Posted October 29th, 2008 by brl
Please visit i-never-promised-you.com for both the online store and apparel. We’ve been putting up new items in the INPYARG store and lucky birds will see why. Online shopping in Goblin Market is limited to art and crafty things only.
Goblin Market, as of October, is still very much a factory. Meaning we haven’t worked on opening it up for the public. This will be our new year resolution.
But browse here for a little of our history, art and little items of surprises; if you like something you see, email us at bruceATgoblin-market.net.
Posted September 30th, 2008 by hwee yee
JB Jeyaratnam died this morning.
I met him a few years back. At that time he was bankrupt and was selling a book of his speeches in parliament to raise money. I shook his hand a couple of years ago and said thank you for doing so much for our country.
He said that he was happy to.
Posted September 6th, 2008 by brl
I have one. Would you like one?
Bashful Puppy, Brown
Xiong Xiong is made of polyester fibres, so soft he has been isolated from his friends at the toy store. He really is quite different from the stuff used to make toys come alive. Trust me. No frills but pellet eyes and a nose - gentle and genteel - the stuff on which original childhood dreams are spun.
And outside to a different world, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden is crazy from her bawdy and patchwork dreams!
Email bruceATgoblin-market.net for Bashful Puppy’s availability.
Posted August 27th, 2008 by brl
Sometimes it may be raining but your world remains dry. Naturally, sometimes when it’s sunny your insides are blurry. Where I am is an internet cafe - “the cheapest in Singapore” - in case readers from the papers want to know where Goblin Market really is.
It’s like this. Goblin Market has moved out of Katong into Joo Chiat this week. The new place will be in a house older than me, the kind where the rain is synonymous with zinc roof. For those of you who have visited Goblin Market at Katong (175A East Coast Road), you will understand why the act of re-creation, in the sense of place and memory, is as sentimental as it is impossible.
Which is why we will not try to. When Goblin Market reopens at Joo Chiat Place, I hope you readers and friends old and new find your way into ours. And when that day comes - I hope you find the quaint and the memorable in Singapore, in our factory, at Goblin Market.
For now, stay with us here if you are keen, where we are all under the same sky.
Reach us at bruceATgoblin-market.net or 65. 6348 8396.
Or come by to I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, #04-133 Far East Plaza.
Posted August 14th, 2008 by brl
(Please pardon this message as it comes up over this one or two weeks. We need to address traffic problems.)
If it’s about clothes, visit http://www.i-never-promised-you.com.
Forthcoming designs (apparel) will belong there and so will its catalogue (online store) and all related postings.
If it’s about art, stay here. At Goblin Market.
Posted August 13th, 2008 by brl
It’s about time.
If it’s about clothes, visit http://www.i-never-promised-you.com.
Forthcoming designs (apparel) will belong there and so will its catalogue (online store) and all related postings.
If it’s about art, stay here. At Goblin Market.
Thank you to all who have been our friends. This includes those who have come by our Goblin Market and INPYARG stores. Thank you to Marcus and Long for coming by Far East Plaza today and making me feel as comfortable in my own skin as only good reporters and photographers can. As I said, today is a day I’ll remember. Because those part of the journey define the journey. Getting there is the most memorable. As for the where, I don’t think I care.
Thank you to goa, as only a abbit can.
Posted August 9th, 2008 by brl
to be Singaporean?
This question must go back a long way, to hard definitions of identity and environment. The former is just too hard to blabber about, the latter a more forgiving idea. For many of us, outside our vocations and passions, can group ourselves according to which decade (or even half decade) we’re born in or which schools we’ve come from. The fact that this little word environment can and will make its influence for the rest of our lives reveal matters of identity find their way into everything we do, and every moment of being.
Much as we live our lives without tangible or definable traits of national being does not preclude us from having a unique identity. Identified or not, the identity lies in the being. Ok, ok, I am in the philosophical head or tail chase but before this day goes by again, I want to remember the peace we’ve had as a tiny country and re-wish the old wish I’ve always held - the wish to see more idiosyncrasies and ‘intolerables’ fleshed out, unhidden, un-judged.
