Notes From an Even Smaller Island Page 11

  Moreover, our low back fence allowed my mother to show off her gymnastic abilities. Early one morning, she was hanging out some washing when she saw Charlie, our next-door neighbour, lying face down on the path in his back garden. Charlie was a lovely old man who dressed immaculately and never complained, even though I must have climbed over his fence more times than a cat burglar to retrieve my football.

  On that terrible day, my mother sprang into action. She claims that she threw the washing down, hitched up her skirt and, with no concern for her own safety, jumped straight over the fence and went to Charlie’s aid. After examining him, she pronounced him dead at the scene.

  Charlie’s death illustrates the sad social phenomenon that plagues England and, increasingly, Singapore. Had he died today, my mother would not have noticed. Our back garden now has a two-metre-high fence running all the way round it, as do most of the other houses in my street. Man has always been entitled to his castle but now he wants to build a moat around it.

  Singapore is faced with the same problem. In 1964, the HDB launched the Home Ownership Scheme and thousands of Singaporeans bought their apartment units at affordable prices. Today, a staggeringly high 92 per cent of all public flats on the island are owner-occupied. Of course, the logic behind home ownership is politically sound. A resident will look after his home if it is his. However, when he closes the door to the outside world, he immediately severs those kampung bonds. The Straits Times often runs stories of elderly HDB residents lying dead at home for several days. In a non-welfare society that already encourages self-help in the workplace, such individualism cannot be helpful in the long run and the government knows this. Thus, it has employed various strategies, such as the ongoing upgrading programmes, to reignite that sense of togetherness within the HDB estates. These upgrading programmes aim to give older HDB estates, like Toa Payoh, a well-deserved face lift with an added room here and a lick of paint there.

  My apartment block was recently upgraded and it proved to be an awful experience. Apart from being woken by the joyous sounds of pneumatic drills and sledge hammers every morning, I also enjoyed the added luxury of having the entire rat population of Toa Payoh pack its suitcases and move to the bottom of my block. I felt like I was sharing the apartment with the Stuart Little family. I would come home every night, look down at the building site below and play ‘spot the rat’. My record, and I am not joking, was eleven. The average person would probably shrug off such a statistic but I happen to have a terrifying phobia of all things rodent. On many a dark night, Toa Payoh residents have been greeted by the sight of a blurred Caucasian sprinting past them screaming, ‘It’s a fucking big rat!’ The building site is now a beautiful garden and the rodents have all moved off to the upgrading project across the road.

  More seriously, the programmes have also made architectural attempts to bring the residents together again. Apartment blocks are now linked by sheltered walkways, more communal areas with tables and chairs have been built on the void decks and in the gardens while playgrounds have been built in the hope that more children and their parents will come together. Will these improvements work in the long run? Probably not. It is still largely the elderly who sit and chat on the void decks, although more kids play together in the playgrounds, which is encouraging news. The younger generations are, of course, at work chasing the dollar so the communal areas remain, by and large, deserted.

  Apart from the upgrading programmes, in Toa Payoh alone there is a small public park, a modern library next to a new public amphitheatre, a swimming complex, a cinema and coffee shops all over the place. In fact, in every corner of Toa Payoh, there are discernible attempts by the local town council to bring its people together. Yet the town centre remains a brain-numbing blur of people scurrying to the bank, the post office or the supermarket before rushing back to their apartments.

  Ironically, the only thing that does seem to bring HDB neighbours together is a good old-fashioned crime. As soon as a police siren is heard screaming outside your block, doors and front grilles are opened and before you can say ‘kaypoh’, the corridor is brimming with eagle-eyed neighbours.

  About a month after we moved into our flat, my girlfriend and I heard the sound of screeching brakes and shouting voices below so we went out to look. By the time I had opened the front grille, about twenty residents were already standing outside gossiping among themselves. Within five minutes, we had met and chatted with more of our neighbours than we had in the whole of the first month. I was convinced that they all had access to a police radio because they knew everything. They explained that a woman had stabbed her husband in an argument, then run out of the house and was now walking the streets, dazed and wielding a bloodstained knife. This all sounded a little melodramatic to me but who was I to argue with the people in the know? The incident lasted about an hour and by the end of it, we had given some clothes to one neighbour for her niece and a woman at the end of the corridor wondered if we had ever considered Buddhism.

