For many years we’ve been told that women need to get married and have kids to be happy. Society requires us to have a partner to be considered ‘normal’. But some of us want mature relationships, where what is normal is saying what you think and acting accordingly. Learn how to fully enjoy work, parties and friends regardless of luck and loss in love. Find out how to live with high self-esteem and a disappointment proof attitude. Table for One explains all this and more. It reads like a confessionary with all sorts of fun situations where misunderstandings and tragedy intertwine to really get you laughing. With this book you’ll realise that happiness is in your hands.
Archives: Books
Exploring Southeast Asia with Affandi: The Humanist Artist
EXPLORING SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH… is a series of narrative non-fiction picture books for young readers between the ages of seven and twelve. Each book will focus on one national artist, taking readers through the country’s history, the artist’ place within its history, and how art is a reflection of our times. Each book contains critical thinking questions comprising visual thinking strategies (VTS), an enquiry-based method to encourage children to think about the content and formal structure of the artworks.
The series encourages young children to read about artists who had made an impact on the art scene in Southeast Asia.
The main character in this story is AFFANDI, perhaps Indonesia’s most famous painter. Affandi was born during a time in Indonesia when only traditional Javanese art was considered art. Through the study of Affandi’s work, readers will come to realise that Affandi is a painter with a unique method-he paints with his hands instead of a brush. Through his series of paintings of Borobodur, readers will also be taken through the history of Indonesia, focusing on the island of Java. They will learn about how Buddhism and Hinduism arrived in Indonesia and how that had influenced the culture of Indonesia. It will also take readers through the vibrant city of Yogyakarta, the artistic and cultural capital of Indonesia and highlight the famous royal palace there.
Exploring Southeast Asia with Chuah Thean Teng: Father of Batik Painting
EXPLORING SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH… is a series of narrative non-fiction picture books for young readers between the ages of seven and twelve. Each book will focus on one national artist, taking readers through the country’s history, the artist’ place within its history, and how art is a reflection of our times. Each book contains critical thinking questions comprising visual thinking strategies (VTS), an enquiry-based method to encourage children to think about the content and formal structure of the artworks.
The series encourages young children to read about artists who had made an impact on the art scene in Southeast Asia.
The main character in this story is CHUA THEAN TENG, a Malaysian batik painter. This story takes the reader through the artist’s colourful life from Fujian, China, where his mother made shoes for women with bound feet, to Penang, Malaysia, where Chua opened a batik factory following WWII. His artworks were featured in UNESCO’s greeting cards in 1989. Chuah is widely regarded as the father of batik painting. Through Chuah’s paintings, readers will learn about the the importance of batik in the Malay world as well as the techniques of batik and batik painting. Readers will also get a glimpse of a Malaysian kampung and a Malaysian way of life.
The Light of Stars
Keix sets off on her journey to find her father and meets a mysterious Kulcan who offers to take her to her destination. Back at Atros, Zej and the rest of the gang, thinking that the organization had kidnapped Keix, hatch a plan for a rescue mission. But they soon gain knowledge of a vicious group whose aim is to bring the world to its knees.
Racing against time, Zej has to find Keix and convince her to help the people who had previously betrayed her. With innocent lives at stake, will Keix agree to the uneasy alliance, and put her own goals on the line
again to go in blind against an enemy that’s even more ruthless than Atros?
Destination: SEA 2050 A.D.
Destination: SEA 2050 A.D. the first Southeast Asian fiction anthology that imagines-based on scientific projections-the world of the year 2050, the same year when 90 percent of the planet’s coral reefs are expected to decline, when plastic is found inside 99 percent of all the world’s seabirds, when there is severe water shortage in Asia, when growth in the world’s populations stops, and when the elderly outnumber children in most places on Earth.
Short stories and graphic narratives from a veritable literary supergroup from all over Southeast Asia and with each story painstakingly annotated, will paint a vivid, often disquieting but at times hopeful, vision of an environmental futurist spread. Destination: SEA 2050 A.D. is a travel through time and into the heartland of the global conversation on the final stages of the sixth extinction.
Showers of Luck
Inspired by a true story, Showers of Luck follows the life of two characters, Lily and Khalid. Lily is a hard-working young nyonya who stays with a distant aunt’s family, following the advice of a fortune-teller that she should be given away after birth. She develops a crush on her handsome Muslim neighbour, Khalid, who is trying to fulfil his filial duties to his estranged parents and to do his best for the upcoming Senior Cambridge Examinations.
