Shovel Digs in Singapore

An interesting week at Mount Elizabeth Hospital

2010-10-03T16:14:00.000+08:00

In the Shovel Household it’s been an amazing couple of weeks. Pregnancy and all its accoutrements have finally become Parenthood and all its highs and lows.

Last weekend on the night of the glitzy Singapore F1 Grand Prix, my Lady gave birth to our first son, Junior. While the world was watching cars whizzing around Singapore’s cute and sassy city-circuit and Singapore was either enjoying the thrills and spills or moaning about road closures, our lives were changing.

The maternity ward at Mount Elizabeth hospital behind Paragon Mall on Orchard Road (aka Mount E) took care of us. Our parents are many hours away and have their lives to get on with. Our siblings are similarly wide-spread and we’re newly arrived to the island. We’re pretty much looking for as much knowledge and guidance as we can get as new parents so that we can figure this out on our own.

On the second night, as Junior was screaming his lungs out for no apparent reason, we asked the helpful night-crew what might be going on and if there were any cues we might have missed. The delightful nurse simply picked up Junior, cradled him a little and shrugged her shoulders.
“It could be anything, it’s so hard to tell” she said,
in a matter of fact way that could only be offered by someone who is asked the same question by desperate parents every single day, yet who has the professionalism and patience to avoid emotional responses at these difficult times.

The next move was unexpected, but on reflection we suspect it is the usual course of action at Mount E, known to be the birth-place of choice for Singapore’s TV stars.
“Would you like me to take your baby to the nursery for you?”

We were somewhat taken aback at the ease at which people are offered the option to pass their newborn over to the nurses, but we persisted. We don’t want someone we don’t know (however professional) to remove our child and relinquish us of responsibilities at such a vulnerable moment. We want to know what’s normal, what’s not and what we should be expecting.

It was too much of an easy exit, too much of the “someone else do this hard work for me”. This is not normal behaviour for Singapore, the nation where the individual is not just empowered, but expected to act for themselves. We pushed the nurse on what we could do and after two attempts we finally got a response that made sense. Some helpful advice was that he might be thirsty and without Lady’s milk coming in yet, Junior might just want a little more liquid.

Sure enough, as eggs is eggs, after 3ml of water, Junior was a happy sleeping bunny again. An hour of pacing the ward with him, in my PJs, attracting unusual looks from late-night workers that suggested I could be stealing the baby didn’t do the trick, but 3ml of water and 5 careful minutes of the right questions got us an answer. Armed with this tiny nugget of information, we move on to the next day.
Shovel

Getting older and not being quite so precious about it all...

2010-10-03T16:07:00.000+08:00

I’ve been pretty quiet the last couple of weeks. Work has been busy and Lady and I have been dialing it back in anticipation of our new child joining us.

One of the things that I’ve been realising is that the older you become, the less worried you are about some things but the more worried you are about others. Your pressure points and concerns change.

It’s the little things I think I’ve noticed first. I don’t know whether it is me trying to blend in but I find myself belching just that little more openly at dinner. Not raucous, gut-wobbling belching, but a pleasing small bubble of post-dining contentment. I’d like to think that I can keep up with the Grannies and Aunties who you’ll hear let rip after a plate of fried bee hoon at the hawker centre, but I think my English sensibilities will hold me back for a good few years yet.

I’m not into hocking and spitting into the open sewers (or even public litter bins) like most guys here, but, yes, I’ll probably be more inclined to pass a small bottom-burp in public now if I think I’m not going to stink up the joint. I’m just not that precious about it now.

Similarly, I think the aging populous in Singapore are finally getting over the sense of reverence about the grand-daddy of Singapore, the great Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew. As brilliant as his legacy is, some of the things that are being put up for discussion are not getting the enthusiastic, rousing approval from all and sundry that they used to. Maybe as Singapore and the population also ages they don’t feel so tied to the one-party line either or conforming to the socially respectable ways of old.

In a taxi a couple weeks ago the driver and I were discussing the current proposal of not retiring from work at the age of 65. As wonderful a policy as that may sound to an older generation that is still able, willing to contribute and, more importantly, valued (and to be honest might be in desperate need of an income in this expensive city that has ramped up living costs in the last 20 years), to many voters it’s not sounding like a winning idea. This particular taxi driver effectively thought that LKY was losing his touch with the common people, that the vast wealth and longevity of his ‘reign’ had finally set him out of context with what the people really needed or wanted.

I was quite surprised to hear such open and honest discourse. Refreshing and interesting discussion points for the controlling party to consider how they remain relevant for the majority. Maybe it’s not just the young radicals that make changes. Maybe as we get older we still have a sense that things need to change and there is sometimes no value in maintaining the status quo.

Shovel

Shopping-tastic! A weekend on the malls

2010-09-18T21:23:00.000+08:00

Tanglin Mall and Vivocity

Tanglin Mall at the end of Orchard Road is a little piece of the Caucasian kingdom, a relic from British colonial past, complete with faux-Tudor black and white frontage. I honestly feel out of place here, with so many westerners floating around buying over priced merchandise.

It makes me feel uneasy, like I’m segregating myself from the real world, because it isn’t the real world. It’s like the Epcot Centre in Singapore, where a little piece of every country is crammed into the purpose-built dome for the benefit of those who can’t bear being away from Mother Country.

Apparently the coffee is very good; Caffe Beviamo is the best of the best if you’re after a really good latte. But coffee does not a shopping experience make, and this place just feels wrong.

Vivocity, the newest and largest mall in Singapore, is the perfect example of how to build a mall, if you’re in the business of designing malls that is. Down by the new Harbour Front development, overlooking the causeway to Sentosa Island, Vivocity is an absolute playground for Singaporeans on the weekend.

There’s every department store you’d want, there’s every designer shop you’d ever need to be down with the kids (of ANY generation), there’s equipment stores, food stores, cinemas, a paddling pool on the roof, a gym and when you’re bored with that, walk into the older Harbour Front Centre, adjacent, and book a boat trip to Indonesia. What else do you need for entertainment?

Alternatively, Vivocity can be used as a viewing platform for Sentosa Island's Resort World!

Resort World's rides still aren't working...

but the Casino is raking in the money. Some CEO lost S$26M in a weekend's binge-gambling. He's trying to claim the Casino was irresponsible.
Answers on the back of a S$2 bill, addressed to "Big Loser"

If you’re not content with seeing the same stores over and over, I find it interesting to spin myself around three times and try to find my way out. The mall has been designed with disorientation in mind and zig-zag escalators, randomly placed elevators and confusing signposts make for a slow getaway! It’s a perfectly designed mall and I take my hat off to the engineers and architects. I take it off to them until I just want to find a toilet NOW and then I lose my rag and just WISH there were some signs!

The hilarious moment of the day came when we ate at JPOT Hotpot Steamboat restaurant in Vivocity and found the attached notice on our table. Highlighting the importance of good hygiene when sharing dishes, it is important to use the tongs for raw food. Tongs, or THONGS? Too funny!

Shovel

Help! I’m being held in a captive market!

2010-09-18T21:05:00.000+08:00

We’ve been figuring out for the last few months how much things cost. The obvious price-hikes we’re now painfully aware of: anything Western comes with a double digit mark-up, anything Local is dollars and cents. My cup of coffee in the morning, a regular filter coffee, nothing fancy, is S$4. Malay Kopi in a bag? One dollar thirty (and that’s if you want milk, black it’s 80 cents). Six inch Subway sandwich, turkey, 6 grams of fat, very healthy, weighs in at a hefty S$5.50. My noodles and veggies at lunch are a dollar eighty. The expats are a captive market, one that, for convenience sake, continues to pay the bucks.

One market that is infinitely more ruthless in its pursuit of elastic pricing, a real slave to supply and demand, is the world of maternity paraphernalia. Good grief have the owners of Mothercare and the competition figured out that Westies will pay top dollar for the smallest little thing that ensures their overall pregnancy experience is just like their Mum’s or their Grandmother’s.

Maternity chairs, perfect for rocking your baby into a dreamful feed, seem to be only sold by Mothercare. Given that there are only three versions from one supplier, the price is about four times that of a US or AU supplier that you could buy on-line...if you could only ship it here! A colleague from work with many frequent-flyer bonuses managed to fly a cot and a chair from the US to the UK a while back in his bonus weight allowance. A very smart solution if your job takes you back ‘home’ every few weeks.

An even more extreme example that penalises all mums is the maternity bra. A two-pack is a staggering S$80 from family friendly (but profit hungry) Mothercare but in sunny Sydney we picked up the same for S$20.

It’s as uneven a pricing table as I think I’ve ever experienced. It’s like one of those old-time hawker centre guys with a pole across his shoulders; on one side high in the air is a box of noodles and on the other, scraping the ground, is a cast-iron stove complete with coal. I used to moan about the inflated commuter tickets on the British Railways, but this is painful.

Another place where pricing could do with a little help is around this whole specialist maternity hospital construct. We selected Mount Elizabeth, a shiny place with an exotic fish-tank in the lobby, just off Orchard Road, where no one seems able to give us a straight answer on the cost of anything to do with the birthing experience. We have a ‘quote’ for the birth, which I accept, given that no one knows what we’ll need from the point of “it’s coming” onwards. But no one can put a dollar figure on any part of it. We were referred to the special ambulance service for the hospital, but even they couldn’t tell us how much it was to get us to the maternity ward in case we needed the emergency ride.

Another friend of ours who gave birth recently at the same hospital experienced a 60% increase on her budgeted delivery but to this day cannot tell us what exactly the increase is for. As a result, we’re scurrying the cash away in these last few weeks to ensure we’re covered for the birth.

Having kids over here, without the safety net of good private medical, which mostly considers pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition (unless you’re insured before hand) is an expensive life-style choice.

Shovel

Spontaneity, Sir? Let me check whether I can do that.....

2010-08-29T23:42:00.000+08:00

Taking the lead from another popular blogger and also my Lady’s experiences, I wanted to draft a short blog on the lack of spontaneity that seems to have been bred into a lot of people on this small yet highly successful island.