Happy National Day, my countrymen and friends!
Posted August 4th, 2008 by brl
Let me explain a little.
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden is a sister store to Goblin Market, the latter currently closed to prepare for its re-opening in September-November. INPYARG will be hosted off its own domain once the website is ready. Meanwhile, they share this virtual home here and the store is opened on the 4th Floor of Far East Plaza, room 133.
Where Goblin Market used to peddle all lustful things, INPYARG will only be a place for apparel, some trinkets, some books. The store is small, that could be why, but also because we would like the art and production side of our work to be located in the same location, hence the upcoming location of Goblin Market in a spacious, natural air loom off Joo Chiat Place. This should be “the factory”, if all goes as planned…
More about Goblin Market when the factory becomes a reality. Do come by the store when you are in town!
Posted July 15th, 2008 by brl
Yes, I think everyone knows that. But not everyone knows how far Singaporean Chinese men will go, the kind who are more proprietor than proper, in order to conceal their self-esteem from an apparent threat. This threat could be a fellow competitor, a more or less ‘educated’ neighbor, a presumed ‘poorer’ or ‘richer’ person, or simply a decent-looking man or woman.
I was out looking for glass and mirrors today and walked right between this vampiric shop owner’s fangs. He commented that his mirrors could detect my wrinkles when I smiled; that I should be nearing forty; and wondered aloud to his “pig-brained” “Chinaman” (a bespectacled fair-skinned China young man) how the latter could be distracted by a “not 100% pretty woman” (ME!). His comments did not come as a continuous bloody slew but was dispersed throughout the time I was in his shop. I was caught off guard yes, but I was farther thrown over by his pendulous psychiatry of encouragement and insult, or generosity and mean-mouthedness. Yet I left with some samples which he refused to accept payment for, and was told to take good care of myself.
!!!
He also lamented how he could not understand why women need men to remind them they are loved and expect to be told in words as if words meant anything…Maybe words do mean nothing when the heart has been left wanting.
I will go back again. To get more glass, mirrors, and all kinds.
In a less convoluted world, Goblin Market says goodbye to its first mirror, “Not Just Black & White”. Bye bye, my poor, upside down mirror! May you bring the double Ps we mean you to in your new home…
Posted July 13th, 2008 by brl
Today is Sunday. It is also the day of slight renovation and fitting out the new store. When all is done, where ‘when all is done’ feel so light and heavy at the same time in this heart, I ask myself what is at the core of it. I think it is the worker who helped us make the store a store on this Sunday.
We actually started out on Friday night, but the Friday worker was truly only meant to be a worker. I’ve been told the job was simple enough it required no foreman and only the workman’s labor. I thought, hey we could save some so why not. I will not say much but why yes.
All you who will someday need to do a combination of DIY and business-related renovation may like to heed this: if a workman is an independent worker he is likely to have come around as a foreman. It is this simple - unless you know exactly what you need AND have 80% level of experience of how to get the things you need done, you would probably need a worker and his foreman, OR a foreman who is also a worker. My experience is that there is heavenly chance of an independent (self-reliant), experienced workman.
But Sunday’s worker is heavenly. I mean I am moved by his quiet ways of alternating between taking instructions from his foreman and carrying out his tasks independently and yet wholly. It is easy to sometimes slip when one is tired or when no one will mind but he didn’t. It is common to have the workman’s attitude when one is used to the work one does but he didn’t. It is hard to make the little things matter when one is paid according to a manual-work-hour rate but he didn’t.
We sat in the same lorry after the day’s work, us in the front and him at the back. He has been with the same foreman for almost twenty years. He wouldn’t ‘jump ship’ even when offered a higher work rate. He has relative experience but possess no equipment or vehicle or office or English or, I imagine, the Singaporean understanding of what it means to go home with love and hardship in your blood and bones. He rides his motorbike across the causeway in the evenings and has been doing this for twenty years. Getting into Singapore to begin the workday by eight.
Can you? Imagine?
Mornings are worth evenings when at night the eyes close to the body’s ache, the heart’s content. God, let me too.
