Honing Your Observation Skills

Shut up…and just observe. No interviews. Just observe. What do you see? How does it sound? Is it sweet? Is it foul? Is it smooth? Is it moving? Boring?

We are endowed with five basic senses – smell, sight, taste, hear, and touch. These senses, which we use to carry out our daily mundane routines, are writers’ bestfriends, too. If we use them more consciously, we see more action, more life, more movement, more voices in the things, faces, and places that we daily look at and find no expression at all.

“Honing Your Observation Skills” (HYOS) is one of the activities I have enjoyed in my Feature Writing subject when I studied Journalism at the University of San Jose-Recoletos (Cebu City, Philippines) few years ago. Thanks to my mentor Maylaine T. Cerna who introduced this to my class.

It was fun to have my fellow writers here at Writers Coffee Lounge do the same activity. We stationed ourselves in our chosen places (home, kopi tiam, etc) to do this exercise. Below are some of our outputs for the first HYOS activity shared to the group last 15 May 2009. We decided to do this again and for the second round, we will focus on observing a character, a person.

7th Floor
by Aurelia L. Castro

Kopi tiam
By Angeline Koh

Coffee shop complaint
By Cecilia Mahendran

7th Floor

(Honing your observations skills assignment by Aurelia L. Castro.)

Buildings that look like boxes. Columns and rows of tinted glass windows that stare like lifeless eyes. A slow movement of vehicles coming in and out the parking lot. A few people passing by and a cat or two strolling around the well-swept path – these are the usual sights from my window at the 7th floor in my flat.

The 15-storey home buildings before me look so still. They seem to have stood there for years. Their walls’ weak and fainting colours of yellow, pink, and maroon tell me they are old and have lost their smell long time ago. Their gray-white coloured air-conditioning units are like uniform badges attached to their chests.

It’s quiet and slow, boring and almost deserted in the daytime. Cars and motorcycles are neatly parked, some almost kissing each other, on their numbered spots. Even the clothes hung on some of the windows look tame and calm. The trees are orderly arranged as well. Their leaves gently flip with the occasional soft blow of wind.

The sight of the sky takes only about a quarter from the whole screen view in my window. Yet it’s the one that seems to command life to this rather nostalgic and perhaps unappreciated place. It creates movement as it breaks from darkness to gray in the morning, to orange when it’s shone by the sun, to blue, till it turns slowly back to gray, then to darkness again. At six in the evening, it is still bright and dominant.

As the sky begins to cool down and welcome the stars and moon at night (which are usually overshadowed and unseen because of the city’s bright light), the lamp posts at the parking area start to light up. The darker the sky goes, the more light comes out from everywhere – cars, buildings, and streetlights. The windows that were like lifeless eyes finally blink and smile at night.

Coffee shop complaint

(Honing your observations skills assignment by Cecilia Mahendran.)

It was about eleven o’clock when my daughter and I reached Bedok Food Court. Only a few stalls were open. Consequently, and also because it was still too early for lunch, only a few tables were occupied. The whole food court seemed to be shrouded by a shadow except for the middle, where the sun shone through.

My eight-year-old daughter wanted to eat carrot cake. I scanned the whole line of signboards for the one advertising carrot cake.

“Sorry, no carrot cake,” I told her pointing to the stall’s silver shutter that was still drawn down.

She reluctantly settled for minced meat noodles, which was also what I had chosen. I paid the stallholder after telling him my order and my table number.

Back at my seat, as we were waiting for the food, I noticed a blue poster glued onto our table. I noticed also that there was a blue poster on every table in the food court. The same blue posters, bigger in size, could also be seen on almost all the pillars as well. I took a closer look at the poster on my table and saw that it was a campaign to get customers to return their empty bowls and glasses to the collection stations after their meals. I looked all around to see where this collection station was. Not being very observant by nature, I could not at first spot any. It was after I mentally told myself, “Good, we can just leave our bowls here,” that I noticed the first mobile shelf tucked discreetly behind a pillar. Then I noticed another, then another. Almost all the pillars had one – a metal casing, taller than a tall man, with groves along the insides that enabled food trays to be slotted in.

