Issue 10: 25 March 2014 Chief Editor: Indrani Kaliyaperumal Editors: Joyan Tan and Spandana Bhattacharya
VICE-RECTOR’S NOTE I have mentioned in previous issues my constant amazement at the ongoing efforts and dedication Joyan and Spandana have put into making PANOPT an outstanding student publication. From the beginning, they have formed a great team with Indrani to crank out a new issue every two weeks, guaranteeing that the quality of the content and layout remain consistent throughout. Earlier this semester, they decided to add an online component (http://bit.ly/yale-nuspanopt) that would serve as a permanent record and also provide room to include more content. As part of this change, the editors added video interviews and other articles that could not fit into the printed edition. In an effort to add other viewpoints and generate greater discussion within our community, in this issue they are introducing a slate of Opinion Columnists. These writers will work with the editors to address a variety of topics of interest to us all. I look forward to reading their opinion pieces and thank them in advance for their contributions. Hopefully many more of you will want to collaborate and write a column in the future. I know Joyan and Spandana continue to think of ways to enhance PANOPT so check with them and thank them for their efforts. These changes bring me to another point. I have regularly contributed a small column to each issue, sharing some thoughts on how things were going from my vantage point and giving an update on relevant upcoming events. Starting with the next issue, this column will also change to let other voices be represented. We are a diverse and growing community. Soon there will be three Rectors and three Vice-Rectors, another student cohort, and a significant number of new faculty and staff. Stay tuned to hear from many of these people via PANOPT in this space. Best of luck with the end of the semester and see you all on Monday, April 21, at 2:00 pm during the Electives Fair and Major Informational.
EDITORS’ NOTE This week’s issue of PANOPT marks a momentous point in our history: we have invited 9 new columnists to regularly contribute pieces both to our newsletter and our website! We are pleased to introduce to you- Amanda, Daryl, Graham, Janel, Joshua, Kei, Payal, Tara, Xi Min. Each columnist will have their unique page on our website (http://bit.ly/yale-nus-panopt) where they will post articles on a regular basis, so keep a lookout for them.
Each and every one of our columnists is a fantastic writer, with absolutely fascinating experiences and opinions to share. In this issue, not only will you hear from our Writing Guy about travel writing, you will read actual travel writing – Kei’s experiences as an ang moh in Vietnam, and Payal’s letter to Susan as she travels. Lastly, Amanda’s breathtakingly beautiful thoughts on hell and tears will move you beyond words. As our college grows and activities abound, we are often hard-pressed to contain everything within these 4 sides. We predict that it won’t be long before PANOPT expands further beyond what it is now. Meanwhile, remember to check out our website for more opinion pieces (as not every piece will be put on the newsletter) and tell us what you like/ don’t like about PANOPT!
t res Inte
s! up o r G
We are the Good Ol' Yale-NUS Adventurers' Club, and we’re up for all things outdoors and fun.
The GOYAC is an interest group for those who are (i) interested in participating in more outdoor activities with Yale-NUS folks, and who (ii) seek like-minded friends to go on adventures together. Engaging in outdoor fun together is a great way to get some exercise and build better friendships at the same time! Spending a half or whole day out cycling, trekking, or islandexploring might sound daunting or time-pulverising for all of us busy people, but the occasional venture out of school and into Nature can be exactly what we need to recharge and gain a new perspective on what’s happening in our lives. This semester, we're looking forward to exploring scenic trails, bike routes, and even one of Singapore's many offshore islands. Best of all, all activities will be manageable for most people, so don't hesitate to come along on our next trip! Sounds interesting? Want to join us? Check out our Facebook group here: http://on.fb.me/1jaertc or email may.tay@yale-nus.edu.sg!
1
KNOW YOUR PROFESSOR:
Professor Rajeev Patke
Professor Rajeev Patke Professor Patke read English Literature (BA Hons) at Fergusson College, Pune, received an MA at the University of Pune, and attended Oriel College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He obtained a MPhil in Modern English Studies and received his PhD from the University of Oxford.
