ANOTHER NEW YEAR AND HOMEWARD BOUND

 

My time in Singapore this time has simply flashed by in part because I have been much busier than usual. I’ve finished with my last long teaching session, enjoying the student contact as much as ever. In fact they have been both the largest and arguably the best group I have ever had. Not just in their written work (where AI means one has to be wary of high standards these days) but in the presentations and class participation part of it as well. A nice bunch to end with. I was actually very touched when a Philippine student, who’s fine but not outstanding in the class, sidled up to me as I left and presented me with a bag of Philippine cakes and biscuits, for me ‘to have with your coffee.’ So that side of things, has been great,  though I am less enamoured with all the bureaucratic nausea that goes with teaching these days.  

Of course the big event of the last three weeks was Chinese New Year, when again I was invited to attend a family – and really its should be dynastic – celebration. A good 50 people all told with a lot of chattering (about half of which was in Hokkien or Mandarin) the rest in English or Singlish. This was, I have to say full on. I was there about 8 hours. Much eating - and drinking though I have noticed that the locals are much more abstemious  with alcoholl than most of us decadent westerners. One highlight is the ‘Prosperity Toss.’  All the ingredients of this are gathered ceremoniously into a representation of the year – in this case the Year of the Fire Horse. Hence the horse head picture of the plate.

All of the ingredients are ‘auspicious’ of something or other – health, wealth, good fortune, lots of children etc. Once assembled everyone pitches in with chop sticks and chants theoretically tossing the contents into the air to lock in the beneficial effects. Large numbers need to do it in relays ! Aficionados try to hit the ceiling but we didn’t have any of them. Its fun, but I’m not sure the video of my role in this will work.(it didn't)

The other major activity was Blackjack. The real thing – and it has to be with money, usually based on the Hong Bao money one gives out to kids – in ceremonial red packets. I had come prepared for this of course. Two and a half hours. I was pleased only to be down by 3 dollars  at the end. The real card sharps were the kids who can’t be seen in this pic. The other grandfather in the pic (and there were several present at various stages) seemed very stern, did everything in Hokkien, but lost ‘heavily’. Interestingly they didn’t allow increasing bets after the cards were dealt but had a lot of special cases to be remembered. It certainly passed the time !

That and related activity practically gutted one week and the one before saw us squeezing in a very compressed trip to Kuala Lumpur. Lots of academic interactions, including their defence University. But two of us (I must admit at my suggestion as a perpetual grockle) went off to look at what is now called the Seri Negara a rather grand summerhouse that used to be one of the major colonial headquarters. General Templar stayed there during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s. It now houses a technically very upmarket museum of Malaya’s path to independence. It was fascinating to compare this with the special exhibition My colleagues and I had been shown round at Singapore’s National Library the week before.

This was based on the so-called  ‘Albatross file’ – something that had been kept secret since 1965. This up-ended the long assumption that Singapore, after years of difficult negotiations, had effectively been kicked out of the British inspired Malayan Federation (of Malaya, Brunei and Singapore) by the Malaysians – effectively Tunku Rahman. This led to Lee Kuan Yew famously crying on TV when he announced it to his people, believing that the city wouldn’t prosper on its own. The file showed in fact that there were a group of Singaporean senior politicians who thought that Malaysia would be an ‘albatross’ tied around Singapore’ neck and who actively strove for independence.

But the Malaysian exhibition literally didn’t even mention Singapore; nor did it have more than a passing reference to the ‘Confrontation’  of the 1960s with Indonesia, when British forces protected Singapore, Brunei, Sarawak and Sabah against Indonesian military attacks. There was also plenty of references to colonial exploitation generally not seen in Singapore. I found all this really interesting and illustrates the tensions below the surface in all the local relationships, of which the little local war between Cambodia and Thailand is another example. But as you can see, it was a delightful building and made for a very fulfilling visit.

