Scribbles from the Same Island Read online

  NOTE: An irate American reader said I had no right to pigeonhole New Yorkers, or worse yet, over 250 million Americans as being ‘daft’ after spending just one weekend in Manhattan. He’s absolutely right, of course. Powerful, intelligent Americans have contributed so much to the world — hot-dogs, hula-hoops, American football, the list is just endless. Take the most powerful man in America, the president. He’s not a daft man, is he? He never says funny or peculiar things. I mean, as the leader of the people, he can’t. Though I still think there is a ‘u’ missing in that last word. Incidentally, I had a Singaporean friend who spent a year studying in the United States and returned sounding like Jennifer Aniston. She hasn’t spoken to me since this article came out. That’s strange. Perhaps she’s been busy.

  THE SPY

  I WAS walking past New York’s Bloomingdales department store when it hit me. There is one man who can resurrect Singapore’s economy.

  The Ministry of Trade and Industry has been churning out depressing figures of late regarding the Gross Dyslexic Peacock and all those other exciting economic statistics. So allow me to add a positive figure of my own — 007. Don’t worry. The suave super-spy will stir up the Singaporean economy and shake it to its very foundations no less.

  To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Ian Fleming’s creation on the silver screen, Bloomingdales had a mini-Bond exhibition on display in its store windows during the 2002 Christmas period. After 20 official movies, it’s no less than the British naval commander deserves.

  But then it occurred to me. When was the last time you saw the dapper gentleman in Singapore? You haven’t. In over 40 hours of screen time, his polished brogues have never set foot on the Changi Airport runway.

  The Republic has been mentioned though, twice in fact. In Sean Connery’s You Only Live Twice and Pierce Brosnan’s Tomorrow Never Dies, spy chief M refers to “our satellite in Singapore”.

  Now, where is this top-secret satellite and who the hell is operating it on behalf of Britain’s Secret Service? It’s probably an illegal bookie living in Toa Payoh, trying to receive the English Premiership on ESPN without paying for it. But seriously, I’m going to impart classified information and reveal the satellite’s location. It’s at the summit of Bukit Timah Hill. Have you noticed that fenced off “military” area at the top? There are those graphic signs, depicting a matchstick man being shot for trespassing.

  Should you pass that deterrent, there is another sign, showing a trespassing matchstick man having his testicles removed with an MRT farecard. (You might as well do something with them now that the ez-link card has mercilessly replaced them.)

  That’s where MI6 is hiding its communicative hardware for Southeast Asia! But who’s operating the satellite — the monkeys? Surely they can’t be running the intelligence agencies of both London and Singapore? Luckily, this isn’t the case. Sources at the Internal Security Department intercepted a recent transmission sent out from Bukit Timah.

  The male voice said: “M? It’s Beng in Singapore. Getting interference lah, cannot lah. Trying to watch Man Yoo. Big game lah, half ball some more. Get that ‘ham-sum’ ang moh called Bond James Bond can? Let him fix problem, so can watch match in peace.”

  That’s right. Get Bond out here. Let’s have the franchise’s producers, the Broccoli family, bring their US$100 million budget to Singapore and allow the Republic to be the exotic Asian location for the 21st instalment.

  Japan (You Only Live Twice), Hong Kong, Thailand (The Man with the Golden Gun), Vietnam (Tomorrow Never Dies) and now Korea (Die Another Day) have all been featured in the Bond series. Thailand actually renamed the island used in Roger Moore’s The Man with the Golden Gun, calling it the James Bond Island. Its near Phuket and tourists flock to it every week.

  And what does Singapore have after 20 high-tech Bond movies? A satellite. But all that’s going to change. In the next movie, the world’s favourite spy will be met, in the customary fashion, by the local operative at Changi Airport. Pierce Brosnan will step into the Singaporean sunshine and mutter the immortal words: “My name’s Bond. James Bond. Licensed to kill.”

  “My name’s Beng. Ah Beng,” his opposite number will reply. “Licensed to squat on MRT trains.”

