I ended up only attending the first three, including the buffer, because I realised that it was too tiring to just sit there and listen to panels after panels.

However, Living in Chains and Short Stories by Migrant Workers were great.

Living in Chains is a FYP screening by some Wee Kim Wee students about this Indonesian practice known as Pasung, where mental patients are chained up in the name of treatment. It was a pretty sad idea and what the filmmakers did was to present the points of view of both the patients and the staff of the facility.

Apparently, because of their film, Dr Radiah Salim, a physician, is currently leading a project to bring some form of discussion over to some of such facilities in Indonesia, as well as some help in the form of better facilities. It is great and ideal that writing and documentary-making sometimes do make a difference, although it is up to really passionate people to get these things done.

Short Stories by Migrant Workers was a free reading where seven migrant workers out of a number who won in a 300-word story competition read their story to anyone who was there. Out of coincidence, most of them were Indonesian domestic workers.

Their perspectives of how domestic workers' lives work were really interesting; as Singaporeans, there are just some things that do not occur to us. For example, one of them wrote a story about "herself" falling in love with a Singaporean employer, telling herself that she was just a maid, living with him for years, and then watching him get married to a beautiful wife. It was really sad.

Bigger issues regarding how migrant workers are treated aside, it is inspiring that these people have not only demonstrated that they have artistic talents, but that they are willing to do something about it. Even without computers, they write with their phones during their lunch breaks, before they sleep, and so on. They do not just get to write because feel like it; their employers' approval matter. Yet, they managed. And they wrote in a language that they were not comfortable in. Really commendable.

The other day, Min Teck (a friend from school) was reinforcing my opinion that it is important to learn other languages. For people in the game industry, Japanese and Korean were really important. I've always wanted to learn Japanese but learning a foreign language is tough. Maybe I should get to it.

I was honestly expecting SWF to be kind of boring, but the stories were really interesting and some of the stuff were really thought-provoking. Back to the domestic helpers, some employers apparently used "writing" as an excuse to scold the helpers when they screw up. That sucks.

Anyway, I hope to go back there maybe the next weekend and catch some panel discussions and stuff. I've got to make the $25 festival pass worth it.