once again, time to write about -

I seldom write about politics so it wasn't hard to try and find anything on this 8 year old blog that was vaguely political in content. I found two posts. One was the post I got quoted on Today from. The other is on Marxism. Those two are all there are on the topic of politics.

I guess the Marxist post still resonates with me because re-reading it inspired me to write this post, here, now. I see Marx as a sociologist more so as than the founder of Communism so I have no qualms about publicly writing that I agree with Marx.

Where I stand exactly on this - agreement - is what I shall clarify tonight.

There are books that are Communist-angled that have truly inspired me: Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Che Guevera's The Motorcycle Diaries. Even Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory is somewhat uplifting. I love the ideology that drives social change even if it is Marx-derived and therefore dangerous to admit so.

Recently SDA's Chiam See Tong (once again, I am not related to him) made a declaration to participate in this year's elections because even though it is hard for him at his age, he says that it is more truly difficult for the people who are suffering in today's Singapore and it is for them that he is continuing to campaign. His declaration made me shed a tear. This is what should inspire political ambition. The sight of masses of humanity in need in your own nation - or in Che Guevera's case, continent - is what should trigger the need for a revolution.

Hence I support the ideals behind Communists such as Che Guevera because of the fact that the ideology, the ambition, and the cause were all because of the masses whose lives could be made far better.

But I disagree with Communism in practice. In reality, Communism as an administrative system does not work, as we can see in so many countries today. Imagery of bespectacled citizens being executed or exiled from their countries because they are educated does not sit with me at all and conjures up tears. Capitalism is still necessary and is in my opinion not the polar opposite of Communism such that they cannot co-exist in the same system. How else will we have food to eat? I am Protestant and believe in the Protestant work-ethic too, so no way am I against capitalism because I believe in Karl Marx's theory.

A new ideology needs to come up from another mind in present times that will be as brilliant as Marx was in his time, one that will be relevant to today's social structures, today's literacy levels, and one that can co-exist with capitalism without unfair power imbalances. If you ever write a thesis on such an theory, let me know. 

Marx essentially said that the regular man (the peasant, the proletariat) will eventually 'wake up idea' and a revolution will definitely take place for a complete paradigm shift in the balance of power. But today, we are educated enough to have woken up our ideas so to speak. The problem today is not about realising that the bourgeoisie have intrinsic power over the people, because we already realise that. We have realised, and we are upset about it.

This emotional response breeds two kinds of behaviour in our society. One is nonchalance, where we admit that the ruling party simply has too much power shrouded in elitism - untouchable - then we sigh and shrug and just go on with our daily lives. The other response is to support left-centre ideology parties that have actually good plans in place to better our fellow man's welfare in this country simply because we want to fight the bourgeois elite ruling party.

As for those partisans contesting the ruling party, the real challenge is still Marxist in nature. To what extent have we woken up our ideas that the ruling party has too much power? What the opposition parties need to do is to realign the ideas that need to be 'woken up'. Ideas that will inspire them to change and want change and want your party to be the one to change the face of Singapore. Sylvia Lim of WP is doing a good job of that.

Obviously, a revolution Egyptian 2011 style is not going to take place because in Singapore, participation in anything remotely like that is going to be suicide in this country. But when the proletariat masses finally awaken and realise that, 'Hey, ruling party buys our votes with monetary gains, do I want my kids to be materialistic Singaporeans and nothing else?' a revolution of another kind will come into play. It will be slow, it will be small at first, but eventually, the tide will turn, and as it has been written - the Tipping Point will emerge to change the face of our political climate and therefore our societal power balances.

No revolution involved that involves guerrillas fighting in jungles or masses gathering with banners shouting for so-and-so to resign. But still a revolution is needed, and will happen. And that thought is Marxist is nature, because his pyramid imagery of society always turns over.

And that's that. Now you know where I stand on Marxism in relation to today's political climate in my own country. Sounds like a lot armchair-theorising about a very real and practical issue at hand, but Marxist ideology drives a lot of admirable politicians and change-makers whether they realise it or not. If you ever were moved to change something somewhere in society because you came face-to-face with a marginalised member of society in suffering - you have had a Che Guevera moment. Go buy a tee-shirt with his face on it, he looks better than Karl Marx.

Margaret Atwood

Recently I have been chain-reading Margaret Atwood.

