Checked at the Checkpoint

.... Something, something "office" said the young chap at the booth. After leafing carefully through the passport some kind of red flag had come up on his screen. Almost thirty-nine months in and out of the country, often coming through the Causeway gate at Johor Bahru. If you flew into Changi on an Australian passport it was likely a different matter. We would be escorted to the office. Just wait where you are. Five minutes later another young fellow with a gun in his holster arrived on his iron horse to show us the way. 10 30 PM on a Sunday, it had taken half an hour to reach first base at the Checkpoint.
         What are you doing in Singapore?... Long time you have not returned to your country.... Can I see your return ticket?.... A writer? You write about politics? (There had been no prompting; the man was not making small-talk either.).... No sir. Culture, the social scene on the streets and at the Eateries.... religion. — What you write about religion? Askance glance and eyebrows elevated.... Oh shite! That was wrong, wrong. Like writer was immediately suspicious and wrong, but what else was one to say? A romance keeping one here? Romance with the country perhaps?... Well, the Analects, the Hadith, Confucius.... A few months ago I went to Shivaratni and wrote about that. (Was the fellow Indian or Malay?).... Under the interrogation lamp the reversion to weasel cockroach was automatic.... Give me the address of your blog.... There you are sir.... How much money do you have with you? (S$250 providentially.)....Take a seat outside.... Would "Ibrahim and Ismail" raise suspicions? Unlikely the man would burrow through the mountainous pile to "May-day Singapore". No way. Two Viet lasses waiting on the orange chairs, one pregnant Nance said. Possibly trying to have her brat on the soil here.... A Food Writer. A real Travel Writer taking in resorts, beaches, the shopping experience, that would have been different. The faded old tee from the night flea market at Chow Kit in KL likely didn't help..... A riff-raff kind of writer without gold chain or even watch. If he asked to see the old Samsung cell-phone with the worn pad Zainuddin had gifted we were sunk.... You're definitely going to Jogja end of next month? And then returning to Australia?... Stating only a 40 day stay weighed in the matter. (Old hands had warned it was a mistake to put the 90 maximum on the form.) Definitely leaving?!... Almost certainly the Viet girls were returned.... A couple of years ago after locking horns with an expat American writer here the relative standpoints needed to be identified: there was the grace of a writer sailing a boat adrift on the breeze—the viewpoint seemed to suggest art for art's sake, beauty, elegance, release ultimately; opposed on the other hand to one delivering some kind of matter from a pulpit. Oh alack the day!....

Thieves Thieved

Dear sir/madam
I would like to voice my concern at the reported move and possible disbanding of the Sungei Road Second-hand Market.
As a regular visitor here over the last number of years I have often gravitated to this market in order to seek out what is difficult to come-by in this rapidly transforming country. It seems to me such seemingly negligible quarters of cities could in fact constitute jewels of their own kind that weigh more precious than generic big budget tourist draws and entertainments.
The vivid display of history, culture, enterprise, spirit of endurance and community offered by such locales as the Sungei Road Market should not be casually under-estimated.
A plea for the voice of the traders to be heard and respected for the sake of the city itself.
Sincerely yours

PR

Thursday 31 July 2014 Straits Times letter to the editor in response to a news item of the day before. Judged not palatable enough at the editorial desk. Some oddness in viewpoint possibly, a note of irascibility.

Hard on the heels of the penning this afternoon another captivating royal performance at the Thieves. Again a sense of having stumbled onto a stage-set beyond the looking-glass. Here is an old thin ancient child-size on her haunches trading from a piece of fabric opposite the two sisters on the corner of the main thoroughfares. (How did these sisters own that prime location? By what arcane right?) Before the woman on their own haunches two sisters of the younger generation, lovely middle-upper Primary twins from a Normal stream. They were twins alright; no mistake. Appeared; perhaps the first pair in the three years in the small gene pool in this oddly composed city-state. Loose strands of hair pulled behind an ear, bare crooked knees, fledgling bird-like features in fine plumage as if on a branch. The pair were apprising a couple of bright toys the old woman had among her spread These white uniforms had not been freshly laundered; the pair lived in either the Rochor block behind, or else the similar at the end of the row in front. First a coloured tin car that might have been a secret money-box, splitting down the centre so that a thief would never know. To close you needed to bang on your knee. Neat. One tried and then the other's turn, all shared and in consultation. Good too was a small ten inch red periscope: look in the bottom to spy over the top of a hedge; around the corner of a balcony. Third was some kind of red miniature on wheels. It was the last two they were particularly fixed upon. (Money-box too rich.) A brief to-and-fro with the old vendor, in size and proportion a perfectly fitting third party. The woman had cut her queue long ago; not yet the girls. Wrinkles didn't stop the old lady smiling: the urchins here assuming the closed, expressionless visage…. Where were they making off with the goods like that!?
         —  ….You gave it to them Auntie.
         —   They no money have, the woman defended herself.
         Ooooh, gee. Shucks....
         Woman wouldn’t take the two dollars compensation.
         —  You buy. I no take your money, indicating the choice array spread before her.
         Woman traded in fifty cent and one dollar items, she was giving it away; selling herself short. Twice refused the offering.
         —  Very kind auntie.
         —  You very kind too, a chap down on his haunches beside suddenly inserting himself. Where did he come from just then?...
         Auntie couldn't be moved, shifting her attention to a Bangla man crouching over her wares. The woman was a trader not a beggar. This was her treat.