While the education system has, by all accounts, followed the UK system teaching children to answer the questions in front of them for the purposes of passing a test (and has excellent results for that) it seems to have been at the expense of creative, out of the box thinking. And it’s not just me, it’s the press that think this (and ergo the Powers That Be: PTB) and also many taxi drivers...who are never short of comment.
A couple of examples that would lead me to believe that the educational requirements have bled into the everyday way of life are these that I have spotted or actually been required to conform with in the last couple of weeks.

Eat with your family day, sponsored by the National Family Council (www.nfc.org.sg). Indeed a whole family month; have breakfast, learn a sport together, take a picnic...how to family 101....can’t people do this on their own? I have even seen Singapore Family Sports day. Crikey!
I have seen emergency vehicles on several occasions with their lights flashing and sirens blaring, waiting patiently at traffic lights while the other traffic passes. Gosh knows what would happen if something unexpected happened...gosh knows what would happen to the people that called the emergency services should that vehicle not arrive.

Having said all this, after the incredible rigour around the retail banking system, I was opening a new account last week where the minimum deposit was S$1,000. I asked how I could pay that into the new account and whether I needed to go and get cash out my other account at a rival bank to do so. Oddly the gentleman serving me thought for a moment and said “How much would you like to deposit?” to which my initial response was “Nothing” but after some negotiation we settled on an arbitrary S$500. A little flexibility actually brightened my day up and left me S$500 better off!

While I’m here, I wanted to drop down a note on a good food establishment called ‘Fries with Everything’ on Joo Chiat Road.

It’s a novel concept and the owners aren’t even Belgian. An exceptionally plain and ascetic building, painted stark white concrete walls and floors mirrors the menu in its simplicity. Side orders apart, it’s a menu heavy on meaty things; cheese burger, lamb burger, chicken fillet, pork chop, beef steak and as the name suggests, everything comes with a portion of fries; shoestring or straight cut. Following up the very western theme come caesar salads, coleslaw and thick milkshakes.

We decided to eat here because the greeters were welcoming enough to come out to the street and talk to us, explaining how their steak is cooked and without pushing us to take a table. Nice, I like that.

Lady selected a lamb burger that was juicy with a hint of mint and a ricotta and roasted tomato relish and I took the char-grilled beef kurabi, slow cooked and so tender that my knife slid into the meat right through to the plate without any pressure being applied. It was sumptuous serving of beef and an absolute travesty to have served it with chips and coleslaw.

To be honest with a name like ‘Fries with Everything’ you’d expect to have some pretty good chippies, but unfortunately the fries were the worst part of the whole affair! Still for $40 (and the steak was half of that) it was a pretty reasonable dinner.

In comparison, here's some amphibian related algebra from the other end of Joo Chiat Road.
I kid you not, a Vietnamese restaurant does a good line in frog. But, if one frog and rice = S$8
and 2 frogs and rice plus 1 extra frog = S$16
and 4 frogs plus 2 rice plus 3 extra frogs costs S$30,
how much does one frog cost?

Shovel

Youth Olympic Games – Closing Ceremony

2010-08-29T23:25:00.000+08:00

So inspired was I by the opening ceremony of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Singapore that together with my Lady, we picked up tickets to the closing ceremony. Games and events during the weekends were all sold out and the weekdays, well, that’s for working, right?

At S$15 each, with 27,000 other people, we got to watch the spectacle reach its natural conclusion, the montage of achievements relived, the flags lowered and the flame extinguished. Not only that, but we got a pretty well stocked goody bag each (reusable, suitable for shopping and picnics by the beach), a Singapore national flag (handy for next year’s NDP) flashing hats and heart-shaped wands, a bottle of water and, get this, a YOG muffin. Like I said, well stocked for all eventualities.

With a haul of two silver and five bronze, Singapore has achieved much in the sporting arena. The young Olympians have trained well, fought hard, and leave standing proud, dusty, bloodied but champions all. One of the great aims of the PTB is to ensure that the Singapore of tomorrow has a sporting infrastructure and an athletic culture that rivals any small nation around the world. They seem to be on their way.

As hosts, Singapore put on a world-class display, hosting this event with short notice and limited resources. What went in their favour was unlimited local endeavour, enthusiasm and government support that could not and would not allow these games to be seen as anything but a success. As local journalists have said, the natural perfectionism of Singaporeans probably pulled this event off, but you’ve got to be engaged emotionally to want to produce this.

Admittedly I think the international media coverage was limited, but then again this was the first of its kind. Without doubt, the first Winter YOG in Innsbruck, Austria in 2012 and the second YOG in Nanjing, China in 2014 will be bigger, but you have to start somewhere. And Singapore certainly removed all the stop-signs to start the ball rolling. It’s been a heart-warming experience to watch this and see the nation come together over something that’s not politically or financially motivated (and I firmly believe that sport should never be political – hence my frustration at the withdrawal of a 17yr old male Iranian taekwondo practitioner from the final of the -48kg category because he was fighting an Israeli. Honestly, build a bridge and get over it).

Unlike the F1 Grand Prix, which had long been shunned by the Singapore Sporting Council because of ‘safety’ but when it was proved there was a lot of money to be made from hosting it, the race got the green light to proceed, the YOG has been supported because it is the right thing to do for the future of youth sport in the world. With the cultural exchanges and educational program running in tandem, it seems to have been even bigger than sport.

I’m always mightily impressed at what a motivated and big-picture attitude can do. There’s a lesson for us all I think on a big scale.

Shovel

Commuting Arts & Crafts – folding a newspaper

2010-08-22T23:30:00.000+08:00

Current chat on the I-Stomp pages of the free paper in Singapore is about capacity on the MRT. Apparently the system is just too crowded. In my recent blogs I’ve aired my frustration with commuters here in Singapore about how there is little perspective on how good they have it here, about how easy commuting is here and how much space, comparatively, there is in the MRT carriages. Rush hour lasts about 30 minutes and if I wanted, I’d never actually have to miss a train, however I choose to let the odd one go so that I can have a little more space to myself.

One of the things that I think people like about the cosy system is that they are still able to read a full-size newspaper, completely open with their arms out in front of them. That requires the equivalent of two human spaces to do and this is the problem. There’s almost double the space on trains that people actually realise, but they are unwilling to give up their precious personal reading space.

So I thought I’d put down the five simple steps on how to fold a newspaper in order to be considerate and thoughtful to your neighbouring commuters.

Step 1 – Obtain your free paper, choice of title is yours, chief-editor is the same....

Step 2 – Open your free-paper prior to entering the MRT or Bus.

Step 3 - Fold the paper in half on itself.

Step 4 – Half that page again, lengthways, showing columns 1 & 2 on one side available for your confined-space reading pleasure.

Step 5 – Flip the skinny paper and continue reading columns 3 & 4.

Of course, this method is best employed on a proper daily whose content and comment is worth the paper it is written on. You’re probably reading a free-paper, so it’s probably not worth the effort and adverts on every page don’t count. Like I said, it’s your choice; read selected news that you’re spoon-fed or get a small A5 book that might have something intellectually challenging or thought-provoking between the covers.

Shovel

Maintaining your drains – essential DIY

2010-08-22T22:40:00.000+08:00

Sitting a gnat’s girth from the equator, in the middle of the warm south china seas, drains are going to be a festering problem. It is hot and humid here. Hot and humid all the time. Our storm drains and home drains are full of tepid water that doesn’t run away and we humans tend to wash down the plughole an awful lot of protein, hair and waste food. Some of the storm drains that run around these older neighbourhoods have only ever been flushed through after dramatic floods. I hear that people have actually fallen in them, they have been so flooded, and gashed their legs badly in a fetid bath. Delightful.

At home, we’re not talking about our u-bends or sink plug-holes. We’re talking about industrial, vertical drains built from industrial piping that run several stories down. For some odd reason these are always filled with water, about 35cm below the level of our floor. Around these drains we have inherited a breeding ground of slime and a furry mattress of hair and fluff from the previous tenant. Once already we’ve had a greasy ball of matted hair and human fats disgorged from a deep, dark part of the shower’s drain that was blocking the progress of water. Today I tackled the remainder of the drains that hard started to smell somewhat ripe with the recent heat.

Everything was going well; rubber gloves, long handled brush, boiling water and powerful chemicals were all dispatched into the dark with moderate success. On flushing the sink and opening the kitchen’s drain cover (and this is right in our kitchen remember) I came face to face with a stinking fat cockroach, twitching its antennae as it watched the cleaning waters race past. Now that’s not pleasant at all. Cockroaches spread a lot of nastiness and have a habit of leaving their eggs lying around in a careless fashion. Quickly the Baygon was to hand and the poor guy didn’t stand a chance. It struggled a few inches before collapsing at which point it was wrapped in a paper body bag and dumped into the external rubbish-chute.

The general message to all out here, keep your drains clean and flushed regularly. Watch what is washed away down the sink in the way of food stuffs and make bleach your friend!

Shovel

Youth Olympic Games 2010 - Opening Ceremony

2010-08-16T22:15:00.004+08:00

Two and a half years ago, Singapore was given the responsibility to host the inaugural Youth Olympic Games. Two and a half years in comparison to seven years to prepare for the games; it was a tall order but Singapore have pulled off an absolutely amazing start to this new addition to the Olympics. Only a week after the NDP, Singapore once again hosted an enormous event with some 27,000 spectators in the stands and many thousands, if not millions worldwide in the international audience.