  They can compare drinks — Bond has his martini “shaken, not stirred”, Beng has his Tiger Beer “bottled, no cup”. And consider their wardrobes. Bond’s handmade suits are bought from a tailor in upmarket Chelsea. Beng gets his matching white singlet and trousers from a night market in Choa Chu Kang.

  Moreover, setting the movie in an unfamiliar Asian location will inject fresh impetus into an ageing franchise. We’ve all seen the ski chases, the car crashes and the jump from Paris’ Eiffel Tower in A View To A Kill. We can all do that.

  Get Bond to jump off an HDB block and see if he can open his parachute in time. Now that’s a stunt sequence. Should he fail, at least Singapore can boast that it was the country that finally killed 007. And Ah Beng can pick his 4-D lottery numbers based upon the floor his dead colleague jumped from.

  Then there’s the diabolical megalomaniac. Thirsting for totalitarian control, the Bond villain must be contemptuous of his underlings and dismissive of his opponents.

  Oh dear. Do you think Singapore could fit all its “villains” into one movie? But I’m opting for the durian seller. In Live and Let Die, Tee Hee had his hook, while Oddjob had his bowler hat in Goldfinger. In the Singapore movie, the durian seller will have his parang.

  The dastardly cad would allow Bond, who is so enamoured with the double entendre, to deliver throwaway lines like: “Well, Durian. I like your aftershave. And is that a parang in your trousers or are you just pleased to see me?”

  And if the director needs beautiful, but one-dimensional, women to fawn over Bond, then he should head for Orchard Towers. Two hours and a large wallet should do the trick.

  Whatever way you look at it, all the essential ingredients for a formulaic 007 movie are here in plentiful abundance. It’s time for the Singapore Tourism Industry to bring Bond to Bras Basah. And “Bra Bizarre”, incidentally, makes a great name for a Bond girl.

  Should you get a chance to watch the latest Bond offering again, watch the end titles closely because I understand the next movie will have a poignant plot twist. The final credits will read: “The end of Die Another Day. But James Bond will return in Ah Beng Die Die Ah.”

  THE ENGLISH

  IT TOOK me seven years to master the rudiments of Singlish. It would take me seven lifetimes to understand Mancunian English. In hawker centres, Singaporeans converse in a relaxed fashion. But on the streets of Manchester, locals speak with a relaxed brain. It’s very time-consuming. Casual greetings with strangers took so long that I often nipped away and grabbed a bite to eat, before returning to hear the rest of the sentence.

  “Helloo, luuurrrvvvveeee,” they would begin. “Ahhh yaaa, all-riiiiiight?” It was three days before: a) I realised I was being asked, “Hello love, are you all right?” And b) I shoved four Duracell batteries in their mouths to speed up vocal delivery. Officially, of course, I was in Manchester, in the freezing north-west of England in December 2002 to cover entertaining Premiership matches and, if I was free, to also watch Manchester United.

  Unofficially, I was in Manchester to track down every loony, nutcase and space cadet that Lancashire had to offer. I’ve been working on this mission in Toa Payoh for several years now, but I never realised that my duties extended to northern England.

  My first basket case found me while I waited at a bus stop in a Lancashire village called Worsley. The place is so quiet that the local council has been discussing shooting its duck population because residents have complained that the occasional quack has increased noise pollution by 45 per cent.

  As you can see, the deranged elderly have a lot of time on their hands in Worsley. So, they like to while away the hours with the odd, impromptu mime class.

  When I was at the bus stop, a bus pulled in, so I tilted my head to read its destin
ation on the side. An old woman, who was sitting on the bus above the sign, smiled at me and then tilted her head. Slightly disturbed, I rolled my head towards my other shoulder and she did the same.

  Safe in the knowledge that a bus separated me from the lunatic, I began moving my head backwards and forwards and she copied my every move. We looked like a pair of those cheap, nodding dogs people have on their shelves in Singapore. Then, demonstrating the first signs of spontaneity, the daft old bat started to wave at me vigorously and gave me a toothless grin. I’ve got more fingers than she had teeth.

  Unfortunately, just as I contemplated asking the old dear to come and live with me, the bus pulled away. I was devastated. Priceless nutters like them can be so hard to find. Luckily, they find me. I went into a newsagent for directions to the nearest post office and regretted it instantly because only one of us was fluent in northern English.