I first read her in Moral Disorders, a collage of short stories that centre around the same characters. It was insightful, but not extremely entertaining or inspiring.

Then I picked up Oryx and Crake, and went a little crazy about it. It reminded me of the crazy sci-fi that Murakami writes about in some of his books. Oryx and Crake is superb writing, in content and delivery alike.

I then went on to The Robber Bride, and found it amazing - the character development is excellent, so multi-facetious because the central character is a trickster who goes by many identities. By this time I realised that Atwood can write in such a wide variety, excellently. It is not easy for any writer to do such a thing, and yet she can.

Then I read Alias Grace. Also superb. Entertaining, well-written, captivating to the last paragraph. I am not usually into murder mysteries, but this one being based on a true story, and much more than just a story than it is about human behaviour.

So I went on, to Cat's Eye. Oh this book is lovely too, it is insightful like Moral Disorder, only more in-depth, and more entertaining because a novel is just so much more than short stories, which I do not like. The protagonist of Cat's Eye is an artist with my namesake; the artworks are described so perfectly I can imagine them and feel inspired as if I were walking through an art gallery.

Now I am reading The Blind Assassin, and I am not devouring it maniacally yet, but I probably will, when I can sit still enough to read it for long. I have to make this book stretch till my next shopping trip, budget allowing.

Atwood is like middle-of-the-road reading, in a good way. More entertaining than some historical fiction, more profound than most contemporary literature. She amazes with her depth and width - profound observations, genre-busting stories. If you tire of shallow books as well as difficult writing, Atwood likely has a perfect book as an in-between.

books again!

A lot of you know I love collecting and reading books. Some of my most beloved books are outstation, meaning I have lent them out eagerly to friends, to share with them my loves. Sometimes I wonder if I should buy them again, to replace the books on my shelves, because it is hard to lend out books expecting they will eventually return.

This is a list of books that are currently outstation:

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence

These books have been lent out because they are great enough to be shared, so much, that I often press books into the arms of guests at my flat. I know some will never return, and to have a piece of me in the lives of others who I might seldom, if ever, see again, it remains like a physical evidence of our lives being shared for a part. It comforts me that I will not totally be forgotten.

At present, I am actively reading Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, and Joyce Carol Oates' The Tattooed Girl.

I picked out Doris Lessing because this book of hers is award-winning, a must-read book of all times. I relate to it because her protagonist struggles with her intellectualism and her pro-communist affiliations. Her friend and her are also feminist, which makes it a trend before their time.

Joyce Carol Oates is a name I picked out on the back of another book I was reading, as she penned off one of those reviews other authors often do as part of the marketing of that book. The fact that we both at one time shared a common interest in the same book, endears me to her writing, that I believe I must also enjoy, since we both have something in common already.

Great way to find new authors to read, by the way: searching for names on reviews for the books you already like.

This Charming Man by Marian Keyes

I am in the middle of reading Marian Keyes' new book, This Charming Man. I have to say its superb literature. For one, Marian has married four writing styles through the voices of four women, all linked to topics of politics and domestic violence through the same man. Four stories, yet not short stories that leave you hanging for the ending, yet one superb story. No regrets following one of my favourite authors.

reading

I subscribe to 92 feeds on my RSS aggregator and I read them all, daily, hourly.

I read lengthy magazines like Vanity Fair and Glamour.

But I cannot seem to sustain reading the books which I chose at the bookstores, those I am intent on collecting in my trove.

I have, on hold, these few books am somewhat currently reading:
Why I Write, George Orwell
The Lizard Cage, Karen Connelly
The Night Watch, Sarah Waters
His Illegal Self, Peter Carey
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
A Fortune-Teller Told me, Tiziano Terzani

Suddenly my favourite hobby has become difficult.

no words and a crash

When I was still in my old room at home, I discovered that the hardest part of each day, as is the case with most depressives, was simply getting out of bed in the morning. if I could do that much I had a fighting chance. To get through the day, that is. I decided to try to do some writing, hoping it might afford me the same sense of release that it once had, so many years efore. But as soon as I sat down at my typewriter, I froze before the keyboard. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. No poems, no prose, no words.

Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify it or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I'm feeling now. It's so bad, it's useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.

Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel

I removed the things in my life that were not what I wanted or needed to do at this point. I made the career change, I resigned from the less-than-ideal job, I left the church that contained people whom I cannot be friends with because we are too different. Why then, am I still sad? I do not know how to get to the There which I need to go, but at least I know what I do not want or need. Surely it is supposed to help. But all that happens is that I crash again and I can only hope that C will not leave me because I am so depressed because he is all I have left that understands what I am going through. I am going to go back on my anti-depressants, and ask my doc for more. I am going to force my sleep when it should be, through Valerian root and not leave it to happen till morning when become thoroughly exhausted and awake.

latest Murakami

I have never really liked short stories. Most people who love reading as much as I do, don't like short stories - they are too, short!

But really, I had felt all along that short stories were more of an effort to show off literarily, rather than to expound on life and philosophy through beautiful language. It feels like a shortcut to actual writing; much like blogging. The easy answer out. Great for speedy English improvement if you have an English examination coming up. O' Henry's shorties did it for me nearing my O level exams.

My opinion about short stories changes with the introduction to Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Murakami opines in his introduction to the book, that he enjoys writing short stories. (Thanks for the book, Kel)! A short story begins with, what I call a 'traffic-light moment', what he calls 'the smallest details'. His short stories paved the way for the novels he has written. Perhaps without the short stories, there would never be any Norwegian Wood, no Murakami as he is today.

Which makes me wonder if After Dark was originally meant to be a short story, a little bit mistakenly expanded into the length of a novel.

Now I think I will pick up the shorties in his collection to read, that I haven't already.

And in fact, re-think the traffic light moments in my life, and think about the beauty of the short story in every one of them. Blogging and the like really isn't that lowly a writing activity after all.

Lauren Willig and George Orwell

I finished this book by Lauren Willig sometime back and I have to say it is well-written and a stroke of genius. My regret is that, because this book seems to be a part in a continuing saga of fictitious spies in Napoleon's era, I have no idea whether to read ahead or backwards. I think I am going to let it remain as a stand-alone novel for me for the time being.


It has elements of mystery, comedy, romance in a chick-lit fashion, and English wittiness. Given that I seldom read mystery or crime unless masked in something else, like Ryu Murakami's In The Miso Soup for example, this serves to meet my need for non-romantic thrill in a book, without being a hard-core mystery thriller sort.


My George Orwell's Why I Write, collection of essays by the man himself, is an inspiring read. It makes you think about things, and you find a friend in him if you like writing. Unfortunately, the cat tore some pages of it, and I have yet to come around to fixing them together with scotch-tape, so, reading it came to an abrupt halt. I still find him to serious to be a novelist, though maybe I can hardly stomach very many serious writers, so it could be just me.

book log

1. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar is a good read, entertaining and a literary inspiration.
   
2. Again, Marian Keyes and her Walsh family sisters, particularly Anna in Anybody Out There? - superb.
   
3. Am still distilling the first few chapters of The Alchemy of Desire. Very nice, partly poetic, melancholic story telling, meaning of life etc.
   

My reading needs combined with a book collecting habit does not at all help me in my desire to save money. I need something to fund my book habit.

is there such a thing as intelligent chick-lit?

Actually, yes. Marian Keyes, to me. Or Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diaries, and two-hit wonder Emma Gold.


This book I just finished, was a disappointment. The story is actually passable, but the characters' details are splayed out much more like nutritional facts and figures on a tin can or cereal box, instead of the way good writers do it: introduce them to you like these were real people, just like you are, and then you become friends with them. Definitely not easy, but I suppose one could publish when such is achieved and not before.


It has been disappointing trying to find new chick-lit authors that are actually good at what they do. Hence I continue almost completing all of Marian Keyes' collection with my next exploit.


(Don't judge me for reading chick-lit: what is an intelligent life without tireless entertainment?)

Illywhacker by Peter Carey

Just at the end of oh-six I borrowed this from the library, but as yet am only through the first few pages. It is a bit dry for me at the moment, more like an admirable language-skills display than an entertaining story so far. Perhaps I should keep trying.


I am still a Peter Carey fan although the only reason why, is because of The True History of the Kelly Gang. Carey is a superb writer, that I cannot deny. I also read Theft, but though it was about Australia (I love reading about foreign cultures), and about art I found it a bit unsatisfying.

All TIME 100 novels

Out of which I have read:

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

On the Road
Jack Kerouac



I have only half-read, the following, shallow that I be:

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee




I might probably read:

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf



Books I think should be in this list:

Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts

The Black Album
Hanif Kureishi



Books I know someone will say should be in this list:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera

The World According To Garp
John Irving

And...

