Notes From an Even Smaller Island Read online

By the way, I do enjoy the frankness of the average Singaporean shop assistant. It is so refreshing. When I finally bought some shirts, I was delighted to find a shop that stocked clothes in my size in a variety of styles and colours. Usually, I get something along the lines of ‘Yes, we do have one shirt that will fit you. I believe it was ordered by a Mr Cuthbert Nathaniel Smythe during those wildly excessive colonial days. This neon khaki safari shirt is a little dusty but I’m sure if I knock 10 per cent off, we’ll say no more about it.’

  So while I was paying for my purchases, I was eager to express my gratitude. ‘I’m so glad to have found something that fits me. I’ve been looking for six hours.’

  ‘That’s because you’re too long, lah,’ said the young cashier who was folding my clothes.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Of course, what. You’re so tall and your arms are really long. You’ll never get clothes in Singapore.’

  Fighting back the tears, I retorted, ‘But I just have, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yeah lah, but only because we have European stocks and you’ve taken the biggest. I think you’re too long for Singapore.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t fucking say.’ Okay, I did not say the last part but I did collect my receipt in a rather hurried fashion. I also steadfastly refused to flirt with the young waif, even though I suspect she found me damned attractive with my ready wit and Neanderthal measurements.

  Yet her in-your-face serving style is an example of one of my first impressions of Singapore. Its people can usually speak two or three languages and can write in at least two, an accomplishment that is extremely impressive to a man who is still struggling with his native tongue. How well each language is spoken depends, obviously, on age, education and socioeconomic background, all of which makes for some entertaining customer services.

  When Scott and I began to eat in hawker centres, we found our early experiences terrifying. Men in black wellington boots would stand behind their respective stalls and if we ventured close enough would bellow, ‘Wha’ you want?’ And when I say bellow, I mean bellow. This voice would slap you in the face and perforate your eardrums. Before you knew it, you were ordering things like boiled squid just so you would not get shouted at again. Then the woman who sold drinks would come to the table and take our order. She would never write anything down, yet she would go back to the drinks stall and collect the already waiting drinks. How did she do it? It is very simple. Female drink stall operators in Singapore have the loudest voices in the universe.

  No matter which hawker centre you go to, the drinks seller will approach your table and eloquently ask, ‘Want drink or not?’

  To which you reply, ‘Two cokes, please.’

  Then it begins. She lifts her chin and points it towards the general direction of the drinks stall, which could be up to 25 metres away, with fifty talking customers in between. Opening her mouth to reveal a chasm that could easily fill Changi Airport, she stands up straight and, like Mount Vesuvius with a queasy tummy, erupts, ‘T-W-O C-O-K-E-S, O-N-E C-O-F-F-E-E A-N-D T-W-O S-P-R-I-T-E.’

  Scott and I jumped under the table the first time it happened. Never had I heard such a sound produced by a human being. Imagine standing on an airport runway as a Boeing 747 takes off, clearing your head by just a few metres. Think about the sound that those four engines make as they roar past. Now pretend they are saying ‘Two cokes, one coffee and two sprite’ and you will have some idea of what a female drinks seller in a hawker centre sounds like. Thirty seconds later, the same woman does it all over again, yet I have not come across a drinks seller who sounded hoarse.

  Of course, I find hawker centres and their employees particularly endearing because I used to work in a café that was owned by my uncle in Bromley-by-Bow, an industrial area in East London. Our daily clientele consisted of enormous construction workers or lorry drivers, who used to grunt their orders, bitch about the prices and display their vast, greasy backsides while they ate. And I, a fourteen-year-old skinny teenager with zero confidence, was expected to serve them. No matter what I did, it was always wrong. How I used to wish that, for just one day, I was big enough to stand up to them and tell them all to fuck off. Now I wish I could have sent them ‘hawker-centre woman’. Yes, sent ‘hawkerwoman’, the new crime fighter, to the heart of male-dominated, chauvinistic working-class East London to bring justice back to the world. Just one blast from her volcanic mouth would have scared the little shits witless. And should they have decided to pursue the matter, hawkerwoman would then have produced the chopper that the Hainanese chicken rice guy uses and decapitated each and every one of the bastards. Oh, you have got to have a dream.

