Photo credit: Michael.Camilleri / Foter.com / CC BY

A friend of mine, who is a football aficionado, recently coined the phrase “to blatter”. If you’re not in the sporting fraternity, Sepp Blatter is the 79-year-old president of FIFA (something to do with the World Cup) who refuses to step down despite numerous charges of wrong-doing. He may well be innocent, I get that, but it does nothing at all for the sport to have this crisis drag on and on. So to “blatter” means that you put yourself above the good of the organisation that you represent and fail to realise that there is a time to go gracefully. It’s a useful word in Penang (and Malaysia) nowadays.

One person who definitely isn’t blattering in Penang is Annabelle Ng, a Malaysian installation artist, who is also, rather paradoxically, developing a fashion label. At a recent event, she was self-effacing to the point of uttering a few gnomic phrases which chased around my mind like a pack of wolves searching for something to sink their teeth into. “The map is not the territory,” and “It’s hard to define my art by one meaning most of the time,” were examples. I struggled fruitlessly to find that one particular day that one could find meaning in her installation pieces. She describes herself as an experimental artist, “something like taking a challenge and creating a surprise outcome,” which sounds a lot like my cooking. She herself is fragile and dainty of build. It was a mystery how she manhandled the great slabs of wood, wires, test tubes, electrical equipment, and other impedimenta that form her amazing, if impenetrable, work. I just wonder how the clothes will turn out and what it would be like to wear such uncompromising pieces.

She was speaking a conference entitled IAM which, on first sight of the invitation, I read as I AM, a bold statement of existence. But in fact I was wrong – it is the initial capital letters of Ideas Agent Meetup. It was hosted by PenangPac which is really worth getting to know better as it has so many cutting-edge events beside regular theatre. IAM aims to provide a meeting ground for creative and innovative individuals in Penang and expose them to awe-inspiring ideas. The theme was “A Million Little Things” – I never did find out what that million was but the afternoon was certainly awe-inspiring. Aik Chuan Goh, talked about setting up Uber in Penang. He dazzled us with the idea that Uber is actually a cheaper a way of getting about more comfortably and elegantly than owning a car. It’s almost as convenient (except perhaps on a wet Sunday evening in the holiday season) as your own vehicle and certainly would do away with the need for car parks and parking spaces in cities if we all used it. That might mean that one could actually get to see the street art of George Town as the lower lying examples of it are often obscured by thoughtlessly parked autos. And that’s a shame, as Urban Xchange has commissioned a new batch of murals which Gabija Grusaite of the Hin Bus Depot Art Centre spoke about.

But my favourite speaker was Rebecca Duckworth who spoke on “Connecting with Your Past”. Describing herself as a social activist, she is also wonderful painter. She shared with us her amazing family history that includes murder, poverty, wealth, love, secrets, and intrigue. Growing up on rubber estates in Johore in the ’60s and ’70s, she evoked an all but vanished past. Her English father served in a Ghurkha Regiment during the Emergency and fell in love with the country so much that he came back as a planter and worked on various estates in Johore. He also fell in love with a young Chinese girl who worked at the local hardware store. Their plans to get married caused great consternation and opposition on both sides.

Rebecca has very little knowledge of her Chinese roots save beyond knowing that her grandfather was adopted. He had been bought off a ship arriving in Singapore from China, something which was not particularly uncommon in those days. When he died – still in his youth and with a young family – his grandparents decided to do away with his widow and so they hung her from a beam in the house with the children, including Rebecca’s mother, still in the room. Rebecca spoke warmly of the creativity of both her parents. Her father kept extensive notebooks with detailed botanical drawings and also set up scheme of using barn owls as a means of rodent control which is still used. One of Rebecca’s great legacies in Penang is the Tropical Spice Garden which she and a group of friends set up over a decade ago. It’s a place where you can float above the vegetation on a giant swing, learn to cook authentic spicy Asian food, and just hang out amidst the spice terraces. You can drink tea at the tea house on the hill, or even get married in the Bamboo Garden. There must definitely be a million plants there and it’s a
wonderful place to escape all the blattering of the modern world.

PenangPac, Quay One, Straits Quay, Jalan Seri Tanjung Pinang, Tanjung Tokong, 10470 Penang.
T +604 8991 722 / 2722
W: www.penangpac.org

Tropical Spice Garden, Lone Crag Villa, Lot 595 Mukim 2, Jalan Teluk Bahang, Teluk Bahang, 11100 Penang.
T +60 4-881 1797
W: www.tropicalspicegarden.com

Read more:

• The Hakka Heritage in Penang
• An Expat’s Opinion on Health and Wellness
• 5 Child-Friendly Activities in Penang

Source: The Expat magazine November 2015