What have you enjoyed the most in Yale-NUS? Most academics tend to join institutions with most of their traditions, procedures, and processes already in place. So the degree to which an academic gets to change an institution in a whole lifetime is very limited. Here in Yale-NUS, in addition to student engagement that is very pleasurable and teaches us a lot, the possibility to shape a new academic culture and to create new traditions is very exciting! What work do you do as the Director of Humanities in Yale-NUS? In a college like ours, we have one innovative feature – the Common Curriculum. The Common Curriculum works out the foundation for education without the administrative bureaucratic division of faculty into departments. The Divisional Director’s role is to mediate between the disciplinary interests that contribute to the Common Curriculum. For example, in the Arts and Humanities, it is about integrating the Arts with the teaching of literature and history, and also the development of the teaching of philosophy that has an element of history in it and an element of comparative study of religions because philosophy engages in an interdisciplinary way with the politics. So although Politics is allocated under the Social Sciences division, there are many areas where we think of the Divisions more as permeable membranes across which osmosis takes place. The Divisional Director’s role is also to shape the curriculum, to look after issues of workload allocations, curricular development, and the possibilities for two kinds of barrier crossing. One is the relation of the curriculum to the co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, where we liaise with the Office of the Dean of Students, Rector, Vice-Rector, and visiting authors, writers, and artists. The idea is that life in college is rich not just because of what goes on in the classrooms and in the corridors and rooms, but also in terms of other people – not necessarily just academics, but also creative people coming in and sharing experiences and knowledge. In addition to that, there are other more professional things such as considering promotion and tenure especially for junior faculty. Yale-NUS quite consciously markets itself as a liberal arts college that is committed to steadily encouraging research in our faculty and to giving students an orientation towards research, so we provide you with the ability to engage in research regardless of what you do later in life. The idea is to help younger faculty develop their research interests, correlate and balance their teaching and research, arrange for study leaves, sabbaticals, and find out what they do during the term time that relates to their research. The Divisional Director handles annual reviews as well and this is an ongoing process as we take in student feedback and revise in light of that. There seems to be a larger emphasis on Literature in our Literature and Humanities modules compared to the other Humanities. Is this intentional, and what are your thoughts on it? This is something we have tried out for the first semester and are learning to change in the second. Human resourcing has affected this to some degree. We began with a number of faculty members trained either in Comparative Literature or Classical Literature. We have recruited one Art expert, and we are opening up more positions. The thing about the Common Curriculum and the LH component in it, is that is it an evolving organism. It’s not written in stone, and we want to integrate interest in history, arts, and literature all together. So what you notice now as the dominance of Literature is true, but just a first step in an evolving process where we may walk in a different direction in future years. We just need more people. It’s like when you have four cooks preparing a meal but at the moment the French cook has joined first, the Chinese cook has yet to join, so the menu prepared will be determined by who is there. So to your question on whether this bias towards Literature will remain, the short and simple answer is no. It will change and evolve and we would like to incorporate other arts but Literature will play a significant role. What research are you currently working on? Until last year, I was working on a book that has now been published, and that was about the relation between modernist literature and post-colonial studies. Having finished that, I am now benefitting from the kind of broad focus Yale-NUS gives. I am turning to a different kind of research interest, which is classical music of North India. This is something I kept as a hobby in my life as an academic in NUS, which I occasionally published essays on; essays that looked at the relation between music and technology, or music and memory etc. At Yale-NUS, I hope to be able to work on a book that will be about the relationship between feelings, emotions, ideas, and formal structures in music (specifically music in North India). I am particularly interested in vocal traditions – Khaval, Drupad, etc. I have a large collection of my own and I take every opportunity to meet a creative vocalist. However, the startup phase of a college means that a lot of time needs to be spent administering, and creating the processes and structures. So I’m not able to spend as much time on research, but I am looking forward to the vacation. How do you plan your schedule such that you can do everything that you are currently doing? These days, you don’t have to worry about how your schedule is being planned because the activities going on in the college help you plan it. So I look at every week’s schedule in the preceding weekend by going over all my emails, and the college staff also slots things into my Outlook calendar in case we academics forget. I attend a large number of meetings, so what I do every morning is to go over the meetings and I carry a card nowadays with my meetings penned in. I write all the places I must be in from Monday to Friday on the card. Also, when I am negotiating meetings, there are two things happening. One- I apologize for not being in my office during my advertised hours, due to some other compelling requirement. At the moment, the college is going through a very unusual intense burst of activity. I think it’s all good, and knowledge of that gives me energy and makes one’s apologies sincere. 2
