Minimums and Maxims

Minor signs of jitteriness only thus far on the shifting of the political ground here. On the cusp of fifty years of one party rule with entrenched dynastic characteristics, the first faint stirrings of opposition are no doubt giving rise to more consternation than the top-end of town is letting on. A serious, violent riot a month ago in Singapore for goodness sake. More than a little disquieting the Democrat President in the White House pushing hare-brained ideas again of universal health care and now even an increase in the minimum wage. $7.25 insufficient and almost forty percent increase mooted, to be rammed past congress by Executive Order. In recent days the measure reported in the monopoly media here, only fair to acknowledge. It will make it difficult keeping a lid on matters locally. The usual arguments have been recapitulated thus far: self-reliance and initiative, meritocratic corrupt-free opportunity, myriad forms of social support for the misfortunate few, those falling through the cracks. Fostering enterprise free and unfettered. Government dependency dangerous. We know what we’re doing, what’s best. We made this place what it is don’t forget. Aren’t we the envy of the region if not the world? The new-age Venice. (An older chap struck it lucky at the second-hand book-store at Bras Basah the other day clutching under his arm the blood red cover of Where Would We Be If There Had Been No LKY? Perfect fare for sitting under the aircon with the pipe seeing in CNY.)

Raining Mandarins

Boxed mandarins in bright red cardboard with gold lettering all across the town the last few days, standing over a metre and a half high. The supermarkets, the greengrocer, the street stalls along the roads and those within the markets. Mr. Lim at Haig Road hoped to move something like 2600 by CNY a week away. The contract Mr. Lim had with Popular Book-store accounted for about a quarter of his trade in the CNY mandarins. Each fruit was plastic wrapped and in the deluxe article sitting within its separate compartment in the box. $8-18 & 20 was the range at Haig Road. For NY Eve Mr. Lim would close up shop a half day. There would be little rest however. As the youngest who lived with his mother, the family would gather at Mr. Lim’s four-room HDB on the Eve and again over the following days. The elder siblings were all grandparents now, four sisters and a brother. Ninety guests altogether expected. Mrs. Lim would be busy in the run-up. Apart from Popular, who deliver boxes to the staff of schools they supply with stationery, two or three customers take around 200 boxes. The small Haig Road stall naturally could not manage such scale. Mr. Lim had an arrangement with his supplier to home deliver orders. The practice of mandarin gifts recalled our own Easter back home, Bab colouring her eggs on her stove with onion skins. More adept housewives achieved brighter colours with their secret methods—red, brilliant and violet blue and emerald—against which we offered our shamefully streaked brown. At the grounds of St. George in St. Albans Stevie Dakic won scores of eggs in the contests with his disguised wooden manufacture. Rather stupendous to consider there would be the odd child here still delighted to receive their own glossy mandarin from the chest delivered to the house on NY’s Eve. In the neighbourhood one had seen such children sitting patiently at the eatery tables, or walking in-hand with parents. Malay more often than not, but Chinese too. Gong xi gong xi gong xi ni. Happy New Year of the Horse.

 

 

 

                                                                                                Geylang Serai, Singapore

Playing Ball

Turned thirteen and keen on football since the return from the U.K., the two kids have been pestering the maids every afternoon to play with them. There was no escape every afternoon at five o'clock before dinner. Both were called upon. When one tired the other took over and so it went until the kids had had enough. From the ball the women needed to immediately repair to the kitchen. The onerousness was either conveyed somehow to Sir, or else he made his own understanding, whereupon he told the children to leave the "Aunties" be as they were busy and had much to do. Weekends Sir took the kids to the Botanical Gardens for some ball play; through the week he got home late. There were two balls in the house, one kept locked up by Sir. Preparations for CNY raised the level of activity in the house too, lengthening the list of tasks. Today Rina needed to clean the kitchen cupboards before she could leave on her free day, noon before she was done. With Mame back in London Popo had taken command of the household. Sir's appeal to the children had fallen on deaf ears and the pestering of the maids continued for ball play, only finally coming to an end a few days ago when a long ball sailed up into the upper storey of the neighbouring bungalow. This bungalow remained vacant in-between leasing to orang putih — white people. No trespass was possible there. The kids would not go over themselves. Some peace for the two maids in Bukit Timah in the final run-down to the festivities.

