2010! A new Year

The new year benchmarks new patterns, ideas, thoughts and habits against a backdrop of new relationships and explorations.

My foray into pet photography has always seen itself as an expression of my passion for animals and cats especially. The feline attraction has resulted in a large collection of photographs that I store as a reminder of their physical beauty and intense sophistication as animals.







The Aesthetic we call beautiful continues to amaze me, as I extend such professional photographic services to people. These new images were taken for Sunny's lovely family.







On more solemn notes, I continue to delve into photojournalism as a study in itself, Observation a key aspect in such exercise. The following are a sample of my recent trip to Guangzhou, China, amid rising unemployment. Commercially I also extend my services to the local press as well as apply this in my general photographic approach.







Douglas Ho (何家俊)
douglas_ho@hotmail.com

Retrospection

Subtract the wit and intellect from the banter and you will hear the beast chanting away.

See alot, Learn alot

Having nothing better to do other than entertain thoughts of travelling, doing chores for people with big houses for a small fee or climbing over condo walls to swim for fun, or visiting annabel's church, I decided to follow my brother jafakree to Bukt Panjang Plaza. he was helping a friend with a flat that needed to be showed around, so I waited at BPP and suddenly decided that if life was to have any meaning at all, I would humbly put into action a thought I had conjured up not too long ago.

What it must be to live until one is old and frail and to, only then, know! Surely old men know truths young men do not. I would cheat life today and be honest about it. It was a good time to communicate with fellow fish.

I came along Wang and Lim. For the confused and immersed slang-americanized Chinese and Asians, Wang is pronounced WH-Uh-NG not waaang.

By chance, that characteristic of life, I spotted him outside the Ah Wang Cafe benches alone, looking out toward the light from the shade. His skinny legs were crossed, his arms folded feebly. His weathered, haggard face and stained clothes beckoned me. I resisted, and walked around the locality, passing another elderly man doing his 4D lottery tickets. But I finally returned to Wang and his mid-level cataracts. Embracing the beauty of the connectedness of life in its entirety, I sat down next to him. I guessed that he was 70, he said up, up. I said 75 and he said 73. The eldest of a family of 4, two of which have returned to Old Heaven, he now lives alone without a family of his own. Apparently his wife and children left him for money, and this spurred the conversation along.

In ubiquitous singapore rojak of Hokkien Mandarin Chinese and English we began talking about life. Good and bad people could be differentiated by observation, and by the measures of whether they drank or smoked. I didn't tell him I had a cigar now and then, but we carried on. Bad people were gangsters, and they resolved problems by fighting. The best way, he said, was to take them in one ear, and out through the other, and ignore them, and befriend the good people, those whom one could tell by simply observing in silence.

I had met the nice guy, the street smart labourer and discerner, the observer, the survivor who stayed out of trouble and survived becaused he saw truth in having money in your pocket (put your hand on your pocket and feel the change) instead of its equivalent blowing away in puffs of smoke. He saw wisdom in spending money to eat, and drink, and knew the folly of indulgent alcohol and tobacco.

Lim came along about when Da Wang and I were talking about how expensive cigarettes and bus rides had become. I guessed 75, he said up, up, I said 78, he said 80. Lim is the son of the brother of Lim Bo Seng. He told me his greatest regret in life was not having spend more of his grandfathers fortune on holidays and treats, and not learning more Mandarin. He was English educated from a young age, and if he could, he would have studied further, and credited the occupation of the Japanese for this regret. We darted from topic to topic, talking about the war and how the Japanese were crazy and shot even those who surrendered, unlike the Americans who invented a lot of things and were compassionate not to bomb Tokyo but just blast Hiroshima. As a fortunate son his filial business line son supports him and fetches hm for meals now and then. I asked, and he told me Gui Hui died two years ago from cancer, a relapse from 5 years back. Did he still ache from her demise? No, this is life. Was she pretty? "Of course, I say yes, other people say no way! But of course I say yes; she's my lover!" Later, Da Wang left us.

Expectedly some intervals allowed me to share about myself. Lim saw my writing material and subtle scribbling, and commented to Wang that I had good writing skills. I elaborated that I had completed some studies in journalism and communcations, that I was a fortunate son with loving parents, but I was seeking wisdom and truth from old men. In some geniality he told Wang I was intelligent, and that I should go out and see the world; see alot, learn alot. Scrunching his wrinkled affable slim face Lim says life is very short, and time flies. Was it wise to pursue money in a doldrum life, I asked.

