Scribbles from the Same Island Read online

  “You’re telling me I’ve got to allow this prick to drive recklessly because he has a bigger bank account than us?”

  “It’s not that,” my friend explained carefully. “Singapore is a tiny place, especially in business. The chances of you running into this guy at a meeting or in the office are quite high. If you don’t give him face, he could remember it and screw your career.”

  “Yeah? I’d never thought of it. Well, in that case, fuck him.”

  This Singaporean symbiotic relationship between material wealth and social status has got to be broken up. Money does not equate to courtesy. It might be just me here, but have you noticed that some of the biggest arseholes — the most self-centred, selfish, tedious, dogmatic individuals — that Singapore can offer are often towkays? Rich, miserable old bastards who assume they can bypass you at the queue in the garage and force you to brake sharply on the expressway so their luxury vehicle can smoothly dominate whichever lane it chooses.

  Just a few weeks ago, I was standing in the middle of a junction at Toa Payoh Central, waiting for the lights to change, when I watched some moronic tai tai attempt a U-turn in her Mercedes. There’s nothing illegal or inconsiderate about that. However, she tried to turn the wheel of her huge car with her right hand, while she held her handphone with her left. In the middle of her earpiece-free conversation, it was painfully obvious that her minuscule powers of concentration were being stretched to their limit. She turned so slowly that oncoming cars were forced to slow down as she straddled two lanes, forcing other cars to swerve away from a huge insurance bill. But she was oblivious to all of this, of course. Without so much as a casual glance in her rear-view mirror, the silly bitch continued her conversation and pulled away.

  These buggers do not own the road. And I’m going to be brutally honest here. I’ve been in a car with my face-giving friend on several occasions and listened to him savage other drivers. He says things like: “You see that bastard there overtake me? Look at his number plate. He’s a Malaysian, what do you expect? Buggers can’t even drive properly.” Or “Look at that shitty car there. A cheap Nissan and he thinks he can drive around like a big shot.” He is the same person who says things like: “Never mind lah. Did you see his BMW? That’s the new model, shiok right? Costs about 150k, that model.”

  By the time he’s finished arse-kissing the vehicle’s owner, he’s forgotten that it was only his quick reflexes that prevented the ‘shiok new model’ from knocking his wing mirror off.

  So it’s time for the Singaporean government to step in and ban inconsiderate towkays and tai tais from ever driving a car in this city-state again. Should one or two of the more liberal members of this society consider such a stipulation a tad harsh, then I recommend employing chauffeurs. Such distinguished citizens should have no problem paying for a personal driver. Now, I’ve spoken to my mother and she’s more than willing to do the job. We’ve just got to find the deepest ditch in Singapore.

  THE SNIP

  LIKE many movie distributors in Singapore, I’ve also been punished for trying to show uncensored films.

  When I was a child, my younger sister and I would raid the video cabinet as soon as our mother left for work in a bid to find the juiciest material. We succeeded but, unfortunately, our movie selections were always discovered. Our mother would return and notice that two videotapes — The Violent Return of the Sick, Sordid, Sadistic Serial Killer and The Sound of Music — had not been rewound.

  “How many times have I told you? You must stop your little sister from watching violent films,” our mother would shout.

  “Sorry, mum. I was too busy watching Julie Andrews in my bedroom. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?!” she would scream. “That’s not good enough. Sorry? I’ll give you ‘sorry’.”

  She did not give me a ‘sorry’, whatever that was. Instead, she gave me a forceful slap on the face that sent me over the sofa like an Olympic hurdler. I’ve been opposed to all forms of artistic censorship ever since.

  Over the years, though, I’ve managed to block out my mother’s random acts of violence. But the memories came flooding back when video censorship sneaked into the news again.

  A report in TODAY said that those guys down at the Films and Publications Department (FPD) had cut the outstanding Gosford Park DVD before it was sent out to the stores. Apparently, the British social satire showed a man’s buttocks during its cinematic release, which was R(A)-rated, earlier in the year.