Art to Burn (Art Stage SG)

Art Stage Singapore Friday afternoon fulfilled expectations.

        WSJ Cafe for pause after the first round. One of the exhibits was produced in conjunction with Lamborghini; another might have been inadequately attempting to lampoon BMW (unless it was product placement again—it didn't seem worth closer investigation). 

         A Japanese meltdown of the iconic MBS Integrated Resorts—casino, hotel &etc., which stands opposite the exhibition complex—together with the Sydney Opera House post- upcoming apocalypse seemed tame. The longest stop was at a five screen presentation of contemporary trucker trade across the old Silk Road—scrap-metal in Kyrgyzstan exchanged for tightly packed textiles in China. You sat before the mounted screens and took in whatever you could get of the flickering sequences. Finally it seemed a more effective realisation than the smoother editing might have accomplished. 

         Mostly a march past the booths was enough. The targeted condo and bungalow market produced a good deal of glitz from which to choose for decoration: oversize garish colours (defiant baby pink), movable parts—an inflatable elephant raising its trunk, flapping ears, stampeding it may have been. 

         Matched dazzle was given by the attendants and gallery owners, many good performance artists themselves, part-Bond, part-impresario. 

         A number of ice-buckets held chilled bottles on desks perhaps following notable purchases. 

         Unexpectedly, the piece the Paragon fashion mall on Orchard Road had commissioned for its forecourt stood modestly in early model form in a quiet corner of one of the booths, among the rest of the genre. The heart shape of the pink and silver bow here had been superseded in the final product for the shopping strip.

          Brown water latte @ WSJ Cafe $6. Luckily the Media Desk boy provided free entry on presentation of a biz card and mention of the PR gal.

          On the final circuit the small booth that held particular interest for a friend in Australia doing a PhD on colonial echoes in the contemporary culture of the region was happened upon. Glimmers here and there of interest in the old archival photographs, with insertions of the artists pointing to the disturbances and upheavals involved. Slight, glancing effects in the pictorial form for this viewer; young student work developed during an Arts Residency at Cementi House in Jogja, lacking force and energy, I'm afraid Lushan, and entirely out of place in such a setting.

A-list Art Wank

Thought had been the art scene in France had dwindled like most other places; hence a flight out to warmer parts still flying the flag.

They were attempting to get the Arts off the ground in Sing—soft power, tourist dollars, tweaked with allied commercial interests.

Therefore this latest icon to add to the Orchard Road retail strip. Something fitting for high-end Paragon.

Mostly right it turned out. The fellow in question had form, a thoroughbred riding in Chanel, LV and Gucci colours previously. Man had galloped round the grounds of the Versailles Palace, no less. Cache collateral.  

Other A-list artists had been commissioned for Paragon too, for public areas around Marina Bay & the CBD. 

The Paragon Executive Director spoke frankly: Noeud Rouge / Red Knot—“a piece about infinity and energy. You can see yourself in an infinity of reflections," according to the artist sculptor—was chosen to complement what the mall had to offer. (Premium fashion.) 

         The second column on intention, artistic process, colour and effect deserved 24 strokes of the cane in the ante-chamber of artistic hell. 

         Jean-Michel Othoniel the artist.  

         Deepika Shetty Arts Correspondent

 

 

NB. Another consideration of this particular art work can be found in “Bread & Circus”, published by San Antonio Review.

 

https://www.sareview.org/pub/l4n51qpx/release/1

Forbes Singapore & Dynastic Alliances

Day two and now three of the most sensational kidnapping case in over a decade here fails to turn up the wee little detail doing the rounds of the street this end of Geylang. OK, a heavy hitter involved of course: Forbes No. 3 locally, weighing in at a cool five-one-five mil. Climbed from pig farming and suddenly blossoming with supermarkets to enter a much, much, muchos higher tier. Nice work. Big iron frame on the entry-gate at home didn't help cos the chaps pulled the mum off the street with a likely story. An alright sort the old dear it seems, giving everybody a Hello at the local food stalls. Pair of inept villains gay couple, according to the reliable Straits Times. Strange the sleuths at the offices didn't twig to the little ittzy-bittzy small tiny other tid-bit. The PM's relief wasn't a put-on. Noooo. In fact family had been involved. In a little figurative, if not literal tweet, the leader of the shocked nation commended the police for a "great job". In his F-book post: "Glad Madame Ng is safe and sound. Also glad that her son...alerted the police as soon it happened.”     