  The whole episode would not have happened in England. Fear would have kept everybody’s doors firmly closed. I remember a police van pulling up outside my friend’s house one night. Without pulling back the curtains, we peered through a tiny crack to see what was going on. Four policemen got out of the van and, after some running and lots of swearing, they arrested two brothers. The interesting thing to note is that not a single soul came out to witness what was quite a unique event. No one wanted to get involved for fear of recrimination. After all, what if the two brothers spotted you? They would assume that you had grassed them up to the police.

  When I recall these incidents, I really do appreciate Singapore, its people and the benefits of living in an HDB block. In terms of architectural stature, the apartments may not be up there with New York’s Chrysler Building and, in an ideal world, I would prefer Singaporean children to have a garden to play in. However, when you have a population density of 5,900 per sq. km, what else can you do? The HDB makes the best of a difficult situation, even if it does weaken that wonderful kampung spirit.

  And I am proud to live in Toa Payoh, Singapore’s second satellite town, complete with educational, vocational and recreational facilities. To me, it is the Dagenham of Singapore and I have a strong attachment to both the place and its people. I love playing football with the young lads at the bottom of my block. It may be technically illegal but sod it. Build more football pitches and sports fields for the children and fewer condominiums and golf courses and we will stop playing on the void decks. I have fun watching the old-timers gamble, sorry, I mean play Chinese checkers on the void decks. I like feeding the turtles at Toa Payoh Park and eating homemade chicken and mushroom pies in the town centre on Sunday mornings. I could go on forever but I think you get the general idea. Besides I must dash – Vidal Sassoon is at the door.

  Chapter Eight

  Every now and again, we find ourselves privy to some magnificent spectacle or event that serves to reaffirm our humble place in the great state of nature. It could be any kind of incident, such as an earthquake, a hurricane or even the ever-growing hole in the ozone layer, that reminds us that there is something bigger and greater than humankind at work. For me, there have been two spiritual awakenings in my life that have confirmed this.

  The first came at the Singapore Zoological Gardens, where I was lucky enough to witness two giant tortoises mate. It took a whole five minutes for the male to muster the energy to climb on top of the female. Once there, let’s just say, I hope for the female’s sake the boat was of sufficient size because there was absolutely no motion in the ocean. If the subdued mating couple had died during intercourse, no one would have noticed. Nonetheless, they saw it through as do all tortoises around the world at some point. It then struck me how powerful nature is. Here is an animal that walks like it is treading water, carries its HDB flat on its back and makes love to a soldier’s helmet, yet nature compels it to get the job done.

  Thinking nature could not possibly astound me
again, it presented me with the Grand Canyon one fine Summer morning. Standing on the edge and peering down at Nature’s craftsmanship, I realised conclusively that humankind would never be able to compete on equal terms. Nature constructed the Grand Canyon – I cannot even build things with Lego bricks. Without a doubt, I have never seen any landmark that surpassed the Canyon in its magnitude. It does nothing but impress you.

  Unless, of course, you are one of the Singaporeans with whom my partner and I went on an American tour. They actually gave the impression that the whole Grand Canyon sightseeing trip was just one giant bore. They complained about the length of the journey from our hotel in Las Vegas to the Canyon. It appeared that due to their insular narrow-mindedness, they had assumed that the United States was like Singapore, where it is a case of turn left and there is Orchard Road or turn right and there is Raffles Place. They could not understand why the same geographical principles did not apply in the United States. You know, turn left and look, there is Disneyland or turn right and there is the Las Vegas strip.

  As we were being thrown around the bus, I heard one guy say to our tour guide, ‘Edward, how long will this take? I want to get back to the casino.’