I wouldn't know what books you think should be here unless you tell me too.

join bookmooch!

Thanks Billy!

This is a site where you can exchange books with other people (permanently) without having to pay for anything except postage. Books that you offer to give away, and actually do, gives you points which you can use to ask for books from other readers to be sent to you. This means almost-free books! This is great for people like me, who will probably never make it to the flea market / second-hand bookstore to get rid of the books I no longer want to horde.


I managed to put up only eight books. These are books which I think are not worth hording to future reads, nor flaunting to show that I am well-read. These amount to eight books, at present not enough to gain any books till someone actually requests to mooch any of mine.


Go scour your bookshelf and join now!

elainities update

1. I have been away slightly, from the computer anyway, because I have been busy; with work, resting, Calvin. The house is still in a mess.


2. The DVD player is very officially kaput. I will need to buy a new home theatre system of sorts. Stupid Sony.
   


3. I just finished reading Banana Yoshimoto's Lizard, a collection of short stories. Ordinarily I don't like short stories: they take you nowhere, they are merely thoughts on paper with no life-blood, but merely some philosophy, like an essay disguised. I finally decided to try Yoshimoto because of a reader's suggestion some time back, since he knew I liked Murakami. They are rather similar in their tendencies towards the introspective, only so far, it think that Murakami has explained his characters' lives and thoughts much clearer. I will probably try her other books to make my views more balanced.
   


4. I just finished my girly share of chick-lit, through my favourite chick-lit author Marian Keyes's Watermelon. I like Marian Keyes because she writes well despite being in the chick-lit genre, and I hardly touch very many other chick-lit authors.


5. I went and procured myself a copy of Gregory David Robert's Shantaram after checking it out at Joseph's suggestion. Will be reading it next, together with


6. In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami. I actually resisted buying it for about a year, when it was still lurking in shelves no one knew about. I read it standing up in bookstores over extended repeated visits to the bookshops, and stopped somewhere, and now I have it to continue. Apparently Ryu Murakami is one of Haruki Murakami's favourite writers, or at least one of them.


7. I just went to collect my copy of The Long Tail at the post office today.
   

finished reading

I have just finished reading Kerouac's On The Road. It is going up as one of my favourite books.


It ends in Mexico, before Sal heads back to New York. Another one of my favourite paragraphs occurs climatically at the end of the book, when they were en route to Mexico City via mountainous roads, and they encounter the indigenous Indians that reside there. Sal and Dean and his friends have been living life decadently, typically, with drugs and sex and alcohol and all that has been popularised as decadence in the cities. A sudden contrast occurs when they hit the tropics and mountains that the road leads them to:

As we climbed, the air grew cooler and the Indian girls on the road wore shawls over their heads and shoulders. They hailed us desperately; we stopped to see. They wanted to sell us little pieces of rock crystal. Their great brown, innocent eyes looked into ours with such soulful intensity that not one of us had the slightest sexual thought about them; moreover they were very young, some of them eleven and looking almost thirty. 'Look at those eyes!' breathed Dean. They were like the eyes of the Virgin Mother when she was a child. We saw in them the tender and forgiving gaze of Jesus. And they stared unflinching into ours. [...]

I think one will only use rapturous imagery and spiritual analogies like Kerouac has done here, when human images can no longer define what is being experienced. It is hard to write well, if you have a lack in your storehouse of extreme experiences. Everything will seem bland, monotonous writing with no contrasts, and hardly any living. Sometimes you have to write about things bigger than yourself, to capture your audience up there with you. It can be extremes of anything, highs and pleasures, encounters with God, depression beyond the mind. I think that any writing that lacks that will lack, doubtlessly. It will become like, news reporting? Or just general fare that no one will truly enjoy reading, because it never changes anything.


What did I see when I read this? I saw images of brown children with discolourations in their hair from malnourishment, covered in dust from the streets; the only images closest possible to what they saw, for I have not been to South America, so what I can conjure up in my mind are the Asian parallels I have seen.


















Street kids at the immigration checkpoint of border town of Poi Pet, Cambodia.




