A love of Art.

Popular Bookstore is a chain present in both Singapore and Malaysia. It tends to stock academic books for schoolchildren and a reasonable - though restricted - range of general reading material. Today, in a Popular Bookstore, in KL, I noted something most telling. I saw a book section I have never seen in the corresponding stores in Singapore. Now can you guess what it was? What kind of section could a Malaysian bookstore have, that its Singaporean counterparts don't have?

Have you had a good think? Well, to my astonishment, today, I saw a "Drawing" section, in the Malaysian Popular Bookstore. That gave me pause, for it was not a small section: it consisted of two whole bookshelves, perhaps three to four metres wide and one and a half metres high, in total, carrying nothing but books on the art of drawing: how to do it, what it is, and how you can learn. There were books on particular types of drawing: portraits, fantasy figures and so on. I was, in an instant, most impressed by what it said of the country I am now living in. It says, quite clearly, that there are enough people in KL interested in learning how to draw, for it to be profitable for a general bookstore like Popular, to carry such specialized titles.

Yet, and this was the most telling part of all, I had never seen a similar section in Singapore's Popular bookstores - though I have been in many of them, many times.

One can conclude from this that Malaysians are rather more artistically inclined, than their Singaporean counterparts, for no bookstore is going to waste shelf space on things which don't sell enough to justify it.

Perhaps, pragmatic Singaporeans don't see the value in art, so much, because they cannot see how it connects to their life value of accumulating money as rapidly as possible. Since art seems distant from this, they are less drawn to it...excuse the pun.

As for me: I like art and artists and think that it is an eminently worthy pursuit, even if it never results in great personal wealth, or even a decent living: it is the art itself that counts.

I find it refreshing that an ordinary bookstore would actually pay such heed to drawing. There is, I think, more depth to this nation, than one might first grasp. No doubt there are more clues out there, waiting to be seen.

I will let you know when I spot one.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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