Publicity and Painting
Hi All!
In this post, I will share about my day on the island back on October 27th, 2018 as I go around the island spreading the news of the big event in two weeks' time and some artwork as well.
It would have been a consecutive four weeks in a row that day, having spent every single Saturday of October back on the island. How fast time really flew by! The whole week prior to this trip was a pretty busy one, too - mainly because I am in the midst of organising something that had not been done before in a very very long time.
In the previous post, I talked about planning something big and so now with just two weeks to go, it's about time I share with you what exactly is going to happen:
For the first time in decades, our former Malay residents of Pulau Ubin will be having their first homecoming and YOU are invited to join in our simple celebrations! Wan's Ubin Journal presents to you "Jom Balik Kampong Halaman! (Let's Go Back Home!) Former Malay Residents of Ubin Homecoming"
I had fun making this poster and I would be sharing and posting a much more detailed informative post regarding the event in the coming days. For now, this poster had been printed and photocopied several times throughout the week, before I finally headed down to Pulau Ubin to seek help from the residents.
At 9 am, I arrived on Pulau Ubin and Azman as always was sitting by the taxi stand in his black songkok. When I approached him, he smiled and mentioned to me that he was so happy and thankful to have seen me return to the island for four Saturdays in a row. He even told me that he could feel that my presence on Pulau Ubin serves as a glimmer of hope for him and the community on the island. As I thanked him with a sense of shyness, I took the time to reflect on his words. I have befriended quite a number of residents of the island, something which I wouldn't have known to be ever possible a year ago from now. I first started out as a stranger, but now I am seen as family. I guess it really must have been the Ubin blood in all of us.
I then took out my giant envelope from my tote bag and handed out one poster to him. He had already known of the event a week before but I just handed over to him so that he might keep it for safekeeping. I bade farewell to him before I headed down to Ah Kee's bicycle rental stall. His stall was pretty crowded when a group of young teenagers all came to patronise his stall, which was always a happy sight to see for him. I rented my usual bicycle and cycled my way down Jalan Jelutong to pay a visit to Ivy whom I hoped was already at Ah Ma Drink Stall.
As it was still relatively early, I was a bit worried if she was not around just yet - but thankfully that was not the case as I made my turn into Ah Ma Drink Stall. Ivy was actually shocked to see me there that early this time round but regardless of my reporting time, her hospitality remained the same. She was still setting up her stall together with her mom, Mdm Lye Huat Soh; whom also actually smiled and said hello to me, which was heartwarming because she too had treated me as a close family friend to them by now. As they placed the chairs in place and placed the drinks; I also joined in to lend a helping hand.
All of the dogs at the stall were there, except for our newest addition, Bakau. I asked Ivy where the puppy was and she said he had to be kept at home first (maybe for some disciplinary actions, hehe). As they finally settled down and were ready for business, I handed some flyers over to Ivy and she knew exactly what to do. She was more than happy to distribute them and tell her customers about the event, saying that it was the least she could do for me and Pak Ahmad. I bought a 100 Plus bottle from her before I headed down to the place where the event would be held, Pak Ahmad's House and Drink Stall.
Cycling along Jalan Batu Ubin still seemed to be daunting for me given how steep the slopes could get but at least it served as a shortcut from Ah Ma Drink Stall to Pak Ahmad's house. I reached at my destination at around 9.45 am and Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah was just resting at their serambi. As I parked my bicycle in their external serambi, I came into the house to salam the both of them that was when and realised something felt completely different. The serambi felt much bigger and spacious - turns out Pak Ahmad did a makeover the past week!
I asked Pak Ahmad why he decided to do everything himself and it almost caught me off guard that he wanted to clear more space and make it more cosy for the neighbours on November 11th. Pak Ahmad was so excited for the event that he prepared the space a whole two weeks before it even began! To be honest, I did not expect him to take it upon himself as I also had the intention to help him out the following week as the event drew closer - but it looked like Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah was just beyond excited!
I placed the remaining posters at the table right next to the drinks counter so that anyone may just take a copy back home. As I helped myself to the goreng pisang and keropok served by Ratinah, Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah's family helper, I received a text from Sarah that she was already on the way over to Ubin on the bumboat.