  Now, call me old-fashioned, but I don’t go to cinemas to ogle men’s bums. If I wanted to look at a hairy, greasy and slightly flabby backside, I could stand on a mirror. So I can’t even recall the two-second scene, but nothing gets past those eager beavers on the Films Advisory Panel who help to decide a movie’s classification in Singapore.

  They cut the scene for the DVD release, which has, in turn, thoroughly ruined the director’s audio commentary. Nevertheless, we can all sleep safely in our beds now because there is one less bare bum out there. If that monu-mental decision doesn’t single-handedly revive Singapore’s flagging economy, then, frankly, nothing will.

  And don’t underestimate the workload of the FPD. After visiting its fascinating website, I learned that of the 39 movies reviewed from August 10 to September 9 in 2002, seven were passed only after cuts were made.

  Some, of course, do not make it to the Republic’s cinema screens at all. In February 2002, Ben Stiller’s satire on the modelling industry, Zoolander, was denied a cinematic release. The silly, comical plot involved assassinating a mythical Malaysian president and was deemed insensitive.

  Taking this issue into serious consideration, it might be an opportune time to reexamine the James Bond series. After all, there are several plots involving megalomaniacs seeking world domination, often at the expense of global superpowers. They might only be the work of fiction, but does the rest of the world know that? Downing Street and the White House must be informed.

  But seriously, the Gosford Park farce hardly comes as a surprise. I’ve been a victim of the excitable, but clumsy, cutters at the FPD. A friend sent a British gangster movie to me, as a gift, and it was rerouted to those wonderful FPD employees.

  Confident the film would escape the censors scissors, I paid for it to be viewed by those wonderful FPD employees, who decide, on my behalf, what parts of my gift I’m allowed to take home. However, I was staggered to learn that the movie was awarded two cuts, which I also had to pay for. One of the cuts involved a pair of exposed breasts on a poster, in the background and out of focus. Now, I’m quite partial to that area of a woman’s body, but I must confess that I’d never even noticed the poster. But, thankfully, those wonderful FPD employees certainly did.

  Are we supposed to deny the existence of breasts? Because, with the exception of Pamela Anderson’s, they’re real, you know. And there isn’t a man (or woman, for that matter) who should not give thanks to their respective gods every single day. A slightly different chink in the evolutionary chain and breasts could have been shaped like cows’ udders, which would’ve been a genuine reason to cut them completely from the movie-making process.

  But interestingly, certain productions fall under the FPD’s exempted categories. Examples include sports programmes, training videos, karaoke tapes and ballet recordings.

  Has anyone at the FPD ever watched ballet on television? Those lycra numbers leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. It only takes a close-up, frontal shot of a male dancer pirouetting and I can’t look at a chicken rice stall for a week. There are all sorts of things wiggling about in that costume. A performance of Swan Lake has more perfectly toned torsos than 20 viewings of an uncensored Gosford Park. For the sake of social cohesion and chicken rice stall owners everywhere, it is time for the FPD to take its scissors along to the ballet.

  Certainly, some of these neurotic censors need to get out more and get a life. If that doesn’t work, they can always get a gentle slap from my ever-willing mother.

  NOTE: With
in three days, I received a wonderful page-long letter from the FPD, which was subsequently published in the letters page of TODAY. The government body never took me to task for any of the content. It couldn’t. It was all based on facts or actual incidents. But the censorship body felt the need to explain why the scissors came out for movies like Gosford Park — so it could receive a general certificate. In other words, making the cut means more copies of the DVD can be sold to a wider audience. I must admit I was quite impressed with FPD’s reply, because it showed that the guys there just had a job to do and they all took the column in the right spirit. But it remains disappointing that in the interests of making a few extra dollars, art continues to come off second best to greed in Singapore.

  THE PHANTOM

  MY senile grandmother doesn’t understand the concept of recycling. Environmental issues mean nothing to her. She can’t even spell ‘environment’. She endured London’s pea-soup smog of the ’50s, when levels of sulphur reached lethal concentrations with no fuss and typical working-class resilience. Indeed, if she visited Singapore, she would consider the haze a ‘slightly overcast’ day.