The Youth Olympic Torch - Robinson Road

Once again using the back-drop of the city-scape and a floating platform on Marina Bay, the events unfolded, telling the story of the young athletes’ hopes, dreams, fears and struggles. This time there was no military hardware and only one suitably unifying song; including the lyrics “you are the one, Singapore. Now is the time, here we go, yeh!” It was quite a show. True to most Olympic opening ceremonies, there was the underlying story-line that was narrated by the TV presenter, but most of all it was about the spectacle, the grandeur, the big vision of it all.
And Singapore did not disappoint, despite the fact that the venue is a multi-purpose landing stage on the Bay, it doubles as the platform for the F1 Grand Prix and other international events, the scale of the show was immense. Not to mention the fireworks and the vortex Olympic flame that I hope to get a picture of at the closing ceremony.Three thousand, six hundred young athletes from 204 represented countries will experience something akin to a cultural exchange trip over the next 13 days. While they all take part in their respective sports, they will also be exposed to a structured cultural differences program, and an international education program. It’s a brave new plan from the International Olympic Committee from Switzerland, but one that fits exceptionally well with the young nation of Singapore.
I was exceptionally impressed with the ceremony and have just booked tickets to the closing ceremony. Let’s just hope the weather holds! I can’t imagine sitting in rain for a few hours would be fun. I’ll update you in a couple of weeks!

Shovel

Sing a song for Singapore - National Day 9 August

2010-08-16T22:09:00.003+08:00

Singapore exited from the Federation of Malay States in August 1965 to become a stand-alone country. Since that date it has strived to create a unique national identity through collective experiences and collective goals. That continues to this day through an unrelenting devotion to national service and pride in the nation. It’s a remarkable feat but much credit must go to the vision of the founding fathers that have set the path and shepherded the people.

Every year there is a celebration of Singapore’s success, strength, identity, shared aims and place in the world. The National Day Parade (NDP) is, as mentioned before, a big deal to everyone and requires a phenomenal rehearsal. We experienced our first NDP this year, after seeing the rehearsals for many weeks, but were a little confused by the content of the show that unfolded under the 2010 theme of “Live our Dreams, Fly our Flag”

For weeks on end the airwaves (remember, state owned airwaves) have been flooded with the sound of this year’s theme song; “Sing a song for Singapore” (for your listening pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVF_WClXXQc ). Malls have been running talent contests on Saturdays where small children (and some not so small children) sing along to the backing-track and television adverts have been reminding us day in and day out of the importance to the Nation.

I like my music, I really do and I think that my generic digital music device has some eclectic sounds on it. But this soporific and sentimental song has really pained me, every bar and chord irritates me. But in the hearts and minds of most people I see on TV, it brings them to tears. “It makes me feel proud” is a common phrase. I have tried to think of other songs that have instilled the same sense of National Pride in my most beloved countries and can only recall two equally powerful anthems:

• Jerusalem - by William Blake and

• Down-Under - by Men at Work
As the NDP unfolded at the Padang in central Singapore, Lady and I wondered how often the same themes can be repackaged every year in a fresh and dynamic way. Brotherhood, Sisterhood, Respect, Filial Piety (the current favourite), Graciousness, Unity, Hard Work...the list goes on. And then we realised that you only need to pick a couple of these each year and when you run out of ideas you roll out the military. This year we are living our dreams, in camouflage, apparently.

It’s quite a spectacle coming from such a small nation who is, I believe, the second highest military spender per capita behind Israel, when they roll out the tanks, and armoured personnel carriers, the guns, soldiers and arrange the perennial fly past by Apache helicopters and F15 and F16 jets.

Admittedly it’s not quite like watching North Korea’s thousands of soldiers march in time past Kim Jong Il, but within 30 minutes of their exit from the stage, tanks and trucks were rolling through five heartlands around the island, Eunos (east coast) was one of them, saluting the local officials and receiving the cheers of a few thousand lucky spectators. To all intents and purposes, it’s a show of strength to the nation and the surrounding nations that Singapore is well armed and ready to take action if needed. All the NDP was missing was a sail-past in Marina Bay by a few frigates and a destroyer or two to really show what this was all about.

And as with all good national celebrations, once you’ve run out of ideas, sung all your national songs, recited the pledge of allegiance and sung the national anthem the next logical step is to light the firework touch-paper. And goodness me, can Singapore do some fireworks! WOW!

With the city and new integrated resort with a backdrop, the fireworks were spectacular! From our balcony, it looked like a fire was raging and the plumes of smoke ballooned over the roofs for a good few minutes. From the viewpoint high above the city in one of the five star hotels, it must have been one heck of a show!

Shovel

Katong Swimming Pool, Mountbatten Road

2010-08-07T16:27:00.000+08:00

Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore had many great ideas. One of those ideas was that everyone should live within walking distance of sporting and recreational facilities. For me, that’s fantastic because it saw the building of vast swimming complexes, more than I’ve ever seen in my life, with parallel Olympic eight-lane pools and kiddy sized leisure pools tacked on the end. It’s a great set up for any out-door swimmer, be you competitive or recreational.

Since those early days though, it seems swimming still hasn’t really taken off. While racquet sports are to Singaporeans what football is to Brazilians, swimming may not be a Singaporean’s natural talent. Reading through forum pages on the internet there’s an army of people looking for buddies to learn to swim with and it’s not for their kids, it’s for them. On reflection, maybe that’s a navy of people looking to swim?

Last weekend as I ran down to the pool from our place, I realised what sort of a neighbourhood the Katong Municipality had chosen to locate their pool in. The area used to be very close to the old airport in pre-federation times and as I trotted past first one english named street, then a second I paid more attention to where I was;

Mountbatten Road Wilkinson Road Arthur Road Goodman Road Margate Road Ramsgate Road Branksome Road Ringwood Road Bournemouth Road Wimborne Road Cramborne Road and finally, Clacton Road.
For 10 minutes I was running through the English gardens of Kent and Dorset with the smell of humidity and frangipani thick in my nose instead of roses and rain.

The pool itself was a mixed blessing. I’m a swimmer and my muscles have been aching for the burn of freestyle. My lungs have been missing the distance of a 50m pool but my Lady has not been missing the lingering whiff of chlorine. To have almost the entire complex to myself was aquatic freedom.
With the midday sun brushing a “hello” of light rouge across my pale shoulders and a clear lane infront of me, I pushed through my self-imposed “getting back in the water” set and felt rather chuffed with myself. Chuffed, but reminded how dramatically fitness falls away. It’s like climbing a mountain. It takes weeks and weeks of hard work, slow progress up and down between elevations to acclimatise and many days of pain to make it to the top of the peak. However, one slip and it takes seconds to slide in icy free-fall back to base-camp.
And so it goes with being a swimming machine. I look at my friends who are now undertaking 9 mile open water training sessions back in the UK and while I would happily have joined them in the murky water if I’d been in regular training, I can only dream about it. My arms would never make it right now.

Katong Pool on Wilkinson Road is alright for a swim. It’s an older pool and the tiles might not be the cleanest around the water line, but it works for me. It is open from 8am every day until 11pm so for most people that’s going to be an evening session. The best thing is that it’s a dollar entry in the week and a dollar thirty on weekends. Lockers are forty cents and there’s plenty of space to enjoy the water. Swim coaches for kids or adults come at an extra price but there’s plenty of takers to split the cost with!

Shovel

SPORTS SHOE SHOPPING – QUEENSWAY MALL

2010-08-07T16:14:00.000+08:00

Moving to a new country requires you to recreate your training schedule and I figured I should treat myself to a new pair of running shoes to pound the streets with. I turned in my old Asics for the current model, it feels like I’m trading in my spouse for a younger model. The red-trim Asic 2030 runners had got me around a lot of the country, up a lot of hills and from A to B and back again quicker than the outbound. They’re still functionable, but not quite up to the job any more, the edges have gone soft, the support is lacking and, well, they’re just a bit drab.

I know you could pick up a pair of runners at any of the many sports shops in any of the many malls across the island, but to be sure of a better deal and to feel smug about your purchase, you’re better off venturing to Queensway Mall, an older outlet but one that harbours every athletic sporting good you might want. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, front to back with runners, trainers, badminton, squash, tennis, football, rugby, rock-climbing, skateboarding, hiking, trekking, beach, high-street, racquets, t-shirts, shorts: anything you might want to get you back out into the sporting world.

It’s truly jaw dropping the range of choice you have here, at some good deals too compared to high street prices. Any shoe your foot might prefer or require is here, although you’ve got to know what you’re after as there’s none of the helpful customer service that puts you on a gait-measuring tool or an instep sensor and suggests a shoe. The only help you’re likely to find is someone to grab a size ten from the back room and lace it for you.

What I did find, though, was that a lot of the stores have exactly the same prices which saves you the dilemma of trying to find the same shoe at a lower price. It’s a good informal agreement, leaving the only separator as the notional customer service. So after two hours of circling the three floors, lacing and unlacing, I return to the original store and purchase a new pair of blue-trim Asics 2150s at S$50 off the normal high-street price. In between times, I found my impulse purchasing taking over and I was loaded with new shorts, quick-dry singlets, running visor, waist-belt and water bottle and even a new pair of street-runners which I bought while waiting for the afternoon’s deluge to clear.

All in all I had a good sporty afternoon in the confines of a compact mall. The only downside of the aging store was the pungent smell of bak kut teh (pigs organs) being stewed and boiled for lunch, so if you’re olfactory nerves are on the sensitive side, best make it a swift sporty selection!

Shovel

FARMERS’ MARKET – DEMPSEY HILL

2010-08-07T16:11:00.000+08:00

When you’re away from home there’s an overwhelming urge to dive into the local lifestyles and get to feel comfortable with your new surroundings. As explained on my earlier blogs, Singapore is a foody’s playground and there’s many many different new things to try. This weekend I ate my first fish-eye. Not quite as huge as those fish-eyes eaten on the UK trash TV show, “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here” but a fish-eye none the less. It’s considered a delicacy here and along with the fish’s cheeks something that people fight over at the dinner table.

Yet with all the new experiences, there’s always a part of you that yearns for a familiar taste, yearns for that comforting morsel out of your Mum’s larder, yearns for home.