A week before, Sarah had wanted to return back to Ubin to touch up on her sign that was gifted to Pak Ahmad for his drink stall by the volunteers over from Faith Baptist Church (Marine Parade) and the Jurongville Secondary School Boys' Brigade 86th Coy. Despite several times mentioning to her that the sign was more than fine (especially since Pak Ahmad displayed it right smack in the front of his stall), she still felt like she wanted to do a better job. So, she decided to dedicate her Saturday at Pak Ahmad's house to finish the job.
I informed Pak Ahmad that I was heading off to fetch Sarah before I headed out to the jetty. Just nice as I reached the taxi stand, Sarah just finished walking down the entire jetty with a bag filled with art stuffs such as cups, pencils and brushes. Azman was there too and he told me to take a good look at his van. He joked with me that he had made some minor modifications to his van while I was away but it turned out that pasted the flyer on his van's windshield so whoever boards his van would be able to read about it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that and smiled widely knowing how Azman too was equally excited in spreading the word around about the homecoming event to the public.
I brought Sarah back to Pak Ahmad's house and we came to see Pak Ahmad at the back of the stall painting a piece of board. We were puzzled as to why he was doing that but when he found out that Sarah wanted to touch up on the sign, Pak Ahmad gave her a whole new board so that she could start a whole new masterpiece while still preserving the first sign. So, we waited for the paint to dry and Sarah and I started talking and chit chatting away.
Unconsciously, we echoed after Ratinah so that passersby might patronise Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall by shouting out "Coconuts! Drinks!". In the end, we just decided to keep calling out whenever passersby would cycle or walk by. It had been a pretty slow and quiet day, at least until lunch time when a crowd of people decided to come in and drop by for a quick break. It was also by lunch time that the paint on the board had finally dried up. However, as we were about to get started, we realised that ants kept crawling all over it.
When we flipped the board over, we could see through it that there was almost like an entire colony of ants running around in separate directions. The ants might have entered the board while we waited for the paint to dry and we had to think of ways to remove them. Sarah and I initally decided to try and shake the board violently so that the ants might fall out, but that seemed to fail. We then thought that we could probably hose them out of the gaps with running water but after trying that out, it didn't seem to work at all. So, we decided to resort in fumigation. It seemed cruel, I know. I did not say I enjoyed doing it but if we did not do anything to the board, the ants might just damage the board or even the stall in the long term and could even show up on the tables and chairs, affecting Pak Ahmad's business.
Sarah was thinking of a new type of sign and that was when I suggested that we should be creative too. That was when we both decided that we could make it look like a directional sign for passersby to get to their destination. Jalan Ubin always sees heavy traffic for one particular spot - Tanjung Chek Jawa Wetland Reserve. So we decided to write out the signs leading to Chek Jawa with the other direction pointing back to the jetty. However, we also wanted to think of a way to promote Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall so we emphasised on the location of Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall right where the sign was.
Sarah looked up several font ideas and picked one that really suited well to the kampong feels. She spent a while doing up the text and she was a killer in the art of tracing and copying. Her stencilling of the fonts were on point as it really looked like it was printed onto the board instead! Halfway through the painting process, Pak Ahmad stopped us and told us to eat lunch and he was very persistent. Ratinah helped to serve us amazing dishes, such as beef rendang for me and cabbage with rice for Sarah as she was abstaining herself from beef.
The conversation we had during lunch was a very meaningful one for me. We talked about our religions, mainly because she was a member of the Faith Baptist Church (Marine Parade) and I wasn't really a member of any mosques, but just a Muslim. We talked about how similar our faiths were and how Islam and Christianity are pretty much the same for the most part. It was through this conversation that I managed to learn more about Christianity and she also learnt a lot more about Islam from me as well. This just proved that we could always talk about our faiths freely and respectfully without any form of controversy or uneasiness.
After our lunch, we resumed with our work. It took a while for us to complete it as we had to wait for the paint to really dry completely as we feared that if we decided to paint another colour beside it, it would have smudged and blended - making it a little ugly. The weather was also very inclement as thunderstorm clouds covered up the skies for the most part of the day. Despite having spent almost the entire evening till 5 pm, we still could not complete it.
We decided to let the paint dry for the last time and I brought Sarah around the village to show her more of the Malay kampong. The first place I brought was just behind Pak Ahmad's house where I shared with her about Cik Kamariah's century-old house. I also showed her Cik Radiah's fragile home, too. Afterwards, she wanted to head down to Mamam Beach to see what was over there, and instead of travelling down Jalan Mamam, we cut through the forest by following a path behind Murai Hut which was the T-Junction between Jalan Ubin, Durian and Mamam.
It was nice to be walking down the natural track because we got to immerse ourselves in the sounds, sights and smell of nature. It was also my first time travelling down that path but hey, it was always fun to constantly discover new things on the island where my grandparents lived for most of their lives.
After about ten to fifteen minutes trekking through the forests, we reached an abandoned kampong house right next to the beach. What saddened me was to see the roof collapsing into the house and that there was a "Cold Drinks Sold Here" sign there as well. I did not know who stayed there and whether the owner was still around. It was a very dampening feeling to imagine how this area would have been filled with many people purchasing drinks and coconuts from that stall, but had now started to collapse and rot away.
After about fifteen minutes, we arrived back to the stall and saw that the paint had dried nicely with the sun from the golden hour. We then proceeded to clear up the place and placed the sign nicely on the table at the external serambi. Pak Ahmad joked around asking if we wanted to stay the night but we did not want to trouble him at all. We thanked him for having us there and he also thanked Sarah for the hard work she had given in not just the new sign, but also on touching up on the old sign as well.
Pak Ahmad gave us some goreng pisang on our way back so that we could munch on them should we be home late for dinner. We bade farewell and told Pak Ahmad that we would be back the following Saturday a little earlier so that we could finally complete the sign which we hoped could also be a landmark on the island.
When we reached the jetty, it was the first time ever that I had seen how low the sea was. Usually the water level would be quite high that we would not need to climb so many steps, but at that time, we literally had to still sort of jump off the last step at the bottom. We arrived back in Singapore at 6.30 pm and we then parted ways from there.
It had been a very meaningful day and I would say that it was on this day where I valued even more on the significance of friendship. I strengthened my friendship ties with Azman and Ivy, and made new ones with Sarah and Ivy's mother. It was that overwhelming sense of helpfulness and gotong-royong that confided me on the kampong spirit and it motivated me even more to make this homecoming event a success on behalf of the Ubin community; on behalf of my friends.
Read my previous post in "My Ubin Journey"!
"Kampongs Lost and Found"
Find out more about the homecoming on our Facebook event page!
"Let's Go Back Home!"
In this post, I will share about my day on the island back on October 27th, 2018 as I go around the island spreading the news of the big event in two weeks' time and some artwork as well.
It would have been a consecutive four weeks in a row that day, having spent every single Saturday of October back on the island. How fast time really flew by! The whole week prior to this trip was a pretty busy one, too - mainly because I am in the midst of organising something that had not been done before in a very very long time.
In the previous post, I talked about planning something big and so now with just two weeks to go, it's about time I share with you what exactly is going to happen:
For the first time in decades, our former Malay residents of Pulau Ubin will be having their first homecoming and YOU are invited to join in our simple celebrations! Wan's Ubin Journal presents to you "Jom Balik Kampong Halaman! (Let's Go Back Home!) Former Malay Residents of Ubin Homecoming"
I had fun making this poster and I would be sharing and posting a much more detailed informative post regarding the event in the coming days. For now, this poster had been printed and photocopied several times throughout the week, before I finally headed down to Pulau Ubin to seek help from the residents.
At 9 am, I arrived on Pulau Ubin and Azman as always was sitting by the taxi stand in his black songkok. When I approached him, he smiled and mentioned to me that he was so happy and thankful to have seen me return to the island for four Saturdays in a row. He even told me that he could feel that my presence on Pulau Ubin serves as a glimmer of hope for him and the community on the island. As I thanked him with a sense of shyness, I took the time to reflect on his words. I have befriended quite a number of residents of the island, something which I wouldn't have known to be ever possible a year ago from now. I first started out as a stranger, but now I am seen as family. I guess it really must have been the Ubin blood in all of us.
I then took out my giant envelope from my tote bag and handed out one poster to him. He had already known of the event a week before but I just handed over to him so that he might keep it for safekeeping. I bade farewell to him before I headed down to Ah Kee's bicycle rental stall. His stall was pretty crowded when a group of young teenagers all came to patronise his stall, which was always a happy sight to see for him. I rented my usual bicycle and cycled my way down Jalan Jelutong to pay a visit to Ivy whom I hoped was already at Ah Ma Drink Stall.
