The book is out!

Yep...my late night efforts for a month (don't take any naughty connotations of this statement) last November as part of the NaNoWriMo have borne fruit. In case you didn't know about it, you can read about my tryst with NaNoWriMo here, here, here, here, here and HERE. :-)

Thanks to the stellar effort of the co-ordinator of the Singapore NaNoWriMo charter, Rozen, a few of us from Singapore have excerpt of our novels published in a book called "So you think you can write a Novel?"
The book is an eclectic collection of excerpts taken from novels of various genres written by 19 people from different age groups and backgrounds, but all residing in Singapore.







This is how the book looks




The book is published by Marshall Cavendish and was launched today at the Singapore National Library. Unfortunately for me, I could not attend the launch as I was travelling on business. Oh well. Somthings you get and some you don't. I would have loved to be there, though.

I hope the book does well as it is the first time a novel like this has been published. I also hope it is a good wake-up call for all the people who have a writer inside them, but have not given that part of them a chance to come out.

Frankly, I did not know I could write. As a matter of fact, I still can't. But I was a lot worse. I think blogging here has belped quite a bit. And the experience of writing the novel helped a lot too.

Now that I look back, there are so many things I would do differently with my novel. There are so many things that I don't like about it and so many things that could have been better. But it has all been worth it. It has been a good learning experience. I think I will do better in my next effort.

Oh, and I forgot. It's WriMo time again. That's right, NaNoWriMo fever kicks off again in a few days (on Wednesday, to be precise) and so it's off to the race for some of us. I very strongly encourage you to join in. You can register yourself at www.nanowrimo.org and have a go. And who know? You could be joining me at the winners podium at the end of the month.

See you there at the end of the 30th of November!

Isn't this just beautiful?

Just look at this picture!


This is a shot of the beautiful signature Par-5 on the famous Ria Bintan golf course in, of course, Bintan! While the picture is breathtaking, the experience of actually being there is way, way, way beyond. The course is that beautiful.

This hole, incidentally, has been rated the most beautiful par 5 in Asia! And I most certainly agree with the rating. It is a very demanding hole with the requirement to keep to the left or center of fairway off the tee, a blind shot to where you think the forest is and then a sharp downhill shot to a small green surrounded by water (where I promptly hit my ball!).

As a collegue of mine described it: "Beautiful course, ugly game"! That pretty much sums up how I played that day.

But the course was absolutely beautiful!

When was the last time you looked directly at the Sun?

It's been hazy for the last few weeks (as you might have noticed from my last post), but this just took the cake.

This is a picture I took when I was taking the ferry to Batam to play a round of golf. Mind you,
this is in the morning!

Normally, the sun is strong enough for you to reach for your suntan lotion bottle, but this time the sun was barely visible, let alone powerful.

You could barely see the light reflecting in the water, which is usually reflecting so harshly that there is no way of avoiding your sunglasses, and all around was this grey gloom which pretty much looked like it was a worldwide phenomenon (which, come to think of it, it is).

Made me think about how the dinosaurs would have felt (assuming our theory about the meteor hit is true) when they were engulfed with dust. I felt so miniscule in the grand scale of things. A fire somewhere had an impact (currently just an irritating one, but impact nonetheless) on my life in another part of the world. How we are all interconnected to a large extent.

And how fragile our ecosystem is. And how much we abuse it.

Reminded me of Sting's "Fragile".

On the way back, I took another picture. This one, you can barely see the sun. As in the first
picture, I have marked it just so you know where to look. Cause the sun looks like a remote spec in the sky.

No longer the mighty fireball that we associate with, but a meek blip on the horizon.

No blue skies, no more clouds. I can't remember the last time I saw a clear blue sky since I landed here.

It threatens to clear every day, the wind notches up a bit to raise hopes, but the haze presses in the next day, reminding us that it's there for a while.

How long is this going to last? When do we see the skies clear? When will I get the chance to curse the equatorial heat when I play golf?

Smoky air

Smoke and ash billows from the fires
Mother Nature put to the test
Wind blowing the ash toward us
Giving the city a smoky crest

The entire city is in a haze
Sunlight filtering through
The dull lighting in the morning stays
The sky no longer looks blue

It feels harder to breathe these days
Or maybe it's just me and what I think
My throat feels parched always
No matter how much water I can drink

For a change, it's not been raining these days
That would have helped clear things about
The wind is our only ally now
But it blows more ash and smoke in than out

How a fire in one part of the world
Affects people so far away
How an earthquake in one corner
Causes a Tsunami in the other

We all live in a connected universe
We all affect each other's lives
Maybe it's time we all realized
The privilege of what we call life!

The God of guitar is coming to town!

Eric Patrick Clapton is coming to Singapore in January!

He is actually going to play live here at the Singapore National Stadium.

I can't wait. My browser is not allowing me to make the ticket bookings, but I will get that done as soon as possible. I am not going to miss this show.