         No mention of the PM's younger brother fretting over his son's mother-in-law's ordeal. See, the PM's younger bro has a son; the tycoon, towkay in Chinese, a daughter. Neat marriage; fitting. Escaped the ken of the S.T. hounds, who got everything else into the story. Not relevant to the matter perhaps, even if true. Coincidence. Not necessarily a billionaires tight little circle. Can’t jump to conclusions.   

         Without a Parliamentary Register of Assets can it be known here the wealth of the pollies? Scurrilous rumours persist in the Malay end of town that Mr. Lee pere, the great statesman and benefactor of the nation, might be the richest man on the planet, never mind the little red dot hot spot. A fellow should not repeat such gutter talk, as one was reminded trapped within the elevator at the National Library at the present time. A photograph would capture it nicely, were this phobia less virulent in this KonicaFujiKodak heaven. Social Program warning against credence being given rumour; truth, verifiable truth was the golden prize; &etc. &etc. In the elevators of the Library, across the concourse by the escalators, over the walls on the 8^th storey. 

Can you tell fact from fantasy? 

Learn to decipher the true story. 

S.U.R.E. source. understand. research. evaluate…

A COOL STORY or a fool’s story?... 

(Too many others to mention.)

Sunday Corso in the Tropics

Eye-popping deep blue-indigo cowboy shirt with white piping, twin pockets, super cut sported by a flash granddad in his mid-seventies. Magnifico. Top notch. There's an outlet somewhere perhaps in the Jurong Badlands beside a traffic viaduct where these old Elvis dudes source the articles; small clientele rogue threads like that on a can-do, go-getter island like this run by ironed white shirts, ties & leathers. Nice buckle only glimpsed, such was the radiance of the chest, shining like a breast-plate on a richly caparisoned knight in the Holy lands. Thinned dye swept back, comb in the rear of the jeans must have been. Chaps at the Labu Labicorner table at —now Sri Geylang Café—caught their breath watching that number prance past borne by the lord of the jungle.

 

Hired Help (Buffalo Street Again)

Sounded like Gambir when she called, the Madame at the Blue Diamond. Early fifties, plenty loaded here. The Sir is the opulent one. Just this afternoon the observation from the side table unavoidably passed to the height the trouser were hitched on the belly. A style from back home. One remembers it from the early 60’s in the older men of the neighbourhood, usually our foreign contingent of the various sorts; from photographs from the Levant and Greece; old movies of the same region. Approximately three inches above the belly-button. Still enough room to breathe, but Golly-gee. However that be, the Madame far more restrained. Sir carries giant inch and one half heads on the rings either hand; bracelets both arms; the waiter Prakasam avers dripping gold under the shirt too. Madame has got fat with him though, that partnership firm. A half hour after her arriving for her afternoon stint at the till one of the lads called over in order to fish out her work-a-day slippers under the stand. Each day feeling around there with her toes turns up nada. One of the lads bending on all fours with an eighteen inch ruler soon fishes out the flip-flops. All set.

          Sounded like gambir. That would have been no surprise. Prakasam was Bright; or, as this author prefers, Effulgent. Nice lad. Gambir was nice too. As at Komala Vilas, most all within these establishments on Buffalo Street well above average niceness. No room for league tables here.

         Madame had assumed a masala. No Madame, ginger lassi today.

         — Gambir. Gambir. (It ought have been recorded on the whizz-bang computerized system.) Gambir.

         The spice of course. Why not? Not a reason in the world.

         In fact no.

         Tambi is Little Brother in Tamil. Chap concerned early/mid twenties. On approximately, say, $950 per calendar month, twelve hour days and half day free per month. (Prakasam again avers. Highly illegal of course. No room for social justice here.) Sir/Madame have shit-loads. Evidently not Brahmin class, but who cares. That was then. Serious dosh. Late week and weekends a seat almost impossible to obtain at the Diamond. Good tucker. Turnover might be in the order of $25k a week perhaps. The lad here certainly no blood relation. Nooooo.

         Tambi. Tambi. Not Shit-head. Not, Hey you, Fuck-face. Yeah, you. You hearing me! Get yer arse over ‘ere. No again. No. Something else in these parts. Another clue for those slow-coaches still bumbling.