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.

Garden(s) of Eden Found!

Fancy a lush garden (above) that greets you when you return home? I don't see why not, especially when we've got award-winning landscape architects right here in our midst. Yes, the Singapore Garden Festival 2010 is back and bloomin'. The 8-day event that opens on Thursday, 15th July is poised to be Asia's premier garden and flower show.

I was among the first to view the showground at Suntec Singapore during the media preview this afternoon and am impressed by the effort that's gone into transforming empty space in a convention hall into plots of lush gardens. Right from when I entered the lift on the ground floor, I knew this show was going to be different and coming up roses. (lift interiors left & right)

The Landscape Gardens section features spectacular creations by local designers and top award-winning designers from renowned garden shows around the world. Standing tall and distinctive is the two-storey structure called Tree House by local designer and certified horticulturalist John Tan. Lush greenery including bamboo wrap around a warm wooden structure with a meandering stream complete with catfish. The ground floor's furnished with a bar and a couch and the staghorn fern as a a plant 'installation' in place of a regular wall painting. Neat! The upper deck's like a patio with even more space to lounge around and mingle with moss. It was perhaps the closest to feeling like you're in the Garden of Eden, only without fruit trees hanging their produce and friendly animals a whisker away. Oh and John, despite his ability in designing enchanting gardens (his garden by the way won 'Best of Show' award - the festival's top honours) whisks you back to reality and has you know he lives in a modest HDB flat.

Also on show and garnering a Gold award is Daintree, designed by Australian garden architect Jim Fogarty (left: with Kenny Eng of Nyee Phoe) who was our guest last week in The Living Room. His latest tie-up with Nyee Phoe Flower Garden as the implementing partner makes it a hat trick at this biennial festival since striking his first Gold in 2006.

Kenny, whom we've also hosted previously in The Living Room, wanted me to tell you that there's literally a 'green' message behind their garden and it's got to do with penning on pebbles. Click here to find out about Project Pebbles.

I'm also proud to report that another former guest also bagged a Gold for his entry (see below) in the Landscape Garden category. Congratulations to Peter Cheok from Far East Flora!


For more photos of Singapore Garden Festival 2010, visit The Living Room now on Facebook!

Ti(mor)e or Les(s)te - A Paradise of Promise!

It's paradise...more or less.

The imprint of Portugal, Timor Leste's colonial master, on the land lingers. If you don't hear it taught or spoken, the signboards on streets and signages of shops and property are visible representations of a language very much alive in this place. The old-world feel of this young nation (gaining independence only in 2002 after a shortlived 9-day stretch in 1975) has many scars to show for - holed out buildings, poverty, malnourished citizens and high unemployment attest to a nation finding its feet. Like a mother hen is to her chick, a strong United Nations presence is felt throughout Dili - exactly what a fledgling nation needs to attain some kind of social and political stability to get the economic engine going.

Leading the charge towards nation building is its President Jose-Ramos Horta, a Nobel laureate. The former foreign minister has encountered firsthand the atrocities during the Indonesian occupation, where four of eleven of his siblings were killed. Yet his focus is forward-looking. When Pam and I spoke with him in person during our visit to Dili, he singled out Singapore as a country whose successes ought to be emulated. He said in jest that if he had a nation made up of Chinese, Jews and Indians, they'd work hard to get the economy growing and the rest of his people could just sit back and watch. He was a president most candid and accessible to his own people.

Pam and I were honoured to have chatted with the president the day before we participated in the inaugural Dili 'City of Peace' Marathon. Pam chose the leisurely 5-kilometre run while I signed up for the punishing half marathon - my first and one I hadn't trained for. Together with about 20 other members who signed up with The Chain Reaction Project (TCRP), amongst them our ex-colleague Melanie Oliveiro, we were part of the small Singapore contingent of runners at the landmark event that saw international participants, mostly from Australia (just a 60-min flight away).

