Monkey Nuts

Raffles. Takes up an entire city block. Heavy Victorian landmark of its time. Boutique stores ring each balcony, with the hollowness such places exhibit for all their staging and illumination—antiques, dowdy high-end fashion, jewelry, intimidating shop assistants.
         The Long Bar was the destination. Goal: a Singapore Sling. $26 a throw, as advertised on the Net.

         “Monkey nuts" were part of the routine, salted somehow and lightly roasted in their shells it seemed. The husks were tossed onto the marble floor—flung in proper form. A fair dispensation in tidy-town Singapore. The flinging complemented the slinging—both were equally prominent in the Net mention.

         Em had to have a Sling; couldn't go to Singapore without. Being an understanding boy-friend, Neil went along. What was the guide supposed to do?

         One shrewd young couple who had dressed for the occasion sat at table perusing the menu, ate a few nuts and took pics of themselves, before rising and making for the door.

         Filled pretty much; almost entirely with ex-pats. Camera flashes every side. Lots of families, more so than romantic couples. One or two had the Sling ordered for under-age children, precocious girls. 

         Nothing raucous. No hunter-types returned from an outing in pith helmets. (On sale in the Chinatown stalls.) No safari suits. Brash Etonians had moved to the Intercontinental possibly. One Indian family were dressed as if visiting the Maharaja. 

         The monkey nuts were served in wooden boxes filled to over-flowing. Three people might empty the box in little more than an hour and a half if they went about it, had the waiters allowed. Twice our box was replenished, the first time something under half way. Management well knew how best to rid themselves of malingerers sitting on a single drink.
         Chap at neighboring table had a half yard of beer standing almost head high. Abschooner of Tiger, the local brew was $20. Sling or no sling, you were stung at Raffles.
Ticked off now a month in.

Ramadan

Three hundred and eighty five a week at a rundown hotel in a dowdy old quarter. Dorm bedding between eight and twenty available in the vicinity for $25 per night, mostly catering for travelers. A room of a similar size not far off in a newly renovated house that the landlord has turned into a small hostel offers savings of about eight hundred and fifty a month, housing mainly ex-pats on work contracts. A  prudent decision pending the last fortnight.
         Aircon, phone and ensuite sizeable luxuries at Hotel Joo Chiat. Peeling paint, holes in the bed linen, toilet roll for tissue paper. A couple of lights out, bedside wired with the one-speed tractor-cooler. The large window brings a refreshing morning breeze when the sun isn't blazing early.
         A multi-level commercial carpark immediately adjacent and supermarket adjoining. On the other side a wide grassy field where someone feeds birds in the morning. Like all grassland on this side of town, the ground is usually completely empty. The little park beside Guillemard sometimes finds some Indians on the bench seats. Last night the French horn player from the HDB block above City Plaza blew the overture to Aida, back turned to the dirty water in the canal. Young foreign workers make out on their free Sundays in the field beside Paya Lebar MRT; otherwise the heat does for the traditional recreation even where there are trees.
         Supermarket delivery truck at four alternate mornings and Indian night-shift crews carting the steel framing for the tenting being erected on all sides. The last few week the lads have had the look of circus performers shimmying up the posts barefoot for better grip; up on the peaks fifteen and twenty feet in the air the plastic cover is hoisted by ropes like a sail on a dhow. 
         Ramadan at the end of the month promises a large affair, visitors from Malaysia and Indonesia to be expected.
         Thus far one other Westerner encountered in the corridors at Hotel J. C., an older Dutchman who with his wife makes sure in Asia they stay away from Western tourists. No doubt the pair knew the significance of the green arrow on the ceilings in the rooms. In 233 it points toward a utility hatch of some kind, for the electrical wiring it was more or less presumed. When Neil and Emily visited Em was unable to sleep under a directive of that sort and immediately made the discovery. (The kiblat indicates the direction of Mecca, in the case of 233 turned to the south toward Australie.)
         Geylang Serai is the Malay quarter in Singapore, somehow miraculously guessed by Nance Ong as the most congenial for the newcomer. Indonesians are the largest part of the clientele; thus far no terrorists.
 