NB. The Sungei Road second-hand market is also known as the Thieves Market, the term proudly claimed by the vendors themselves.

Learning the Tongue (Sept25)

Briefest of briefs. A trifle for linguists and those historically minded. Other readers would be advised to look away now... These little oddities have been rattling away in the brain for a good long while. 

Saturday's edition of The Hindu struck a much harsher note in the recollection of Empire on the sub-continent; specifically, in the north-east in this instance post-war, when the Indian National Army (essentially formed here in Singapore among the expatriate Tamils) was attempting armed rebellion against the British. 

A good time to engineer a famine, teach the rascals a lesson. About three million people were estimated to have perished across West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Bangladesh. 

A much later piece of Colonial devilry than that detailed by Mike Davis in his eye-opener book Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. 

Many of the heinous crimes of the recent past never acknowledged by the perpetrators on "our" side. Buried, selective history...

These Chinese in Singapore never had too much cause to complain. Circumstances here in the strategic transport hub were for the most part moderating and less than demonic. The earlier generation of Coolies perhaps suffered greatly; perhaps the first two generations. Brutal times. Slavery in many parts of the world was far from eradicated in the relevant period. In Singapore the English left much to their inheritors for which they could be grateful. And not merely the upper crust to whom the torch of freedom was passed.
         

But brevity.

Three unusual common expressions on the streets here every tick of the clock in every quarter of the island. 

Sketch in rubber plantations, the English superintendent from northern parts (Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester, Lancaster). Pith helmet, twin-pocketed safari shirt, long walk-socks, a kelpie at his side brought over on the boat. Stepped out under the rubber trees, gone down into the tin mines, the house-boy needing instruction, lads laying down the rails:
Carry on
Never mind
Correct

These three words and phrases in particular penetrated deeply right down to the present generation. Utterly ubiquitous, impossible to avoid one or two dozen times per diem in the strangest contexts. 

The author's illiterate, former boxer landlord, possessing no more than 100 - 120 English words, maintains in his kit the last two. 

Unremarked previously and needing to be dislodged; worthy of mention for the echo and the indication.

...Get Help To Arrest Your Mistakes mug at the Blue Diamond for lunch today, from the Speak Good English campaign of a decade or two ago. Still very much active and widely promoted by the foreign-educated technocrats and mandarins.

NB. And another used by the same groups, common island-wide and taught to current day youngsters too, even in Bukit Timah. In primary English speaking countries we say, Will you/Can you accompany me? ….go/come with me? On the rubber plantations and in the tin mines it was something else; something instrumental. No time for mincing words... You FOLLOW ME... The exclamation mark retained in the tone two generations later here. More than a little irksome when directed at oneself: pretty girl extending an invitation to a picnic under the trees ruins the venture with suchlike. Horrid. Oh! Those superintendents and administrators getting out the product!

