welcome to come and observe the proceedings.

2/ Sign up at www.aware.org.sg

3/ For those who signed up online and did not receive their membership card, please print out your confirmation email and receipt and bring it along for the EOGM.

4/ Join the Facebook group for more updates