Chinatown 2 (published Asian Cha)

Three dozen playing; ten dozen perhaps congregating. Some of the games have a dozen looking on from the sides, two dozen closely focused, attentive eyes. The men soundless and mostly standing, studious in their regard. Within the walls of the nearby temple worshippers are less concentrated. (Reminds one of those mythical books said to so grip a man that he might read it through standing, leaning on a post. The Montenegrins say a person would listen to something truly captivating while rain poured behind their ears.)
         Chinese checkers one side; chess the other. The latter fifty cent-sized flat round disks carrying an identifying character. An inner city square of the usual size. Toward the reconstructed, highly ornate carmine-red temple there stands a stage where a concert was held a couple of weeks ago featuring old songs in a vaudeville-like presentation. On that night there were perhaps a couple of hundred people on plastic seats that had been arranged for the event—families, elderly, lovers, the lot, singing along, clapping, marveling. These board-games took place during the height of the afternoon heat. Middle aged and older men in thongs and tees down from the HDB towers. There were no women, only the occasional passer-by. The large food hall at the base of one of the towers; stalls of various kinds to the side; tourist aisles close-by always thronged. This quiet centre of Chinatown a little oasis.
         On all sides calm, patience, deference to age, a little larking at success and once or twice small gasps at errors. Numerous old leathered grandmasters heavily afflicted by their smoking, taking the habit full term. An outsider moving among them gets no notice whatever, such is the level of interest.
         Nothing comparable, nothing of a similar order imaginable in any Western country for the last how many decades?  

This piece was integrated into a larger work that was published in the Hong Kong Asian Cha Literary Journal, Dec 2013, titled, “Ancient China: Post- (Almost) LKY Singapore”

https://www.asiancha.com/content/view/1552/424/

Durian

Wikipedia has much good information on durian. Good descriptions on the challenging matter of its smell and taste—sewerage, filthy laundry, rotten fruit, bitter almonds; &etc. (Laudatory description was the lesser part of the entry.) 

         If there was anything lacking it was sufficient attention to the texture of the fruit, both on the palate and in hand.
A burst old scrotum, Em suggested, getting close to the matter.
         The yellowy white sack of fruit inside the shell had within a little oval nut that wasn't easy to detect through the outer layers.
         Custard cropped up more than once in the discussion, for colour and surface texture more than anything else. This gooey tissue however stuck to the fingers like streaky glue. Like no other food known to man, at least not in its natural state. No doubt it was not meant to remain in the fingers so long.
         Skeins of stretched fibre clung to the tongue and refused to go down. Revulsion was no doubt part of the problem.   

         Equally, traversing the tongue to the back of the mouth and then tipping down needed more than jawing. A raw snail straight from the shell was likely easier to take, as its flesh would surely not distend and congeal like durian. 

         People fix on the smell as if that was the greatest challenge. That really was the smallest part.
         Political differences in Singapore or anywhere else were not divided any more strongly than on the two sides of the question of the King of Fruits, as durian was known by its admirers.
         With an admirable spirit of investigation, Neil got down three of the pods.
         Five or six dollars for a medium sized, something larger than a coconut, on the stalls in the streets.

Art of Seeing 2

A hunchbacked dwarf trooping up Geylang last night. Like every other foot-slogger there, whether Chinese, Indian, working girl or labourer, the man paced with settled, perfect composure. 
         A working girl has prepared herself for the street, the adjustment for all the observation she will attract made in her room prior to coming down. But the five or six hundred dollar a month mainland Chinese or Indian labourer who toils day and night in the heat, how do they manage such ease and lightness? And then the hunchbacks and cripples? 

         Earlier Em had noticed a chap at one of the eatery tables with a large dark mole on his cheek from which sprouted 200mm hairs. That particular kind of sight is not common back home; but surely there are no fewer hunchbacks, cripples, bent, disabled or deformed. Are there fewer on the streets in cooler climates? Is it harder to brave our streets for some reason? Are cripples still targeted and attacked in Western cities? (Here such things are completely and quite unknown.)
         Emily had an interesting thought. Perhaps in the Chinese or Asian guise the crippled, maimed and the deformed are more striking to our Western eyes. Those particular, unfamiliar characteristics in that form recast the entire visual sensibility. A possible reason for our attention being drawn so strongly.

