In The Name Of Arts

A friend, who's fully aware that I'm not a football fan, sent me a web-link in his email, entitled "football Mr Koh?". In that email, he asks, "not a football fan? could this change your mind?"

Well, the link had nothing to do with football—balls, maybe, but certainly not football. This article is about a famous photographer who intends to photograph 2008 people in the nude in a Vienna soccer stadium on May 11. It's to be done in the name of arts, I guess. And I bet there will be many people who'd be all out to be photographed in the nude like that!

I am a romantic and artistic person in many ways, but posing nude is one thing I will never bring myself to do. It is interesting to see the signs of changing times.

Several hundred years ago, the people from the Western World set sail and eventually landed in the the more primitive lands. They found "uncivilised" people with very little clothes on their bodies. Even the women were running around bare-breasted. The Westerners were disgusted.

A few hundred years later, the descendants of those so-called "uncivilised" people, upon visiting the Western World, find that those "civilised" people are going nude, taking photographs in a football field.

Now imagine this...

A guy went holidaying to Vienna. At a train station, he found a notice pasted on a noticeboard. Anyone who'd pose in the nude for a photograph together with 2007 other people could have a free ride. He's in the mood to do something crazy, so why not this? He got onto the train and soon found himself in the football stadium. To his amazement, there were many other people there—men and women—all in the nude. While the photographer was preparing his camera, our friend's eyes started to roam around. Then the inevitable happened; he became aroused! Well, the photography session was quick. Everyone started to break up. He asked someone in the crowd to take his solo picture in the nude with his polaroid camera.

That night, in his hotel room, he decided to write to his mother back home. He had no other photos with him, so he decided to cut the one taken in the nude into two, and sent off the upper portion.

A few days later, his mother sent him a message on his cellphone:

"John, glad 2 kno u r hav'g gud time. Ur grandma was here wen I rcvd ur leter. She's jelous, said she wants a pix too. Pls send her 1 too, OK?"

Well, John still had no other photo on him, and it happened that his camera ran out of films too. He thought grandma's eyes were terribly bad anyway, so he sent off the lower half of his nude photo.

Several weeks later, John arrived home and found a letter from grandma in the mailbox. He opened it up and read:

"Dear John,

Thank you so much for sending me a photo of yourself. I was with your mom when she received your letter the other day, and I was a bit jealous, you see.

You looked very handsome, John. But perhaps you need to do something about your hairstyle? It makes your nose appear so huge, doesn't it?

With love,

Grandma"