Hari Raya—Idul Fitri—Eid—Lebaran in the Malay Quarter of Sin'pore

A cast of thousands for a modern-day historical epic of empire, travel and adventure. How many thousand could it have been from Onan Road up to the Post Office? Five or six at a pinch in the visual field. All granted a day free of labour it needed to be acknowledged, when in the case of domestic service there was no stipulation in the law. (Moreover the day before had been a Sunday when many had an ordinary free day.) These were all Indonesian young women from across the archipelago; the lads entrain and courting Bangladeshi and Indian. Hand-holding on every side, sisterly arms over shoulders, bright, colourful new bajus every so often in highest style Cleopatra from First Lady and the like. These latter girls were either well remunerated or had generous boyfriends. (In his crusade against immorality Zainuddin had long complained the Bangla lads were big spenders on the girls, at the expense of their needy families back home.) The picnics were concentrated beneath the trees before the Post Office and around Tanjong Katong Complex; others were spread among the refuse of the stalls that had been promptly evacuated overnight. Magnificent hearty embraces on the finding of friends from the annals of ages past. One lass alongside the spluttering fountain outside Coffee Bean had a dear friend who sat on the parapet clasped around the knees. In front the girl was kneeling on the paving half-burying her head in the other’s lap and holding tight. A loved mother reunited after a long absence might have been embraced in such fashion; here an older sister, precious friend or kampung neighbor. A tall Bangla lad in a resplendent lime green frock-coat from the eighteenth century stepped past erect and stately with a dowdy Indon girl like a hand-maiden bringing up the rear. Still in their teens a good number of the young women. Only a small minority risk the chairs at the Bean, where the $5.70 regular lattes are the cheapest option. Two hundred and fifty congregated in the immediate vicinity—thirty or forty empty cafe chairs. And the racial divide of course: indoors under the aircon Chinese girls of the same age sit with their lap-tops and smart phones over their drinks. The lucky ones here have been gifted the traditional New Year bonus (as have the illegal foreign worker compatriots at the stalls). Ten-twenty-fifty dollars mostly; generous employers present one or two hundred and the best bestow an entire month’s salary—$500-600. Two friends met along the way, mid-thirties and with children at home left in the care of mothers, in both cases received nada. — You give me Pavle? cheekily in either case. Selfies of course in all the hot music-video poses wherever one turned, forgivable here where they were destined for distant family. 
         Late afternoon after a bakso lunch with friends old and new at the Botanical Gardens Rina called round. At the Bukit Timah bungalow Rina and the second maid have been left alone at home while the family holidayed in the Philippines for a week, where visas for Indonesians presented a difficulty. A week of lounging and relaxing! Excellent.... Ah, in fact not quite. Ma'me has left a list of tasks to be completed in their absence, the major item being cleaning the fish pond. The water needs to be drained, weeds and litter removed, filter and stones cleaned. Last time it was a four person job that took a full six hours. Still, sleep-ins, cooking only for themselves and their own tastes, no car-washing, none of the usual Hari Raya parties. No need rush home either, the pair agreeing eight o'clock would be seemly enough for the neighbours. (Little doubt Ma'me would make her enquiries on her return.)

Venice on the Equator

Do Some Good Today
Small Deeds
Big Differences

A do-good initiative by Fair Price Foundation
Large delivery truck stuck in the Changi Road traffic outside Har Yas in the rundown to Hari Raya Monday. Fair Price is a supermarket chain. The large steel banner seems to flutter in the breeze: white background, soft primary colours & the contemporary version of the pictogram in the universal language of children's books. Fair Price is one of the largest local chains; NTUC is another—National Trade Union Congress. Both crusading to keep prices rock-bottom for the lower-end wage earners. (At time of writing, 15 - 20% it might be from memory survive here on SG$600 monthly.) Given single political party domination these fifty years since independence, government owned and controlled media in its entirety, religious bodies and trade unions strictly controlled, if not in fact co-opted by government, the position of the supermarkets does not need to be enquired too closely. This is the fascinating nub in Singapore, a shining example to many in the region and well beyond: a demented breakneck leap to modernity, foisted upon it by the forces of globalisation and Western corporate interests; whilst at the same time, the last flickering remnants of communal and co-operative living, Confucian/Buddhist values (Muslim and Hindu in the minority) and a moral code from long ages past. It has after all only been a famously thirty year leap from Third World to First. The pluto-technocrats know only one way—wreckage tidied up later: can-do, straight-ahead, chop-chop, brook no challenge. A little democratic opinion beginning to flare in recent time; some minor defiance and challenge. Opposition members of parliament finally—the days of Cold Storage, another supermarket too incidentally, of dissident voices (extrajudicial confinement), no longer sustainable. The earnest rousing and rallying of the populace meanwhile; an unending cycle of colourful community events & festivities. Sport and arts the newest initiative of social pacification, with a good deal of money channelled in the direction. Meanwhile, onward with growth, shopping malls & housing towers, tourism, logistics, pharmaceutical & military production, extended SEZs within the neighbourhood in order to take advantage of the huge, cheap labour pool. “Venice on the equator”, some of the commentariat with big bellies stroke themselves beneath their desks.

 

Internal Tourism in Singapore - Hari Raya (Eid) 2013

An unexpected visit from Rina put the trip to Woodlands back until early afternoon. Usually Rina and her friends headed out to the Indonesian Embassy for Hari Raya. At the last minute this year the decision was made for City Plaza, a picnic on the grass beside the river, or if that was crowded, by the Paya Lebar MRT, where there was tenting. 