Try and spot the mudskipper in this picture!
Meet Kopi-O, one of the three dogs at Ah Ma Drink Stall who were named after our local drinks!
Ah Ma Drink Stall is located right next to an amazing mangrove forest. Definitely a view worth quenching your thirst to!
Cycling along Jalan Batu Ubin still seemed to be daunting for me given how steep the slopes could get but at least it served as a shortcut from Ah Ma Drink Stall to Pak Ahmad's house. I reached at my destination at around 9.45 am and Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah was just resting at their serambi. As I parked my bicycle in their external serambi, I came into the house to salam the both of them that was when and realised something felt completely different. The serambi felt much bigger and spacious - turns out Pak Ahmad did a makeover the past week!
I asked Pak Ahmad why he decided to do everything himself and it almost caught me off guard that he wanted to clear more space and make it more cosy for the neighbours on November 11th. Pak Ahmad was so excited for the event that he prepared the space a whole two weeks before it even began! To be honest, I did not expect him to take it upon himself as I also had the intention to help him out the following week as the event drew closer - but it looked like Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah was just beyond excited!
I placed the remaining posters at the table right next to the drinks counter so that anyone may just take a copy back home. As I helped myself to the goreng pisang and keropok served by Ratinah, Pak Ahmad and Nenek Piah's family helper, I received a text from Sarah that she was already on the way over to Ubin on the bumboat.
A week before, Sarah had wanted to return back to Ubin to touch up on her sign that was gifted to Pak Ahmad for his drink stall by the volunteers over from Faith Baptist Church (Marine Parade) and the Jurongville Secondary School Boys' Brigade 86th Coy. Despite several times mentioning to her that the sign was more than fine (especially since Pak Ahmad displayed it right smack in the front of his stall), she still felt like she wanted to do a better job. So, she decided to dedicate her Saturday at Pak Ahmad's house to finish the job.
I informed Pak Ahmad that I was heading off to fetch Sarah before I headed out to the jetty. Just nice as I reached the taxi stand, Sarah just finished walking down the entire jetty with a bag filled with art stuffs such as cups, pencils and brushes. Azman was there too and he told me to take a good look at his van. He joked with me that he had made some minor modifications to his van while I was away but it turned out that pasted the flyer on his van's windshield so whoever boards his van would be able to read about it. I was pleasantly surprised to see that and smiled widely knowing how Azman too was equally excited in spreading the word around about the homecoming event to the public.
I brought Sarah back to Pak Ahmad's house and we came to see Pak Ahmad at the back of the stall painting a piece of board. We were puzzled as to why he was doing that but when he found out that Sarah wanted to touch up on the sign, Pak Ahmad gave her a whole new board so that she could start a whole new masterpiece while still preserving the first sign. So, we waited for the paint to dry and Sarah and I started talking and chit chatting away.
Unconsciously, we echoed after Ratinah so that passersby might patronise Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall by shouting out "Coconuts! Drinks!". In the end, we just decided to keep calling out whenever passersby would cycle or walk by. It had been a pretty slow and quiet day, at least until lunch time when a crowd of people decided to come in and drop by for a quick break. It was also by lunch time that the paint on the board had finally dried up. However, as we were about to get started, we realised that ants kept crawling all over it.
When we flipped the board over, we could see through it that there was almost like an entire colony of ants running around in separate directions. The ants might have entered the board while we waited for the paint to dry and we had to think of ways to remove them. Sarah and I initally decided to try and shake the board violently so that the ants might fall out, but that seemed to fail. We then thought that we could probably hose them out of the gaps with running water but after trying that out, it didn't seem to work at all. So, we decided to resort in fumigation. It seemed cruel, I know. I did not say I enjoyed doing it but if we did not do anything to the board, the ants might just damage the board or even the stall in the long term and could even show up on the tables and chairs, affecting Pak Ahmad's business.
Sarah was thinking of a new type of sign and that was when I suggested that we should be creative too. That was when we both decided that we could make it look like a directional sign for passersby to get to their destination. Jalan Ubin always sees heavy traffic for one particular spot - Tanjung Chek Jawa Wetland Reserve. So we decided to write out the signs leading to Chek Jawa with the other direction pointing back to the jetty. However, we also wanted to think of a way to promote Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall so we emphasised on the location of Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall right where the sign was.
