The Flood Series Part 1 - Patna, the Temporal Dimension of Space and a Little Lesson

It has been quite sometime. Everybody had been talking about the big flood in Jakarta. Firstly, I have to apologize that I had to skip on the topic. Why? It would be unfair for me, who has neither experienced the flood first hand nor lived in Jakarta to write as if I knew anything on the matter. There are many experts out there, activists who have lots to say. There are even more out there, people who are directly affected by the flood and its repercussions. They have things to say too. I don't.

However, I do have a few things to say about flood, because floods have been a part of my life. I was born in the very city that inspired the song "Semarang Kaline Banjir" (Semarang, the flooding river). It was never as big as the recent one in Jakarta, though. The last big flood in Semarang happened when I was a baby, so I would not have remembered a thing. Nonetheless, big or small, flood is a yearly agenda in Semarang.

After living in Singapore for 8 years, flood becomes something more distant. It is only when I was able to distance myself from the everyday reality of flood was I able to offer a different perspective on flood:

Flood, or an invasion of water into dry land, forces the urban space and urban dynamics to change in an instant. 

Singing Songs from an Overhead Bridge



Little Fella~

I cross overhead bridges almost daily in Singapore. For me, the two most important ones are the one right outside NUS Faculty of Engineering and another one outside the School of Design and Environment.

Somehow, over the years, the activity of crossing an overhead bridge has become more than just a way to get to the other side of the road. The bridge has gained a new meaning - a rather abstract and personal one - as a place for short daily contemplations. Sometimes, when I am lucky enough to cross the bridge early in the morning, I can hear the chirping of birds or the rustling of leaves from the adjacent Clementi Woods. A greater luck would let me catch a glimpse of a squirrel making a dash to its safe hideout. In the evenings, I would think about the stray cat, or secretly replay the tune of a familiar song. The song changes everyday.