We came across such a well-stitched expat security blanket through mutual friends a couple of weeks ago. On the first Saturday of every month, hidden away at Dempsey Hill is a small but perfectly formed Singapore Farmers’ Market. It has a diverse expat focus, centered around the small kitchen called “The Pantry” (which runs cooking classes for the foreign maids to learn how to cook western food) and on a wet, grey Saturday morning we are greeted by bunches of flowers, french and spanish wines, australian chutneys, english pies and pasties, himalayan jams and more imported fruit and veg that you could shake a farmer’s crook at. Portobello mushrooms bigger than your palm, rhubarb (RHUBARB!), parsnips (which grow so much better with a sharp frost, something that you’ll never find in S’pore) and red onions that don’t look like they were fished out of a drain with a net.

Once again we bump into our friendly purveyor of wines and beers, George, from East of Avalon Wines, but this time steer ourselves towards some fresh barn eggs that have no added ANYTHING! The shelf-eggs are crammed full of added vitamins, A, C, Omega 3, Lutein...any food chemists out there? It makes for an unsettled stomach, so the fresh unadulterated barn-laid eggs are a bonus. Watch out for Freedom Eggs at NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage. They’re not free-range and maybe freedom’s not the right name, rather ‘socially-mobile’, but it’s a step in the right direction.

As we purchase breads and tea-cakes from Wild Honey (which runs an all-day breakfast restaurant on Orchard Road, serving breakfasts from all around the world) we find that it’s more than just about food, it’s a social hub where foreign and locals alike arrive, meet and greet, share stories and for the more extravagant pop champagne over brunch. It’s all about getting into circulation and getting your name out there.

For example, the nice Australian Lady who spends all month cooking up jars of fabulous chutneys and piccalilli following her mother’s recipe, to sell them only on this first-Saturday. She is the culinary equivalent of the mayfly.

It’s an interesting place and one that needs the support of locals to really make a go of it. No doubt fresh produce and fine foods are going to bring in the crowds but they need locals to spread the word.
The Farmer’s Market runs from 9 – 2 on the first Saturday of every month at Loewen Cluster on Loewen Road which is just past Dempsey Hill. It’s pretty small and taxi drivers don’t really know where it is, so take a map. And take a taxi number with you so that you can call one to get you home.

Other amusing moments from this trip was the massive jam that occurred on our way home, along the PIE with jams at the junction of the SLE, CTE and KPE. Does that make sense to anyone?

A teen’s t-shirt with the simple statement “got chiz?”. Whatever that means, I don’t want it.

An advertising hoarding for a new apartment complex that describes that any investor would be “Living In An Attitude” should they buy in. Whatever that means, I don’t like it.

Shovel

Here’s a joke for you, “There’s nothing to do in Singapore “

2010-07-26T22:26:00.000+08:00

One of our ongoing concerns about living in Singapore is what to do to fill our time when you’re not slaving away at work. In the last couple of weeks we’ve found some good things to do, oddly enough going to the Singapore Repertory Theatre twice in a week. Firstly, to see a friend’s self-written monologue in a show that she also produced and secondly, to laugh our Friday night away at the Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow. It seems that with a little nudge and the willingness to try new things, there’s plenty to do. Or that’s what we thought.

Between the handful of comics that were entertaining us this evening, we were hosted by a ‘brilliant’ (her words!) New Zealander MC, Cal Wilson. Her role was to engage the crowd, get some good vibes running around the hall and kick-start the banter. After going over the usual “where are we all from this evening?” round of questions, we reached the “so, what is there to do in Singapore?” section. And this is where it all got a little uncomfortable. The comics had already been to the zoo and had already ranted about the excessive shopping addiction and surplus demand in this city and with those two big tickets gone it left silence.

“The night safari...” some game lady chirped up....except the show is one during the night, you fool....you’d never been in a more uncomfortable comedy show. The audience corpsed and silence loomed as people raced through the things to do in Singapore. The wall of silence morphed into a swarm of bees as audible “mmms” buzzed about the theatre. And then it got really weird. Of all the things to do in Singapore, of all the things that could have been said; “eat”, “drink”, “visit Sentosa”, someone down the front passed Go, took a beer-induced ticket and suggested “four floors of whores”.

I’m sorry? “Four floors of whores”? Firstly, what is that and why is that what comes to your mind when you think of things to do during the day in Singapore? During the day? Following almost immediately came a suggestion to “visit Geylang”, which while dubious enough was misinterpreted as “visit Gay-Land” by our Kiwi MC and from then on the whole section became really, really awkward.

Needless to say, Lady and I did not take notes during this section of the evening and we’re on the look-out for alternative excursions.

Shovel

FLASH FLOODS IN SINGAPORE – What’s to say or do?

2010-07-19T00:15:00.000+08:00

June and July have been a topsy-turvey couple of months for Singapore, meteorologically and economically speaking. All has been going well on the ever-important economic front. Singapore has put its best foot forward and is rewarded with number one spot in the list of fastest growing economies (14-16% growth in 2010). The Government says that it needs 100,000 more foreign expatriate workers to come to Singapore this year just to keep the economy growing.
At the same time, there are pressing questions about whether the small-scale city-state with the big ideas can keep pace with the infrastructural needs of a targeted population of 6.5 million. Dramatic and recurring flooding has stalled the City on three occassions in the space of a month. For a tropical location, this really shouldn't happen, so what's the cause and what's to do to balance the vision with the reality.

The month of July, I understand, is normally the drier time of the year. Locals and travel books tell me this. However since 16 June, on three occasions the weather has turned on a six-pence and Mother-Nature has dropped her rain cloud on Singapore with alarming intent.
Twenty years ago, the Rochor Canal in Little India would regularly burst its banks. That was when the population was small and the impact was not significant. People expected to have to mop out their front rooms once in a while and dodge the muddy puddles. Everyone knew that it rained in Singapore. A lot. Over time, the canal was widened and deepened to channel the flood-waters to reservoirs and the ocean. As the infrastructure improved, so did people's expectations. Has all that work made any difference as the population keeps on sky-rocketing and the rain keeps on falling?
It's funny that as I type this there is a global debate on the future of water supply happening right now in Singapore. The world's water infrastructure leaders are debating how we must manage the resources we have. How good it would be to say that while more than 100cm of rain fell in an hour this saturday morning that Singapore was able to harvest that into its new Marina Bay reservoir. How smug would we be then, eh?

Lady and I were woken at 4am this weekend to the sound of a biblical deluge hitting our balcony. Singapore’s main streets found themselves once again under several centimetres of water, in places where canals and gutters converge, almost a metre of water. The pictures captured by locals with camera phones ever-ready show the scale of the problem facing businesses, homeowners and authorities alike. While there's a lot of review to be done and a lot of action to take, what’s been interesting for me as always is the difference in reporting of the flash floods, comparing local and foreign angles on the story.

The Channel News Asia media coverage reads like a list of facts from the notebook of Joe Friday, the detective from the Dragnet movie; “I just want the facts, M’aam. Just the facts”. Clearly if there’s no good news about what Singapore is achieving, just stick to the facts. While the comments from Associated Press seem to show that their freer-minded journalists have been moonlighting with papparazzi photographers from The Sun, tweaking the edges of the story and spicing the sentiments with pointed barbs. I particularly like how ABC News groups Singapore in the same bucket as Manila and Jakarta on an arbitrary infrastructure index; a judgment that will no doubt stick in the throat of the PUB, while the Straits Times is referenced saying “restaurants lost fish that were in live tanks”. Need I say more?

Some sections I have removed so that you don’t have to read the whole report, but you can click through the link given.

Flash floods wreak havoc (Straits Times 16 June)
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_541057.html Straits TimesFLASH floods caused by heavy downpour on Wednesday morning wreaked havoc on many parts of central Singapore, flooding basement carparks and shops, and making roads impassable to cars.
The worst-hit area was the Orchard Road and Scotts Road intersection, with large stretches from Paterson Road - where Ion Orchard and Wheelock Towers are - to Ngee Ann City submerged in nearly half a metre of flood waters.

The basement of Liat Towers was flooded, affecting shops like Starbucks and Hermes, which reported goods destroyed by floodwaters. A number of cars stalled in the rising floodwaters, stranding motorists. Many passengers were also reported to be stuck in buses in areas where traffic was impassable. Traffic lights were out at some inter-sections.
A tree fell near the Buyong Road exit of the Central Expressway Tunnel, towards Ayer Rajah Expressway, blocking traffic across three lanes. The CTE was closed as a result, partly to prevent traffic from going into Orchard Road.
PUB, in a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, said almost 100 mm of rain fell within a two-hour period from about 9 am to 11 am. 'The amount of rainfall is approximately more than 60 per cent of the average monthly rainfall for June,' it said.
PUB, Traffic Police and SCDF officers were at the various sites providing help to motorists and directing traffic. The PUB advises the public to exercise caution as flash floods may still occur in the event of heavy storms. The cause of the flood is still being investigated.

Flash floods stain Singapore's urban paradise reputation (ABC News – 18 July 2010)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/18/2957114.htm?section=justin Singaporeans were salvaging cars, soaked belongings and damaged goods on Sunday after a third flash flood in two months submerged low-lying areas of the city-state.

Shops and houses along posh Orchard Road were again hit by floods on Saturday after heavy rain overwhelmed the drainage system of the wealthy metropolis, which is often lauded for its excellent urban management.
The flooding took place just before parliament was to debate the issue on Monday following public clamour for explanations for earlier floods, which are normally associated with neighbouring capitals like Manila and Jakarta.
"We never had floods like that," said Peter Wong, 49, a long-time resident in a row of houses in eastern Singapore invaded by calf-high floodwaters on Saturday. Everything was gone, the carpets as you can see are damaged, the bottom of all the sofa seats are still soaking wet now, after 24 hours. We had to replace a new fridge, the fridge is totally damaged," Mr Wong said.
The Straits Times said some restaurants lost live fish stored in tanks.

A major highway was also closed for two and a half hours, while motorists and commuters had to be rescued from stranded vehicles, but there were no reports of major injuries.

Critics had blasted the Public Utilities Board for not being prepared to handle the first two floods, while the department defending itself by saying abnormal weather conditions and clogged drains were to blame.