          Of course, Singapore has indeed prospered on its own, doing much better than both Indonesia and Malaysia so far. But as this shot of KL at night time from the open air top floor bar and pool of my hotel shows, the city isn’t by any means a sleepy little town either. Though it has a much more extensive, scruffier, old ethnic Chinatown than Singapore. On one day we were invited to another full-on Chinese New Year lunch with prosperity tosses and all the rest of it in the  heart of that area which was really, really noisy and great fun. The only problem a programme mix-up meant this was our second big lunch of the day, having already had one at NDU. But our host had gone to so much trouble we all did our best. Fortunately the next stop was the airport.

On top of all this there were quite a few invites out and special events, so apart from staggering around the Botanic Gardens a few times, I found I had much less time for grockling than I had anticipated. But there’s always May, when all being well I shall be back for several weeks. After all this Allington will seem very quiet.   

Things old and new

 

It’s shortly the year of the Fire Horse and it would be hard for Singaporeans not to be aware of that. This one stands, or rather rears,  in the middle of New Bridge Street which is a busy road that runs alongside Chinatown.

Upper Hokkien street feeds into it. I mention that since that’s where I get my Lapsang Souchong tea from (though it costs a lot more here than it does in Devizes, make of that what you will). The horse appeared almost overnight – a nice illustration of the blending of old and new. Old ideas, new format. That goes for Chinatown too and in fact everywhere in Singapore despite the surface modernity of much of it. Look closely, or around the corner, and you’ll find bits of the original still hanging in there. It’s why I like it, I suppose. 

Behind the horse for example you can see the Majestic theatre. It looks like an Art Deco cinema, but actually it was a Cantonese Opera House built in 1927 so it’s not very likely that either my father or Cherry’s went there when stationed here or passing through before the war. Cantonese opera is an acquired taste. They would certainly have recognised Chinatown, though, and the Tiger and Tsingtao beer is probably much the same. 

            Perhaps that train of thought was set off by my re-visiting the refurbishing Singapore national museum last weekend. It’s in a splendidly recycled colonial era building – probably the biggest in Southeast Asia – founded in the mid 19^th Century. To cover up the on-going refurbishment they put on two big displays of Singapore’s history, mercifully free of the anti-Imperial cant so common these days. One was a kind of sound and light show that you walked through by descending a circular ramp, starting with today and going down to the remote past. It was very effective and photogenic.

I liked this portrayal of the old kampong days, and the awfulness of the war was particularly well done. Equally so, its depiction of the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in December 1941. But the fore and after really comes across from old photos, like this one of the river just before the First World War.

 Now the river is almost completely empty apart from a few tourist boats chugging around – all the shipping has shifted now partly to Keppel Harbour and now to a brand-new ultra-modern, automated port at Tuas at the western end of the island. Building that was a gigantic project of extraordinary complexity that puts our shambling H2S to shame. There’s nothing like a bit of ‘guided democracy’ to get things done ! It’s the same at my university campus which was largely green when we first came here 20 odd years ago but now has no less than three underground stations being built on it with twisting overhead tracks all over the place. It’s still full of trees though. Likewise the shop-houses on the quayside behind the boats in the river are still there, though mainly restaurants and bars these days.

I go to college twice a week by public transport the underground -or MRT Mass Rapid Transport and bus (and once by minivan) and am always struck by how deeply underground my Downtown line is. The lift, if uninterrupted, takes a full minute travelling quite fast to get down to my platform. Some of the escalators are hugely long. And yet before the war when the military wanted to dig trenches on the Padang ( Singapore’s equivalent of a village green even with the cricket club nearby) for protection against Japanese planes, they were dissuaded by the locals who said the water table was so high they would flood. Or so we are told !

Anyhow enough of that.  I have been extremely busy teaching and participating in conferences and the like, not the leisured life I had been thinking of, but can still find time for the odd local excursion to favoured places. Unimaginative it might be, but the Botanical Garden just next door a great and easy lure. There’s nearly always something to see.

It might be a shot of a white-fronted waterhen picking his way across the lily-pads or a tiny Kingfisher, or this chap, a monitor lizard dozing at the water’s edge right by the path, so well camouflaged that most people walked past without seeing him, even though he was a good 5 feet long. 