  “Helloo, luuurrrvvvveeee,”’ said the shop owner. “Where? Aye. You wanna ge’ a boose. It’s tool fah t’wark.”

  “No, I don’t mind walking.” That was a mistake. Manchester only has two seasons — June and winter.

  “Riiiiiight, aye. Tech the furs’ riiiiiight. Goal pass the red paws box and yule see paws office next t’it.”

  After I’d gone through my English/northern English dictionary and translated her directions, she added: “Boot it worn be open now, luuurrrvvvveeee.” I took one of the quacking ducks from the nearby canal and threw it at her.

  Compared to Mancunian, Singlish really is a walk in the park. I’d forgotten, incidentally, that during those walks in the park, loonies do enjoy a heated argument with themselves.

  Strolling through Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens in the city centre, I saw a rather intoxicated chap screaming abuse at his alter ego about that “fucking waste of space, Tony Blair’’.

  Then in the next breath, Dr Jekyll replied: “But look how the Prime Minister’s cleaned up this place.”

  This infuriated Mr Hyde, who retorted: “Nope, Tony Blair is a fucking Tory in a cheap Labour suit.”

  It was positively wonderful. My only regret was the old tramp didn’t start fighting with himself. I would have brought in popcorn and charged admission for that.

  The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) should pay his salary (a cheap bottle of cider and a urine-stained overcoat seems to make him extremely happy) and bring this man to Hong Lim’s Speakers’ Corner. Give him any issue you like — foreign talent, Medisave, ez-link cards, prescription chewing gum — and let him go to work. He doesn’t need to read up on the subjects because from what I understand, facts merely cloud his judgement. Just give him plenty of room and a discreetly placed bucket. Both Jekyll and Hyde, unsurprisingly, have an acute bladder problem.

  Indeed, if the STB is serious about providing quality street entertainment, then I suggest they secure his services now. Because I’ve heard he shares a room in the asylum with a really good mime artist.

  NOTE: I received a letter from an expat who had actually worked in the Manchester village of Worsley. Well, someone’s got to I suppose.

  THE CAMPAIGN

  AFTER leaving my family behind in England, having spent Christmas and the New Year with them, I was rather depressed and needed cheering up. I’d just infuriated a Singaporean busload of impatient commuters by waving my old farecard at the ez-link card reader. Surprisingly, the machine wouldn’t beep. Unsurprisingly, my uncensored language produced a few beeps of its own as I struggled to come to terms with the latest technological miracle of efficiency.

  I’d only been away for five weeks, but it might as well have been five years. In the end, a teenager rather patronisingly explained that the farecard was now defunct and I had to use an ez-link card instead.

  The embarrassing scene was reminiscent of the time I showed my grandmother how to use a VCR. “So you put the tape in like this, Nan,” I told her, while performing the task in slow motion. “This slot is only for videotapes, okay? It’s not a mailbox. This is the last time I’m getting the letters out, all right? Now, stop dribbling.”

  Back on the bus, I thanked the teenager with a discreet farecard paper-cut to his forearm and sulked all the way to the MRT station at Toa Payoh. And then, the dark clouds dissipated and sunlight filtered through my black mood.

  The blinding light came in the form of an SMRT poster, which proudly announced the all-new Courtesy Awareness Campaign for 2003. The acronym is CAP, though I’m sure there should be an ‘R’ in there somewhere. Perceptively aware that commuters might, at this stage, gouge out their eyeballs to avoid reading the poster in its entirety, this campaign vowed to be “more fun and exciting”.

  Now, there is a quiz. That’s right, there is an online quiz to determine whether you are a selfless angel or a kiasu bastard when travelling on Singaporean public transport. I couldn’t wait to get home to participate.

  In entertainment terms, the quiz might fall short of, say, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or an irritable bowel, but it’s an enlightening exercise nonetheless. I won’t spoil the content for you, but let’s just say the quiz writers are fond of pregnant women questions along the lines of: “If a pregnant lady goes into labour on a train, would you cut the umbilical cord and give up your seat for the newborn baby?”