Delfi flooded again (Straits Times 17 July) By Bryan Huanghttp://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_554657.html AFTER being hit by the worst flooding in 26 years last month, Delfi Orchard was again flooded on Saturday morning.A tenant of the building, Ms Shanta Sundarason, said she arrived to work to find the basement three carpark flooded with 'waist-deep' waters. Ms Sundarason also told straitstimes.com that tenants at Orchard Towers and Palais Renaissance were 'also mopping up after the waters gushed in'.
'So much for the 'once in 50 years Freak Flood' along Orchard Road,' said Ms Sundarason. 'It would be nice for the problem to be addressed and dealt with, rather than a sweeping statement from the ministry,' she added.
In the June floods, shoppers in the prime Orchard Road area around Scotts Road had to wade to safety through swirling brown water the colour of milk tea, when heavy rain caused a huge flood. One of the worst-hit places was Liat Towers, where a new branch of Wendy's burger restaurant had opened just three days before. The restaurant had to close as $500,000 worth of furnishings and equipment was damaged by waist-high floodwaters.
Authorities later found that a drain the width of a bus near Delfi Orchard was so choked with leaves that it triggered a run-off enough to fill 20 Olympic-size swimming pools. The run-off gushed into basement shops and carparks in Liat Towers, Lucky Plaza, Delfi Orchard and Tong Building.

Be careful what you say! – photographer arrested for taking pictures of the flooded streets!http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/2010/07/18/newspaper-photographer-detained-for-taking-flood-photos/

You know, it could be worse. I could be living in southern China right now. Spare a thought for the millions of people who are losing their entire livelihoods (and lives) in the worst flooding there in years. Puts the loss of your morning coffee from a flooded Starbucks into perspective, doesn't it.
Shovel

A sense of spacial awareness wouldn’t go amiss

2010-07-18T22:44:00.000+08:00

The last few weeks have been a bit busy, hence my lack of blog activity. We’ve been away for a long weekend to Phuket and I have been swamped with work. I feel like I’m getting pulled into the black hole of Singapore’s work ethic which is work, work, work until it’s done, even if you realise there’s still tomorrow to get it done. It’s also not helped by the cross-over of timezones with the US. I find myself on calls at 9, 10 and 11 at night. That’s not right in anyone’s book. In the word’s of one of my former mentoring partners at an accounting firm, “that’s just not sustainable”.

What I have gained from the last month is a growing understanding of how commuting works and how people interact with each other at street-level. You’d expect there to be some sense of order about how things work here, after all there are arrows on the subways to tell you which sides to walk on, signs on the escalators to tell you where to stand, even painted footprints on the steps to show you where to put your feet. However, an email I received from a professional colleague sums up the duality of life in Singapore pretty well:
“It is wise to check although if truth be known, not all practices are regulated and sometimes it is just hit and miss. The practitioners will tell you to proceed as if it is not required and if X or Y decides otherwise, you can always arrange for an audit. There is unfortunately no definitive answer and this flies somewhat in the face of the impression that Singapore is totally regulated.”

That's an interesting statement.

When I compare that to my dealings with people on the street, on the buses, on the MRT, there generally seems to be a cloud of ignorance, a shroud of unawareness about the general public at large. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t every person on the island, it’s not even specific groups of the population, it’s the overriding sense that I get as I go about my daily business.

It’s as if there’s a bubble around people that stops them seeing others or judging their movements. It’s a dim understanding of where they are in relation to objects (moving and stationary) and thinking about how their actions may impact people on the street. If you’re coming from London or New York or Beijing where the bodies per square meter ratio is significantly higher, you would expect a commute in Singapore to be a walk in the park in comparison. A few examples for you which confront me on a daily basis;

1) There is no concept of queuing or any sense of priority when boarding or alighting from public transport (I admit that the British invented queuing and I should have no expectation that other nations would do the same. The British also invented fish and chips and that hasn’t caught on too much either.)

2) People will adamantly stand on the designated walking side of the escalators or stopping at the top of the escalators instead of walking off them. It slows down an already slow process and actually creates a hazard at the top of the escalator. If I trip over another old person and get cursed by the person behind me one more time, seriously....there will be face-losing words.

3) Shoppers will stop abruptly while walking in the middle of the street or mall, will walk phenomenally slowly or meander while texting. Taking a leaf from the “don’t drive and text” message that Oprah’s pushing for the USA, maybe “don’t walk and text” would be more appropriate. There’s been a saying for a while that certain people can’t walk and chew gum, let me tell you, it’s funny because it’s true.

4) A growing number of people will not hold doors open for others, be they Ladies or Gentlemen. Again, the British have pioneered chivalry for many centuries and to some extent it’s in a British Gentleman’s DNA, so I should have no expectation of it from Singapore which is more akin to the wild-west where it’s every man for themselves.

5) Commuters will rigidly stand directly in the doorway of the MRT instead of moving down inside the train. I’m not one for overt physical contact at 8am but there’s got to be some sense about you that if people want to get into the train and there’s space available, that they’re going to have to enter through the door, which means they have to enter through YOU, Buddy, so move down inside the car! They moan about the people per square meter during rush hour, but believe me, it’s positively pleasant and roomy.

I don’t think I’m expecting too much, to have a sense of common decency, courtesy and respect for a fellow citizen. It seems that the many dollars spent by the Govt. to spell out the “be courteous” message has to some extent been wasted on a nation of people who’d rather join the front carriage of a train because it physically arrives at the station first, sneak through a closing door because it means that the person behind them has to open it themselves, overtake you in traffic because then they’re one car ahead of you. The list could go on. Competition is fine, as long as it’s not at the expense of the common society. Once it is defined in terms of Me V Neighbour, the whole community loses.

Shovel

Can’t I just do that right now? The perils of on-the-spot decision making

2010-07-18T22:24:00.000+08:00

My lovely Lady has been out and about in the City for the last couple of weeks, immersing herself in how things work and meeting as many people as possible. It’s been an interesting adventure that is recounted to me each evening on the couch or over some noodles at a restaurant.
The current learning event of the week (read “frustration of the week”) is that there doesn’t seem to be much of sense of the impromptu. Lady, bless her cotton-socks, has high standards from her background in five-star hotels and expects the same when presented with a service opportunity. However, it’s not all been going to plan recently, nothing that she tries to do seems possible without extensive forward planning.

A few examples range from recruitment agencies that won’t even take five minutes to talk to you unless you have an appointment in advance, sewing classes that you can’t put your name down for unless you’ve called ahead, but get this, you can buy cinema tickets from the box office but all the seats (except the rubbish ones at the side and the front three rows) have all been booked in advance!
This was demonstrated to us today on a wet weekend as we searched on line through five different cinemas for a pair of seats that weren’t three-meters-from-the-screen neck-breakers; it’s almost impossible to get impromptu seats here, so book early. However, what stuns us is that you still need to queue up at the box-office with your on-line print-out to get hold of the paper tickets anyway. Pointless. For somewhere so technologically advanced, this seems utterly backwards.

Needless to say, Lady’s pretty ticked about all this inability to react on the spot and the dearth of spontaneity unless there is a check-list of spontaneous responses taped beneath the counter, but has learned an important lesson; always call ahead to make sure that the journey you’re about to make will lead to the outcome you’re seeking. After all, it’s way too hot for a stroll down Orchard Road only to have to stroll all the way back again with no result.

Shovel

National Day Parade – military advertising gone nuts

2010-07-12T22:45:00.000+08:00

Singapore has many different people but how do they get moulded into singaporean citizens who will all pull together under one national identity? A few decades ago the concept of mandatory national service was given life whereby at the age of 18 all males must perform two years national service and then remain available for some years after, performing a week or so duties every year. Just to keep active.

As an idea, it’s worked very well and there are many relationships that are formed in those two years and which remain for many years after. These men have pulled together for the same aims and for the same nation and as such have the same sense of national pride.

Every year the military joins in on national day, 9 August, to celebrate the anniversary of Singapore exiting from the Malaysia Federation in 1965. The National Day Parade (NDP) brings together all things Singaporean and fosters that national pride. To rehearse for the NDP (which is essentially the leaders speaking to the people about how great Singapore is and promenading their military might to the masses) the military spends six hours every weekend for two months shifting tanks and guns and fighter-jets about the city streets and above the towering sky-scrapers to make sure that if anything goes pear-shaped, the president and prime-minister can make a sharp secure exit in their shiny plane.

Now, I’ve been present for one national day a few years ago, and noted that from the beginning of July everyone flies the S’pore flag from their balcony to show that they are good citizens and a few thousand go to see the national day parade; either at the Padang or another large venue. I’ve spoken to a few locals about whether they’re excited about it and to be honest, the answer has been a resounding “no”. Most people would prefer to work and earn money rather than take the day off and watch the event. Most people would prefer to be able to drive about the City on a Saturday night without massive traffic jams for two months (which will then role into three months when the inaugural Youth Olympics in August and then the F1 Grand Prix in September come to town) and from the looks of one irate pale-face at a gridlocked Mountbatten/Nichol Highway junction it’s just about everyone who is ticked about it.

It’s not my national day, it never will be and I’ll probably end up working anyway, so as long as the endless rehearsals stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of theirs.
Interestingly, I read in the weekend paper (I-S Magazine, if anyone wants a controversial read, http://is.asia-city.com/ but find the paper version, much better) that as Sweden votes to cease its policy of mandatory national service, Singapore chooses not to reduce the minimum two years. There's vocal dissent in the ranks as local authors speak about their incredulity at their nation's spending on defense. "not one of the neighbours would want to invade Singapore; it has no natural resources, is dependent upon other countries for water and has no strategic importance any more". Well, contentious indeed.

Shovel

SINGAPORE RIVER FESTIVAL – Clarke Quay

2010-07-12T22:27:00.000+08:00

One of the things that still worries us about living here in such a small city is the number of entertainment options that are available without spending excessive money on tickets or travel. A real positive is that the Government commands institutional authorities who can pull these big national events together and get people interested. Along Clarke Quay we had seen huge signs hung from every flagpole over the last couple of weeks, heralding, by way of a media onslaught, the forthcoming River Festival. With the recent downpours and interest in the clogging waterways, anything that could be done to get people back to the river is a bonus, especially considering the recent tragic drowning of a worker who was sleeping off the effects of a night on the drink and smokes along the steps of Clarke Quay itself.