  I asked her once what she thought about recycling and she said: “If your granddad was still alive, you could’ve asked him. He was never off that bloody bike.”

  Like many of the aunties and uncles in Singapore, she has little time for recycling. But for a country that could easily fit into several Canadian lakes, wastage is like a foul odour that won’t go away. Recently, a number of environmentally conscious Singaporeans have complained about the lack of awareness regarding the various laudable recycling programmes that have existed for some time.

  The Ministry of Environment, which has, in truth, made commendable efforts to minimise the waste of some four million people, should send a team down to Toa Payoh. Tucked away in an HDB block is the phantom recycler, a potential environmental envoy for the country who could keep the country green for your grandchildren. I discovered him when I moved house. Yes, it was time to call it a day on Toa Payoh Lorong 1. We had some good times, but we decided to part ways to maintain an amicable relationship.

  I moved from Lorong 1 all the way to... Lorong 2. You didn’t seriously think I was going to turn my back on Toa Payoh, did you? If I go any further north than Bishan, I start to get a nosebleed.

  It was a rather bizarre moving day anyway because the moving lady possessed the unique skill of conjuring rabbits. Apparently, someone on my old corridor had to get rid of a pair of rabbits because they were mating like, well, rabbits. They were producing the kind of numbers that Romancing Singapore campaigners can only dream of and all that ‘producing’, scratching and cries of “oh yeah, bunny boy” were keeping the old timer awake at night. So, he gave the rabbits to my removal lady. But she never told me.

  Can you possibly imagine what your reaction would be if you unloaded your belongings off a lorry and discovered two randy rabbits that you know you didn’t have 20 minutes ago? You would probably say: “Excuse me, auntie. Sorry to trouble you, but where the fuck did you get these shagging rabbits from?” Or something like that.

  But that was only the first illusion during a weekend that quickly became a David Copperfield special. Like most people, we’d accumulated too much junk for a three-room flat. I’m still not sure why I have a life-sized Darth Vader mask, for instance, but there you go. First, we called in the Salvation Army. I wasn’t aware that they’d moved into recycling. When I was a child, they just blew out a few Christmas carols on their trumpets and disappeared again until the following December. But they collected six bags of ‘why-in-the-name-of-impulse-buying-did-you-buy-THAT-you-stupid-woman’ stuff and promised to pass it on to the needy.

  Then, we called in the collectors at SembCorp Waste Management to take the rest, that is, the sort of knick-knacks that the Salvation Army turned down, giving you an idea of the crap my girlfriend had accumulated. But no disrespect to either recycling programme; nothing compares to the resourcefulness of the phantom recycler of Toa Payoh.

  In a rare moment of recklessness, I’d bought a junior snooker table once, swearing that it would have to be prised from my dead hands before I’d get rid of it. The missus threatened to leave me if she bumped into the green beast one more time on her way to the toilet in the dead of night. So I took it down to the HDB lift lobby to get rid of it. But, before that, I took a box down containing the snooker cues, the balls and so forth. When I returned less than five minutes later with the table, the box had vanished. There was no trace of it. Now, I suffer from a rancid imagination, but, without the table, what the hell does a person want with a pair of snooker cues and another man’s balls? Frankly, I was genuinely stumped on that one.

  I considered David Copperfield but quickly dismissed him. I know he made the Statue of Liberty disappear, but could he make his balls disappear outside an HDB lift in Toa Payoh? I was intrigued, so I staked out a nearby void deck and watched my snooker table for 10 minutes. Nothing happened. Bored and hungry, I went back upstairs to lock up and when I returned, the table had disappeared! Who the hell was doing this?

  Growing alarmed, I grabbed a passer-by and said: “Hi, I’ve just moved into this block. I wonder if you can help me?” By his concerned reaction, I’m sure he visualised all-night parties, too much beer, English Premiership matches blaring out at 4am and drunken brawls between rival supporters. But he shouldn’t feel compelled to invite me over. So I hurriedly continued: “Have you seen a snooker table outside the lift?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “A washing machine.”

