The Writers Talk Too Much

This is the general impression I am beginning to form after a few days of this “Watch rehearsal, comment on what you have seen” stuff that’s been going on with the mini-series. At least, I think I talk too much.

The documenters have been taking me and the other writer aside and telling us that they’re really glad that we’re am sounding off about our opinions–and more tellingly, our concerns and anxieties–about the project, because it would seem that everyone else is entirely too self-aware and self-conscious. This, at first, was a shock to me until I reminded myself that it is, after all, Singapore, and even here, the most extroverted of all professions–that is, acting–still can be all too full on self-censor mode when they know that this stuff is going on record and could potentially be used in some unforeseen witch hunt run by God knows who in the government at some point in the future. The end result being that a lot of the stuff tends to run more “nice-nice” with everyone talking about how great everyone is, and how great everything is going, and how great the process is working out, and that things are just… great.

I on the other hand sit in front of the camera and say, “I think I’m screwed, and here’s why,” and start off with a laundry list of anxieties.

Oh, and today I saw a baby dropped off a bus.

Yes, that’s right, an actual human infant got physically dropped from a bus to the ground.

I take a bus home from the rehearsal space because it’s too far to walk, but too close to justify a cab. So while I was waiting, there was an east Indian couple with a stroller for two kids. As their bus pulled up, the mom grabbed one kid, the older one, while the father took the younger baby and collapsed the stroller. The mom went up, and the dad followed. I was sitting there watching how clumsy and ungainly he was trying to carry that big stroller under one arm, and carrying his baby in the other, and I was amazed that he didn’t drop the kid.

So of course, he went and did.

He was at the top of the bus, and was fishing for his wallet for the bus fare. As he swung over, the kid literally leaned right out of his grip and fell to the first step of the bus, banged against that, fell to the second step, slid off and dropped to ground on his or her back.

Everyone was stunned, because we couldn’t believe we’d just seen someone drop a baby.

Then this old couple standing right in front of the baby jumped in to pick the kid up (Who wasn’t making any noise) and then handed it to the dad. He picked up the kid and then the mom looked as if she was about to get off, when the dad ferried her back into the bus, and followed her in. The bus just drove off as if nothing had happened, and everyone looked at each other like “Did we really just see that?”

You see some odd things on these streets sometimes, man.