During a meal at the newly opened Red Dot micro-brewery on Boat Quay, sampling their range of brews; summer ale, stout, wheat beer and even spirulina-laced green ‘monster green’ lager (which is a boost for the immune system and could even aid the retardation of HIV/AIDS, apparently, if you believe the brewery’s claims),

we watched brightly lit boats with booming sound systems drift past us, sailors waving hello, twirling flaming batons and reminding us that we were experiencing “My Singapore”.

Further upstream at Clarke Quay was the real spectacle, not actually a spectacle we knew much about, but it consisted of two shows at 19:30 and 22:00 containing aerial art, high-wire ballet floating inches over the water, dancers twirling across the Clarke Quay bridge, Renaissance music (and wigs), filling the air with atmosphere with the whole show culminating in fireworks that arced across the liquid, reflective floor of the Singapore River.

While the display unfolded a good distance in-front of us, the detail of the costumes and story-line somewhat obscured by smoke from more flaming wands of light, we realised that the true spectacle was not the art we were watching but that rather the thousands of people in attendance, locals and tourists alike, watching the events unfold and recording the moment with camera and video.

Much credit must go to the organisers and publicists who had successfully captured the imagination of thousands of people to come down to the river on a hot muggy evening and watch some fancy nonsense going on before eating and drinking themselves to sleep in typical Clarke Quay fashion. If they keep knocking out events like this which pique the interest and provide an evening of entertainment on the cheap, I shall be rather happy.

Well done Singapore, well done indeed.

Shovel

Asia Beerfest 2010 and NDP Rehearsals – don’t drink and drive a tank

2010-07-12T22:12:00.000+08:00

The Asian Beerfest 2010 was held in Singapore recently, along the F1 pit straight and below the Singapore Flyer, an iconic setting for the City. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from such an event, given the love of alcohol from both local and majority of expats alike, but also given that the venue is pretty small. We dutifully booked tickets early and were looking forward to having a couple of free beers and immediate access to the festival site.

Well, what a trial! I’ve never known a harder situation to get a beer in such a small place. First, our bus was stuck in traffic that was backed up and bottlenecked on account of the road closures from the National Day Parade rehearsals, the weekly National Day Parade rehearsals, every Saturday 5pm – 11pm for two months. We arrived some two hours late. On the upside, we watched from a road-bridge while a column of tanks, cranes, jeeps and mobile rocket launchers rumbled their treads beneath us, their young drivers smiling through camouflaged faces.

Second, we arrived at Suntec Mall and walked for 20 minutes to the site, only to be directed by Festival signs around the F1 pit straight, around the back of the tents and then in a large circle back to where we started underneath the flyer. Grrrr...

Third, when we arrived, two hours late, we were met with a line-up that was 200m long. There were people still queuing, all with pre-purchased tickets, waiting to get in and the reason why? It was because there were two people checking tickets at entry, TWO! For the Asian BeerFest, it’s not a small event. If this is some indication of how logistics work (or don’t work) around a large event, I fear for the Youth Olympics where the volume of people will be much greater.

Fourth, and this really gets me to this day, we received our free drink tokens which could only be redeemed against specific free beers, mostly generic beers that the world has tried before. We’re not here to try Budweiser, thanks, we’re here for random brews from unusual countries; like Bali! The festival was a ‘no cash’ zone so you had to purchase more poker chips with cash and then carry them around the site exchanging them for beverages or food. Which is fine, it’s novel and easier than messing about with change, but what annoyed me was that you can only exchange chips for cash at the end of the night for 80% of their face value and only in whole dollar amounts, so my $4 of chips became $3.20 which then became only $3 in my pocket. I admit I’m tight when it comes to cash, but being short changed with a smile really, REALLY gets me.

Other than that, the crowded tents, the lack of seating, the scarcity of non-alcoholic beverages to rehydrate, the beer-stained concrete smelling of yesterday’s revelry, really gave it the sense of a thrown-together event. Not brilliant, but some tasty beverages none the less.

Shovel

Visiting Guests - Raffles Long Bar, Swisshotel Equinox high-tea

2010-07-04T20:27:00.000+08:00

On the Sunday we took our friends to the Long Bar at Raffles, THE singapore tourist spot for anyone who enjoys a bit of the decadent colonial past.
The Long Bar is famous for being the birth-place of the Singapore Sling (mostly premixed now, with gin and a cherry brandy base, but apparently if you ask for a fresh cocktail they’ll oblige). Raffles Hotel was founded in a beach-front bungalow in 1887 by the Armenian Sarkies Bros. and saved from modernisation by being raised to historic monument status on Singapore’s centennial. The hotel is the epitome of colonial grandeur, shining marble floors, sparkling brass light fittings and it even comes complete with a front-drive manager in bright, white colonial uniform and turban.

The Long Bar is the only place in Singapore where you are encouraged to litter, it’s a cheeky hook to bring in the supremacists who enjoy acting guilt free, although the harm done by asking a cleaner to clean and then creating more mess by throwing peanut shells on the floor in a society where the gap between top and bottom is ever widening is yet to be quantified. It’s a crunchy affair walking between the tables of expats and tourists who sip away merrily on their $30 cocktails and $30 half-yards of Tiger beer.

To be honest, while it’s a part of Singapore that everyone knows, it wouldn’t be in my top-five choices of location or clientele to take a friend for anything more than a beer and a photo-opp.

So, with one Singapore icon down, we trotted our way merrily out of the bar, through the wonderful open courtyard and around to the five star Swisshotel for high-tea on the 70th floor’s Equinox restaurant.

Singapore has some wonderful views when you can get above the high-rise, concrete, steel and glass. Taking a seat in the simple but naturally decorated panoramic venue, we were indeed blessed with a sunny and clear day. Singapore’s Padang and cricket field were laid out directly beneath us and Marina Bay and the marina barrage a little further off. Stretching east and west was the coastline, natural and man-made, prickled with trees in one direction and stippled with condos and buildings in the other. Two of my favourite past-times came together this weekend; marvellous sights and good food and drink and we shared them with the best friends.
Singapore has some great facets to show off, you just need someone to show them off to.
Shovel

Visiting guests – Boat Quay, Clarke Quay

2010-07-04T20:14:00.000+08:00

What to do on the weekends in Singapore? There’s always eating, right?

Picking our friends up from Changi airport on a Friday night we dropped the bags and went out to eat at Sin Hoi Sai Eating House on East Coast Road. For a pretty reasonable $60 for the four of us, we enjoyed excellent food from the extensive menu and large bottles of Tiger beer. To be honest, the beers were the majority of that, but Sin Hoi is just the slightest bit higher in price than other ‘street’ based restaurants for a couple of reasons; 1) it has the BEST reputation, having served food here for a couple of decades. Even though it’s on the wide pavement between Joo Chiat Road and Still Road there are enough tables around you and enough buzzing chat that it feels like you’re inside, all be it a warm restaurant. And 2) that large restaurant has a large floor plan to pay rent on. It’s not cheap to own a large establishment on East Coast Road and to have to pay the expensive business licenses that are at a premium. As the jet lag crept up on our guests we left the crew at Sin Hoi to continue until gone 4am.

On Saturday after the mandatory tour of Orchard Road, we stopped into Brewerkz on Clarke Quay for lunch, escaping the mid-afternoon heat of a muggy day. Brewerkz is one of Singapore’s fermenting brew-houses and makes its golden nectar on site. With the standard beer accompaniments of burgers, ribs and steaks, it’s very western and pretty stodgy stuff. The aussie rules footy on the television was a suitably masculine accompaniment to the red meat and a welcome diversion from the heat outside.

The brews are pretty varied though, definitely the reason to go there with a group of friends, and they’re strong. Starting at 4.9% golden ale, they move on to 7% head-thumpers! There are tasting menus available which allows you to sample whatever you’ve not tried before, before diving into a pint of new beer. Bottled beers are on the menu too and they have chosen interestingly boutique and global varieties; my favourites coming from the small UK breweries of Wychwood and Brakspears.

As one of our friends is a vet, we were obliged to visit the Night Safari, which you can see my blog entry about earlier. After meeting the animals we took a late-night taxi to Boat Quay, arriving about 00:30. We thought it would still be busy, seeing that it’s a long drag of restaurants and bars and Singapore likes to party on the weekend, but to our surprise a lot of the restaurants had already packed up their tables and chairs. We managed to find an indian/chinese crossover that was willing to serve us and we did get some very good curry and rice before they chivied us along and asked us to finish up and leave.

Shovel

Changi Village and the furthest reaches of the East Coast Park

2010-06-28T00:17:00.000+08:00

As the rains have started to come down more steadily, the weekends have begun with a completely grey hue. At 04:30 we were woken by the same dog that has woken me at 04:30 for the three weeks, then woke again at 08:00 by the thunder and rain of a wet Singapore day. Apparently Singapore’s a fun place when it’s wet because everyone stays inside. It’s almost better to get out in it, underneath an umbrella and go to explore while the populous maximus stays inside and watches reruns of Two and a Half Men with the ever tedious Charlie Sheen.

With this noble effort in mind, we got up, got out and ventured far from the city, well, as far as we could, to get some perspective. Heading further east to Changi Village on the number 2 bus we quickly left the concrete and steel behind. There is indeed a cycle path that runs from just east of Marina Bay all the way to the airport, from there you can continue, hucking your bike onto a small boat and puttering across to Pulua Ubin to continue the two-wheeled adventure. However I’m not sure how would get a bike to Changi Village without a car if you chose not to cycle all the way? What say you live in the west of the island, can you get the bike onto the MRT or do you cycle all the way? For me I can cycle from my place to Changi Village, it would even be a reasonably pleasant excursion, sweating aside.

