The World Is Just Awesome.
By Ng Jun Sen
These days, students aren't having it good. Stress levels have reached stratospheric levels, and if you place all their homework on an aircraft carrier, it would most certainly sink. It's really not hard to understand why your nearest shrink has a thicker wallet despite the credit crisis.
The government knows this, and in the recent years set in motion great plans to overhaul the entire education system. You see that going on with the change in the syllabus, an upheaval in every subject taught in schools and colleges, and an emphasis on both the humanities and sciences.
So now, youths receive what our good ol' government says is a "more focused and all-rounded curriculum", but I've thought about that, and realized it's just like saying you take pride in being a chauvinistic male, hate girls, but would like to undergo a sex change operation.
Sadly, the men at the bureau of the Red Bolt and Blue Ring do not really understand that the crux of the problem isn't what students are studying nowadays, nor is it the methods to learn the curriculum, but the tremendously high standards set by the primitive fear of losing out.
I know this because I have taken up tutoring English at a neighbouring tuition centre, and even the Lower Secondary books it provides showcase sesquipedalian and superfluous words like "sesquipedalian" and "superfluous". I could sympathize with the browbeaten sods who decided to pay for my amateurish lessons after torching their hair in frustration, knowing that the longest word they ever put down in Scrabble was "banana" and that only gave them 7 points. Not enough when clever little Mary across the table spelt "gubernatorial" across two triple-word scores.
The nail in my foot with local education in general isn't any of the above, but it is the bare fact that it spares none of its affectation as a tool in the intellectual factory on the creative arts, and instead strives for unnecessary streaming and categorization of our ambitions. You couldn't choose to be a business professional and a DNA aficionado at the same time because the universities would laugh their heads off at your course selection, and there goes your future as a filthy rich CEO of a cloning company.
And because I know the people who are reading this now are either students or internet stalkers or lost souls who googled "MJC Prom Photos" and ended up here, I also know you'll agree with me about the state of our education scene. It isn't pretty, but you're stuck with it and over the years of repetitive studying you realize that all your complaints and wrist-cutting isn't going to change the reality of a Singaporean childhood, so you accept it. And with time, you forget that you ever had opinions like that.
I was frustrated with these limitations accorded by local education, so for most of my youth I screamed and shouted a lot, of course only if I'm isolated and unseen by the public. But it seems that I'm not alone in this. Jack Neo, who happens to be my neighbour, appeared to agree with me after hearing the melange of rants I gave to the friendly face in my bathroom mirror, and went on to create several local films criticising the education scene.
Not surprisingly, the local media got all overwhelmed and fan-girly that there's finally a Singaporean film which wasn't shot by few drunken dudes with camcorders, so they ate it all up and gave the films a thumbs-up, lauding Jack Neo's brain and brawn at taking on a taboo topic even though Big Brother is watching. People everywhere patted each other in the back, congratulating each other on the progress of Singapore's entertainment scene.
So as it is with all successful local movies, it was heralded as a milestone in our film industry, the company made a lot of money, the director earned mentions and accolades in PM rallies and then people quickly forgot about it because the next Harry Potter film came out.
It makes me wonder that when an issue is revealed for the first time, everyone will begin thinking that it is the most important thing of all. But then, with time, people move on, leaving the issue unresolved.
It's all like the news, really. You read all about Mas Selemat in what seems like years ago, and whatever happened to him now? For all you know, he could have boarded a ship and headed out towards the calm of international waters, only to end up looking down the barrel of a rifle held by a Somalian pirate.
And as the pirates demanded for ransom for the ship and its motley crewmembers, news agencies swooped on this breaking news story and sent their journalists down to sweltering Africa for this mission.
But then the credit crunch and U.S. presidential election came along and stole all the attention from the guys with the notepads, so they flew to America to conduct talks and interviews with fat economists, stupid bankers and Joe the Plumber.
No one cared about Mas Selamat and the rifle-totting Somalian pirates anymore. They had their time in the spotlight.
This doesn't really bring me to the Alfa Romeo Brera, but does, in a way, as you'll see later. Under the bonnet of the Brera lies the sprawling mass of a 3.2L V6 engine, producing just about 256bhp, which really isn't that big of a deal nowadays. The weight of the car, however, drains all those horsepower away. At 1600 kg, it might as well weigh as much as a small galaxy, or Oprah Winfrey, or both.
As a result, it takes seven seconds to reach 60 mph and four days to reach 100. It has about 321Nm of torque, enough to shuttle you to the grocery store and back. Unfortunately though, you only have enough boot space to put a grand total of two potatoes and a carrot, because the designer decided to taper the arse of the car. So you have to make multiple trips, only to find that you lose 12 litres of petrol every 100 kilometres.