We had little time either side; just enough for Rina's racy story of her pretty sister Rani's first weeks in Singapore. A delay in her work visa and crowding at the maid hostel meant Rani was in for a fortnight's sleeping rough. Instead, rescued by a white guy met at a midnight bus-stop where she had planned to bed-down, the gal finds herself a place at the Marriott Hotel—five star luxury, food, gifts and money laid on. Just like Sis, landing on her feet, Rina laughed.

Zainuddin had provided precise details for the trip: up/down escalators at the two MRTs, left/right, the particular roads and drives. Before the first bus-stop, however, a halt was made in the progress. 

The matching azure-blue outfits of the approaching pair had somehow passed without notice. Another chance meeting with young Raden and his recent bride. Early in Ramadan Raden and his wife were met at the Arab Community iftar—break-of-fast, put on for the poor and needy. On that occasion Raden and his bank colleagues had hosted two large tables of young male orphans. As well as the feast and the enveloped hangpao from the Arab Community, the bank employees’ union provided gifts for each of the lads. 

Some years before Raden and his group had been out to Sri Lanka aiding the relief effort after the tsunami. 

For the festive occasion the young pair was found in fine new tailored cloth, truly radiant. In this case the peacock outshining the hen with a cummerbund in glittering earth tones that hung like an apron below the knees. 

Such operatic costuming for the streets was not uncommon in Geylang, even for lesser occasions. What was remarkable here was the outsider being drawn closely into the procession, something like stepping into an exotic historical epic of the screen. 

Warm greetings, best wishes and promises to catchup. Raden's mother lived in one of the Haig towers, where the celebratory feast awaited the pair. On entry the son and daughter-in-law would go down on their knees before the old woman to ask for forgiveness for any sin or error they may have committed over the previous year. (According to Zainuddin, the elder ought respond in the same kind, as he himself did with his two boys on the day.)

Woodlands was on the opposite side of the island from Geylang Serai, in the north-west corner by the Causeway to Malaysia. The train on the Circle Line had not been taken previously; the prospect of some sight-seeing from the window was in store. A trip a few months before to Jurong in the mid-west had shown a slightly shabby Singapore—housing towers in need of a lick of paint, schools that would have stood low in the rankings and passengers on the bus likewise in the meritocratic stakes. The badlands of Jurong, where large industrial estates were found, including, whispers suggested, military production that made up a proportion of SG’s manufacturing. 

The Circle Line, then the other train from Bishan, showed the commonly lampooned picture-postcard Singapore of order and cleanliness. Not a blade of grass out of place, award winning pavement beautification, air-brushed litterlessness. A command urban planning order executed that had descended like a Papal bull. You could only sit and stare through the glass. 

Cream and pastel-blue blocks stretching into the clouds in Zainuddin's particular quarter; tree and bush plantings under the regime of meticulous gardening supervision; kerbside plantings again like toyland. Up over the Causeway the Malaysians had built a Legoland tourist feature that would draw the people from Woodlands and wider Singapore. 

The newspapers often carried photographs of housing estate launches in model form, politicians and construction heads gathered round. Here at Woodlands stood the realisation—a Swiss dream on the Equator, minus cow-dotted hills.

Wherever one looked the same voids appeared, pasted over by design flourishes. A couple of parcels of forested land had been passed prior to the Admiralty stop, one cut by a bicycle track; a reservoir holding a large body of water; even the more or less natural features seemed concocted. 

Included in Zainuddin's careful directions was what he called a handsome foyer for his particular block. Number such-and-such. Each block carried their numbers that would be visible from jetliners, let alone rescue helicopters.

Entering at Zainuddin's the immediate sense was of hospital order and spareness. Floors and walls gleaming; reflective steel in the lifts showing skin-pores and blemishes. 

Inserting  Zainuddin and his food-spotted shirts, his sockless shoe-wear, concentrated seer's visage, into the surrounds was far from easy.

Zainuddin had told the story of his recourse a few years ago when he needed to dispose of some books from his shelves. The lift. Stacked in the corner. Ground button. 

We had laughed at the table.

            One recalled the old dyed sharp lads in their cowboy shirts and buckles, their out-sized rings and flat-caps; gold-dripping made-up ladies that congregated in Geylang Serai; the scrounging Batam gals, the homeless, the shiftless, the beggars and cripples. How vital they all were to a healthy, sane community. 