Caught with my trousers down

As I promised, I am posting some of the things that happened in my life before I went off blogging. So here's installment number 1.

I had left office around the 5:45pm mark and was walking toward the bus stop to take the bus home (trying to save some money, you know). The bus stop which I need to get to is on the other side of the People's Park complex. So naturally, I have to walk through the complex to get to the stop.

As I was walking through the complex, I noticed a few massage parlours there. Now if you know me, I have a weakness for getting pampered. I LOVE getting massages. And it just so happened that I was feeling quite stiff all day with a body ache.

So I decided to pop into one of these places which promised a 45 minute massage for just $25 (which I thought was a great deal).

I was ushered in by this woman who led me to one of the free booths and gave me a pair of shorts to change into while my masseuse arrived. Shortly, another woman came in, asked me ot lie down on the massage table in the booth and tucked a towel in the back of my shorts (obviously to keep the massage oil from messing them up).

She had just started with the massage when there was a bit of commotion in the lobby (if I can call it that) of the place and a couple of people peeped through the curtains of the booth. My masseues rushed out and just left me there, in my shorts with a little bit of oil on my back and a towel tucked in the back of my shorts with part of my ass hanging out!

I later realized that the folks who had barged in were cops and this was a raid on this place. It was mainly to check on people who were licensed to work in that place and people who were "freelancing". It turned out that the masseuse (?) who was attending to me was not exactly allowed to do it (as I later found out).

So I had to sign a written testimony about how I came there, who ushered me in, who attended to me, all the details of time, place and circumstance. And after 45 minutes (without a massage), I walked out of there after experiencing the first raid here in Singapore.

Not the most positive thing in the whole day, but a lot better than getting arrested myself...that too for going to a massage parlour without checking if your masseuse was legally allowed to give you a massage!

It has to happen to me, right?

Back in the Alley

Apologies, my loyal readers.

It's more than a month since I last blogged. And you deserve to know why you could not read the stellar content I put up here. Even if you didn't, I am going to force it down your throat, in typical Mally-Alley style.

Well, all the week that I put in my last few posts (end August), I was feeling tired and unenthusiastic, unenergetic and exhuasted. I had also lost all my appetite. My wife promptly blamed the symptoms on me being "allergic" to her. She claimed that I was fine when I was all alone here in Singapore and when I was enjoying my vacation in India, but I was tired as soon as she got back here. And I had to endure all her comments for a while.

The beginning of September was my wife's conference in Malaysia (for which the entire family travelled, just so that all of us could see her present her paper there). Even there, I had to put up with all the comments, especially one that went right to the top of my temper pole. She had heard about "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" at the conference and did not waste any time in labelling me with it.

While we were heading back, my mom commented that I was looking "a bit yellow". That raised a lot of eyebrows (mainly cause I am not Chinese and don't lay any claim to being part of the Yellow Race). As usual, my wife got into hyper mode and insisted that we get me checked...a suggetion that I was not entirely averse to.

As it turns out, I was diagnosed with Jaundice! But I was not exhibiting any of the symptoms of "classical" Jaundice caused by Hepatitis A or C. I had no pains in my abdomen, I did not have fever, I did no have nausia. I was just exhausted and unenthusiastic about food in general.

Since the doctors did not have any clue why I was the way I was, they suggested that I get admitted to the hospital for observation so that they could wake me up at all odd hours to take my blood pressure, keep my hungry as the reason for a few tests and not do those tests at all, and in general to keep me away from home.

I spent 4 days in that state with needles stuck in me and my patience running out. I also think I lost a lot of weight in those few days.

My wife, in all of this time, silently bore my snide remarks about how accurate her statements were about the "chronic fatigue" I had and beinf allergic to her. Her expression told me that the one comment I made to her was enough. I was unwell when we went for the conference and she knew that I never complained once.

Finally, the doctors told me that I had Epstien Barr Virus (EBV). When I Googled it, I found that it happens to 95% of the populace of the world, only mostly in the early years. When one gets it in older age, it's a bit harder to recover from. And with that momentous news, they allowed me to go home on the condition that I will not step out of my house, eat food only given to small kids and in general, behave like an intelligent vegetable.

I spent the most part of 2 weeks in this state. And I realized how weak I had gotten when I started getting tired after going from my bed to the restroom. Even talking on the phone made me get tired. And after 2 weeks, I had shrunk to where I could put a fist into my 34" waist Levis and still button it down. I had gotten to the point I thought was not possible.

From there, it has been a slow path of recovery and I am glad to say that I am a LOT better today. I feel hungry a lot more often, I am not at my usual energy levels, but I am getting there.

All in all, I hope that the blog does not go silent and that I do justice to your faith in this site. I know I have a lot to tell you folks, something I intended to do earlier, but could not because of the medical condition I went through.

So, me hearties, Mally is back to the Alley.

Stay tuned!