A friend of mine has the Alfa Romeo, the one with a downmarket 2.2L JTS power station and a manual gearbox, and because of that it makes everything even worse.
I had the privilege of riding in it the other day, and frankly I wasn't expecting much, having looked at the specifications. There's such a huge selection of sport coupés out there, so why not the new Audi TT which I know is a technological marvel, the punk-styled Nissan 350Z, the venerable Mazda RX-8 or the fantastic little Honda S2000?
I got my answer when I approached the car, and it was such a feast for the eyes. The front has been styled to look like the nose of a fighter jet, the profile is so ingeniously designed to be as slippery as possible through the wind, and the staggeringly beautiful six front headlamps tells the world that the Alfa has arrived.
And my breath was taken away the moment I saw the interior. To create the leather seats of the Alfa, six cows had to be sacrificed. The dashboard had sporty dials and gauges, but they weren't as crude and obnoxious as the ones you find in a Mitsubishi or Subaru rally car. Even watching the windscreen wipers move was like bearing witness to the baton of Herbert von Karajan conducting Rossini's William Tell Overture, and you're in the front seat.
This wasn't a feral hound like the Mazda, or a science lab like the Audi. This was a refined, gentleman's car, and because it is from Italy, it has the passion and soul that has stuck on with the Alfa Romeo moniker over the years. The Brera isn't a car. It is a work of art.
But as I was driven around by my friend, I got the sense that he lost the point of it all. As a motorhead like me, he complained about the same things I mentioned above, that the seats were too hard and that being a front wheel drive, there was far too much understeer. The JTS engine up front resembled a dying mule pulling a chariot, way inferior to the top-of-the-line V6, and the noise it creates is as exciting as the cacophony of wheezes in an asthma ward. Worse were the little gadgets here and there that kept breaking down, such as the driver seat recliner mechanism and the squeaky hinges on my glove compartment.
Why then, did he decide to buy the Alfa? Surely he had heard of Alfa's infamous reputation for frequently throwing an Italiano temper by refusing to work, and only relent when you're just about to give up on it. Isn't it a universal fact that anything built in Italy could only be reliable if there was Parmesan cheese spread over the top or a Ferrari badge emblazoned out front? Look at Silvio Berlusconi, the slit-eyed Prime Minister of Italy, who had recently explained that his support for Barack Obama was due to, for no better reason, his suntan. Not a very reliable person you want to head a country, is he?
I'll tell you why, and the reason is the same as why Mr Berlusconi can carry out his antics and yet keep his job. It is because of these quirks that the Brera distinguishes itself from its competition. It has a character, a fiery and passionate one, unlike that which you get from an Audi, which because it is made in Germany, does an exceedingly good job in never failing on you to the point that it gets boring.
But the Alfa is never boring. It has the sort of exterior that makes you turn around after you've parked it for the night and take a second look at it again, admiring it as if you are a parent with a mischievous and hyperactive child who has just fallen asleep in your arms.
That is why people buy Alfa Romeos in the first place. You don't think about what it is like to live with the Brera, but the fact that you fell in love the moment you set your eyes on it. You trace the sleek curves and lines that bear down the chassis of the car, only to break away to form a corner; the triangular trademark nose, topped with the escutcheon of Alfa Romeo -- fearsome yet refined. It seduces you and fills you with the raging onset of an amatory affection; you just have to own one.
Perhaps my friend forgot what it felt like to look at the Brera for the first time, because it's been three years and all he remembers now is the many visits to his osteopathic physician as a result of the seats. It's like purposely forgetting how it felt to fall in love and go on dates with someone because your phone bills were rising. You lose your bearings on what really matters.
And I think you know by now that the point of this lengthy lamentation and candour is precisely that. People forget these important nuggets of opinion, and it's because they've lost the drive to keep remembering, or because time does these things to our grey matter. In so doing, we lose a part of our soul, our definition, and most saddening of all, our appreciation.
Which finally brings me on to the topic of photography.
No, wait, actually, it brings me back to the year 1904 and a man known as Edward Steichen, who lived in a nice house in New York.
Born in Luxembourg in 1879, Steichen was a painter by profession. In 1881, his family moved to America, and he naturally followed, becoming a citizen in 1900. As he grew up, Steichen fooled around with paint and brushes, gradually establishing his name as a fine art painter.
But during one point in his life, Steichen must have gotten quite bored with having to wash oil colours from under his fingernails, because he began to take photos instead.
Back in those days, they didn't have silly SLRs or microchips to sense light. They didn't even have film. What they had were plates of silver halide manually inserted behind a ground glass, with a lens to focus the light on it. There was no automatic film winding, no auto-focusing; there wasn't even a meter.