  One thing I have noticed since I have been here is the steady evolution from hawker centre to food court. Naturally, when friends visit from England, they extol the virtues of the bright, clean and efficient food courts. They remark that the food courts are much more hygienic than those grubby little hawker centres, which should all be swept away. I am not so sure. I have always believed that hawker centres do need radical face lifts. A country that strives for a knowledge-based economy could at least produce an eating establishment that was not littered with cigarette butts, used tissues and dropped food. However, without fail, hawker centres always produce good, cheap food. Food courts with their higher overheads cannot but, for whatever reason, they do not seem to be able to reproduce the quality of food produced in hawker centres either. If I am going to pay S$3.50 for a plate of chicken rice, then, at the very least, it must be as tasty as a S$2 plate from a hawker centre. But it is not.

  So we are left, on the one hand, with modern food courts that are mediocre and overpriced and, on the other, hawker centres that still earn a small profit but not enough to undergo the essential renovations needed to compete in the new millennium. I just hope that when the sad day comes and the last hawker centre is swept away, I can still call upon hawkerwoman to save the day when I need her. Like I said, you have got to have a dream, haven’t you?

  Chapter Two

  There is a song written by Robbie Williams called ‘Millennium’ that I believe could be an anthem for Singaporean ‘aunties’. Whenever I hear the song, which contains the line ‘Come and have a go, if you think you are hard enough’, Singaporean aunties immediately spring to mind. To borrow from London terminology, I have yet to meet anyone who is ‘harder’ than a Singaporean auntie. Believe me, they are rock solid and their resolute attitude and lust for life is something that the younger, greedier generation can learn from.

  A Singaporean auntie or uncle can be anyone who is from the older generations, like an English old age pensioner (OAP), and the term is used out of affection and respect. In a country where so much emphasis is placed upon the family unit and respecting your elders, it is only right that the elderly are held in such high esteem.

  When the Japanese invaded and occupied Singapore, then a British Crown colony, in February 1942, these people endured terrible hardships. Under the constant surveillance of the kempeitai (the Japanese military police), many were imprisoned, tortured and even executed. Nevertheless, underground resistance groups still flourished until the war ended. When Singapore began its transformation from Crown colony to a leading Asian economic city-state, these hardworking people were the backbone. Far be it from me to deny the importance of the political direction of the Lee Kuan Yew-led People’s Action Party to achieve prosperity but I am certain that modern-day Singapore owes everything to its aunties and uncles. So every time I see students and young executives brushing past them as if they were invisible to get on a bus or train, I really want to throttle the impatient little bastards.

  Unfortunately, the same attitude exists in Dagenham, my home town, only it is much worse. Dagenham is in Essex, the county to the east of London. Built in the 1920s to take families away from the overcrowded London slums, Dagenham became home to the world’s largest public housing estate almost overnight. Covering just 4 square miles, the town has a population of 90,000. However, the residents who first
occupied its red-bricked boxes and made it a more homely place to live are now treated with contempt. When they are not being mugged, Dagenham’s elderly are often abused in the high street by little parasites who would not be there if it was not for them. It is rare to hear a teenager in Dagenham addressing an elderly stranger with a term as respectful as ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ whereas it is still commonplace in Singapore. You have to be devoid of all respect and compassion to look an auntie in the eye and forcibly steal her purse but it happens in my tiny home town all the time.

  I would like to lighten the mood a little, if I may, and talk about the wonderful aunties and uncles who make up over 6.5 per cent of Singapore’s population (well, the ones over 65 do). I love ’em. However, the first thing a foreigner seeking to make a good impression must do is calculate whether a person actually qualifies for auntie or uncle status. Whatever you do, do not make the near fatal mistake of assuming that anyone older than yourself automatically qualifies to be an auntie or uncle.

