Farewell drinkies in a shop-house

 

Farewell drinkies in a shop house

This month in Singapore has just whizzed by and was much busier frankly than I had anticipated. Usefully and enjoyably so, though. Part of this was the fact that I got in a bit of teaching at SAFTI, the Singapore Staff college. I do actually enjoy teaching – one of the reasons why I was  bit sad to say I definitely wasn’t going to do my 4 month Elective again last time. I’ll still have my so-called ‘Advisor’ role, though. Because it takes so long for Elective courses to go through the Approval process, a new colleague has been drafted to teach it as well as set up his alternative course for later. He’s panicking a bit and I will probably be doing a bit of the ‘teach the teacher’ work the next time I come in July.

But this time in addition to doing all the usual things, I’ve been particularly engaged with Singapore’s wild-life this time around. When he set up Singapore as an independent state in 1965, he was determined to make the place a ‘green city’.  In addition to the usual feng shui reasons of appeasing the gods and trying to make the place a nice one to live in, he wanted everyone to see that Singapore, was enlightened, rich and sufficiently organised to engage in and maintain parks and streets thickly lined with attractive trees and bushes. This is in striking contrast to other cities in Southeast Asia where if there are any green spaces at all they often look accidental, stunted and neglected. One of the most striking examples of this is Bidari park, which a couple of my colleagues took me to one weekend. This is a relatively new development in part based on a Japanese Garden created in the British era and an old cemetery. It’s quite extraordinary and although closely surrounded by tall apartment blocks and shopping malls on every side, you are plunged into kind of manicured rain forest absolutely packed with exotic birds, lizards, squirrels and most amazing of all otters which you see splashing around in the small lake catching and eating fish. It was a terrific visit. The challenge for Singapore is how to keep going with a rapidly expanding population, with new building going on everywhere. The population has got half as big again since 2000 and is still rising. Necessary but difficult to cope with. Maybe a third are temporary workers from overseas, especially southern Asia.

There was a downside to my green adventure though. It was blisteringly hot and extremely humid. Glasses, binoculars and camera kept fogging up  and I was absolutely dripping so trying to capture humming birds fluttering about in the leaves was a real challenge. Even my colleagues (Indonesian and Singaporean) had a definite sheen to them. There are less exotic things to see in the UK, but climate is not such a problem. 

Another problem aspect of the climate is sudden little warning torrential and often very loud thunderstorms. Really ferocious as these two shots taken out of my window suggest. Caught outside and even with an umbrella you can be completely soaked in a minute.

             

I  encountered another local challenge when walking alongside the river another day, not doing any harm to anyone. All of a sudden there was a big bang on the top of my head. I had been dive-bombed from behind by a crow. It did it a second time, until I turned on it and in an undignified way chased it away from its perch. The ‘attack’ was quite painful, but there didn’t seem to be any blood. I suppose it must have taken exception to my white hair, because you don’t see a lot of it in Singapore. Sunday is the day when hordes of Philippine and Burmese maids congregate for pic-nic get-togethers in the public parks and there was a group nearby; they were very concerned and sympathetic to a poor old chap being attacked like that. It was in the bunch of trees on the other side of the river, opposite the famous Fullerton Hotel/Old Post office and by the-almost- as-famous Glaswegian built Cavenagh bridge of 1869 which takes you over to the splendid Asian Civilisations Museum.

The other commitment has been a sometimes hectic series of social engagements in striking contrast to my normal life at home. Last week there were six of them ! One of the most interesting of these was a visit to a hawker centre where one of the stalls was run by the auntie-in-law of my colleague Jane. First time I’ve eaten pig-tail, shrimp and noodles – it wasn’t too bad, but I’m not sure I would go out of my way to choose it again.

In fact I didn’t choose it this time ! The whole thing was really interesting, especially chatting to Auntie. The stall was in Chinatown and as it turns out directly above the place where I get my Lapsang Souchong tea. Auntie and her family have been running the stall for 40 years, but it’s  a hard life. She gets up at 0200 to prepare everything and works until about 1400 on her feet all the time. She had a friend even older than she was helping out. Some of these stalls have a 3000 dollar rental per month. Since the average price of her meals is less than 10 dollars, and she has food, costs, staff, transport, and energy costs as well it’s not an easy way to make a living.

     The centre is one of many in Singapore and also one of the biggest. At a Monday lunchtime it was absolutely packed with office and others queuing for their delicacies, but the government is concerned that this distinctive aspect of Singapore life is getting harder to sustain. They provide subsidies to help keep it going. There must have been hundreds of locals there, (I didn’t see a single non-local) of all ages; they love eating there but don’t want to undertake such responsibilities themselves. A familiar problem. Like every other developed country they have a labour shortage in such jobs and often employ temporary immigrants from the area, though Auntie doesn’t. Real old school. Appropriate since one of the diners was Singapore’s leading historian, sitting opposite me.

Talking of heritage, a very different experience was attending a farewell drinkies part at one of Singapore's iconic shop-houses. Built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they have very narrow frontages but go back a long way. The shop would be in the front room, with an open air fountain or water source in the middle and accommodation and storage rooms behind. This one was converted into five mini-flats one of which was being rented by a departing colleague of mine who I have known for decades. Nowadays highly valued as heritage, they have a price to match. This one is worth about five million Sing dollars. Very enviable. Singapore like us went through a bad period in the late 1960s and 1970s in disregarding heritage, but they now protect it scrupulously. 

