Interviews from Horqin Desert, Inner Mongolia!

I learnt so much from this trip from the conversations I had, things I witnessed, and the hands-on hard work to plant, water and prune plants in the desert. It's an experience I will never forget!

Here are the FACES behind the VOICES you hear on my Greening of the Horqin Desert series of interviews on 938LIVE.

Yoshio Kitaura, Executive Director of Green Network, a Japanese environment NGO that has been working to green the Horqin Desert for a decade.

Kitaura-san could not speak a word of English! But because I wanted the interview so badly, I got an interpreter from the Japanese team to help translate!

What has the local community witnessed? 52-year-old chief of Maninchu Village shares how he has seen the Horqin Grassland become desert.

Steward Whitney is the VP & MD of Timberland Asia Pacific but what a down-to-earth & funny man! He shares about Timberland's Earthkeepers Movement.

COMING SOON....

Me & Janet Hsieh, host of Discovery Travel & Living's 'Fun Taiwan' and 'Fun Asia'!

Catch that interview on 938LIVE this coming Friday 27 Aug, 10am-11am, with a repeat broadcast at 10pm-midnight, as well as on Channel NewsAsia, 2am-3am.

You can also listen to us online at xinmsn.com/938LIVE,

or on your iPhone by downloading the free app, MeRadio!

Back from Horqin Desert!

For the past four days, I was away in Inner Mongolia to help green the Horqin Desert. This area, which covers 400,000 sq km (the size of Switzerland!) used to be a grassland - the way you'd imagine a Mongolian grassland to be - but due to climate change, over-cultivation, and over-grazing, Desertification has taken place. Today, the Horqin Desert is expanding at 6 million hectares a year - that's 1,900 sq km per second!

I studied Desertification as a Geography student for 6 years, but that was only a concept I understood in theory. Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine myself witnessing this process first-hand... and better yet, to do something within my capacity (albeit small) to help reverse it.

I feel really privileged to have the opportunity to join Green Network (Japanese environmental NGO) and Timberland's Earthkeepers movement to head to Horqin Desert to plant 1,400 trees over 2 days, to water them and prune them. Here's some background to the Earthkeepers initiative, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year:

And I have many stories to share now that I'm back, as well as four interviews to air on The Living Room in the coming week! Stay tuned to find out when we'll be airing this Greening of Horqin Desert series on 938LIVE!

For fast & regular updates, join us on our Facebook page. I'll be uploading lots of photos & videos there in the coming days! *wink*

But first, here's a vid to whet your appetite: Here we are arriving at Horqin Desert in "cattle transporter" vehicles, and the girl you see reporting is Discovery Travel & Living's Janet Hsieh, whom you will also hear me profile on our show this week! *grin*

At 45, Singapore You're Fabulous!

It's so easy to take Singapore for granted. Sometimes, I complain about our rules being too stringent, too many fines (carpark, speeding, littering), the standard of living being too high... the weather too hot, the education system too tough for our kids...

But at the end of the day, I am thankful that I live in such a safe, clean, peaceful & corruption-free country. Think about it, how many countries in the world are there like Singapore?

Pam's sheep Baaabara is originally from Hong Kong, but she considers herself whoolly Singaporean and is bent on celebrating National Day today.

So celebrate with Stan & me (and Baaabara!) today as Singapore turns 45! And don't forget to catch the National Day Parade this evening... Our colleague Bharati Jagdish will be commentating on TV!

At 45, Singapore you're fabulous!!!

We are on Facebook!

Sorry we've been MIA on this blog for a while.

Let you in on a secret...

We're on Facebook!

And we're currently working to build up a community there.

So give us a little time & we'll be back.

In the meantime, join us on Facebook at:

"938LIVE The Living Room"

or simply click here.

See you there!

Violence Against Afghan Women

Ignorance is bliss. Oh! There are countless times in my life I've felt this to be true. Because once I know, ignorance can no longer be an excuse. Then I have to face the question: Now that I know, what am I going to do about it?

I posted some videos of violence against Afghan women on my Facebook wall recently, and a few friends commented that they "can't bear" to watch it. I guess it's easy to not see, not know, and not feel. It's safer to hide behind a closed door and not let unpleasant things get into our system and stir up unwanted feelings within.

BUT YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT. And you must dare to open your heart wide to feel all the injustice, sadness, anger that arise naturally. Because only then, only then, will you be compelled to take action.

According to the United Nations, 87% of Afghan women have been victims of domestic violence.

Many girls in their teens are forced to marry men they do not know. When they are abused and try to run away, they are tortured or flogged publicly, some are even killed because they bring disgrace to their families. And the killers are often family members.

Because this is a fate they believe they can't escape from, many attempt suicide, some by setting themselves on fire. Read about it here.

Here is Sosan's story. She is just one Afghan woman, but we're told hers in not unique...

The plight of women in Afghanistan is horrifying. And so when I got word from Mellisa Chong of UNIFEM Singapore that the Country Director of UNIFEM Afghanistan, Wenny Kusuma, would be in Singapore for two days, I jumped at the opportunity to have an exclusive interview with her.

The interview was held at the Parkroyal hotel on Beach Road, after her day of training with the staff of the International Red Cross. It was almost 7pm when my best friend Ning (she came along to take photos) and I got to the hotel and met Mellisa and Camilla of UNIFEM Singapore. They had made arrangements for us to hold the interview on the 7th floor of the hotel, which was a private VIP floor, so that it was less noisy.

Me seated on the carpeted floor as I interview Wenny Kusuma on the executive floor lobby of Parkroyal @ Beach Road.

