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.