publichouse.sg

Her wrinkled hands carefully open the box of cornflakes. Spoonful by spoonful, the same pair of hands feeds the cornflakes to her child, P. The mother is 72-years old. I met her and P on a rainy Christmas Eve.

Flashback to 1965.

She is 26 and in the prime of her youth. Married in 1959, she worked as a shorthand typist for an insurance company and enjoyed a middle class lifestyle in 1960s Singapore. She owned a car, and employed a Singaporean maid, paying her some $30 a month then. She and her husband were enthusiasts of ballroom dancing. Almost every weekend, they would attend tea dances at the Singapore Hotel off Guillemard Road or at the Singapore Chinese Swimming Club.

In preferring Ma Ying-Jeou over Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwanese voters chose their heads over their hearts.

Incumbent Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT) won a second term as Taiwan's president on 14th January, beating Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) challenger Tsai Ing-wen.  When the votes were tallied, it turned out that Mr Ma had won more comfortably than the polls were trending, with 51.6% of the vote to Dr Tsai’s 45.6%, and third-party candidate James Soong scraping just under 3%.

A gay rights performance art piece is being restaged 19 years after it was first performed.

Don't call him Edward Scissorhands, artist Loo Zihan is re-staging Josef Ng's controversial performance.

In 1993, performance artist Josef Ng sparked nationwide uproar when he snipped off his pubic hair in public as part of a protest against entrapment of gay men by Singapore police.

His performance, “Brother Cane,” so outraged Singapore authorities that they subsequently severely restricted performance art in Singapore.

The following is a Facebook note by Fredrik Härén, a Swede.

Sometimes we take for granted what we have. Below is the view from Fredrik Härén on Singapore.

--

"As an author of creativity books, how on earth can you live in Singapore?" I have lost count on the number of times I have been asked this question. And when I reply "Because I think it is the best place in the world to live for a creative person", most people think I am kidding and everyone asks me to explain.

But no, I am not kidding. And yes, let me explain.

I moved to Beijing from my native Sweden in 2005 because I wanted to be in Asia when Asian countries truly started to embrace creativity. The defining moment for me was when Hu Jintao held a speech to the Chinese people where he said that "China should be an innovative country 15 years from now". Since I write books on business creativity I just had to move to Asia and see this shift happen. After two years in Beijing I knew two things: 1) I wanted to leave Beijing (a fascinating city but too much traffic, too much pollution and too little water for a Swede brought up in the Stockholm archipelago.) and 2) I wanted to stay in Asia.