WELCOME! SELAMAT DATANG in Malay!

         Us Peranakans speak better Malay than Chinese though I do speak Teochew and Hokkien as well. Thank you for visiitng my web pages. I am lucky to be living my dream.  For all you aspiring authors, do continue to believe in yourself because it's possible to achieve your dreams. Even when I was uneducated in Potong Pasir, a Malay village of attap-thatched huts in colonial Singapore in the 1950s, I was dreaming of becoming a writer. Even when I spoke no English, I had dreamt of writing in English. I have had a long-term love affair with the English language! Of course, thanks to publishers who believe in my writing and to readers like yourselves, the dream has become a reality!

        Though I was born and brought up in Singapore, I now live in West Sussex, England and have been in England for about 25 years. I moved to a seaside town near Chichester in 2005 because the sea and the smell of salt in the wind remind me a little of my native Island-Country.

        I am also very lucky to be able to write what interests me. Like many other struggling writers, I earn my living through other means to fund my writing. Ten percent royalties on the small number of my books that get sold cannot pay for my food, let alone my mortgage! But hey, I am so happy writing, it does not matter. One day, there will be so many of you readers who buy all my books that I might be able to write full-time! Meanwhile, I use whatever meagre talents I have to make a living. As I have an MA in Creative Writing, I teach Creative Writing at adult colleges and give talks on the subject. I am also a qualified British Wheel of Yoga Diploma Teacher so I run Weekend Yoga Courses at Earnley Concourse and give talks to various organisations  I don't  teach weekly yoga but I do one-to-one yoga work with individuals. I have a Trinity TESOL Certificate so I teach English to Speakers of Other Languages. As I was foreign to English myself in the past, my experience is a great boon to this teaching.

       Like many Singaporeans, I love food. I eat three main meals a day and one snack. So many Western people asked me how to cook my kind of food hence I decided that putting the recipes in a recipe book is easier than writing one out each time. I have to admit that my book is not genuine in the sense that some of the recipes do not have all the ingredients that a book you bought from Singapore might have. This is because this book is for the West. I have researched the ingredients that are available in the West, in UK, Europe and USA, outside of the main cities where there are no specialist Asian grocery stores. Therefore people using my book in these places can still create the Singaporean dishes using my tailored recipes. As I love food and cooking, I also teach Singaporean cookery and give cookery demonstrations to any organisation who ask. An off-shoot of my cooking is the creation of Phine's Home-Made Sambal or chiili sauce which are now on sale. Those of you who have read my book of memoirs, Frog Under A Coconut Shell will know why I am called Phine and not Jo or Josie.

        Do browse through my website and contact me if you have any comments or questions.

       Once again, thank you so much for visiting. I hope we get to meet someday.

May joy and happiness be yours and may you fulfill your dream!

With warmest wishes,

Phine

PS : May 2008 Latest News

      My students have been asking for a follow-on book from my yoga book, Body and Mind Sculpture, Shape Up For Self-Discovery, as they said that my teaching has evolved from concentrating on physical postures to the more holistic and spiritual aspects of yoga. Well, for those of you who have motivated me, thank you because I have written a new book, Your Body:Gateway To The Divine.

     In this day and age, when so much focus is on the body and so much guilt is attached to it, I feel it is the right time for this book to come out. People fear getting fat, getting wrinkles and getting old. They forget The Divine in themselves and that they are truly beautiful when The Light shines out of them like a lovely rainbow, no matter what the skin looks like! So my new book will show you ways to get in touch with The Divine.

     The good news is that my top favourite publisher of MBS (Mind, Body & Spirit) books, O Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing in Hampshire, has accepted my manuscript and has set the date of publication : 29th May 2009! I am grateful to them for believing in my book. I am truly excited. I hope you will support this latest book too.