Sarah looked up several font ideas and picked one that really suited well to the kampong feels. She spent a while doing up the text and she was a killer in the art of tracing and copying. Her stencilling of the fonts were on point as it really looked like it was printed onto the board instead! Halfway through the painting process, Pak Ahmad stopped us and told us to eat lunch and he was very persistent. Ratinah helped to serve us amazing dishes, such as beef rendang for me and cabbage with rice for Sarah as she was abstaining herself from beef.
The conversation we had during lunch was a very meaningful one for me. We talked about our religions, mainly because she was a member of the Faith Baptist Church (Marine Parade) and I wasn't really a member of any mosques, but just a Muslim. We talked about how similar our faiths were and how Islam and Christianity are pretty much the same for the most part. It was through this conversation that I managed to learn more about Christianity and she also learnt a lot more about Islam from me as well. This just proved that we could always talk about our faiths freely and respectfully without any form of controversy or uneasiness.
After our lunch, we resumed with our work. It took a while for us to complete it as we had to wait for the paint to really dry completely as we feared that if we decided to paint another colour beside it, it would have smudged and blended - making it a little ugly. The weather was also very inclement as thunderstorm clouds covered up the skies for the most part of the day. Despite having spent almost the entire evening till 5 pm, we still could not complete it.
Still a work in progress, but I guess we could never rush perfection
We decided to let the paint dry for the last time and I brought Sarah around the village to show her more of the Malay kampong. The first place I brought was just behind Pak Ahmad's house where I shared with her about Cik Kamariah's century-old house. I also showed her Cik Radiah's fragile home, too. Afterwards, she wanted to head down to Mamam Beach to see what was over there, and instead of travelling down Jalan Mamam, we cut through the forest by following a path behind Murai Hut which was the T-Junction between Jalan Ubin, Durian and Mamam.
Along the path to Mamam Beach, you would be greeted with this natural arch formed by bamboo trees. Photo courtesy of Sarah.
It was nice to be walking down the natural track because we got to immerse ourselves in the sounds, sights and smell of nature. It was also my first time travelling down that path but hey, it was always fun to constantly discover new things on the island where my grandparents lived for most of their lives.
We spotted two hornbills resting on the fronds of a coconut tree. This picture doesn't do much justice but it's still pretty awesome.
After about ten to fifteen minutes trekking through the forests, we reached an abandoned kampong house right next to the beach. What saddened me was to see the roof collapsing into the house and that there was a "Cold Drinks Sold Here" sign there as well. I did not know who stayed there and whether the owner was still around. It was a very dampening feeling to imagine how this area would have been filled with many people purchasing drinks and coconuts from that stall, but had now started to collapse and rot away.
Cold drinks once sold here...
As we continued our journey down the last few stretch of the path, we were greeted with an amazing view of the low tide. I had never seen the water recede that far before! We took a few pictures of the mangroves and the beach before we headed back to Pak Ahmad's Drink Stall via Jalan Mamam; just to see how much time it would take us.
The tide was so low that Sungei Mamam was almost dried of water and the mangrove trees and roots were prevalent everywhere.
Even the beach had its shores expanded far into the Straits of Johor
After about fifteen minutes, we arrived back to the stall and saw that the paint had dried nicely with the sun from the golden hour. We then proceeded to clear up the place and placed the sign nicely on the table at the external serambi. Pak Ahmad joked around asking if we wanted to stay the night but we did not want to trouble him at all. We thanked him for having us there and he also thanked Sarah for the hard work she had given in not just the new sign, but also on touching up on the old sign as well.
Pak Ahmad gave us some goreng pisang on our way back so that we could munch on them should we be home late for dinner. We bade farewell and told Pak Ahmad that we would be back the following Saturday a little earlier so that we could finally complete the sign which we hoped could also be a landmark on the island.
When we reached the jetty, it was the first time ever that I had seen how low the sea was. Usually the water level would be quite high that we would not need to climb so many steps, but at that time, we literally had to still sort of jump off the last step at the bottom. We arrived back in Singapore at 6.30 pm and we then parted ways from there.
The columns supporting the jetty looked so much taller because of the extremely low tide by the time we headed back to the mainland.
Wefie with Sarah
Sarah looking glamorous
Read my previous post in "My Ubin Journey"!
"Kampongs Lost and Found"
Find out more about the homecoming on our Facebook event page!
"Let's Go Back Home!"
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