I have finished this book, and I know I won't stop reading, nor writing, for that matter.

more about On The Road - on passion

I took up a conversation with a gorgeous country girl wearing a low-cut cotton blouse that displayed the beautiful sun-tan on her breast tops. She was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do. 'And what else do you do for fun?' I tried to bring up boy friends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done - whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was. 'What do you want out of life?' I wanted to take her and wring it out of her. She didn't have the slightest idea what she wanted. She mumbled of jobs, movies, going to her grandmother's for the summer, wishing she could go to New York and visit the Roxy, what kind of outfit she would wear - something like the one she wore last Easter, white bonnet, roses, rose pumps, and lavender gabardine coat. 'What do you do on Sunday afternoons?' I asked. She sat on her porch. The boys went by on bicycles and stopped to chat. She read the funny papers, she reclined on the hammock. 'What do you do on a warm summer's night?' She sat on the porch, she watched the cars on the road. She and her mother made popcorn. 'What does your father do on a summer's night?' He works, he has an all-night shift at the boiler factory, he's spent his whole life supporting a woman and her outpoppings and no credit or adoration.'What does your brother do on a summer's night?' He rides around on his bicycle, he hangs out in front of the soda fountain. 'What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want?' She didn't know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost.

From On The Road, Jack Kerouac.

Some people speak of even the simplest things with passion, and some, simply without. Funny how a bum like Sal Paradise has it, it as in, a passion for life, albeit in pleasure, and it is up to him to tell the others, the readers, how not having it is as good as being lost.


Isn't passion so important?


I don't want to be lost, in Kerouac's terms: sleepy, empty, regretful. Where is my passion; and am I actually doing anything about it, or merely holding it in with the past generations, with chagrin as he says?


If we have passion for the simple things, even the wayward things, as so it will seem in On The Road, then we can also draw passion for the great things that will change this generation, and those to come.


I draw a parallel from the Bible's story about the woman at the well. She spoke out against Jesus without restraint: why are you talking to me, I am a Samaritan, you are a Jew, we don't associate! It may seem wrong to question God's authority and actions, but if she hadn't done that so boldly, and had walked away, she might never have found out that Jesus had living water for her. And with the same fire and forthrightness in her spirit, she went and told her whole village about the prophetic things that Jesus shared with her at the well.


The virtue of passion, and in it, forthrightness, courage, these cut both ways. It merely takes knowledge and wisdom, to direct it. To get this knowledge, you have just got to find it, ask for it, meet the right people, read the right stuff.


But without passion, there is little to direct any where.

More about On The Road

It is like reading organised thoughts in prose, straight off the mind of an author. It has been soberly amazing.


Sal Paradise has a mad friend, Dean Moriarty, who is constantly sweating with excitement about everything. Although he may seem like a bum, which he is, yet his thirst for new things, and his passion for music and for being with people, are inspiring enough.


Sal himself, takes in every sight and scene he comes across in his America. To him, the road and all it contains, are almost enough for life itself. He words the pictures and colours he sees: the sun is red, the Mexican girl is honey-coloured. He describes the deserts, the salt plains, the oil-scented air of Texas, the dust of New York, the streets everywhere, the life of the people.


And they say, in all of these things, there must be a God. I agree.


I have yet to see such excitement myself about pure travel, I thought I had it when I saw the mountains of Kazakstan, or read it second-hand about India through Popagandhi. But all that I have experienced are trails of the levels of excitement in On The Road. They are but trails. Today we rely on movies and info-documentaries and such to tell us the beauty of this world. But if a writer can bring across to you, the passion involved in every beat of the jazz musician's drum, make you imagine lights and sounds that are directly teleported from the late 40s to you, right here right now, then that is a true writer's art, the experience conquers even that of some films and other visual displays.


I am three-quarters done completing this book, and there have been no regrets since I started. What will this book accomplish? It is not sad, like some books. It makes me desire to travel like they do, perhaps America too, but my heart is with Asia. I hunger for jazz; but my DVD player is now defunct and my house is no longer loungey for the mess; I will have to overhaul my home through cleaning and clearing up, and get a new music player - or better, go see live jazz music for kicks, as Dean and Sal put it. Or, as Hanif Kureishi, another favourite author of mine, puts it via review on the cover of the book: "It changed the way I saw the world, making me yearn for fresh experience." What indeed, have we been missing out on? We need to live more, and take in every experience.