Since this is my last week here for a while I have been finishing things off and starting to pack up. A bigger job than usual since I am taking back the stuff I needed for the apartment I needed for longer stays and have left here for the past couple of years. I shall need to abandon some it though.  I thought I should show a picture of my main place of work at NTU. My office is quite a posh one reserved for visitors and overlooking the greenery and the trees on the other side of the building.

And talking of greenery again, I have squeezed in some more walking trips to the Botanic Gardens and got some nice shots of birds and general views, but they are all on a camera disc which I can’t currently access as I forgot to bring any of my disc readers and couldn’t face buying yet another one. Getting them will be a job for later this week when I get back to the UK. I did however manage to record a cooperative monitor lizard on my phone. Modestly sized he or she ( I don’t know how you sex a monitor) is one of hundreds at the gardens   

 

Oh to be in England, now that May is there

 

And yes, I know it’s really April, but it will do. Before departing for Singapore for a month, I managed to squeeze in a trip to the New Forest. Then the muted browns and dark greens of winter still predominated, but in the garden spring was bursting out all over and floppy bright light greens were everywhere. May is my favourite month and it’s a shame that my teaching at the Singapore staff college always appears at that time, but I’ll be back soon and hope that by the time I am the late ash and oak will be out as well. However my two (! ) temporary gardeners will have been observing ‘no mow May’ so it will look very lush and abandoned I expect.

In fact I had to leave a bit earlier than usual as I had been invited by the High Commission to an engagement session of the Five Power Defence Arrangements in Malaysia, at the enormous Butterworth air force base near Penang. Penang was one of our favourite places in the old days especially the truly iconic E&O (Eastern and Oriental) Hotel – which is Penang’s answer to Singapore’s Raffles and originally operated by the same entrepreneurial pair of Armenian brothers back in the late 19^th Century. Really stylish and surely one of the nicest swimming pools anywhere.  The old city itself is fascinating too redolent of the same period and predominantly Chinese in atmosphere. Not quite so well-manicured as Singapore with bits of romantic decay here and there – especially the local cemetery. Unfortunately, I wasn’t housed there and only drove through it en route from and to the airport. Instead, I was in another ultramodern hotel (but much less offensive than the Rotterdam one) still on the island rather than the mainland but quite far away. In an any case it was all jam-packed so not much time either. See if you can pick me out in the inevitable closing session.

Otherwise, I had a much more leisurely trip over to Jakarta to perform for their naval staff college and the University of Indonesia, plus meeting some colleagues, now known for sometime and having a number of interesting meals as usual.

Here's me looking rather serious. Limited didn't refer to my expertise (or at least I don't think so) It meant by invitation only. It was all very informal and I wore my blue batik shirt for the occasion. 

At the former I was presented with yet another shield that I inadvertently left on the returning aircraft. I had some excuse for this as most unusually for Singapore Airlines it didn’t go like clockwork. For a start, the RSIS team jumped into a flight earlier than booked. Then just as we were about to take-off the news came in that Changi airport was closed because of bad weather. So we had to sit tight on the tarmac for a couple of hours waiting for it to clear. Fortunately, I was able to keep myself entertained by plugging into 5 episodes of HBO’s ‘Veep,’  profane but funny. We eventually made it, still an hour ahead of that originally planned. It really had been a heavy storm, with a fair amount of flooding. Its unusually hot and muggy here at the moment 33-37 and really, really humid. What some ex-pats call ‘three shirt weather’. Heaven only knows how our Victorian predecessors – who made absolutely no concession to the climate – bore it with their elaborate dresses, ties, frock and waist coats. No wonder they died early. The following two shots taken from my window perhaps 5 minutes apart capture the spirit of a the tropical downpours usual in the afternoon accompanied of course by loud cracks of thunder and lightening. So that’s another reason for wistful thoughts about the crisper English versions of May.

Even so, I’ve had one or two minor excursions to favoured places, that have to be planned around the ferocious and torrential showers that happen most days . Almost everywhere there’s construction going on reducing the green spaces that Lee Kwan Yew insisted on as a visible emphasis of building his Singapore. Despite a hugely inflated population, they just about manage an impressive balance – between the green and the concrete, the old and new. The potential threat is illustrated by this slightly skewed shot of the out of window of a MRT carriage window of new-building cranes crowding around the Chinese Gardens.

It looks terrible but will probably be OK in the end. All the same Singapore is a lot better designed and built than either Jakarta or KL, but it’s not easy or free. A tribute towards the concept of ‘guided democracy’ perhaps ! Certainly, that’s how it seems given the crazy consequences of the unguided versions in the US and Europe. It all contributes to the widespread gloom about the state of things globally, that I encounter amongst my colleagues everywhere I go. 

But the best way of looking on the brighter side is indeed to plunge into nature, whether to grow cabbages, spot birds, supervise the cutting down of dead trees or just wander about enjoying it in the Botanic gardens here or back home next month.  Something else to keep one going and to look forward to.