Small wonder Zainuddin and the other suits and starched shirts needed to take flight from their pigeon-holes for Geylang, even the tame, lower end of the quarter. 

A surprise inside the flat was the perfect order there too. Zaiton—Olive, Zainuddin's wife—had been underestimated.

Every writer deserved a help-mate of the calibre. With Zaiton’s accomplished secretarial services, perfect heaven! 

An independent-minded, rebel author who had spoken truth-to-power in Singapore on numerous occasions—whose autobiography was titled The Singaporean Fundamentalist—found here in feather-bed luxury such as the early Sultans would have envied. 

Where were the books? Zainuddin was never without a book in his voluminous lady's handbag, either to promote to a friend, or else for the long train journeys. The matter could not be pursued.

An impressive gathering. One old Hokkien neighbour who had recently foisted a broken-winged bird on Zainuddin. The chap too was an independent-minded Free-thinker, more than half-inclined to Mao and very much anti-PAP. (The following day would mark both National Day and forty-eight years of unbroken, single party rule in the Republic.) 

Don't mention Lee Kwan Yue, Zainuddin mock-warned during the course. 

Another jack-in-the-box was a Trinidadian lawyer settled almost twenty years, who on free days liked to ride the buses to far-flung corners of the island with her camera. The woman's home island was five, or eight times larger than her adopted, she revealed; but with a third of the population. Even after so many years, the lady seemed to be searching in her new home for something she could not find. With her husband the pair worshipped at the locally famous church in Novena.

At table for the feast were other Chinese neighbours of Zainuddin and Zaiton. Each Chinese New Year the pair came down to the sixth floor to cook the celebratory meal for their neighbours. (Thus perhaps overcoming any possible suspicion of pork.) 

Woodlands held better and richer prospects than one would guess from the exterior.

The large table for eight meant shifts for lunch, perhaps more than a dozen over the course of the day. Once Zaiton's extended family left the non-Muslims were clearly in the majority—a testament to Zainuddin's ecumenicalism.

A highlight on the return journey bookended the day. 

The holiday had the trains crowded. It was a real holiday—even the construction sites had closed. Many of the sites ran 24/7 under lighting, with no more than three or four shut-downs a year. (Even on Hari Raya, not all had in fact taken the holiday. An outfit on Orchard Road beside Dhoby Ghaut MRT laboured in the tea-brown mud behind high screens.)

In middle Geylang later on the return the China boys were prominent; on the trains the Bangla and Indian. During the first brief visit to Singapore five years before, Nancy Ong had suggested Little India on a Sunday, in order to observe the recreation of the Indian construction workers. 

For the spectacle on display among these foreigners Singaporeans were known to come out on a Sunday as tourists on their own patch. Nance and her friends had been out to Little India Sundays a number of times to take in the sights on the streets, in the gutters and across the grassy patches that awaited development. Many Singaporeans made the same trip for the same reason, Nance assured.

On the train from Admiralty—the nearest station to Zainuddin's digs at Woodlands—not all the passengers could reach a handle or rail, let alone find a seat. Quite a number clung to friends and family in order to keep their feet. What the young Indian spivs in their bright, clean and colourful attire arranged was something beyond the common recourse. 

Within the entryway of the carriage two or three found themselves some kind of fixture. The remaining seven or eight in the group created a chain in three separate clusters around the central post. Lads took their fellows over the shoulder, others stood with fingers entwined, waists girdled, affectionate head-locks that included whispers and almost lovers' nibbles of ears. 

Commuters averted their eyes, pretending not to notice. The locals were easy to differentiate by posture alone. None looked in the direction of the show. A drunk peeing in a corner might have attracted this pointed disregard in a Western city. 

The lads rocked lightly against one another, comfortably riding the turns and jolts. 

Boy and girl pairings would have felt shame by comparison. Despite the pretence, all within the carriage understood the matter. Unavoidably. 

The homo-erotic element was undeniable; if there was some it was not the core. 

In corners of the globe, far flung dirty patches without sewerage or running water, humanity lived otherwise. Clean, modern, orderly Singapore presented the other side.

At Bras Basah—wet rice in Bahasa, once upon a time—the No. 7 bus happened along. An early supper was needed after the light lunch. From Guillemard aboard the 7 one could cut through to middle Geylang Road and Tasvee for the, from where an Aljunied vegetarian supper. The Eateries at G. Serai had closed for the holiday; the favourites would not re-open for more than a week. The fortunate Muslim foreign workers had returned to their families for the celebration—Sumatra, Java, Johor Bahru, Chennai and Dhakka.

 

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