  Let’s stick with the ladies to demonstrate this point as they tend to be more vociferous. When I was a teacher, a well-to-do parent covered in jewellery approached me at the end of a lesson for an update on her child’s progress.

  I said, ‘Yes, of course. Your boy is doing very well, auntie. His vowel sounds are much more distinct and...’

  ‘Auntie?’ she shrilled. ‘Did you just call me auntie? How old do you think I am?’

  Like a bullet in the brain, my dad’s two pearls of wisdom hit me. Never wear white socks with trousers and never, ever try to guess a woman’s age. I am particularly poor at this exceedingly dull game and usually end up saying something like ‘Ooh, you must be about eleven’, which only serves to irritate everybody.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...’

  ‘You can’t call me auntie. I’m not old. You can only call old women “auntie”. If my mother was here, you could call her auntie.’

  What a conversation this was turning out to be. First, she wanted me to ‘guess that age in five’, then she wanted me to play ‘happy families’.

  ‘I understand and I’m really sorry if I...’

  ‘Do you know, I’ve never been called auntie before. I’m only thirty-three. I’ve got two children. He’s my elder son and he’s only seven. You must be really careful who you call auntie, especially if it’s a woman.’ I wanted to disagree and say that surely I must be more careful of calling someone auntie if it were a man, but I thought better of it.

  ‘Just remember that it can be rude to call a young woman auntie. She might turn around and scold you.’

  As opposed to the friendly little chitchat that we have just had, I thought.

  I cannot understand why she was so upset apart from the fact that I had aged her by at least twenty years. She should have been flattered that I had grouped her with Singapore’s elite A-team. It would be like someone in England mistaking me for a member of the SAS Commando Unit, which happens all the time actually. I would be chuffed and you would be, too. The Singaporean aunties and uncles are a unique breed and they know it.

  I remember complaining about the heat while waiting for a number 238 feeder bus in Toa Payoh one day. When it arrived, I lumbered towards it only to realise it was a non air-conditioned bus. About to unleash another pitiful whine, I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of my first Singaporean auntie in action. Wearing a trademark auntie pyjama suit, she marched determinedly towards the bus. Now I am not one to exaggerate but she had fifteen shopping bags in each hand while carefully balancing a grandchild on each shoulder. Without missing a step, she waltzed past me (and it just so happened that I was at the front of the queue) and got on the bus. To my astonishment, the old woman, who must have been in her late sixties and barely 1.2 metres in height, then managed to produce her farecard and insert it into the machine without dropping a single bag or grandchild.

  The adventures of an auntie on a bus do not stop there. Should you be close enough to hear two aunties chatting, which is basically anywhere on a bus, you are guaranteed an entertaining journey. You see, aunties cannot converse quietly. When I first travelled on a bus here, I thought the elderly were wired up to a PA system. They usually sit directly opposite each other on the seats that face one another at the front of the bus and natter away.

  I remember two wonderful aunties involved in an animated conversation on the number 54 bus. It was packed and I was one of the many people who had to stand. Yet right in front of me were two seated aunties who had slipped their shoes off to put their feet up on the seat facing them. They were making more noise than a chain saw felling a tree. It was marvellous. The two women jabbered away in what I think was Hokkien, one of the many Chinese dialects, and when they laughed, they roared. No one told the aunties to keep it down and no one asked them to make room for others to sit down. They certainly did not offer anyone else a seat and why the hell should they?

  I am not saying that the elderly in Singapore are rude because generally they are not. Nor am I saying that British pensioners are without character or humour because that too would be a gross exaggeration. My own grandmother has left me doubled up with laughter more times than I care to remember. She is now in her eighties but until recently she used to perform her unique brand of Hawaiian dancing for guests. Weighing in at over 200 lbs, she would wiggle her hips ever so slightly while nonchalantly flicking her fingers out to the side. If you listened carefully enough, you might just catch the word ‘Hawaii’ escape from her lips. Moreover, she also enjoyed showing my girlfriends that she could not only still do the can-can but could also ‘show her bloomers (knickers) with the best of them’. And she did.

  Basically, all I am suggesting is that Singaporean aunties and uncles ‘have got balls’ as the Mafia would say. They are both resilient and fearless.