WRITING COLUMN Question: How do you approach Travel Writing while traveling? I take a lot of notes, and not only for travel writing, but for all the different types of writing I do, whether fiction or nonfiction. There’s nothing like a well-observed detail to crystallize a place in the reader’s mind. I’m working on a novel right now set in Manila, and one day, while sitting in a taxi in heavy traffic on Manila’s main artery, EDSA, I simply took down notes of all the many bus companies that ply the streets of the city. There must be two hundred companies, all competing for business, stopping nearly anywhere on the road to pick up passengers. I also took note of the various billboards along EDSA, writing them down in my pocket journal. Later, while writing Credits to Parag a scene in which my main character is in a taxi on EDSA, I was able to draw on my notebooks to lend the scene verisimilitude. I placed my observations in the mind of my main character, so his thoughts were a little different from mine, but they sprung all the same from my observations. Here’s a snippet: “Starbus. Cher Transport. Jetliner. The giant billboards along EDSA’s eight lanes are the ever-changing Mt. Rushmore of the Philippines. Ralph Benz Express. Joanna Jesh Transport. BBC Transport. Here Mestizo actors and politicians, a famous plastic surgeon, young white models, all look down on the scurrying masses, the models with that odd impassivity bordering on contempt that is the hallmark the world over of young white models, the Pinoys friendlier, more approachable (by billboard standards) showing the solidarity of hungry optimists. Holding aloft the Jollibee burger, the bottle of San Miguel beer, and something called Pizza in a Cone, a Filipina actress lounging on a divan and enjoining her countrymen to ‘Live like a star at Mezza Two residencies...” It’s the same with travel writing. Sometimes I don’t write about a place for many months after I’ve visited, and the more time that goes by the more I must rely on my notebooks instead of my faulty memory. The travel itself is for observing, taking copious notes, and interviewing people when necessary. The writing happens when I have time to reflect on these notes.
I Prefer Staring Kei Franklin Over the mid-semester break, I travelled to southern Vietnam. I started my journey in Saigon, the city of motorbikes. These innards of cars, teetering, whipping through the wind, carry everything: stiletto ladies riding side-saddle, piles of families, cauldrons of food, flowers, babies strapped to high stools. There are many tourists in Saigon. We march around like ducklings, awed, odd, and obvious. Most are French, and nearly all stay in the Phạm Ngũ Lão, the central backpacker district. We are predictable – we click cameras, wear short shorts, and hope to bargain. We are everywhere. Because I was one among many obviously foreign tourists, I experienced many seemingly formulaic interactions with the people of Saigon. It felt like people who passed on the street noticed me and in the same instant, placed me in the Tây (or ang moh) category and moved on with their lives. I felt that this categorization was too hasty – this “She is Blonde, must be French, just another tourist, we know what to expect” trapped me in a box that was too narrow for me to sit, and too short for me to stand. I felt dismissed in every passing glance. After 3 days in Saigon, I travelled southward to Cần Thơ, a large city on the Mekong Delta. I travelled there with a tour group and I felt the same formulaic quality to my experience due to our contrived itinerary, complete with a ‘traditional music performance’ and overpriced souvenirs. I quickly decided to leave the tour group and stay in Cần Thơ, preferring the liberty of no plans and empty shadowed streets to the bright colors of air-conditioned tourist buses. I began to wander aimlessly through back streets, walking straight until I no longer could, and then turning. I was stared at, much more than when I was in Saigon. I had crossed into parts of the city where tourists were few and far between. There is a certain liberation that comes from being a rarity. Although the stares are longer and more sustained, in this fascination comes the gift of ‘the benefit of the doubt.’ I am grateful for this staring, for it held the possibility of mutual recognition. While ‘knowing little’ can be confused with ‘blame’, ‘unknowing’ is a little closer to forgiveness’. Photo credits to Kei
3
Dear Susan, Payal
How are you? I hope Indonesia is all that you expected it to be. In case you don’t remember me, I’m the young college student from Singapore you met in the Rainforest Bakery in Penang last month. The couch across looked cozy and you looked like a warm person. When I came up to your table, I had absolutely no intentions to steal you from your kindle. In fact, I had my own kindle in my bag. I had spent my last few days in Penang site seeing with my friends, and I felt physically exhausted from walking around in the heat. I was not in the mood to converse, and had come to Rainforest Café looking for some quiet time, only to find opposite. And I’m so grateful for that. Talking to you that afternoon changed the course of my trip. To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear a story too different from what I’d heard in the past few days from other travelers in the area. But when you told me such astounding stories from your work with victims of domestic violence back in Holland and your recent trip to Burma, I felt refreshed. For a few moments, I felt like I was living your life through your stories, and learning from your past.
