***Update: Link to article can be found (here).
Sumiko Tan has done it again, this time in her latest Sunday Times column yesterday entitled “New Year, New Start”.
(I can’t find a link to the article at the moment.)
Let’s face it, nothing captivates a nation of readers quite like a Sumiko Tan column about Love and Relationships.
She occasionally writes about other stuff as well, but I suspect people only really care when she writes about her love life, ha!
Find me another female writer out there in Singapore who is not afraid to admit her hang ups about being single in her 40′s, about her constant bouts of loneliness, about her regrets on not being able to have found the “right one” to settle down with, about her insecurities and anxieties on entering into a new relationship, etc.
Love her or hate her, you can’t help but be captivated by this real-life soap opera of a column.
Does she strike a chord with many people out there in Singapore?
Maybe.
And maybe that’s why people love her columns.
Anyway, I previously wrote about a Sumiko Tan column last August (here), whereby she talked about revisiting her old crush “Hurricane” of 29 years ago.
So apparently yesterday’s column was a follow-up to that column.
She starts out by expressing her sense of loneliness and dread towards the Christmas and New Year season, because she constantly finds herself being lonely while others are out having fun with their loved ones and significant others.
Then in the latter half of her column, she describes how her one-time crush “Hurricane” (whom if I’m not mistaken is currently single with kid and living in the UK) has been making attempts to court her through Skype with extremely sweet gestures.
But she leaves the column hanging at that.
She does what theatre folk would call a “soliloquy” whereby she asks herself probing questions, expressing her sense of trepidation and self-doubt…but ultimately she does not provide the reader with a satisfying resolution.
So did she or did she not enter into a relationship with “Hurricane”?
(I think it would be a whirlwind romance, haha! Get it? Hurricane, whirlwind? Just kidding folks.)
Or is she even considering entering into a relationship with “Hurricane”?
A nation of readers awaits in eager anticipation.
Oh Sumiko, you are such a tease!
(I think it would be a whirlwind romance, haha! Get it? Hurricane, whirlwind? Just kidding folks.)
haha…a bit corny leh.
“a nation of readers awaits in eager anticipation.”
i have to beg to differ! i didn’t read sumiko tan’s latest newyear article, and thank goodness for that! usually i cannot help but give in to this impulse to read what ridiculous love story she’s going to next write about. don’t get me wrong, i don’t look forward to reading her articles at all, i find myself cringing each time i do. and i’m sure i’m not the only one, at least not among my friends.
her writing may strike a chord with some of the singaporeans out there, but really, i believe that there is enough of her soap-operaish stories and melancholy towards life to last any reader a longgg time.
perhaps i should mince my words a little more, but her columns (and some others along with it) almost always disappoint, in that as a writer in a position to influence and persuade, she chooses (assuming she did have a choice, or perhaps not) to convey her sappy melancholic outlook on life. that may her winning formula to appeal to her faithful readers, but that is precisely why i shun her columns like the plague.
and if there is any truth at all in how we are what we read, i can only wish that less people would take so kindly to reading her columns, and more would read her columns (more-)critically. for surely, we aim to produce better thinkers and people than sumiko-tan-type (ladies) who live without a single ounce of strength desirable?
[...] can check out this post (here) for a good background on what’s been [...]