Still, you will hear the ambient noise during the recorded interview: Lifts going "ding!" or voices as hotel guests walk by... but I promise you Wenny's stories will keep you hooked.

Her voice was calm, measured and reflective, but there was a sadness that hinted at the many things she has seen, heard and witnessed that she carries perhaps as a burden upon her soul.

Wenny shares that her life has been threatened many times.

If you watched the Sosan video above, you will know that what UNIFEM and other human rights organisations are doing in Afghanistan to empower women to speak up & seek help is changing the World Order in the country. They are rocking the boat, ruffling feathers, and making many people angry.

Wenny reveals off-air that her life and her staff's have been threatened many times. She has even lost members of her staff to these death threats. It really touched a deep chord in me because it speaks volumes of the conviction they have.

I think if you have witnessed the brutality and injustice with your own eyes, it's impossible to turn away from helping another human being.

I will not reveal much more of that interview. You will just have to tune in to hear the full story. In the meantime, to find out more about the work of UNIFEM Afghanistan, click here.

Thanks to UNIFEM Singapore for arranging this exclusive interview: [L to R] Mellisa Chong, Wenny Kusuma, Camilla Adinda.

Thanks too to my best friend Ning for coming down to help take photos & videos for our blog & Facebook page. You can read her blog entry by clicking here.

Catch the airing of this pre-recorded interview on 938LIVE in mid-August.

Keep abreast of the latest by joining our Facebook page here.

C'mon & Tuck In!

Tuck out if you're tucking into the Singapore Food Festival 2010! You'll almost certainly be more comfortable because we doubt you can resist the gastro-cultural fare! Why 'cultural'? That's because this year's festival scoops up the specialty dishes of the five main Chinese dialect groups here - the Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka, Hokkien and Teochew communities.

Clarke Quay's Read Bridge reads like it's the city's latest hawker centre, all 50 metres of it! You'll be spoilt for choice with 30 food stalls that line the entire length of the bridge on both sides.

My makan companion at the launch (officiated by Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, Lim Boon Heng) was F-Cube's Levisha Kumar - a self-professed foodie like I am, even though we both don't look the part. Each armed with a special edition SFF2010 Kopitiam Card with a stored value of $20 each, we were spoilt for choice. Apart from the rojak and duck dish, we deliberately bought ourselves food that looked foreign to us. This must have been why a Thai national whom we shared the table with looked surprised when I confessed that the dishes laid out on the table were just as strange to me as they were to her. And to think I am a third generation Chinese Singaporean! That goes to show just how familiar (NOT!) we really are with the specialty dishes of the various Chinese dialects groups.

Visit The Living Room on Facebook for more photos of the foods we tucked into. By the end of the night, we were stuffed. Boy were were we glad we tucked out!

SINGAPORE FOOD FESTIVAL 2010 (16th - 25th July 2010)
Main Event: Clarke Quay Food Street at Read Bridge
Above and beyond Food Street, other appetitising highlights that will have you dribbling will be the Culinary Master Classes, the Singapore Chinese Dialect Heritage Feast and the Tingkat Cruise. Read more about them at www.singaporefoodfestival.com.

You have Power Over Cervical Cancer!

A very close friend of mine recently fell prey to cancer. It shook my world because I distinctly remember having a conversation with her not too long ago -- while raising funds for a friend's (who passed away from ovarian cancer) foundation -- about how we think cancer is something that happens to other people. Well, it happened to her.

Visiting her this week hit home the fact that cancer can happen to anyone. It scares me to think that if it happened to me, my two little boys may have to grow up without a mum. And the sad fact is the cancer can't be prevented, in most cases. You just have to deal with it when it happens.

But our guest in The Living Room yesterday revealed that for at least one form of women's cancer, prevention is possible! And that's cervical cancer. Our medical expert was Dr Quek Swee Chong, a Council member of the Society of Colposcopy & Cervical Pathology of Singapore, as well as Senior Consultant & Head of the Pre-Invasive Disease & Screening Unit, at the Department of Gynaecological Oncology at the KK Women's & Children's Hospital

Yes, we have power over cervical cancer! Regular pap smear will help detect if there are abnormal cells in the cervix, and a simple vaccination will help prevent the HPV cancer-related cells from developing.

Hearing the story of Mrs May Tiong and her 19-year-old daughter Wen Ning was particularly moving. A mother of two, she broke down and wept when Dr Quek (her oncologist) first broke the news to her that she'd been diagnosed with cervical cancer. I would too... Wen Ning remembers being in school when her mum told her over the phone. She could not concentrate after that, worrying that cancer would take her mum away.

We have Power Over Cervical Cancer! Here to share with us were [L to R] Wen Ning, Mrs May Tiong and Dr Quek Swee Chong from POCC.

In Singapore, a woman is diagnosed with cervical cancer every two days. Every five days, a woman dies of cervical cancer. And the truth of the matter is, IT CAN BE PREVENTED!!! Yet only 3 percent of women in Singapore are vaccinated. Have you been?

I have to admit I fall into the 97 percent who have not been vaccinated. After today, I will make my appointment with my gynae for my pap smear and have my vaccination done. Join me because it matters to those we love. And if you're a man, please spread this message to the women in your life. It is within their power to protect themselves, and that's good news.

Also, do support POCC's Celebrate Life! Bazaar & Pink Party next Saturday. Here are the details:

Celebrate Life! Bazaar & Pink Party

Sat 24 July

12noon - 6pm (Bazaar)

8.30pm - 10.30pm (Pink Party)

ZOUK

Admission is FREE.

To register, visit www.pocc.sg

To find out more about the work of POCC, click here.