Notes From an Even Smaller Island Read online

  Reactions to Notes From an Even Smaller Island

  “Hilarious, controversial, honest, revealing and most candid.”

  – Perut Buncit

  “Siaow Kah Peng! If sit on MRT or bus, sure laugh loud loud one!”

  – Derrick Tan Ah Beng

  “What a disgrace! As a secondary school teacher, I find this book an insult to the intellect of the average Singaporean.”

  – Mrs Lek

  “This book – can, ah. I like, I like! Can see myself in it, lor.”

  – Candy Lim Ah Lian

  “Neil Humphreys is a rare breed. Comical episodes seem to follow him wherever he travels. Whether it be growing up in working-class England or living in middle-class Singapore, he always seems to meet the weird and the wonderful.”

  – Charles Smythe

  “Very good, what! The truth must come out.”

  – Mr Ong

  What the media said about

  Notes From an Even Smaller Island

  “He pokes fun at Singaporeans... but rather than bristle at his observations, you are likely to twitch with mirth. The ribbing is always cushioned by good-natured quips often sprinkled with hilarious anecdotes.”

  — The Sunday Times

  “The book presents a warts and all view of the city-state and celebrates many of the things most often criticised.”

  — BBC World

  “A candid look at the idiosyncrasies of Singapore and Singaporeans.”

  — TODAY

  “It’s a great insider’s look at Singapore from an insider’s point of view.”

  — Malaysia’s Sunday Mail

  “Humphreys’ laugh-a-minute self-deprecating manner makes this book very entertaining... No punches pulled. Bravo!”

  — Malaysia’s Sunday Star

  “Humphreys’ humorous take on Singapore is an entertaining read... It is hard not to smile while reading this book.”

  — Women’s World

  “Blatant prejudices are chewed on, digested and spat out with an equal measure of candour and tongue-in-cheek.”

  — Singapore Seventeen

  “A thoroughly enjoyable read on the virtues (or hazards) of living in Singapore through the eyes of a 6 foot 4 inch Briton whose style is so disarmingly honest, you will laugh at the things you once considered the bane of existence... Decidedly Singaporean, distinctly British.”

  — Singapore FHM

  Copyright © 2001 Times Media Private Limited

  Copyright © 2004 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

  This edition with new cover 2008

  Reprinted 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 (twice), 2008, 2009

  Cover and illustrations by Lock Hong Liang

  Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

  An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Request for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196.

  Tel: (65) 6213 9300, fax: (65) 6285 4871. E-mail: [email protected]

  The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no events be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

  Other Marshall Cavendish Offices

  Marshall Cavendish Ltd. 5th Floor, 32–38 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8FH, UK • Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA • Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand • Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

  Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited

  National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Humphreys, Neil.

  Notes from an even smaller island / Neil Humphreys. – Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2005.

  p. cm.

  Previously published : Times Editions, 2004.

  eISBN 13: 978 981 439 894 7

  ISBN 10: 981 261 586 5

  1. Singapore – Anecdotes. I. Title.

  DS609

  959.57 – dc21 SLS2005049186

  Printed in Singapore by Kepmedia International Pte Ltd

  Acknowledgements

  Some people say that writing a book is a torturous experience and, my God, I would have to agree with them. However, there are many masochistic individuals who helped the process along with their support, encouragement and the occasional blow to the head.

  I will always be grateful to my publisher for being brave enough to take a risk with this work when others would not. I would also like to thank my editor. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the way but she just wiped them all off the manuscript and we carried on.

  This book would not have been possible without my dear friend David, who brought me to Singapore in the first place, and Scott, my old travelling partner. David gave me a goddaughter, Scott gave me an excuse to swear a lot. I will always be grateful for both.

  For inspiration, I must acknowledge the people of Singapore (and Dagenham!). I hope they will still speak to me after this.

  The support of my wonderful family has been vital and I thank my mother for always being there and for being a ‘real woman’.

  But I dedicate this book to the one person who stood over my shoulder every day to remind me that my writing was utter crap.

  This one is for my best mate, Tracy, for always being my best mate.

  Prologue

  There is nothing like being mugged twice to make you want to leave a country and head for a tiny equatorial island in Asia.

  But that is exactly what happened.

  The first time was farcical. When I was seventeen, a couple of friends and I were going to a nightclub called Fifth Avenue, which was full of young girls with too much make-up and pushed-up cleavages. Tacky, but teenage heaven. Naive and about as subtle as a kick in the head, we wore our Sunday best and all the jewellery we could lay our hands on and headed out. We looked like a mugger’s pension scheme as we went into a hamburger place opposite the club.