Kopi tiam

Our group did an exercise to help us hone our observations skills. We were to station overselves in a place (home, train station, kopi tiam, hospital, airport, etc) and just observe using our senses and write down our observation. Here’s mine.

It is 7.30 am. I take forever to get myself dressed. I am both half asleep and hungry. Armed with a pen and scratch paper, I make my way to the nearby coffee shop. I expect to see a crowd – that was the way it was when I went there two months ago after it was newly renovated. The newness has died down. There are fewer people than I expected.

The upgraded coffee shop is clean and airy – miles of improvement from the dark, cramped and dirty looking shop that I remember. Half the stalls are still dark. The poh piah seller arrives and begins turning on the lights to prepare for a hopeful business day.

The permanently fixed tables have orange tops and backless chairs. I am spoilt for choice as to where to sit.

I scan the backlit sign boards that show mouth-watering familiar local favourites like char kway teow and chicken rice; iced lemon tea, lime juice, half-boiled eggs and kaya toast, but my mind is already made up – it’s oily crispy roti prata for me this morning. There is no queue and I get my order very quickly.

I plunk myself strategically. Good morning senses.

There is a quiet hum of the fast spinning ceiling fans above. Mental spoons clink again the cups as customers stir their kopi or teh. The kopi counter is crowded with cups and canned drinks. A neat row of cigarettes of every brand are in the display just above the counter. Coffee servers in blue and white stripped polo shirts and a Tiger beer logo ply around to take orders.

Book Review

Ramona and Her Father
by Beverly Cleary

“Ramona and Her Father” is part of the Ramona Quimby series by American author Beverly Cleary. It is a story of how a second-grader copes with her father’s unemployment and her hopes of getting her father off the smoking habit.

Ramona and her older sister Beezus are expecting their father to bring them out for burgers as it is his pay day. Ramona is also excited about Christmas (which is three months away) and decides to prepare a Christmas wish list in advance. The girls’ hopes are dashed when Mr Quimby comes home with the news that he has been laid off work.

Changes have to be made. For one, Christmas gifts need to be dropped from their list of priorities. More pressing needs such as groceries and loan repayments are necessities that force Mrs Quimbly to move from a part-time to full-time job. Mr Quimby takes on the role of stay-at-home dad. Part of the effort to save costs involves having to put up with many days of dreary dinners, prepared from a huge pumpkin that was part-eaten by Picky-picky the cat.

The mood of the family also changes. Mr Quimby’s sense of humour diminishes as he waits daily for the phone to bring good news of a successful job interview. Mrs Quimby is always tired from the rigours of her new job. Even Picky-picky the cat becomes picky about its downgraded cat food. Beezus, as usual, gets the periodic mood swings which Ramona’s mother attributes to “that age”. Ramona’s insecurity stems from not being able to help out financially as none of the options in her mind seem to be viable. Then one day, she sees a child in a television advertisement and that brings possibilities of making a million dollars. Now in good spirits, she attempts to unsuccessfully lift the family’s spirit as well. Her father gets even crosser when he has an argument with Beezus one night and she criticizes him for his smoking habit. This incident pulls Ramona back into a state of insecurity which is now rooted in concerns for her father’s health rather than the family’s financial situation.

Through the dark days of financial uncertainty up to Christmas, Ramona learns that a “happy” family does not mean a family that is constantly in a good mood. She realizes that her family members will have good days and bad, just like her.

I like how symbols are used in the story as a form of expressions eg. crayon colours which represent Ramona’s feelings and the crown of burs that show how something initially attractive can have undesirable consequences. This book is excellent for discussions with children on how to manage difficult situations and to distinguish between conflicts and the commitment to love.

The Ramona Quimby series has been translated into many languages as well as into a television series. The character has, in fact, been “immortalised” in the form of a bronze statue in The Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden for Children situated in Grant Park, Portland.