Of greatest importance in life? Health. Then, happiness, then money.

Of course, we talked about the too perfect government, the 100% perfect finesse of Lee Kuan Yew, and that a 50% perfect would have been OK too, albeit crediting him for what Singapore is today.

Would Da Wang still smoke and drink now, if he could?

Reflections

Suddenly, I am washed over by an immense sickening, a condemnation of the extravagance and superfluous luxury and artificiality we have accustomed ourselves to. The realization does not slap me in the face but rather wells up like the spreading warmth of stiff liquor, only this time the sensation is intellectual.



And the pulchritude of things and beings glare at me with their overpowering duality, at times close enough to smell its decay. Yet simultaneously I am drawn to marvel at its sweet allure, its sheer beauty.

the religion of humanity

the modern man is clever. he thinks. his thoughts help him believe in things he knows and feels are true, and the more he believes in them, the more they become true, and the more he lives by them, the more his beliefs assert themselves, and they permeate, and take form in defining courses of action, and speech, and thought, affecting and proliferating to his surroundings, to his friends, his people, and more so graduate to a lifestyle and then a culture of him. different religions form, different classes divide, different races inherently segment themselves, but there are salient similarities abounding in these differences, similarities that speak the universal tongue of love and truth and goodness and emotion-morality of sorts.

but what is the product of this? war and tyranny and rule and suffering? progress and advancement of technology and skills and economies? what undermines these beliefs and truths construed in convenience? is there an underlying truth, an undiscovered path in this forested, overgrown thicket? I want to see it

Cats

I wonder what cats do.

Foreign workers (Singapore)

They addressed him as 'ah-neh'.

It could have well been his name, but I never clarified. The earphones he wore were connected to his handphone, and for the duration I was there with them he talked on the phone. The two seated on the pavement spoke in their tongue. All I could understand was mention of 'Jacky' and that there was no lorry. Then the aquaintance on the bicycle pedalled off and they were left in their company. In brief dialogue ah neh told me he was waiting for a lorry to come. I didn't know if he had family of his own, if he was single, or anything else about him. I was merely civilian citizen to him; at best, an observer behind a camera.

To some, foreigners and their work here is an economic issue, a simple trade of demand and supply. To others, the condition is a 'social concern', somehow bolstered by imagery of clusters of them in open plains, or overcrowded buses on Sunday night, or just a different colour of skin.

To me, it was drama, unfolding, a wealth of subtle emotions that summated yet another echo of human pathos and comedy, somehow always found inextricably wound up together.

-outhere

Thoughts

Explanations for explanations come to mind every time the latter comes to mind. It is part of what I think about each day. Sometimes it is the way people allow clothes to define themselves as opposed to allowing their selves to define the simple material worn. On other days it is the manner of life that people adopt, building impressions, innuendos, and messages around them the same way small talk is generated in big ways. When I was in Australia I asked myself and others around me why a female singer seductively carressed her body in a music video of a song about a failed and betraying relationship, and when I was in New Zealand, I thought about what a large, live body of nature would have to expound to a man in charge of a corporation.

There are also days when the watch reads evening and the sun sets and I feel scared. I try to register that fear as some sort of rational corrective measure kicking alive when I recall what the day in my consciousness qualified to, whether it was spent at the old studio of Charlie's earning an assistants wages, leaving home in the morning and catching the peak hour bus home with the sky that familiar beautiful hue of grey orange, or whether it was a boring day in camp doing seemingly mediocre things. The other time it was the protective foam my mum meticulously lined most of the wooden furniture in the house with. That also made me think about what qualified as "time alive well spent", or "meaningful". Sometimes it is like an overwhelming revelation of the importance of the present and the now, that burns a passion for life itself exuding from every action.

Then I realize that it seems to boil down to a value system of building a way of living in our lifetime. Or the need to consider the truth of love transcending prerogative, and to possess a want to love, in contrast to an imposed moral standard for an obliged gratitude for actions of kindness, or actions, at all. Or parents having and loving children for the sheer reason they want to have and love children. Or how religion binds and blinds but yet builds and bolsters.

So many thoughts, so tedious to post.