Changi Village is not so much a village as such but rather more of a boat-quay and beach coupling that serves as a residential area for the pretty, wild but militarily-minded east. The proximity to the airport, military bases, manufacturing for aircraft companies and of course the Changi Prison makes it a sensible area to live if you’re employed in those industries. Changi Village has a short strip of eateries and bars which are of a western orientation. We took in some dumplings at the Airport Food Court which were pleasant enough, even the deep fried durian puff, like hot custard in a crispy shell. The bars advertise their happy hours and western style to the maximum which I think says a lot for the town itself but as hot as it was we weren’t too fussed for beers this early in the afternoon.

Down on the beach there’s not much in the way of public facilities; it is simply a beach and grassland for people to use in whatever way they choose. The biggest outlet is the Bistro@Changi, a small decked area with shade right on the last point of the East Coast Park. It is somewhat expensive at S$8 for a juice, but it is the only outlet for a rehydration stop if you haven’t brought your own. It’s like the far stop at the night safari; once you’re that far across the zoo, you have no other option. Clever huh.

The beach and waves are pleasant, it’s a million miles from the city, definitely, but it’s only a few hundred meters from Changi Airport’s runway. The spectacle itself is amazing; both if you’re into planes or even if you’ve never been that close to one as it’s actually flying. Planes land every couple of minutes and when Singapore Airlines immense behemoth of a plane, the Airbus A380, flies overhead, everything shakes just a little. That aside, it’s a pretty peaceful area and nice for a change of scenery.

Shovel

JUNE - Hotter and wetter..

2010-06-28T00:09:00.000+08:00

It's June and I think the hot and wet season has started. By that I mean the hotter and wetter season.
In the last week I must have woken up to a deluge more often than not, postponing leaving the house one morning by a half hour to wait for the biblical downpour to abate.

At some point what goes up must come down and the forecast for what seems weeks has been sun and rain but the weather patterns have never followed through on the rain part. Yes, we have had some ominous skies, but I can't remember it actually raining in any great measure. Now it seems the time has come and we're settling into a couple of months of rain and general damp.

Which reminds me, I must check the status of my winter clothes. They're in wardrobes, loosely packed with more dehumidifying crystals than you'd find in the sweaty locker of a Bikram Yoga teacher who practiced in the Amazon rain-forest, next to a turkish bath. We have a lot of crystals in our cupboards.

You can buy low voltage air warmers that plug in and fit at the bottom of your wardrobe. They are designed to gently warm and circulate the air so that it doesn't become stale and moisture laden but I don't have power-points in my wardrobes and I'd rather not create an assault course of wires criss-crossing my bedroom floor, I can barely see in the mornings let alone have the dexterity to hop-scotch my way around the room whilst I pick out a shirt.

So now is the important time to become surgically attached to your umbrella, to carry a plastic bag to carry your umbrella in when it inevitably becomes wet and to wear sensible shoes to avoid slipping on the polished tiled floors. I nearly fell on my behind this morning, sliding on the polished concrete of a gas-station forecourt on account of the river of rainwater running across it. So beware, any place can get you and no one is going to rush to your aid ensuring they can get you compensation. Compensation doesn't work the same way as it does in more litigious nations; if you have an accident in Singapore then it's probably your fault so you'd better learn from it. The school of hard-knocks indeed.

Shovel

Little India – a different country in this country

2010-06-28T00:07:00.000+08:00

We’ve been to Little India on three occasions now, first time when we pitched up in January for a look around, and subsequent to that we’ve been on our own and with some friends.

Banana Leaf on Race Course Road
Named of course because your food is served straight onto a green banana leaf from buckets of rice or curry. It seems rough and ready but is far from it; yes the setting is simple with sturdy heavy trestle tables and benches lining the aircon restaurant but the furnishings are rich, red and gold. Don't be fooled by the rough menu, just ask for some curry, rice and popadoms and you'll be taken care of.
It's not super cheap and a simple meal with a couple of beers ran to S$50 for the two of us and they do still supply you with cutlery!

Jaggi’s at 34 Race Course Road
For excellent, flavoursome and no-nonsense food from the Punjab or the North of India, you can't go past simple Jaggi's. There is again a coice of cutlery or fingers but it's totally up to you, just be mindful that there can be quite a line-up for the washbasin’s after you’ve finished. Tea urns or bottled beer caters for all sorts. It’s pretty loud when all the families get in and start chatting, but that you get entire families mixing together there says something about the ambience of the place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a simple room, pretty rough around the edges but it’s all about the food here; simple food that tastes great.

Chapatis and Dhal are excellent as is the brinjal (or eggplant). The tandoor meats do get nuked to warm them for you on the spot, but they’re all freshly cooked that day.

Komala Vilas on Serangoon Road
I’d been there once, a long long time ago. It looked familiar when we’d walked past it on an earlier exploration of the gridded streets, I remembered the metal trays with inset sections for various sauces, dhals and curries and for the first time, eating with my hand.

Its still the same vegetarian fare with optional utensils and we take a seat, chewing on a handful of fennel seeds, the licorice taste and barky husks sticking to our teeth. The menu is pretty simple, well thumbed and curled around the edges, but the offerings are totally dependent upon what the kitchen is cooking today. On three occassions the attending guys had to run out to check whether we could get what we wanted.

Dosai, stuffed with vegetables and with three sauces to dip into. Vadai (pronounced wadai), a savoury donut that’s plain but you can dip into further sauces and an onion baji, which was the oddest looking baji I’ve ever seen. It was more a ring of onion inside a deep red bready type package that was deep fried.

Lady had a chapati derivative that looked like two doughy breast implants, puffed up like double Ds and full of hot air. She popped them with a spoon to release the steam and then ripped them up, using them to pick up the rich chenna masala and vegetable curry.

For four of us, the bill came to S$30. It wasn’t a huge meal, we had the equivalent of a small main each, a small drink and two masala teas and it sounds very reasonable doesn’t it. It was a quick cheerful meal, so in that respect, yes it was pretty cheap for four of us. I think the comparison to what we’re used to is that it didn’t include any meat, which obviously is more expensive than veggies, and it didn’t include alcohol. So the lesson learned is that if you stick to the basics, you can eat very cheaply here. The added frills are where it gets you.

As an aside, while I'm talking about all this indian veggie food, in the back of a taxi to the airport last week I was watching an advert; some SG taxis have a small TV screen and internet hookup on the back of the front passenger’s head-rest. The advert-come-infommercial was about how to save the planet by becoming vegetarian, citing a number of stats about the volume of resources that cattle require in return for nutritional value of protein. On the strength of the food from Komala Vilas, I’d consider it, well maybe just a reduction of meat in my diet.

Shovel

Walk around East Coast/Katong

2010-06-27T23:57:00.000+08:00

One of the most famous streets near where we now live is Joo Chiat Road, named after a generous benefactor who granted the land to the state and thus came into being Joo Chiat Road. It runs from the beach, north to Geyland and has the most wonderful aray of shops and bars every step of the way, serving fantastic peranakan foods and a suitably sleezy neon-glowing karaoke scene.

We walked through the small back streets off Koon Seng Road, remarking at the mix of old and renovated peranakan style shop houses dating back to pre-war times. Their individually tiled fronts and small but compact gardens are a welcome contrast to the concrete and glass condos of River Valley Road or Holland Village. Even a street away from the busy Joo Chiat, the streets are quiet and calm and people have set up small tables outside their houses and sit chatting happily with a glass of wine or a beer.

At the cross-roads of Dunman Road, Koon Seng and Joo Chiat is the Dunman Hawker Centre and we stop in for some food as dusk settles. The stalls offer predominantly fish and seafood based menus which isn’t so good for my Lady who is still in her first few months of pregnancy, so we work hard to find some chicken and rice for her. It’s an alright centre, nothing flash, but if you like seafood, give it a whirl. There’s also a nice little dumpling seller who serves beautifully crafted glutinous rice dumplings. At 70c a go, you’d might as well try one.

Also up by this corner is the treasure-trove of an alcohol store called East of Avalon Wines. It's just below this wonderful old corner-shop at the corner of Koon-Seng and Dunman. It’s full to the brim of other-world beers and wines from no where that most people have ever heard from, but I assure you it’s worth taking a punt on some and seeing what you think. Ask for George, he’s wonderfully english, and he’ll walk you through.

However, it’s at night that the real gems of Joo Chiat open up and a good mile of street becomes lit with neon and blasted with noise and crooning from the endless KTV bars. You can hear male voices coming from what must be only a few paces behind the black tinted front doors and many young women we see have started to parade the streets in shockingly short skirts and toweringly high heels. The food courts have filled, with their fluorescent lights showering the diners in a weak orange glow while dusty fans blow equally dusty air around the venues. And suddenly it’s all got a little seedy, the girls are fawning about the much older gentlemen, the men are touching the girls and giving them what my old swim coach would have called “inappropriate hugs” and everyone seems to be a little heady on the night air. That will be the Geylang factor that has spread from the northern end of the street.

Behind Joo-Chiat we stumble upon a multi-purpose hall where an Indian family was celebrating a wedding. Around the corner of the same hall we find a Chinese festival happening. Across the street we find a Georgian wine importer and on East Coast Road we find Vic’s Place which is an Western Australian wine importer.

To the west of Joo Chiat and on the corner of Ceylon Road and East Coast Road is the famous and exceptional 328 Katong Laksa, serving the best laksa in Singapore. Simple, no nonsense, authentic creamy spicy goodness, but don’t have it too often; your doctor will have a fit as you have a coronary.

It really is a great area to be living in and there’s so much history hidden in back streets and tucked between shop-fronts to live amongst that you’re never going to be short of things to see, or things to eat for that matter!

Shovel

Weekends down at the beach?

