“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
Welcome to my website.
Some introductions are in order. I am a librarian based in Singapore, working mainly with visual arts collections. I am also involved in some digitisation and archiving projects.
My interests include book and library histories; Southeast Asia (its histories, art, and culture); literature; and religion.
I am also obsessed with collecting books (hence the quote above), even though I have become more judicious in recent years due to limited resources and space.
This website existed in its past life as a blog, but I later realised that I am not one for blogging. Mostly I am too lazy to write regularly, and I am incurably afflicted by how necessarily imperfect my writing will be, so I end up not writing anything.
What I have done over the years, however, and in my job as a librarian, is to compile lists of resources and books. Sometimes I recommend them to other people. Mostly I keep them written somewhere, privately.
So in this digital real estate that I somewhat call my own, I attempt to make these annotations available. Perhaps to share with others, but mainly as an online archive. I’ve squirrelled away these jottings in many places and formats – it’s time for all of them to gather in one place.
Enough with the long preamble. Here’s what you can find on this site: