The Grass is Greener...

When I was a schoolboy, I was very interested in landscape painting. I used to dabble in oil. I wanted very much to paint in the vein of the 18th century English painter, John Constable. I copied his famous work, The Haywain--my juvenile attempt still hangs on the wall of my home back in my hometown.

Nowadays I don't have time to indulge in this hobby anymore. Painting can sometimes be a troubelsome affair--you need to get your hands dirty; you need an easle, palette, canvas and messy tubes of paint. Writing in contrast seems so much "easier". Hey, you can even do it with a PDA at the cafe.

When you do painting, you become more sensitive to colours and their many subtle gradations in hue. The first time I set foot in Jakarta, I noticed that the colour of the grass here is different from those in Malaysia--it is of a darker shade of green. After having stayed in Indonesia for almost two years now, I realised that this is probably due to the more fertile volcanic soil that they have and the tropical weather with six months of heavy rain.

I once told my Malaysian friends rather innocently that the grass is greener in Indonesia. Of course, they laughed at me...