  If foreigners participate, they could be forgiven for thinking the MRT is full of nothing other than heavily pregnant women. As a precaution, SMRT should look into this and ensure that its drivers are all fully trained midwives. I’m only bitching because I scored a pitiful nine out of 16 and my scorecard read: “Kind, but could be kinder.”

  That’s a rather cruel character assassination. I’ve secured seats for pregnant women on countless occasions by bundling little old ladies to the floor.

  But Singapore loves a condescending campaign or two doesn’t it? There have been campaigns for, among other things, courtesy on public transport, killer litter, cleaner toilets, feeding stray cats and picking your nose at family gatherings.

  No, hang on, that last one came from my mother, not the Singapore government. There aren’t any posters for that one and Gurmit Singh hasn’t made any commercials for it. But my mother’s campaign does come with a slap across the head, which has enjoyed considerable success over the years. Perhaps SMRT should adopt a similar approach.

  The network’s efforts to cultivate a more gracious and courteous commuter should be applauded, but will a poster and a quiz really transform the kiasu elements of this society? To be fair, having spent Christmas travelling on the crumbling, litterstrewn London Underground, one shouldn’t be too hard on SMRT.

  Besides, the airline industry is still 30,000 feet ahead when it comes to patronising its fellow passengers. Whether it was Changi or Heathrow, I still had to go through that pathetic ‘terrorist’ interrogation. A Changi Airport employee asked the same tired, old question: “Did anyone approach you to carry something through for them?”

  Does she seriously expect me to reply: “Well, do you see that man over there; the one wearing the balaclava? He asked me to take through two souvenir M16s for him. I put them in my suitcase because they were too heavy for my hand luggage. Do I get extra air miles for that?”

  Within six months, don’t be surprised if Changi Airport unveils the “fun and exciting” Say No To Terrorists quiz, with questions like: “If someone asked you to carry a teddy bear in you luggage and it started ticking, what would you do?”

  No one is disputing the threat of global terrorism since Sept 11. But airport officials asking such banal questions will not bring about the collapse of Al Qaeda. Hold that thought, while I pick my nose in peace. That’s about the only public campaign that hasn’t been launched in Singapore — yet.

  NOTE: I remain deeply impressed with how many campaigns this country nurtures in a year. The originality really is quite staggering. They’ll be campaigns on love and romance next...

  THE ROMANCE

  WHEN I was a teenager, I’d like to think young ladies were drawn to me at social gatherin
gs. I made other men feel insecure in my presence. I was a bit of a sex magnet in fact. To visualise this scenario, however, I have to imagine that the only other males in the room were Mr. Bean, George Michael and Barney the dinosaur, but it’s my imagination damn it and I’ll go wherever it takes me.

  But the dream never lasts long anyway. The bubble always bursts when the Michelle Pfeiffer-lookalike rips through my banter by declaring that she’s seen Jurassic Park 12 times and she has an inexplicable fetish for the colour purple.

  To be honest, I attracted about as many women as Singapore attracts opposition candidates at general elections. If only women could’ve been encouraged to like me. If there had been, say, a group of geeks who went around Dagenham, my hometown, ordering single people to get together, my chances would’ve improved tenfold. But who the hell would go to all that trouble to create a taskforce to promote romance and social couplings?

  Stand up, Singapore, and proudly take one matchmaking step forward. In a bid to get more Singapore citizens to have sex (and, I presume, conceive babies to bolster the workforce in 20 years time), February 2003 was designated the month to be one of love, life and relationships. The lovemaking campaign — Romancing Singapore — was launched by the bigwigs. Sorry, I’m wrong. It isn’t a campaign — of course it isn’t, the Republic doesn’t have campaigns — but a festival and celebration of love.

  Don’t reach for the sick bucket just yet; this celebration shouldn’t involve hippies, peace symbols or Beatles songs. There will be no mimicking of Woodstock, with mass gatherings of sex-starved youths at Sentosa. But there is, however, a Task Force. The organisers, Family Matters! (with an exclamation no less), have spared no expense to ensure that Singaporeans celebrate their love for one another. So you’d better be bloody romantic in February or they’ll send the Task Force troops in.