Neville, the New Zealand Prophet!

What prompted me to dig through a whole year's worth of archived Straits Times newspaper at the old National Library? If I had to blame it on someone, it had to be Neville!

In 2002, I paid a visit to my younger sister, Ping aka Space Cadet, living a dream life in Aotearoa, otherwise known as the Land of the Long White Cloud. It's a land now well-known to others as Middle Earth!

First thing she said when I arrived, "Hey, I signed you up for a Maori spiritual camp!" We were to visit a Marae, a sacred meeting area of great spirituality where people gather for some traiditional ceremony. Difficult to explain, especially when you throw in all the Maori lingo and references! For an idea of what happens at a Marae, read this!

Introduction time, day before the Marae! "Hi, I'm Ling, Ping's sister, and I'm here for a visit." Feels like Marae Anonymous. Everyone, mostly locals, welcomes me with open arms. A spitting image of Moses with a pot belly, carrying a wooden crooked staff, approaches the middle of the congregation, and introduces himself as "Neville". In the next 15 minutes, he completely blew my mind out with concepts about his being the gatekeeper to the Lemurian Passage, the passage under the sea leading to Egypt; how he awaits 10,000 ladies who will arrive at a sacred post in New Zealand, climb right through the post to the pyramids of Egypt, and then form an arrow, which is a sign for the "ships to come"....there are 150 mother ships out there, who are in turn waiting to come to earth, but we have not accomplished everything here....". What did he say again? I looked around me. The locals seemed unfazzled. Just to make sure I captured it all on me camera, I politely asked Neville to repeat the whole story (ok, not stories...but personal beliefs?). And yes, he'll do it at the Marae.

Setting : Perfect! The Marae was located amidst rolling green hills with sheep aplenty, also reputed to have some archeological significance akin to the Stone Henge....

Video on Standby.
Viewfinder : Neville, naked waist upwards, wearing drawstring slacks, lying down comfortably on dry grass in a reclining pose.
Press record button : "I am the Gatekeeper, to the Lermurian Passage, the passage under the sea to Egypt..."

Back home, I'd quit my job to learn the fineart of video editing from my video guru, Ah Bong (who is incidentally in New Zealand right now....). I want to be a filmmaker, goddamit! Gotta start somewhere. Best place to start : get your butt out there and start filming! Ok.....but what's the story, morning glory? Whatever it is, we HAVE to feature Neville somehow! Maybe a promotional video to recruit the 10,000 ladies who are to miraculously appear at his doorstep?

But...we can't have a story just about a NZ prophet! Need more footage. But what about? UFOs? Aliens? Oh, I like it already! Wasn't going to be an Eric Khoo movie, but it was my pet topic...and a fun topic! Which I know nothing about. I recalled that I'd wasted 3 birthday wishes as a child, hoping to be abducted by aliens. Wonder if the wishes were really wasted, or was I?


Check google : UFO, aliens, ufology, Singapore! Alvin Chee, Singapore UFOlogist! You've gotta be kiddin', right? Let's email him and see what happens. Met up with him for teh tarik. He speaks lucidly. A prankster? Wouldn't know. But he sure looks like KFC's Colonel Sanders! Anyway, am not going to take positions in this movie.

Yeah, he agrees to be interviewed in my short film. He showed me several photos of UFOs. Hmmm....found it quite difficult to spot them. But it doesn't mean they weren't there. In my short film, he drew a picture of a UFO that pays him a regular visit at his Sembawang home (see drawing above). He draws a picture of a Starhub blimp (which was then circling around Singaporean) to ensure we didn't get the 2 confused (see drawing below)....

But how to connect the story? Ok, let's build the story around my younger sister. She's a known rambler of exotic information and we should be able to pull through. Let's get my Koh Kong Marine Conservation diving friends involved too. And our cat, Cleo, who will be one of the main stars! Maybe pull in a couple more people here and there, and we should be able to whip out something interesting! This was going to be fun.

After a hard day of shooting, Ping heads for home to crash on her bed, but is forced to have dinner with our parents and their friends. How interesting could this be? At dinner, when asked why Ping looked exhausted, Ping jokingly mentioned that she was starring in an alien movie. Dad's friend's wife, a dentist and known as SS, confesses she was an alien contactee at the age of 8 years old! How freaky is that?

She was then a student at Kellock Convent (right : see drawing of map of that school along River Valley Road). Recess time, kids are running wild. 4 classmates (including SS) are playing a distance away from the rest, when they noticed 3 characters standing before them. Two were no more than a feet tall. One of them was the male and the other, female...or so the dentist assumed, since the latter had some semblance of boobs. The third funny cotton-wool like creature was probably their pet dog, which was moving at that time.

In an attempt to make contact, one of her friends touched one of the UMO (unidentified moving object), when it pulled out a stun gun and stunned her. The UMOs quickly vanished into the longkang nearby. there's more to the story but I'd have to go through the transcripts to find out the fine details. Think this happened in 1968, 2 years before the 1970 Straits Times news report.

Oh, by the way, she agreed to be interviewed and she made some pretty strong statements about being an alien contactee, without batting an eyelid. "No one can tell me that it's not real because I know it's real because I saw it with my own eyes."

Left : Drawing by SS of the male alien she saw. The characteristic long fingers, oval shaped head, feelers, costumes and ultraman boots!

It was SS who alerted me to the fact that there were news reports around that time about alien encounters in our local newspapers. So, is her story credible? Was she credible? Does the fact that she's a dentist play a part in assessing whether the witness was telling the truth? Hmmm.....

The best part about the whole exercise was that my short film, entitled "Somewhere Over the Land of the Long White Cloud" (with Ah Bong as my co-director) was shown at the Goethe Institute and at some private viewings, and most people thought the interviews were planted....what fine actors and actresses you have, very convincing. Of course, one of the best scenes featured my sweetie aka Maximuzz, wearing a Darth Vader helmet and riding a mountain bike! He spontaneously played with his light sabre and toys after stripping naked in a bathtub. He was supposed to represent the psychotic believer who has been brainwashed with tales of galactic wars, and in making it his reality, is ready to take up arms to fight in the galactic war.

Something that Alvin said sums up the sentiment (evitable as it may be) of the majority who is quick to dispel any notion of extraterrestrial life : that no matter what you say, what proof you have, most people will think you're spinning a hoax without even glancing at the evidence. Photos? Must be doctored. Adobe photoshop is easy peasey. Videos? Ah, computer graphics. Even if we were there to witness something with our own eyes, there MUST be a logical explanation. It's a lose-lose situation the way I look at it.