And reading Kerouac, makes me hope that my writing will improve even more. His writing style, what he has termed as spontaneous prose, brings to mind the need to always be writing, always be thinking about your thoughts, the need to take in everything with your eyes. When reading his sentences, I feel that he has less regard for the form of the sentence, but rather, he merely uses each sentence because he wants to tell you about what he is on about at that moment, and if it needs to be a long sentence with semi-colons and commas, then so be it, or if just one short five-word sentence, then so be it too. There is no forced stylistic effort, and that is exactly the way I like it. He coins slangs through over-using certain words in his own way, hence the word 'beat' comes about (as in, 'it was a beat suitcase', 'he looked beat', like saying 'worn', but without the preposition), alongside other words like 'kicks' and 'dig'. I think that also helps to create that generation, that experience, that character, that Kerouac is portraying through his book. Just like how Bridget Jones (Helen Fielding) is known for 'v.good' and 'oh my bloody god and fuck' etc, it creates the character.


Writing about Kerouac makes me want to write too. It also makes me realise that I like semi-autobiographical novels, as I think of D H Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, which is another book I like. Seeing that I have no patience to create characters and stories from thin air or through stitching real life with completely fictional ideas, I think if I were to ever write a novel, it would have to be semi-autobiographical too. The very thought that a novel I read is semi-autobiographical makes it appealing too, because it means that these thoughts are real, the writer really thought about it this way once, and as I read it, it is as if that thought transcends time and continent to come to me, right where I am.

"Our battered suitacases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."

From On The Road.

the long tail

Folks, folks,


I am getting a free copy of The Long Tail from author Chris Anderson, and I am elated, not only because I am Singaporean and therefore I love freebies, but because The Long Tail is the articulation of a business concept that I believe in.


(And how did I get this freebie? Well Chris was giving it out for free and I emailed him for one. But they are all snapped up now it seems. The catch is, I have to review it, here, on worlds upon words, after I am done with it.)


Rather than take it wholesale from the site I am going to tell you what it is about in my terms. We all know what niche marketing is about, basically it means catering to a select group of customers, instead of the mass population. For example, Jasons supermarket versus NTUC, Sheng Siong and Shop n Save. Or lemon tea at the Ritz Carlton (where even the ice cubes are made of tea, and you get it served with a pot and a tray) versus the lei-mong-tai you get at the kopitiam (that by the way is how the auntie hollers the order to the counter if you do indeed order lemon tea at the kopitiam near my place).


Well, when I studied (or briefly read, for the exams) marketing in uni, I just thought, hey, you can charge a higher price if you go niche, but if the market is so small, you probably will die easily too.


Of course there are really a whole host of other reasons why a niche marketing company dies:

too much monetary risk taken without prudence (hedge funds),
a lack of market research - thinking there is a niche market where actually there ain't but for an over-tapped mass market (education centres),
poor marketing communications on what exactly that 'niche' is (cafes that think they are so different but are just duds),
the industry sunsets before you have started on your next business unit (Yashica cameras), etc.

All that aside, assuming you don't over-diversify before you make it (think of the many years of the brand of the Osim chair before they prudently went into their other i-deas), you make sound reconnaisance before everything, you plan years and decades ahead, and you have a clear marketing strategy:


Then you really should consider going niche. Differentiating yourself so that you are not only the market leader in your industry-segment, but really, the only market player to a thriving, close-knit industry. Word gets around easily, from staff to their friends, from customers to other potential customers. There would be no other apple to compare to your apple. All other comparisons will be an apple to orange or kiwi-fruit comparison. People want to interview you because you are special, and you might even get free press on the internet and on tv.


And then, can you survive the niche market? Will there be enough to go around, monetarily?


Well, if you are into maths, and you know the concept of the area under a curve, then read The Long Tail blog to know more it in terms of dollars and numbers. As for me, I am going try to put it in words. Factually, if you divide a large cake by a large number of people, for example, at birthdays with the whole extended family or with the whole church, then you get a small slice each, and maybe two if there are any more slices to spare. But if you were to celebrate your birthday by yourself, and you buy a slice of cake (like Chocolate of a Thousand Leaves from Coffee Bean, yum), then, you potentially get a much larger slice of cake per person, because, it is just you. Now it seems like no one knows about your birthday this way, but hey, if you like cake, and you have a good book with you or have loads of thoughts to write in your notebook, (and if you don't really care for big birthday dos) you might as well go for it this way! You get blessed solitude, and a whole lot more cake this way!


And you know what, if you can't find a good slice of your favourite cake anywhere in stores, bake it yourself or find someone who can. That is,


Create your own niche market.


