Eastern Celebrations

 

I had a lovely week in Singapore. Its real aim was for me to speak at and preside over our regular ‘Maritime Outlook’ conference in which we try to forecast what the main maritime issues and events of the year will be. This meant I had to introduce those aspects in both the Ukraine and Gaza wars, among other things. There is so much going on that it’s really hard to keep up. You have to check all the feeds before saying anything, and every time you make a prediction that goes into print, you are hazarding your credibility and reputation. Tricky. But so far at least I haven’t been shown to have said anything seriously wrong. Even so, it's rather sombre.

    I was put up at a nice Waterfront hotel and for 7.5 days; it must have cost a bomb. As soon s I arrived I realised I was back east again with full-on Chinese lunar New Year decorations for the Year of the dragon

I just hope that the auspiciousness of this do3sn’t inspire Mr Xi to invade Taiwan while the US is distracted by Ukraine and the Middle East and China is probably at the likely very short peak of its rise. I don’t think he will, but you never know.

More mundanely I was dismayed on arrival to see hordes of Chinese school-kids milling about in the lobby. Part of the big influx of mainlanders who come to Singapore to let their hair down, buy things and get a controlled glimpse of the West, they were clearly on their way home. Not so the other legions of Mainlanders in the hotel. They are very easy to spot; as a general rule they are very noisy and oblivious of the reactions of others – quite unlike Singaporeans. I managed a few hours by the pool doing my 10 lengths (of a pool about a third of the Olympic size I have to admit ) and so had plenty of time for observation !

From my 15^th level room I had a good view of the brown Singapore river, now lined with eateries. I made good use of one convenience store nearby, and an Indonesian coffee shop to get quite reasonable cappuccinos. The Asian Civilisations Museum had an exhibition called the ‘Manila Galleon’ – all about the colonial links between Spain, Mexico and the Philippines – which was excellent.  I also managed to wallow in nostalgia at the Cricket and Tanglin Clubs, having a thoroughly hedonistic time therein, Gin & Tonic and The Straits Times in hand.

    Otherwise it was a celebration, occasioned by the OBE which they had found out about. The RSIS, my department at Nanyang Technological, really pushed the boat out for me, with two celebratory high level dinners with any number of seriously big wheels attending and a deeply embarrassing Conference reception where everyone (there were about a hundred people there) was told at excruciating length of my sterling qualities. Here’s the RSIS/Singapore Staff College team who were behind it all. 

 The whole thing was overwhelming. When it came to my ‘few words’ I could think of nothing to say and for all the world did a great impression of a fluttering actress getting her first Oscar. Cringing,

Oh and the conference itself. That was pretty good too.   

Getting a Gong and Going West

 

 

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic with innumerable high spots and one or two lows. One of the highest of the high spots, one has to say was getting a gong from the King. I have never paid much attention to the New Year’s Honours List, except once for being able to get an MBE for my excellent and long-serving secretary at the Greenwich Naval College many years ago. So I approached the ceremony not knowing at what was entailed and, actually was faintly dreading it. But as it turned out, the whole thing was a delight. For a start the investiture was going to be at Windsor Castle . This was a bonus, as I’d been to another event at the palace already. We were allowed to take three guests, the number of my ‘children,’ so no issues of choice there. We stayed at the obvious hotel a few yards from the entrance and so were able to gather for dinner, breakfast and celebratory lunch afterwards.

The whole thing was very friendly and we were ushered from place to place with maximum efficiency. We got the very definite impression they’d done it all before. Everything from the policemen at the gate onwards to the innumerable service people and others inside the castle was prefaced by their saying  ‘Congratulations’ until we finally reached the Waterloo Chamber where my batch was to processed. A quick short briefing and into action, photographs all around. Get issued with a hook, for the medal to be hung on, walk up, exchange a few words, shake hands and exit. One is not supposed to relay the content conversations with the Sovereign, so suffice it to say the Naval College at Greenwich was the subject. He went on course when I was teaching there. Afterwards, loads more photographs and disperse. The castle was closed to visitors that day so we had the place to ourselves and were able to take some more informal photographs. Me in my finery in a sentry box. That kind of thing.

The only shadow on the proceedings was that later in the afternoon, I had to take the Eurostar to Brussels for my annual visit to the Defence College, so there wasn’t much time to hang about afterwards. Christopher kindly drove me to St Pancras, and off I went . I had assumed that shaking myself free of a long commitment at Newport I would have a lot more free time. Not much sign of that so far I have to say.

Of course, the Brussels session was followed almost immediately by the long Christmas festivities – a busy, often frenetic time for all concerned and the first week of the New Year saw me returning to Newport for the first of what seems likely to be the first of a very occasional series of short visits to give lectures, join in conferences and things of that sort. I must say that returning, very definitely out of the tourist season, and renewing acquaintance with the people and places I like when there are not tourists around has been highly enjoyable. This last was a very successful and fun week. I even quite fortuitously ended up staying in my old apartment/wooden cottage for the week.

With no leaves on the trees there was a good view of Narragansett Bay and the bridge. This time my rental car was a Kia Soul - Snowflake IV, no problem at all.

From the house I was able to gauge progress on the house I used to watch being constructed on my walk to the nearest coffee house. 

Of course, I managed to squeeze in the two mansions that were open. The Breakers and Rosecliffe. The weather was pretty dire for the Breakers but meant I had the whole mansion practically to myself, which was nice.

Rosecliffe had a special exhibition on the connections between Newport, trade and China, which I thought interesting, and in view of the current state of tensions between China and the US, particularly apposite. Talking of trade, the Houthi issue in the Red Sea, kept me busy in the relatively few hours I had to myself  as my colleagues back in Singapore wanted an OpEd to mark their joining in Operation Prosperity Guardian (shooting down missiles and drones ) for Channel News Asia.
          Some spectacular seas were evident at Rosecliffe with towering columns of foam shooting up from the rocks below the clifftop balustrade (which of course I kept missing with my phone camera). Two of the local beaches have been transformed by extraordinary storms this week.

The same explained one of the ‘lows’ of this period – namely the sixth flooding of the Granny Annexe by run-off water from the hills behind us. It came, just before I left for the US, as an absolute torrent that ruthlessly exploited the one weak link in my extensive defences that have held the line for the past decade or so, but couldn’t this time. Hauling up an extremely heavy pump from the well in pitch darkness and heavy rain at 2200 was no fun, especially with a flight a day later. The other low was hitting a pothole and shredding the tyre. There was  no spare tyre  Since we were on a country lane, in rain and darkness and a very young granddaughter was aboard, I decided to limp the several miles home. It was awful journey, crunching along, but amazingly did no damage to speak of, and I needed a new tyre anyway !

So that’s all waiting for me to address now that I am home again. As are the Christmas decorations which the flood meant I didn’t have time to take down before I left. Mind you, I notice they keep them up a lot longer in the US. Last night I had a Russian dinner with some friends and they of course go by the Orthodox calendar, which is 13 days behind ours. No such liturgical excuse for me though ! I do however have to recommend the Siberian way they deal with salmon. Absolutely delicious. Almost worth going to Krasnoyarsk for, other things being equal - which sadly they are not at the moment