  My girlfriend and I looked at each other in disbelief. We had not even arrived at probably one of the most visually-arresting sites on the planet and one of our travelling companions was already saying that he wanted to go back to the casino.

  I was convinced that once all the chattering Singaporeans stepped off the bus, the sheer magnitude of the Canyon would shut them up and the silent chasm would swallow any insipid kiasu comments. I was only half-right. The kids on the tour were mesmerised for about the first five minutes, which was to be expected. After a few genuine wide-eyed ‘wows’, there is only so much a primary school child can do with a view. Then I heard it. The gambling man, who inexplicably wore a blue mackintosh raincoat throughout the tour, even in Nevada, rushed over to his wife and said, ‘Quick! Finish taking your photos and I’ll ask Edward if we can go back to Las Vegas now.’

  It had taken us three hours to get to the Canyon and this guy wanted to leave after fifteen minutes. As there was a general consensus from the rest of the group that they had seen enough, we left. Ever since I had seen the breathtaking, post-apocalyptic Planet of the Apes, I knew I would visit the Grand Canyon. And I did, for fifteen minutes.

  Looking back, I should have known what kind of holiday it was going to be.

  When I booked the West Coast package tour, the agent said, ‘You do know that it is a Singaporean tour, don’t you?’

  Puzzled, I replied, ‘You mean to say this isn’t the Mongolian tour? Because I was told that it wouldn’t be a problem getting two seats with the Mongolian tour.’

  He stared at me blankly before reminding me that there was an orientation meeting on Friday.

  When we arrived for the orientation fashionably late, my fears that this was not going to be an ordinary holiday were realised. As we entered the room, the guide stopped speaking and the whole tour party turned to stare at us. Had the late John F. Kennedy himself walked in, I do not think they could have conjured a more shocked reaction.

  Breaking the deafening silence, the guide asked, ‘Can we help you?’

  ‘We’ve come for the meeting about the U.S. trip,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you with this group? Do you have your receipts with you?’ After I showed the guide our receipts, he stopped asking questions and introduced himself as Edward. Then it dawned on me. We stood out like the white ball on a snooker table. Not only were we the only Caucasians in a group of about twenty-five but we were also the only non-Chinese. At the time, I put it down to coincidence and thought no more about it. That was a bad move.

  Edward went through the basics, discussing things like departure times, the time differences and changing currency. I have to confess that I found the talk informative and I found myself asking one or two questions. I hoped they were rational and sensible because many of the other questions were not. The first came from one woman who seemed to be on a mission in life to redefine the word ‘stupid’.

  She was a rather petite lady, whom the late Barbara Cartland would have probably called buxom. She had a round face that she chose to accentuate by wearing too much rouge on her cheeks. From a distance, she looked like a strawberry. No, that is not true. She looked like a strawberry in tacky sunglasses. She wore those awful black ones that have gold sovereigns embedded along each of the arms. To the average person, these sunglasses say ‘Here is a moron who wants you to know she’s paid a lot of money for a pair of sunglasses that look about as attractive as the cheap ones in a night market.’ However, to lamebrains like our ‘strawberry’ friend, these glasses represent the height of good taste. Consequently, she wore them everywhere. In the hotel lobby, on the shaded coach and even on the Terminator 3-D attraction in Universal Studios, which was pitch black! In fact, I think it was the combination of her silly sunglasses, her designer handbag with the awful gold chain handle and her round, red face that made a few American teenagers laugh at her. In these situations, I would have pitied ‘strawberry’ until she reminded me what a kiasu bitch she really was.

  The first time she obliged was in the orientation meeting. Edward was explaining about our accommodation in each of the cities we were visiting when she piped up. ‘Edward, why aren’t we staying in five-star hotels all the way?’