The run wasn't the sole purpose (no pun intended) of the trip. Rather, it was a trip with soul! Our particpation to be 'catalysts' through TCRP would benefit HIAM Health - a local NGO in Dili set up to alleviate the widespread problem of malnutrition and to raise awareness among parents on what they can do for their children. Our visit coincided with the official opening of a sponsored playground in the premises by Singapore company Playpoint. Director of HIAM Health Rosaria Martins da Cruz was most heartened by the contributions received. It was TCRP's founder Zhang Tingjun who'd helped raise the awareness of their work to the attention of President Horta. That was how he agreed to be the guest of honour who officiated at the ceremony to open the playground.



Timor Leste has much potential for economic progress and development. With hope in the eyes of a people wanting to move on from the its grim days of civil unrest, with natural resources and an untapped market that could bring in the tourist dollar, Timor Leste has a lot going for it, and it could do with international help to prop it up on its feet and prime it for the long run ahead.



TAKE ACTION!
> To keep tabs with more exciting projects planned by The Chain Reaction Project, sign up as a member with TCRP on Facebook!
> To support the good work at HIAM Health, click here.
> To read our previous entry on TCRP, drop by this page.

Unbubble-lievable!!!

The first thing that struck me about Fan Yang is that his face does not match his name. I had envisioned a Chinese man, but he was obviously not. His father is Hungarian, and his mother Vietnamese. They met in Vietnam when his dad was fighting the Vietnam War. The couple fell in love, and moved back to Europe after the war, setting in present-day Yugoslavia.

Fan Yang came from a very poor family. His brother Jano and him grew up on a farm in the countryside. He had but 8 years of education. Before he discovered his love for bubbles, he was performing on the streets just to earn an extra penny. Juggling... whatever it took!

Fan Yang [right] with his elder brother Jano [left], who is involved in backstage work for the Gazillion Bubble Show.

His first encounter with bubbles was not the sort of bottled bubbles we find at Toys R Us. It was bubbles floating on the surface of a river. He thought to himself, how wonderful to be able to make these bubbles really, really big and to make them float in the air! The imagination of a young teenage boy... but it started him on a journey of no return.

For the first half of his 26-year career as a bubble artist, he invested in finding a special bubble solution that would make bubbles more "flexible". He did - after much blood, sweat & tears.

There are 7 secret ingredients in his special bubble solution, and with that, Fan Yang was able to create pure magic. In fact, he currently holds 16 Guinness World Records! The latest being to put a 8,800lb elephant in a bubble! *gasp*

Bubbles within bubbles! I blew gently on the surface of a bubble, and a baby one appeared inside miraculously!

This father of two says that the Fan Yang Gazillion Bubble Show is very much a family affair. As mentioned, his brother Jano helps backstage. His wife is a bubble artist as well, as are his children Deni, 20, and Melody, 19.

He tells us that he would do this for nothing. It's not about money.

The Gazillion Bubble Show is really about his true life story. And his journey is not without hardship and ridicule. For many years, people laughed in the face for wanting to do a bubble show. They could not understand or accept because they could not see what he saw.

But Fan Yang did not give up, and today, he's been welcomed with open arms on top-rated shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The David Lettermen Show, LIVE! with Regis & Kelly etc.

Fan Yang on the Stan & Pam show! *LOL*

I did not expect, as I walked into the studio this morning, to be touched and inspired so deeply by The Bubble Man. But I was. Fan Yang's sharing touched me deeply.

He spoke in a low, calm voice tinged with an Eastern European accent, which told me that even though he now resides in Canada and New York, he spent most of his formative years in the poverty of Yugoslavia.

A country boy who today travels the world sharing his love for bubbles... I can only conclude that this is the result of following his heart. This is his life's calling.

So without further adieu, here is the one & only, amazing Fan Yang creating a SQUARE bubble for us. Check this out!