  Take the Chinese auntie who cooked at a private pre-school that I used to teach at. She is a real woman whom I admire very much. If she ever decided to keep a diary, I know I would enjoy it more than those written by Bridget Jones, that fictional neurotic middle-class prat who took the British literary world by storm. Auntie was a real woman. Even performing the most mundane of tasks like travelling to school showed how hard she really was. Needing to prepare the schoolchildren’s breakfasts, auntie would arrive shortly before me on her husband’s motorbike. Walking to school, I would hear their large motorbike bringing up the rear. Wearing matching white crash helmets, they would go roaring past like two giant table tennis balls. Carrying her customary ten shopping bags of meat, fish and vegetables, I never once saw auntie hold onto her husband, no matter how fast the bike was going. Yet without fail, she would always raise one of her bag-laden hands and wave enthusiastically, causing the bike to wobble on several occasions, which, in turn, caused the driver to shout expletives at his demented wife. It was quite wonderful.

  The school grounds were set in one of the few remaining rural parts of Singapore. The area was also home to some of the republic’s more exotic species of animals such as monitor lizards and black-spitting cobras. On one memorable occasion, an enterprising cobra had slipped into one of the classrooms to seek a little sanctuary from the damp rainy conditions outside. Unsurprisingly, it was not long before the class was full of screaming children and teachers. In fact, one of the teachers jumped onto the table and became quite hysterical. As the smoke cleared, auntie appeared in the doorway with her sleeves rolled up, holding a broom in one hand and a bucket in the other. After being told that the snake was behind one of the shelves, she sprung into action. Moving the shelves, she thrashed around like a crazed psychopath. Fortunately, for the snake at least, it slithered through a hole and into the garden. The police eventually arrived and captured it. It is not often you sympathise with a black-spitting cobra but, knowing what it was capable of and knowing what auntie was capable of, I did.

  However, I am delighted to report that she is neither the exception nor the queen of Singaporean aunties. No, the queen of Singaporean aunties would
have to be Saudita – the major inspiration for writing this book.

  Saudita is an elderly Indian woman who weighs about 250 lbs and has a tongue filthier than a drunken sailor. She could speak three languages: Tamil, Malay and swear. This mountain of a woman could strike fear into any man, woman or child who dared to cross her path. And she was my live-in landlady, from whom I rented a room for a year. To be honest, I am surprised that I am still here to tell some of her tales.

  In twelve months, she must have sworn at me in every language except English, which she hardly knew. Indeed, her lack of spoken English led to many surreal telephone calls. First of all, she could not pronounce my name properly. It was always ‘Neeoooh’ with the pitch rising dramatically on the ‘ooh’. I would be sitting in my locked bedroom when I would hear her cry ‘Neeoooh!’ Seeing me walk towards the phone, she would merely grunt and point at the receiver. Every time I picked up the phone, I would hear giggling on the other end. It reached the point when friends would call just to hear her shout my name.

  Being on the receiving end was an experience, too. I telephoned the house once to speak to my girlfriend and the conversation was just bizarre.

  ‘Hello, it’s Neil.’

  ‘No,’ replied Saudita.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s Neil here.’

  ‘No house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Neeooh, no house.’ The penny dropped.

  ‘No, I’m Neil.’

  ‘Neeooh, no house, no house,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘No, I’m Neil. It’s me on the phone. I’m Neil.’

  ‘Out. Neeoooh out. No house. Out.’

  ‘I’m fucking Neil, you silly cow. Now will you please put my girlfriend on the line before I come home and kill you.’ She hung up. I suppose I asked for it really but she was such hard work.

  She once asked me to use the dimmer switch to turn down the lights in Indian. Understandably, I was fluffing her cushions, cleaning her windows, feeding the cat she never had and performing every possible household chore except the one she wanted. In the end, when she ran out of patience and I had run out of things to turn on and off, the woman moved from one side of the sofa to the other and turned down the lights herself. It would be generous of me to say that Saudita was somewhat lazy.