  Considering I was less streetwise than Harry Potter back then, it did not register that the only people in the restaurant were a gang of youths standing near the counter. We strolled up to the counter, waving £10 notes and jangling jewellery like a pawnbroker.

  A boy came up to me and asked if I could give him fifty pence. Alarm bells were not yet ringing, as the young lad looked as if he had only just moved onto solids. Momentarily stunned, he hit me with a line that now seems spectacularly hilarious.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘give me fifty pence or I’ll kill you.’

  ‘What?’ I asked in disbelief, still failing to take this surreal situation seriously. Then he sat down next to us and magically produced a knife. Surely this was not happening. Ironically, a police patrol car was parked directly outside the front of the restaurant.

  ‘Now, don’t fuck about. Give me fifty pence now,’ my new companion continued.

  Then I audaciously attempted a ploy that still tickles me. I haggled.


  ‘How about I give you thirty pence?’

  ‘I want fucking fifty.’

  ‘Look mate, I’ll give you thirty as I need to get the bus home.’ I still was not taking my eleven-year-old mugger seriously.

  ‘Those blokes over there are all with me and they’re watching me, so don’t fuck me off.’

  This revelation unequivocally altered the odds. There were between eight and ten guys standing just behind the boy, monitoring his ‘progress’. I strongly suspect their young protégé lost his cherry with us. What else could we do? They were all in their early twenties and looked like they should be playing basketball in the NBA.

  I lost thirty pence but my other friend, who naively opened his wallet in front of the apprentice mugger, was relieved of £10 and a watch. We hurriedly left the restaurant, walked past the oblivious policemen parked outside and dejectedly went home. My deteriorating view of law and order in Britain took another downward turn. Surely there had to be a more suitable alternative to this?

  Four years later, I found myself sitting in a stockbroker’s office in London earning obscene amounts of money. I had just graduated from the University of Manchester and needed money quickly as I intended to travel. I worked in the static-data department, yet, to this day, I still cannot fathom the value of what I did, what the purpose of my job was and who benefited from it. What did I do? Well, I took a set of figures from one computer column and transferred them to another. Then at the end of my first week working there, everything became clear. A payslip landed on my desk. It was my first since I had left university and I decided on the spot that I wanted to be a static-data man for the rest of my life.

  As the numbers mounted on my in tray, so too did the figures in my bankbook. I had long entertained the prospect of exotic travel and now I had the wad of notes to do it. At university, I had met a man, as you do, called David. David was Chinese Singaporean and had invited me to stay with him in Singapore. My reply was ‘sure’, wondering where it was in China.

  That is disgraceful, I hear you cry. Such geographical ignorance borne out of years of jingoistic sentiment. The sad fact is that you would be right. Large sections of the British population hold a rather simplistic view of geography and demography that has been cultivated by their educators – the tabloid media – for several decades and it goes like this. Decent white people come from Britain, loud white people come from Australia and loud, arrogant white people come from the United States. Darker white people with silly accents come from Europe, which is approximately fifty thousand miles away, and brown people come from Pakistan, a country that is quite good at cricket and its natives come to England to set up corner shops. Black people come from Africa, which is where Sir David Attenborough goes to make his wildlife programmes. Yellow-skinned people come from China, where they spend their days bowing and eating with chopsticks. China, by the way, is in the Far East, which is just off the coast of Mars and has something to do with communism. This, in turn, has something to do with a man called Lenin. Or is it Lennon? Something to do with the working classes, anyway. All of these ‘foreigners’, who, of course, cannot speak a word of the Queen’s English (well, not proper English like what we do), come to England periodically to take everybody’s jobs and claim social security benefits. Hell, it is enough to make you bang your chest, wave a Union Jack and sing God Save the Queen while standing on a silver jubilee tea tray.

  However, I digress. As I was saying, I promised to visit my friend in Singapore while muttering to myself, ‘I will visit your sacred land the day Lord Horatio Nelson gets his eye back and Gibraltar is returned to Spain.’ I needed to be convinced further that my future lay on an island smaller than Greater London. I needed to be mugged again.

  I am a diehard fan of the rock group Oasis. I know all about their childish arrogance and abhorrent attitudes but I just love their music. So when I heard that those belligerent brothers from Manchester were going to stage the two biggest gigs that Europe had ever seen at Knebworth in the summer of 1996, I knew I would be there.

  On the eve of the gig, my friends and I had a little drink to celebrate the occasion. From what I remember, the night was a classic. Being friends with the landlord, we had ‘afters’, which meant we could drink into the small hours of the morning. Around 2 a.m., we reached the moral dilemma shared by pub drinkers everywhere to quote the famous Clash song: ‘Should I stay or should I go now?’ And the conversation, as always, went like this:

  Sensible one: ‘Drink up! We’ve got just enough money between us to get a taxi.’