Furthermore, because the film plate was so large, it meant that the camera built around the damn thing had to be quite gigantic. Since Nikon and Canon were still a bunch of atoms in their mother's womb, the sort of camera that Steichen used was made of wood, and was therefore as heavy as the Moon. As a result, you needed to carry around a tripod, and because back then aluminium was the kind of thing you found in rocks instead of MacBooks, that was also quite heavy too.
That would all be fine if you had a Brera to drive it around, but in 1904, that was the name of your Clydesdale horse, and you couldn't trust it because it had no independent suspension or anti-roll bars, so your camera would fall off and become what can only be described as pieces. If you wanted to go on a hike with your camera, you had to carry it yourself, or call up the local slave agency and employ a bunch of people to do it for you.
And I know Edward Steichen had no slaves because Wikipedia said no such thing. So in 1904, he carried his camera and tripod and plates of film into a damp forest in Mamaroneck, New York in the middle of the night all by himself. He came back with this.
Titled "The Pond --- Moonlight", it is a stunning colour photograph in the style of the Pictorialism era, and is one of the greatest classic photographs ever taken. It is phenomenal, and every time I am haunted by the impression it leaves. There are really no words to describe images like these. Imagine a large 40" print of this on your living room wall. My god.
The best thing of all is, someone did, and willingly paid US$2.9 million to make himself very happy, sealing its place in the record books for being the second most expensive photograph ever sold.
Now, if you analyse Steichen's mentality at that time, he wouldn't have gone all the way into a dark and ominous Mamaroneck forest in the dead hours of the night to come home with nothing. He risked getting lost in the horripilating cold, getting mugged by thieves or getting bitten by mosquitoes and vampires. Back then Edward Cullen wasn't as friendly.
So the last thing you would hear from Steichen, really, is that there's "nothing to shoot", as that would mean that he wasn't worth a Wikipedia entry.
The thing is, I hear that quite often nowadays, for some reason, and I think it may be due to the conveniences of technology, and I'm referring to the Nikons, the Canons, the Gitzos, Benros, Manfrottos and the lot.
But I'm not going to be iconoclastic and start criticizing technology, because I actually believe that it is a symbol for Man's triumph as the paragon of animals. What we should change, is not our equipment, but our mentality.
Photography opens our eyes to the world. Do you remember the first time you held a camera, and you promised yourself that you would take powerful and breathtaking photos? As you walked down the cobblestone street with your hands gripping the camera, you began to look around you with those eyes of beatific wonder, as if a new world has surfaced and you're there to capture it? Isn't it awesome?
But gradually, as you head down the spiral of technical knowledge, by learning more about photography or acquiring newer and better equipment, you begin to lose that sense of wonder, almost as if it was inevitable. There's no reason why, but you just do.
So when you find yourself on a stunningly beautiful offshore island like Pulau Ubin with a top range DSLR, you start to drag your sodden feet around and make a sudden realization. You start to say that there is really "nothing to shoot around here".
How could that be?
People close to me would realize that I watch plenty of Discovery Channel. I am a diehard fan of Mythbusters, Time Warp, Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, The Long Way Down and other documentary programmes from there. There're few things that can replace the feeling of coming home from work all enervated and spent, and then plonking down on the living room couch to watch Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman test a myth by blowing stuff up. Hugely entertaining.
But during the advertisements, Discovery Channel will always play a clip to remind its audience of their slogan, "The World Is Just Awesome."
That, in my opinion, is a fantastic phrase, and it's really why I love photography, and why I stop at nothing to take great photos. Whenever I begin to forget the reason why I label myself as a photographer, or whenever my brain gets a little bit weary from photography and start to lose the drive to continue, I'll repeat that mantra to myself.
And I think it'll do you good too.
There's always something to take a photo of, and it's all around you. All it takes for you to do is to realize it's there, and then you let your technical self take over. That's the real difficulty of photography, and the precise thing that many of us as photographers of many years are suffering from now. It is such a mental exercise.
But tell yourself that the environment around you is a boundless cradle of photo opportunities, and carry on shooting; that the world that we live in is an awesome show of beauty and grace, and you have to capture it; that life is filled with limitless stories, and as a photographer you are the ambassador of information and you wield the medium of truth.
Because the world is just awesome, and you're where you should be to photograph it.
Don't ever forget that.
Images are from the recently concluded Operation Ubin, shot by the author.
------
(and as requested by Quentin for the portal)
Ng Jun Sen is an award-winning photographer who has been taking photos for almost ten years. He is due to start his university education in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in the National University of Singapore.
Unfortunately though, he's a little bit insane, so approach him with caution. Despite his experience in photography, he has never been published and still remains quite bitter about it. He maintains that photography is too expensive for him, and his greatest ambition is to "succeed in life."
For some strange reason, Jun Sen is now the Vice-President of Photography in the Alumni, playing his part in photography education and training.