Fan Yang Gazillion Bubble Show

18 - 20 June

D'Marquee @ Downtown East

Tickets via SISTIC

For more info, visit the Gazillion Bubble Show website.

Or find out more about the science of bubbles here.

And if you're still sitting on the fence, brace yourself for a sneak preview:

Transforming Slums in the Philippines

I have never been to the slums of the Philippines. But just browsing for images to upload in this blog entry gave me a brief glimpse of the squalid conditions and the lives of the slum dwellers. Makeshift houses made from whatever they can find (from cardboard to zinc sheets), alley ways filled with dirty sloshy water up to the ankles, litter everywhere, no sanitation, no electricity.

[From BBC News] Family living under a bridge in Manila. Mother sleeps on the table, oblivious to the traffic noise above & around her.

Even so, it's hard to miss the smiles on the children's faces! Perhaps this is all they know? And I suspect many of them don't know what can be beyond this. They don't imagine life will be any different, or that they will get out of these circumstances, according to some interview footage I watched on YouTube.

What I feel we must never do as outsiders is to impose our values & perceptions of what life should be on these people. While our intentions are good, it sometimes irks me that we descend upon places like Cambodia & the Philippines and try to help the people in a condescending sort of way, like we are modern day Saviours, and they are beneficiaries of our kindness.

What struck me about what our guest Aileen Ong, Chair of GK Hope Initiative (GKHi), said is that the slum dwellers they work with in the Philippines are partners. GK's approach is to work with them and to treat them as equals. The lingo & vocabulary is often so revealing!

Aileen was so convinced about the "GK way" that she gave up a 30-year career as a music teacher to commit to this cause full-time. She downgraded to a smaller home and chose to lead a more modest lifestyle ~ with the support of her husband Albert & four kids, of course. In fact, her daughter Lisa often accompanies her to the slums.

Aileen Ong, Chair of GK Hope Initiative (GKHi) shares with us about her work in the slums of the Philippines.

GK is an acronym for Gawad Kalinga or "give care" in Tagalog. Its Singapore branch, GK Hope initiative (GKHi) achieved 'international charity organisation' status last year, and is now working to make Singapore a hub for the coordination of efforts in the region.

GK's mission is to transform slums into communities of hope. The slum dwellers themselves spend months building their own homes. A decent home there costs about S$2,000 to build, the cost of a laptop or designer bag here! Their vision is to touch 5 million families by 2024.

GK Tripura Hope Town Village: Brand new homes built by the community.

From June 25 to 27, there will be GK Global Summit held right here in Singapore where we'll see experts & activists from around the world congregating here to discuss solutions to eradicating poverty.

The outgoing Vice-President of the Philippines will be here, and the Minister for Community, Youth & Sports, Vivian Balakrishnan, the Guest of Honour. The theme of this Global Summit is Icon of Hope Against Poverty. To find out more or to register, click here.

There will also be a choir that will be coming to Singapore next weekend that you will not want to miss! They come from a small church in the slums of Manila. Aileen stumbled upon them quite by chance, and was mesmorised by their voices. She issued them a challenge: If they can achieve a Gold Award, she will get sponsors to bring them to Singapore.

The choir members, all children & teens, took up her challenge. They were up at 5am to rehearse, often in the open courtyard, in the blazing sun. And within 3 months, these children achieved a Gold Award for their performance. Yes, a slum choir!

The children of the Gawad Kalinga Tatalon Performing Arts group at the ASEAN Festival of the Arts 2009.

And so Aileen is now keeping her end of the bargain! Come Saturday, 19 June, they will be performing at The Arts House (Chamber) to a Singapore audience! *grin* You can check out event details here.

Do you see what I mean about Aileen? Never look down on people, even if the rest of the world does! They are equal in God's eyes and gifted as you & I are. And if we see their potential, believe in them, and raise the bar for them, they will invariably rise up to touch that bar we hold up for them!

Find out more about about the Gawad Kalinga Tatalon Performing Arts group here. And please support them if you can!