  Danny: ‘Bollocks! I’m not going anywhere while there is still un-drunk Guinness left on the table.’

  Most intoxicated one (me): ‘What’s all the fuss about? We’re going to see Oasis tomorrow. Besides, it’s your round Danny so sod off up the bar.’

  Danny: ‘Bollocks! I’m not going anywhere while there is still un-drunk Guinness left on the table.’

  Me: (singing) ‘...And after all, you’re my wonderwall.’

  Sensible: ‘I’m tired and you two have to be up in five hours for the gig.’

  Me: ‘Relax, we’ll sleep on the train. Everything’s fine. Danny get the drinks in.’

  Danny: ‘Bollocks! I’m not going anywhere while... shit, it’s all gone. Right, I’m off to get a pint of Guinness. Who wants one?’

  And so we stayed. To this day, though, I wish we had retained just a shred of common sense and taken a taxi. We had to walk three miles home and, as we clumsily climbed a fence into a dark local park to take a short cut, we were asking for trouble.

  Public parks are a strange phenomenon in suburban England. During the day, they welcome senior citizens walking their dogs while children laugh as their wheezing fathers push them on the swings. When the parks close for the day, however, they transform themselves under the cover of darkness into a den of sleaze. A place used only by gangs, drug addicts and young teenagers so desperate to have sex that they are willing to suffer sub-zero temperatures and risk catching frostbite on the bum.

  Into this illicit cauldron stumbled three young drunks, for whom the real London world of crime and violence had stopped existing about five pints ago. Their world was one of Lewis Carroll: a world of giggling and nonsensical language. It was always on a collision course with London’s depressing reality. It was a red rag to a bull.

  I heard some noises in the background that sounded like young boys fooling around. So, because I was drunk and because I am mentally subnormal when I am drunk, I shouted out ‘fuck off’. The rustling sounds of bodies moving in the distance were swiftly followed by fast-moving footsteps. In that split second, I sobered up and realised I had done something seriously stupid.

  The frustrating thing was that we almost made it. Danny and I ran like racing greyhounds and we had almost reached the park’s gateway. I could see the streetlights and passing cars drawing closer, signs of life that would make a public kicking less likely. Then I heard the ‘sensible one’ scream. His scream stopped Danny and me dead in our tracks.

  ‘Come back! Neil! Danny! Please come back!’ he cried.

  Danny and I looked at each other with a rational soberness that was instantaneous. Believe me, there is no medical potion in the world that sobers you up quicker than fear.

  We turned and walked back with all the enthusiasm of a pallbearer. When the sensible one emerged from the darkness, the first thing I saw was the six-inch-long blade held to his throat, which, and I know this sounds terribly pretentious, actually reflected the moonlight. It was being held by a guy whose first impression immediately substantiated my belief in Darwinism. He was so stoned I could have got high from his breath. He was flanked by two morons who wielded neither a weapon nor a brain and were clearly the sheep in this operation.

  The knife man wanted to know which one of us had shouted out ‘fuck off’.

  Nothing can accurately describe how I felt or how my body reacted. At that moment, I hated the world for all its bitter ironies. With plans to travel t
he world in the near future and on the very day I intended to see Oasis perform, I was going to either die or, at the very least, spend the rest of my life with a face resembling the London Underground map. There was only one thing to do: lie my arse off.

  ‘I said it. I shouted it out to some blokes who were in front of us, giving us verbal. That’s who we were chasing.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. Don’t fucking lie to me. Do you think I’m a cunt or something?’ asked knife man. Answering this question truthfully would have really dropped us in it.

  ‘Look mate,’ I said, ‘we don’t want any aggravation. We don’t want to fuck about. We’re just on our way home.’

  In a way, this put knife man in a difficult situation. He had only gone out that night to get stoned. He certainly did not want to commit first-degree murder. I mean, that could really spoil your weekend, couldn’t it? He also had to contend with his two young protégés who were observing his every move. Knife man had to do something quickly.

  ‘Give me all your money,’ he said, delighted with his powers of improvisation.

  We handed over our wallets like naughty kids in a playground. I also had to forfeit a gold ring and the sensible one had to hand over his watch before he was released and we were sent on our way. We called the police, who knew we were drunk and refused to take us seriously. But at least we realised that the world’s most intelligent thieves had made off with the princely sum of fifty pence. Clearly not enough to pay their annual subscriptions to Mensa. So that cheered us up a bit.

  Meanwhile, my dear friend David sent me a letter kindly informing me that if I still intended to travel, there would always be a spare bed for me at his apartment.