Photo credits to Payal
Inspired by our conversation, I decided to spend my next three days in Penang in search of more conversation. I wandered around the streets of Georgetown’s Heritage city the next day by myself. Even though I had walked these streets before, I saw things I hadn’t noticed before, and I smiled at people more often. Sometimes I’d just wave at them, and sometimes I’d stop to talk to them. Every local and every tourist I met was very different from anyone I knew, and everyone had something new to say. As I learnt about Penang and Malaysia from the locals, I learnt about other parts of the world from other tourists in the area. I realized that although it isn’t possible for me to go every place I want to go, it is possible for me to hear from people who’ve been to these places. So Susan, I thank you for teaching this traveler that travelling is never really about seeing monuments and museums. It’s about the people, who can take you miles away from where you are and show you so much more than your eyes can ever see.
Going to Hell for Our Tears Amanda
Photo credits to Amanda
During class on Sunday, we had an Important Debate about the Host: does it change into the real Body of Christ? At the end of the debate, some of my teens wanted to sit on the fence when it came to voting. I wanted the debate to mirror the Ecumenical Councils as much as possible, so true to the voting system in the earlier days of the Church, I said fine. Sit on the fence if you want. Max saw my inner debate and quoted J. F. Kennedy to help me. I nearly fell off my Queenly Chair of Authority and Awesomeness (a high wooden chair I found in the classroom). My Mallet of Boss-dom (plastic water bottle) fell out of my hands. “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality”, he said. “ohh whaaa…” I said. I’ve since been thinking about what Max said. I know this is inconsistent with Catholic doctrine and theology. The worst parts of Hell are likely reserved for those who commit the biggest sins – the worst being blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (basically attributing the miracles of Jesus to the workings of Demons and Devils). Since Jesus no longer performs miracles in person, all other sins are pardonable and there’s a hierarchy of bad sins to ‘badder’ sins, but I can’t say for sure about the hottest part of Hell and who goes there. In fact, I can’t even say anything conclusive about its temperature, its levels, or how it works down there. What I can say, though, is that in the most figurative sense, I agree with Max. When he popped the quote in class like one of my Yale-NUS professors, I immediately thought of The Book Thief and Valkryie. Maintaining neutrality; maintain the safe middle ground while people suffer; preserving yourself while knowing you could do something to alleviate the pain of others. Doing nothing: it’s an odd sort of not-really-badness that might just be the worst kind of badness. Stuffing your hands in your ears and ignoring the plight of others. It’s a type of cowardly that makes me sick to the stomach because I’m guilty of it too. I think of Hans Hubermann and what Death says when he takes him away. “He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do. The best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out.” - The Book Thief by Makus Zusak It makes me want to have the same kind of sit-up soul too. The Book Thief is the kind of book that takes apart and picks at your soul. It’s musical like a song, but controlled and not self-indulgent. I have never, while watching a movie felt physical pain. When I watched The Book Thief, my heart twisted. Right at the end when Death talked about the forever-lemon hair of Rudy. The pain was so terrible I doubled over and sobbed tragically. I rather frightened myself with the crying. I felt like I would never be able to breathe normally again and remain a heaving mess for the rest of my life. I have a thing about crying. I think about crying a lot because I cry a lot. Sometimes I am annoyed at myself for it. It’s selfindulgent. There is no actual point to crying at sad movies except emotional release. We are exercising our faculty of empathy! You say. But the characters in the screen are all fictional. We sob for those that have never and will never exist. Perhaps then we are actually crying for all the pain and suffering in the world that we cannot do anything about? There is some merit in that. Maybe sad movies trigger an emotional response that we have learned to numb to lead emotionally stable lives. In a world where riots, inept governments, and natural disasters kill and tear apart families and people hurt and hurt and hurt, we know but we can’t think of what to do to help without compromising our comforts, we learn to switch it off. Do sad movies switch on that Switch inside us? In the comfort of the warm belly of faceless humans and comfy seats, we allow ourselves to feel the pain of someone else. Do we flick the Switch back off after the credits and roll on with life, dry-eyed and stone-hearted 4 till our next 2 hour rendezvous with darkness where we allow our hearts to break for others?