Joss Stick

A paper shirt! young Neil comes upon on Geylang, making the discovery in an instant. How did he know it was paper just passing casually like that?

         The shirt was wrapped in plastic display pack with firm backing. Fixed and rigid, nothing to indicate the material. The colouring was unusual, muted kind of hippy flower tones—pale sky-blue, faded pink and tainted vanilla. The button-down collar was another colour. Ruffs in a panel down the front to go under an unimaginable dinner jacket.

         Unlike at any other shop-front here, the woman in back remained at her station, uninterested in the customers.

         Overhead hung large, what seemed like plastic tip-trucks, also wrapped in cellophane. Some pairs of flip-flops, as they are called now, glossy and ornate. Understandably, Neil was puzzled.

         The shop signage was in Chinese characters; nothing in English. Not so exceptional on Geylang. The interior of the shop seemed to give a warning in that particular tone of Buddhist red. Were apples that colour in childhood—not toffee apples, apples from the tree? or had that been only picture-books? Fire engine red was close; Santa's tone too. A signal colour that transcends culture, never quite capturing the vividness of blood.

         It took a time to recall the previous trip here two years ago. Nance had been the guide then, a reluctant one at a similar shop at another location.

         Bundles of what could only be play-money, of some forbidding kind, mounted on a table inside the entry. The piles of shirts, the toy trucks and the rest were out on the footpath. They would need to be brought in at the end of the trading day. For some unfathomable reason, as if they were the prime lures, these articles were given the prominent position along the walk-way.

         On one wall inside a darker red, a crimson, of packaged incense sticks. Were they called joss sticks, this particular kind? The other night it had occurred to Nancy that Geylang Road gathered a remarkable array of commerce. Further up there was a shop of this kind beside a karaoke bar one side and car-tyre outlet the other.

         Even this second time round with Neil and Emily the wrong conclusions were drawn.  

         Wasn't the tendency everywhere to give the departed the best possible send-off? Little business empires had of course been built on the practice, this kind of shop a case in point. Wouldn't the paper tear trying to get it on?

         Cremation was only recalled months afterward, and the regular days of offering learned about after that. In the East burial was the exception.

Green City (April26)

Look there and see. Look on. Keep yourself from gaping, you're doing well.

The fellow kitted out in the corporate uniform—white polo with green leaves rising from the extremities, the sleeves, front lower band and more profuse again on the lower behind. Grey slacks; matching shoes. 

But in fact not a corporate cleaning kit. No. Look again…

More specifically, Garden Maintenance. Hence, the leaves. (Corporate clean is usually blue or yellow.)

Catching the fellow first-up gave the wrong impression. Trolley with a couple large plastic buckets, parked beside the pots in the library forecourt that lined the path toward the cafe.

Mex-Latino type the initial impression; giving the smile added again. Friendly sort up for a joke, fun to be round. 

Closer up the correction for the Sub-continent; West coast round Goa. (Zapata moustaches had penetrated the four corners now.)

Greening the World We Live In waved over the rear of the polo... In this company's case, greening & polishing. 

The contract with the municipal authorities which oversaw the National Library building & grounds stipulated keeping the plants weed-free, watered & fresh-looking. Therefore dusting & polishing the elephant-ears of the potted plants down in the forecourt by the cafe. (Kinda promoted growth too.)

With the rag out wiping and scrubbing, one had been misled. 

Bent at the work. Circular motion adding polish. Unpleasant taskmaster the Super. All in a mistaken first flash.

Over-filling the pots once or twice, man bent with the rag to soak up the spillage. 

Urban gardener. Civic pride. Certainly in Sin’pore. Bucket-loads in Singapore.

A report in the paper recently on a model Chinese city that had made great strides in re-vegetation. In that case, the choice of trees to plant had proved unfortunate. The model was Singapore. Clean, as every visitor knew—despite some ill-discipline in rabble Geylang.