[From Part 1]

From the quiet park, I walk into a slumbering HDB estate. I am in a carpark, larger than most. Instead of the usual family-sized cars and SUVs, I’m towered by buses and trucks. Hundreds of residents were still asleep on this Sunday morning. There is/ was no clattering of pans and plates. No blares of Sunday morning cartoon channels.

My stomach signaled for food. I am at a coffee shop under a HDB block. I’m in an unfamilar part of my neighbourhood but in a familar setting. Only a handful of customers having breakfast of prata and coffee, or tea. My breakfast was noodles and Teh-c.

Like most hawkers and proprietors nowadays, they were cordial and prompt. But this coffee shop seemed to be a bit friendlier than most. Not exactly bright chirpy faces but there were no dour expressions despite the early hour. The stern looking, short skinny mustachioed man took my order and served me my tea. I asked, in Hokkien, if it was 90 cents. He said yes accepted my payment with a thank you, in Singaporean-accented Mandarin.

In between mouthfuls, i glanced at the customers. At the far corner, the proprietess of the drink stall was having a quiet joke with some customers. An elderly woman sat directly ahead of me, five tables away. She had a pao and coffee, reading her morning news.

The short and skinny mustachioed drink stall assistant was clearing the tables of empty cups, serving the desired beverages, taking more orders. He shouting the orders out loud as he walked back to the stall. The desired beverages appeared like magic on the drink stall counter.

A table of four were on my left, probably a family — with a two aged men a woman, and a teenage boy. They were soon joined by a young mother carrying her infant. The mother cooed her baby with a tibit, who gurgled but ignored the treat.

The prata man was busy with his flipping and frying. The man who sold me my breakfast was now sitting down to eat his own. He bought his from the prata man. I wondered what the prata man would eat.

My plate and cup was empty. My watch told me it was a quarter past 7. It’d been under an hour from my short jaunt at the park to my finishing breakfast. The sky had brightened without my notice. The ground was wet but the rain has since stopped. The neighbourhood has awoken. There are more customers buying their breakfast. Some still in pajamas. Some in their Sunday finery.

On a whim, I decided to write all this down. Maybe it was the still quiet morning and warm food in my belly. As I come to the end of this note, an hour and half has passed — longer than my walk. The coffee shop is filled with customers but not quite full. I’m undisturbed and largely ignored. The coffee shop lady comes over. She clears my table. She doesn’t look at me or speak. But she has a friendly smile. I’m not surprised why there’s a neighbourly charm to this place.

I stand up and walked home, contented.

Flashes in the distant sky. Would it rain?

Shouldn’t matter. The email said rain or shine, the brisk walking party would be there. My concern was whether I’d reach the meeting point on time.They said they would start their walk on the dot.

My handphone buzzed.

“Heavy rain everywhere. Walk is canceled.”

Looking out of the bus, I noticed a reservoir ahead. I’d often passed over the years but never had a reason to stop. I looked up from where I was seated. The sky was still dark in the way dawn is. Since I was out already, I might as well make a reason for myself.

Pressed the bus bell. The driver let me out. Stepped from the artificial cool of the air-con bus onto the snappy breeze of dawn. The rumble of the bus trailed away.

The rustle of the dew-laden trees filled the silence.

There was a pier in the distance. Further back was a golf green lit in harsh halogen white. A gentle breeze caressed the water’s surface. Small ripples breaking the reflection of the man-made lights on obsidian waves.

The park was deserted, save for two or three individuals resting under small shelters along the foot path. I stepped from stoney path to wooden board, and walked till the end of the pier. There was only the sound of water and wind. I positioned myself to take a few pictures of the distant lights. I was surprised to find that there were more colours captured on camera than my eye could see.

It started to rain, droplets growing into pelting water bombs. I hurried to a sheltered part of the pier. A man got off his bicycle and sought shelter as well. Probably came here to fish. There was plenty of room. He was my silent company while I waited out the rain.

When the showers slowed to a light drizzle, I left the pier and walked along the path to explore the rest of the park. There wasn’t much to see, partly because it was still dark, and because there wasn’t much to the park. I’d quickly reached the end of the path. I walked to the main road with a promise to be back.

Big thanks to MyVanillaWorld for providing her excellent vocals to this earlier track.

I got to know MyVanillaWorld at a work-related function some time back. Learned that she was trying to record her own music. So I’ve been pestering encouraging her to do a musical mash-up some time. She didn’t mind me sending her my songs, so I did.

My earlier Good-night Not Goodbye song struck a chord with her.

This song is dedicated to her late close kin.
GOOD-NIGHT NOT GOOD-BYE v2.1

• Dan O-Connor’s instrumental track, “Love Letters” (by Dan O’Connor – Free Music By DanoSongs.com – licensed under a Creative Commons ATTRIBUTION 3.0 US license).
• Words from two poems: “CAELl” by F. W. Bourdillon & “GOOD-NIGHT” by C. C. Fraser Tytler. See: http://www.archive.org/details/lovesoldsweetso00unkngoog – Public Domain; Not In Copyright.
• Vocals by MyVanillaWorld – myvanillaworld.wordpress.com

Peace. Originally posted by .m for matthijs under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

Done in 1989 as art practice (wow, 10 years ago almost to the month!)

Poster paints and ink on sketch paper.

“1989 (Oct) Cover – adapted from Anne McCaffrey’s “The While Dragon” by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License. Please credit as “Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com”.

Another of my book cover adaption. This one was from Anne McCaffrey’s “The White Dragon”, which I borrowed from the public library back then. While googling for the book, I just discovered the cover was by David Roe. Found a scanned image of the cover from this forum.

This was inspired by the All-Terrain Scout Transport vehicle that I first saw in the 1983 Star Wars “Return of the Jedi” movie.

Ink, water-colour pencils, water colour on sketch paper. 1989.

“1989 (Oct) Amtrak – Men and Machines – Waltz Piper” by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License.
Please credit as “Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com”.

Ink and watercolour pencils on sketch paper. 1989.

“1989 (Oct) Amtrak Warriors – The men who dare” by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License.
Please credit as “Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com”.

The updated version of this 1989 illustration, here.

I was reading a lot of Anne McCaffrey back in those days.

Ink on sketch paper. 1989.

1989 (May) Dragon by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License.
Please credit to Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com

Basically an oversized racing bike, with a few guns and mini-turrets as props. Ink, watercolour pencils, poster paints on sketch paper. 1989.
Please credit to Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com


1989 (May) Armour – SuperBike by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License.

Water-colour pencils & ink on sketch paper. 1989.

1989 (May) War Zone by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Singapore License.
Please credit to Ivan Chew – MyRightBrain.wordpress.com

Wasn’t sure how this would end up when I started with urmymuse’s guitar stems. If you think this sounds like a Japanese Anime soundtrack, then I’m glad

STRANGE TOWN

“Tokyo Lights” originally uploaded by OiMax under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

Was toying with urmymuse’s guitar stems. Managed to record a decent sounding lead guitar part for the chorus (which is what you hear in the track) but after that I couldn’t work out an opening guitar melody. So I headed over to Freesound.org for ideas. Found hanstimm’s “This is a strange town” spoken Japanese recording. Learned from one comment that the words meant “I’m looking at a strange town” and that inspired the title. morgantj’s track and yewbic’s Freesound sample completed the picture.

Enjoy!