More Art

Noi's youngest sister, Tina, is staying with us over the weekend with her friend, Haslinda. The girls (really women, in their twenties, I think, but I'm not trying to be patronising - they look and behave like young teenagers, as so many Malay women of that age do) are here to enjoy a weekend of art. They are both practising artists, Tina is involved in all sorts of pottery-related activities, and as far as I can tell spent most of yesterday, before we met them in the evening, scouring the island for art and food. Now they're out again doing the same, having only gone to bed after two in the morning, following a trip to the beach with my missus. I was safely and insensibly tucked in bed at that stage of the proceedings.

Just now I was looking at their catalogue for ARTSingapore - the Contemporary Asian Art Fair 2008. It's all very glossy, very commercial, I suppose, yet brimming with energy and oooomph. I loved it, but indiscriminately so. I just have no taste but lots of appetite.

I'm not quite sure why, but I associate most of what I see with a sense of youth. The girls' own appetite for taking all this in is dauntingly intimidating but vaguely galvanizing. And that's had me thinking about how enjoyable, tackily but truly life-affirming it is to be around young people. Editing the testimonials for the students who'll soon be leaving my school has been another reminder of this. They get so much done! Of course, it helps that teenagers generally in Singapore don't conform to the sullen stereotypes of their counterparts in the UK. Like their country they remain, for the most part, stubbornly, occasionally remorselessly, sunny.