I did spot him , and took the photo.  while I was so engaged, a small group of young French gentlemen came over to see. ‘Oooo la,la,’ one said, impressed. I didn’t know they really said that !

A sleeping dragon beginning to wake up. So, to summarise, out here one quietly continues to take delight in little things, be they old or new.    

Welcome home !

 

 

Well, that’s what they said to me when I got back to Singapore after the Christmas break. That was because under my current contract I am resident of Singapore not a visitor, but it felt strange all the same as I had already had a very good welcome home beforehand ! Nice though, all the same. I had a hassle free flight to the UK arriving in the early hours of December 9^th, got home finding everything in order, unpacked and then went out straightaway to Devizes to get the necessary Christmas tree – or two if there was a suitable small one for the dining room. I was shocked to find the usual place of purchase almost completely denuded but managed just one and that was shorter than usual. The rest of the day everything went up and two months of postage was processed.

Team Powell arrived just after a big Sainsbury’s delivery which also had to be stashed away. The Walthamstow gang arrived the following day. The first Christmas dinner was at te King’s Arms – an enormous affair and very welcome. Fun and jollity followed. It was great  first part of an extended Christmas-New Year break. Packed with activity and two weeks completely free of academics, apart from emails, which just can’t be escaped.

A couple of days on my own, in which I sorted things out and started packing for my return flight and chased up an errant US bank account and arranged the fiendishly expensive travel insurance I now have to pay for an extended stay abroad. The to Cross-in-hand. On the way I treated my self to a trip to Bosham, a place connected with the House of Godwinson and the beginnings , I like to think, of the family history project I am aiming to do. Fascinating and lovely place well worth a visit. I parked at the water’s edge and enjoyed a sandwich before doing the local Church. It’s thought also to be the place where Cnut bade the tide stop rising. His 8 year old daughter is buried in the Church after having drowned in the harbour. It doesn't lookit from this angle but is one of the oldest Saxon/Early Norman Churches

It's also the place from which Harold Godwinson, the future victim of the Battle of Hastings, and the Tills' probable landlord set out on his ill-fated visit to William Duke of Normandy. This is how the Church is portrayed in the Bayeux tapestry. The church looks a bit different now but the great Saxon chancel arch is still there.

On Christmas eve,  a carol service in which we made our way around selected suitable sites, a pub appropriately called the star, and into a very upmarket stable (with a swimming pool in a local farmstead) with a real baby Jesus who only had a melt-down when being out back into his car having performed his role perfectly up to then. The Church itself of course and some moments around a blazing and most welcome bonfire. All very nice, and made up for the fact that at the last minute I couldn't get into Salisbury cathedral for its spectacular version because it was completely full. Christmas day itself was a jolly one and busy one, especially when all the Patricks came. Time also for a walk to a nearby wood and on Boxing day all the clan turned up for present exchanges more eating and drinking and of course the expected photo on the stairs.

Back to Wiltshire for a couple of days via another House of Godwin Church (Compton two miles north of West Marden the first documented Till residence in 1386). I largely finished packing for the flight back to Singapore, changed library books, got my next stash of pills, brought some firewood in from the garage and battened the garden down for what seemed likely to be a cold snap after I left. R,S + V arrived on the 30^th. The second Christmas supper out at the Peppermill in Devizes followed. New Year’s eve to the Savernake forest to track down – and measure ! – some of its collection of grand old  oaks, the  Big Belly Oak is especially famous, one of the 50 finest old national trees, right be the road unfortunately. The Seymour Oak 10 meters in circumference also had a hollow interior which Violet enjoyed and the equally impressive Cathedral oak. Here two members of the team peer out from the latter.

It was a beautiful day and the slightly misty woodland looked fantastic even without the big oaks.

The cows in Allington got a second visit, though Violet wasn’t as keen on being licked as Barney’s Ambrin was ! Then it was take-down and departure time. All hands to the plough. RS+V left at 1200, my Heathrow taxi an hour later. Timings were tight !

 

And that was that. Or so I thought. Because for only the second time in my life I was given an upgrade to First Class which turned out to be a very nice way to start the New Year !