The Skeptical Optimist

When I first met Frenchman Franck Ibanez and his Singaporean wife Wang Meng Ngee and they told me they lived on a boat, I thought they were slightly crazy. Then they told me that their eventual plan was to sail around the world with their two young children and I began to seriously wonder about their sanity.

Honestly, most of us who have the privilege and responsibility of caring for more than one child under the age of 5 will tell you what a challenge it is even on dry land! So what more on a 12.5 metre long boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean?

As I got to know them though, I began to understand what Franck meant when he said it was a lifestyle choice. His rationale was that he wanted the world to be his home, the sea to teach its lessons to his children and a life that was pared down to the basic essentials. After all, there’s not much space for frivolity or luxury on a small boat that has to be stocked with the supplies for sea voyages lasting up to 3 weeks.

It was difficult not to be inspired by this almost romantic vision, while simultaneously feeling a little worried about how they were going to meet the unforeseen and unknown on their 2 to 3 year trip from Singapore to Europe.

Talking to Suzanne Jung and Steven Chia in the studio, Meng talked about how her journey began, “I thought well I’ve always liked to travel and what better way to do it than on a boat, because when you take the aeroplane, it’s faster but you don’t see as many places. On a boat you go to places like Chagos island where there is nobody there and you can’t take aeroplane to be there and you can just be free for a month with nobody telling you what to do, you’re able to fish, you’re able to swim on a whole beach for yourself.”

Franck and Meng spent about 4 years at the Raffles Marina in Singapore, planning their trip, preparing their boat and making babies. They set off for their grand adventure a little over a year ago, when their daughters Carmen and Julie were 4 and 2, and have sailed from Singapore all the way to South Africa.

Besides getting dengue in the Maldives and have their boat burgled in Mayotte, they seemed to be having a whale of a time. We kept in touch via their blog (www.constantesingapour.com) and the occasional long distance phonecall. They told of adventures with sharks, catching enormous snapper fish, meeting a wide range of sailing friends, braving storms at sea and dropping anchor at unspoiled tropical islands – things we could only dream of in our small little city lives.

Meng and the girls came back to Singapore recently to spend the Lunar New Year holidays with her family. Sun-tanned and happy from her seafaring life, Meng talked about how their unusual life had changed the girls: “I would say that I have managed to see how they developed in their self confidence that I don’t see in land children. They are very cautious when they are climbing on to things. Thankfully we haven’t had them fall overboard yet, they are really careful. They know where are their boundaries.”

The family intends to head to Argentina next where they might stop for a year or so before continuing on to North America and eventually to France.

(A shorter version of this article was published in the TODAY weekend edition 24-25 January 2009)

Tags: children, friends, sailing

Can I just say? I am addicted to this ongoing live broadcast of Obama’s inauguration festivities… it really feels like we’re watching history in the making. And I can’t help but feel happy for Americans, this represents so much in terms of what has gone before in their history and there seems to be so much joy and optimism in the air, in spite of everything. Can one person, one man change, if not everything then at least a lot? Or at least set things on the right path?

We can only hope so.

Tags: historic, inauguration, obama

In an age of inexplicable natural disasters that inflict unthinkable devastation like tsunamis and earthquakes, it seems almost crazy that humans should continue to fight against each other, killing sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, cousins, grandparents. Each day that I’ve read the news over the past 3 weeks or so, I’ve been confronted by tragic and often horrific footage coming out of the Gaza strip: badly injured children being rushed out of ambulances into poorly equipped hospitals, bomb ravaged landscapes, grief-stricken mourners at funerals, bloodied corpses wrapped in shrouds lined up in endless rows. You see a lot of tragedy and pain in a lot of news footage and after a while you sort of desensitize yourself as a means of self-preservation. Somehow though, as a mother perhaps now, I find it very difficult to get over what’s happening in the Gaza strip.

This is not meant to be a polemic about who’s to blame in the complex quagmire that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I don’t even know how to begin to think about solutions for the violent impasse that has been going on for decades. In my opinion, both sides of enough blood on their hands to launch any number of war crimes tribunals. In situations like these in any case, at this point, does it really matter who we point the finger at? Innocent civilians are caught in the crossfire and more die every day in the most terrifying ways that can be imagined. What must it be like to know that nowhere is safe? Especially if you’re a child and are even more sensitive to this lack of security?

In the news station we often get access to footage that is more explicit than we deem it fit to broadcast, often images that are too disturbing are edited out for the sake of the viewers. I’ve edited some of this footage, and a lot of what I’ve left out cannot even be described here. Very often we think of war and conflict as this abstract happening that’s far away, and paradoxically in this age of instant reporting, blogs and 24 hour network news, it’s sometimes both farther away and nearer.

How do politicians and army generals think of abstract “operations” and “missions” and “collateral damage”? All I can see is the too small limp bodies of children, carried barely alive by grief stricken, hollow eyed paramedics .

Tags: children, collateral damage, gaza, news, war

It’s been a long and eventful 2008. Just in general with prison breaks, larger than life political elections, devastating earthquakes, horrific terrorist attacks and of course an unthinkable financial meltdown. It’s been a busy year for the news business – which means not a good year for the world in general. Usually most people look forward to the new year as a chance to start afresh, do better and feel happier – somehow though 2009 appears to be viewed with some apprehension. This is one of the few times that a buoyant optimism hasn’t really been the mood for the new year.

For me, I feel that 2008 was the year the world sort of speeded up, with more intense news coverage, more internet connectivity and use, more of just everything. When you live in a fast-paced city like Singapore, sometimes we often forget to look back and reflect or even just hold on to the past.

My kids’ daycare is moving premises, and on the last day of their time at the old centre we went to pick the children up and I gasped because they had completely taken down every single piece of artwork, every last poster, photograph, set of shelves, divider, curtain – and just white washed the entire space. It was as if the last 2 years of my child’s life in school had been completely wiped out. I mean, sure they are going to a new swanky daycare centre, with brand new facilities et al. But it was the casualness with which they performed this move and erasure that really struck me. After all, a lot of us have the same experience in Singapore; I’m thinking of schools, workplaces, religious institutions and of course homes that have just disappeared off the face of island without much afterthought. I often wonder what this does to our sense of belonging and memory. Singaporeans are a pragmatic bunch, fundamentally, but these constant erasures have to affect us in some way.

(As I write, there are a few days left to the bulldozing of a large part of the Seletar Airbase, a place known for its colonial black and white houses, tranquil atmosphere and community life. Just another casualty of progress of course. Just another blip in our speeded up lives.)

So this new year – I say, be optimistic, look forward and try not to be too bogged down by worries and fears. But at the same time, take stock and remember to look back and appreciate the places, people, memories still around you… in many more ways than one, life is fleeting and there’s no point if it’s not lived fully.

Tags: 2008, 2009, hope, memory