  The room fell quiet. The whole package with flights, hotels, transfers, theme parks and some meals was just over S$2,000. Return flights to the West Coast on Singapore Airlines (our airline for the tour) during peak season usually cost around S$1,400. Therefore, you do not need a calculator to work out that poor old Edward, who took care of hotel bookings, transfers and so forth, had to make S$600 go a very long way. He explained, rather patiently, that all the hotels had three stars and the Holiday Inn in San Francisco had four stars. As far as I am concerned, all the hotels were more than sufficient. But once strawberry had set the ball rolling, all the stupid questions came gushing forth as Edward struggled to hold back the kiasu tide. Blue mac, the gambling man, asked if we could extend our stay in Las Vegas. No, we could not because we were on a tight schedule came the courteous reply. No, we could not because this was a family tour so the selfish arsehole would have to play blackjack with himself would have been my reply.

  However, if one topic dominated the tour, it would have to be food. From the orientation through Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Arizona and even San Francisco, the subject of cuisine was never far from my travelling gang’s lips. It came up on our first night in Anaheim, Los Angeles. We went to what must have been the cheapest looking Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles. The food was tasty and plentiful, though it did seem somewhat surreal eating Chinese food on my first night in the United States. I felt, at the very least, that we should have been eating ribs or hot dogs and a big slab of mom’s homemade blueberry pie. It seemed my companions did not agree.

  We began chatting with a young couple who were on their honeymoon. They were pleasant company and we ended up spending a bit of time with them. Yet the guy said the strangest thing. I asked him what he thought of America so far, a crazy question I will readily admit because we had only been in the place for about four hours and they had all been spent in Anaheim, so they hardly counted. And he replied, ‘I preferred Europe. It’s got all the history, great buildings and everywhere is different.’ He paused and then added, ‘The food was better there, too.’

  Now this startled me a little as he had only had one meal and that was Chinese so he had nothing to compare the European cuisines with. Somewhat stumped, I asked, ‘Do you mean all the different Italian and French dishes?’ Notice I did not mention English food. I did not want to destroy my credibility after one conversation.

  ‘No, I mean the Chinese food was better.’

  ‘The Chinese food? Where?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘Well, all over really. But I remember a great restaurant in Italy.’ And his wife nodded
in agreement.

  It was the first time that I had ever seen two Singaporeans fall into self-parody so easily. Italy is famous throughout the world for its spaghetti bolognaise, lasagne, cannelloni and its 101 different varieties of pizza. I do not profess to be a food expert. Having grown up on my mother’s cooking I cannot be but even I wanted to laugh at this guy. I mean, he was excited about a place that was over 10, 000 km away because it had restaurants that served the kind of dishes he could get at any hawker centre in Singapore for S$3.

  Once we had broached the subject of food, the floodgates opened. Everyone on our table suddenly perked up, even strawberry, who, up until this point, had been stuffing her face with spoonfuls of sweet and sour pork. Her husband began to talk to the newlyweds about the best Chinese restaurants in Singapore. Eager to bring us into the conversation, he asked my partner and me if we had eaten Chinese food before. So I said, ‘Funnily enough, no. Despite their exorbitant prices, we’ve eaten hamburgers every fucking day for the last three years. Hence the greasy skin, the huge waistline and my partner’s habit of mooing when she’s around grass. Quite honestly, we wouldn’t be able to tell a stick of satay from a chopstick. Both of which I intend to insert up your rectum once I’ve managed to dislodge them from your wife’s prodigious mouth.’

  Indeed, this question always floors me. Not because people ask if I have had Chinese food before but because they do not ask me if I have had Chinese food in Singapore before? They cannot possibly assume that in twenty-odd years I have never eaten a Chinese meal in England. Singaporeans must know that London is generously sprinkled with hundreds of Chinese food outlets. Those who have visited England have probably dined at most of them as part of their effort to eat their way around all the Chinese restaurants in the world. It is sad really.

  However, it is not as sad as how I felt on my first night in the United States after having listened to my companions discuss where to get the best chendol on a tiny island that was on the other side of the globe. This was America. We should have been talking about where we were going over the next few days and what were the best rides for the kids in Knott’s Berry Farm Theme Park. Would there be time to stop in Beverly Hills to buy strawberry a more subtle pair of sunglasses? You know, holiday-type stuff.