Ooh and eat it all up by yourself, before anyone even knows about it. By the time they do, you are already doing some other thing, leaving them in your dust trail.


I hope that does the long tail concept justice, but regardless, I have to read the book to know if it is really a good book. Nonetheless, it will be free for sharing, and I will pass it around to whoever wants to borrow it after I am done (which means I know I might never get it back, but it is okay, good things must share).


More soon.

current read, and inspiration

Jack Kerouac - On The Road



I first heard of this book proper in Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, through Sumire. Sumire, aspiring writer, Kerouac fan. She had no money, but she bought books. At first, a lack of knowledge on my part halted a possible attraction to Kerouac - what the heck is the 'Beat' generation? And On The Road seemed to be yet another travel journal. Nothing against travel journals per se, but hey everyone travels, unless you are Che Guevera then your travel journals are just like everybody else's, right?


Then I stumbled upon Kerouac's quotes.


Then I found out that he actually invented something - spontaneous prose. Much like blogging, only we are talking late 1940s, 1950s.


Plus, I am poor like Sumire. What else better to spend on, then books. Books make life easier to bear.


So what is the book about?


Sal Paradise, Kerouac's protagonist, decides to make across America and back, and he details every high and every shitty encounter (not with people mostly, as far as I have gone so far, more like with himself for taking the wrong route and things like that). On The Road, to me, is not story telling, but truly a revelational writing style. I feel like I am reading someone's diary, only it is more in depth because he is a real writer; and don't we all like reading diaries.


I feel a parallel: I remember watching The Motorcycle Diaries lately, and amidst the comic scenes they had with their trusty Mighty One (the name of their motorcycle), I wept with them in every heart stopping moment of the film. Literally. The camera captured the life and non-lives of the souls who represented South America. I mean, no one cared about displacing the Incas, no one dared touch the lepers, some people were so poor, they could die of something so treatable like asthma. Asthma! It is like drowning on dry ground.


I stood with them at Macchu Picchu, taking it in with the camera, suddenly seeing the history of a people before me, as the boys did. They each took a spot at Macchu Picchu, and comforted in each other's solitude, made a life-changing moment right there in their hearts and journals.


At the end of the film, I wept with each black and white photographic replay of the lives they met - it was almost exactly like the vision I had in the late 1990s, at a Singapore Indoor Stadium event. I saw flashes like black and white photography, of so many displaced people! I knew I had to live for people like them, to restore to them what God has promised them, what is originally theirs. I felt like God placed this slide projector collection of images in me, branding them in my heart. Now, you really must watch The Motorcycle Diaries, don't you? And yes, I will read the books too.


I don't think On The Road will be like that, seeing that Sal and his friends seem to be even more decadent than Che and his chubby friend and their motorcycle. But Sal, and more importantly the man behind this alter ego, the author himself, they are both writers. Kerouac makes me think this: if I can inspire people, and move them through my writings, then - imagine the impact. Kundera spoke of Immortality: through your art, and your writing (letters, books, papers), you are perpetuated through eternity. But more importantly, it is not about you, the writer, but about every reader who reads your words. You may not change the world much, but through your writing, art, music, work, love, inspiration - you might move someone who will change this world. It is worth every tear drop spent at the scraps of collected writing, at the keyboard, in your prayer bed. As I read Kerouac, I want to be moved, so that I can also be one who moves this world too. It is not for me, but for to release away this heavy burden in my heart.


There are times when I feel like I had enough of hearing about all the 'me's. True, our very self is important. But it comes to a point when I don't want a miracle for myself, thanks Pastor, I need a miracle for the people who are dying in floods, in danger of being buried in volcanic mud, for people who have no home to go to today, yesterday, tomorrow, for the kids being trafficked for sexual slavery in Asia. I really don't want a miracle for myself God, I need it for them! Are we really that in need?! We ain't, no matter how much we bitch about it. Every 'through it all', every 'I trust in You', God I want to sing it for them.


Hence we need to be inspired, constantly, constantly. If nothing moves you, you cannot move the hearts of people.


More on Kerouac, when I am done with him. (If you hear nothing, it probably means I have been disappointed).

Theft

As mentioned previously, I want to read Peter Carey's new book - and I bought it! Now I am hungrily finishing Jane Eyre so that I can read Carey's Theft.


And how apt, for I am going to Carey's home country next week.