Spanning a period of two years in pre-war Singapore, against the backdrop of a world preparing to go to war, Lily and Khalid’s paths intersect time and again. Consumed by their desires, the couple navigate societal judgment and challenge familial expectations in a brave attempt to start a new life together.
Exploring Southeast Asia with Anita Magsaysay-Ho: One of Them
EXPLORING SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH… is a series of narrative non-fiction picture books for young readers between the ages of seven and twelve. Each book will focus on one national artist, taking readers through the country’s history, the artist’ place within its history, and how art is a reflection of our times. Each book contains critical thinking questions comprising visual thinking strategies (VTS), an enquiry-based method to encourage children to think about the content and formal structure of the artworks.The series encourages young children to read about artists who had made an impact on the art scene in Southeast Asia.
ANITA MAGSAYSAY-HO is a Filipina artist who was part of a group of artists known as the Thirteen Moderns in the Philippines. She was the only woman in the group. Magsaysay-Ho is a Social Realist painter who documented the life and culture of the Philippines in the early 20th century. Through her art, the story will take readers through the history of the Philippines and how women formed a large part of the labour force. The story invites young readers to examine the life of a female artist, the constraints as well as the liberty of being the only woman in a group of renowned male artists. NAG-IIPON NG DAYAMI (GLEANERS), painted in 1975 is one of Magsaysay-Ho’s works that will enable readers to understand the core tenets of Social Realist art.
The Waters of Manila Bay are Never Silent
When an article about a boy who was killed after being tagged by police as a drug runner lands on his desk, journalist Zechariah ‘Zeke’ Dipasupil feels the story deserves to be on the front page. He empathizes with the dead boy whose cries were unjustly silenced since he also lost his voice as a child.
He grew up without knowing his father and had to look after his mother who suffered from depression and other ailments. His fight to defend the weak and the voiceless caught in the middle of the government’s war against illegal drugs is reminiscent of the activist movement during the Martial Law years in the Philippines. Later, he meets his long lost grandmother who reveals the truth about his father.
As he struggles to rise above societal oppression, he finally finds the courage to respond to the many unsettling silences in his personal life
Exploring Southeast Asia with Liu Kang: Master of Colour
EXPLORING SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH… is a series of narrative non-fiction picture books for young readers between the ages of seven and twelve. Each book will focus on one national artist, taking readers through the country’s history, the artist’ place within its history, and how art is a reflection of our times. Each book contains critical thinking questions comprising visual thinking strategies (VTS), an enquiry-based method to encourage children to think about the content and formal structure of the artworks. The series encourages young children to read about artists who had made an impact on the art scene in Southeast Asia.
The main character in this story is LIU KANG. Readers explore a segment of Singapore’s history through Liu Kang’s seminal work, Life By The River. The story takes readers through a slice of Liu Kang’s life in Singapore before the founding of the Nanyang style, an art movement that has become embedded in the art history of Singapore. Readers will see how Liu Kang struggled to find artistic inspiration in Malaya and how a trip to Bali changed his mind and perception of home. Weaved into the story is that of Singapore seen through the lens of the artist. Children will learn about pre-independence Singapore, its landscape, and people.
The Preying Birds
Mando Plaridel is the lead character in this novel of social consciousness. His character combines the qualities found in Simoun and Ibarra, the two lead characters in national hero Jose Rizal’s novels: Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Ibarra is the passive character in Rizal’s novels, while Simoun is the active propagandist who wakes up the people from their centuries-old sleep under Spanish colonialism.
After the war, society begins to know him as the brave editor of the Kampilan newspaper. He later becomes involved in the problems of the farmers with the abusive Monteros. Told from an omniscient point of view, Hernandez is able to enter the consciousness of the wealthy characters. He shows how the ruling classes-the politicians, landowners, judges, deputies and bishops-only protect their own interests, that is why they do not want to change the status quo.
Dr Sabio is the progressive president of a university founded by Mando, who used the treasure thrown into the sea at the end of Rizal’s second novel to help improve society. The money is used to fund Freedom University and set up Kampilan, the brave newspaper. The novel points to the cooperative system of land ownership as the way out for the landless poor. It implies that change can only begin when the eyes of society have been finally opened.