off to give a talk at rj to the humanz kids - excited! i gave a smaller talk to the acs(i) humanz kids on monday, but (a) that was a smaller group (just a class, compared to 4-5 classes(?) today), i.e. more intimate / less intimidating (b) i had bright-eyed bushy-tailed jerrold yam to accompany me, so i could outsource the tougher questions to him when my brain was drawing blanks.  

the arts house is being kind enough to host my book launch on thu, 12 jul 2012 at 730pm.

as to why there is a dude with two guns on the left, they demanded an image of an ip, so i gave them my grandfather.

here's the clicky thing and info.

"SONNETS FROM THE SINGLISH by Joshua Ip is a collection of 44 poems on love, language and other funny stuff, loosely translated from Singlish, the English-based creole colloquially spoken in Singapore. This is Joshua Ip’s debut collection of poetry. 

This culture event is being held on Thursday, 12th Jul 2012 at 1 OLD PARLIAMENT LANE, SINGAPORE 179429 by The Arts House." 

why a book of poetry, and where on earth did it come from? there were kind of three elements that made it happen.

so i always wanted to grow up to be a writer. in the same sense that kids want to grow up to be astronauts and presidents and beauty queens.

but last year, i realised that i was reaching one of those arbitrary milestones (age 30) after which it would be increasingly difficult to claim that i had not "grown up" yet. so i decided it was about time i became a writer. 

every two years, this competition called golden point awards comes along for new singapore writers. every two years, i faithfully get all fired up about writing for a week or so, dash out a few half-assed pieces and submit.

except this year i managed to squeak into second place. the money was nice. i was inspired to write more.