  “Really?”

  “No. It’s big, green, rectangular, with pockets in every corner.”

  “No, I haven’t. But I know someone who can get the new Incredible Hulk movie on DVD if you’re interested?”

  I wasn’t. But I am keen for the environment ministry to employ the phantom to improve its recycling statistics. In 2000, Singapore generated 4.6 million tonnes of waste and recycled 1.8 million tonnes of them, giving a recycling rate of 40 per cent. In 2001, that level increased to 2.2 million tonnes from 5 million tonnes of waste. Thus, the recycling rate increased to a commendable 44 per cent. And it’s trying to raise residential awareness with the National Recycling Programme (NRP), which was launched in April 2001. If you’re interested, household participation began at around 15 per cent. It reached 30 per cent by October last year. The NRP is aiming for a 50 per cent participation rate by the end of 2003, and I sincerely hope it succeeds. I don’t want to leave a Singaporean rubbish dump for your grandchildren, do you?

  But I’m convinced that even the optimistic target of 50 per cent would be a conservative estimate if the environment ministry recruited the phantom recycler of Toa Payoh. Get the Internal Security Department to hold stakeouts at the HDB blocks in Toa Payoh Lorong 2. The agents must scour the void decks to find this man immediately. He will clean up this country before you can say: “Have you seen my bloody snooker table?”

  THE FARECARD

  THE peaceful tranquillity of Malaysia’s Tioman Island was shattered, when my partner grabbed my arm and exclaimed: “We need to get an ez-link card!”

  I had no idea what the stupid woman was talking about either. Sitting at the jetty waiting for a ferry, this was hardly the place to be discussing the Singaporean public transport system. We had spent a rustic weekend at a simple village, where the locals were so laidback they were almost horizontal. When the ferry was 10 minutes late, I asked the operator: “What time is the ferry due?”

  ”When it gets here,” came the humbling reply. “Don’t worry, sit back, relax and feed the fish.”

  Great advice, but I didn’t have any bread and, besides, we had to rush back to Singapore, apparently, to embark on our ez-link card mission. An eager bus driver had informed me the previous week that the prehistoric farecard was to be bumped off on October 1, 2002, and that we risked social castration if we didn’t have an ez-link card by then. So, from the serene silence of Tioman, we jo
ined the shuffling feet at Toa Payoh’s MRT station. The queue for the ticket booth was longer than the Great Wall of China. What were they all queuing for? I’m convinced that some had no idea.

  “Look at that!” Passers-by must say to their friends. “Now that’s what I call a queue. Sure must be a free gift at the end. Come lah.”

  In the end, though, I was granted a temporary reprieve. After calling a charming woman on the TransitLink hotline, I discovered that the death of the farecard would be a long, drawn out process. She said it could be “November or even December” before the ez-link card usurps its predecessor and takes complete control. That being the case, I will doggedly persevere with the old farecard until Dec 31.

  And I know this will irritate fellow commuters. On buses, when I slow down boarding time with my farecard fumbling, the perverse side of me quite enjoys the accompanied critical mutterings. If they persist, I turn the card upside down, look aghast when the machine spits it back and say: “Excuse me, there seems to be something wrong with the machine and I’m really in a hurry here.” God, where do they get these people from?

  But I struggle with relentless change. My generation has grown up in a society where Blitzkrieg technological development is the norm. There is no time to stand still. I admire those who stand up for some continuity in their lives.

  In England, there were cases of shopkeepers being forced, by law, to adopt the metric system of weights and measures in line with European Union stipulations. Despite the threat of a fine, and in extreme cases a prison sentence, they still stuck by their pounds and ounces. They were my heroes.

  These grocery guys would rather take on the European Union than risk the wrath of little old ladies coming in and asking: “What the bloody hell is a gram, you silly young man? Now, give me two pounds of sugar before I box your ears.”