2010-06-03T23:11:00.000+08:00

I write this short catch-up blog with a heavy sense of irony, given last week’s minor incident down at the beach. However, it is important to spill the beans on the delightful part of Singapore that is the East Coast Park, the right lung of the city.
East Coast Park is…is….is what? To many here it is the essence of outdoor living. To others, on first view (and maybe this is because I have lived in other places where open-space is not a luxury) it’s just a park. A long, skinny 200m strip of grass on reclaimed land (effectively a flat sand-dune) that stretches for several kilometers from Marine Parade to Changi Airport between the East Coast Parkway (a highway, also built on reclaimed land) and the tanker-filled ocean. To me, it’s a place of peace, meditation, good spirits and escape from the office.

Squeezed into this furrow, like taught hamstrings in a pair of cycling shorts, are a walking track, a bike and in-line skate path, multiple bbq pits and even camping zones. On the weekend there are any number of extended family pitches set up around the bbq pits; it’s a heart-warming sight in this day and age to have 20+ people, sitting together, laughing and smiling together, enjoying a family meal and simply having fun together. The beach itself is not so much a beach as another furrow of land that is made of golden sand. Further to the east the beach does become more of the Australian type beach that I’ve come to know and love, but you’re still swimming in a boatyard.

After exploring the childishly amusingly named Kaki Bukit shopping strip one weekend, Lady and I took a cab through the rain to East Coast Lagoon Food Court – a huge set up of structured food stalls, covering the usual whirl of Asian delights. You can sit by the lagoon (a man-made lagoon) and watch the new 360 degree cable-water-ski or alternatively stare out to sea and watch the tanker and cargo ships swinging slowly on their moorings not one mile from the beach.

East Coast Park is an action centre for Singapore; cycling, running, futsal, volleyball, triathlon, kiddy ball-pits and now waterskiing/wakeboarding. It’s got a lot to offer and with very established food outlets covering thai, seafood, a micro-brewery (Red Dot) and even KFC or MacDonald’s (for the teens of course, once in a while) there’s heaps to do for a whole day and evening.

That I think is one of the important things to remember if you’re on the island for any length of time. You’ve got to split out your weekend activities and pace yourself. Singapore’s not the biggest place and without leaving the island, your options might initially seem less than what you may be used to in larger countries. I mean, the UK is not the biggest place either but within a 4hr drive you’re in the Lake District or sub-tropical Cornwall. 8hrs from London and you’re in Glasgow, an erstwhile European Capital of Culture, none the less.
However, search, dig, seek and you’ll find nuggets of joy hidden between the glossy exterior of one mall and the next. Maybe that’s why another taxi driver told me that the three national sports in Singapore are shopping, eating and drinking. Today we managed to split our day into two main focuses, 1) being shopping for Junior and 2) took a late lunch and a walk through the park. It took us all day and combined two of the national sports missing out on the third as we’re not drinking together given the pending arrival of a small Shovel. A trowel, if you will.
Shovel

Singapore Oil Spill Response

2010-05-30T22:55:00.000+08:00

I heard about the oil spill on Saturday 30 May, idly surfing the net over breakfast. I’d smelled petrol on Thursday afternoon, sitting in the office but passed it off as an oddity when no one else confirmed it (and I work a long way from the ocean).
The collision between a tanker and a cargo ship happened some 13km off the shores of Singapore three days prior to that, spilling an estimated 2,000 – 5,000 tonnes of bintu light crude (depending on sources) into the water. The preliminary story I picked up was in a Malaysian news article as follows.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/5/28/nation/6355091&sec=nation

The problem I have with this and other press releases I have read is that it’s being treated like it’s no big deal, that the mess isn’t a problem. From articles I have read, I have seen statements such as “the light crude will evaporate from prolonged exposure to the sun” and “efforts have been positive, more or less”. Now, while all this may be true and honestly, I am no organic chemist, my gut feel is that the importance of the event and the profile of the response to it has been understated. Especially when you compare the reactions (admittedly on grossly different scales, I will grant you) on different sides of the pacific to similar dramas. Both are in major oil territories; the Gulf of Mexico for drilling and Singapore as an entrepot for storage and refineries.
http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/2010/05/25/oil-spill-off-singapore-after-vessels-collide/

Living so close to the beach, I took myself for a run on Saturday 30th to see how the ‘response’ was being enacted and the progress made to date, given the expectation of the authorities that the situation would be dealt with by Sunday. There’d been no official warning to stay away, besides, the Sundown Marathon was to go ahead along the east coast park that evening.
The powers that be had allocated 100-125 personnel to combat the spill, stopping it spreading to the sand which was where animal life was at risk and as I trotted along to the beach I could see many people milling around in the usual way that outdoor workers do here, slowly.

Don’t get me wrong, you’d expect the authorities to have been prepared for this, and they were. You can’t run such a massive operation here and not be ready for collisions. But the assembled team was a rag-tag collection of labourers, mostly Indian from what I could see, dressed in a variety of bizarre non-uniform uniforms; jeans, track-suits, short-sleeved shirts, sandals, running shoes, bandana facemasks and towels wrapped around heads to keep the sun off. One or two guys had donned the worker’s traditional high-visibility jackets, but more so as an accessory rather than to be seen. From a safety perspective, all I noticed was one guy using safety gloves to pick up the oil-covered sand (safety gloves made of black polythene refuse bags) and one guy using a face-mask to protect himself from the fumes (a face-mask that was actually a knitted, black balaclava). It was a motley crew indeed.

The smell of the beach could best be described as a cross between a fishmonger’s store as the fresh fish are unloaded and a gas-station’s forecourt. A salty, sea-weedy, petroleum aroma. It wasn’t a good smell that I sucked into my lungs through the afternoon heat. My lungs might be big and strong and I managed an audible laugh on seeing the recreational smokers lighting up along the beach. East Coast Park is one of the few remaining public areas where Singaporeans can smoke yet this week probably wasn’t the smartest place to be waving around naked flames (again, I don’t profess to be an organic-chemist nor do I profess to know the risks of the oil spill, but should I have been told?).

I ran past hundreds of refuse bags along 4km of beach, full of oily sand and debris, lying in the sun on large tarpaulins, ready for collection at some point later in time. Bags of oily rubbish lying in the sun in full view of many children running around on the beach. Does that sound sensible? It was as if nothing had ever happened: cyclists kept cycling, runners kept running, in-line skate first timers still tried to avoid falling and kids kept playing. The park was crowded with people enjoying the weather, flying kites and barbecuing. People were even fishing, idly throwing a line at the ocean opening of the Siglap canal, through a rainbow shimmering film of light crude oil. Seriously? I don’t see much in the way of catch-and-release sport fishing going on here so where were any fish going? Not the barbecue, surely.

I guess the main problem I have is the lack of acknowledgement that anything bad was happening here, or that there was any potential risk to the general public. Yes, I considered any potential risk that I knew of, as a reasonable person (not a chemist) and still went running along the beach, making a concerted effort to run on the track, not the sand. I hope everyone else made the same conscious decision on behalf of themselves and their children. But did they? Should they have had to? Maybe I missed something, but in the space of five days I did not hear one item of news about the spill, did not hear any recommendations about what to do when, IF, you wanted to go to the beach and saw no warning signs at the beach at all.
Clearly there was something out there from the powers that be, but was it enough?
Shovel

An open zoo - beasties and crawlies in your own home

2010-05-29T12:35:00.000+08:00

Why does there seem to be a distinct absence of flies in Singapore?
You'd think that this tropical, steamy island would be a breeding ground for them, it certainly is when it comes to mosquitos and the signs at building sites on the importance of eradicating stagnant water cannot be missed. However I've only spotted a couple here and there; a couple of weeks back there were two lazily buzzing around my thonged right foot whilst I waited in line for a taxi. Maybe they were waiting too, after all, with all that flapping of wings, you'd get pretty tired here; why not take a taxi instead?

Maybe there really is a small population, maybe there's a mysterious shortage. Maybe they have been picked off by a supremely efficient predator or most likely they are all feasting on some fetid, festering garbage heap in the less populated parts of the island. Who knows?

In this first week of moving into our new place, we've been visited by geckos, which is something you don't see too often in the home-counties of the UK.

The little lizards seem to be the good-guys here, living off the numerous slugs, bugs and roaches that linger in dark alleyways. Maybe they're the ones eating the flies, but how would you catch a fly if you're bound to the ground and have no chameleon-styled tongue? The ones that found their way into our kitchen (our door-frames are not the best fitted. The builders left a good centimetre gap either side, probably for ventilation health and safety purposes) are five to eight centimetres in length, pale green almost yellow in colour and have big brown eyes. It almost sounds adorable, doesn't it?

They flick about, with a distinct pad pad pad of their sticky-toed feet and, having tried to catch them, are pretty nippy over short distances. So far, I have evicted two, one day after the other, although maybe i didn't do a good enough job of showing the first to greener pastures and he just wandered straight back on in, like a drunk cowboy who has been turfed out through the still-swinging saloon doors. Then again, the process wasn't so difficult, they are reasonably cute little dudes and it's not so much of a hardship chasing them with a tupperware cup in my hand.

In addition to the gecko invasion of my kitchen, I stumbled across a fat cockroach in the door way of the regional tax manager's office this morning, and reacted with typically new-expat revulsion. Good job he's out of town travelling this week. The beasty was a good three centimetres long and two centimetres wide, proudly lying on it's back, displaying its cockroach-brown glory, crossing all it's stick-like arms and legs. Dead. The dessicating insect lay there for a good couple of hours before magically disappearing.
Shovel

Singapore Night Safari

2010-05-29T12:26:00.000+08:00

With international visitors in tow, we ventured out into the night to the Singapore Night Safari; the first night zoo in the world. This is a big draw card for visitors to Singapore, rated number seven in the top-ten things to do in Singapore by the eyewitness travel guide we have and it doesn’t disappoint, unveiling a range of nocturnal animals from small to large, slick to furry, herbivore to carnivore, which are more active in the cooler evenings than their diurnal cousins who hide from the heat of the day.
There is such a different feel walking about the zoo at night than I have experienced at other places around the world, for a start you’re more aware of your surroundings; your eyes are more keen, adjusting to the low-light so that you can spot the smaller inmates as they feed on hanging fruits. And secondly your skin and sense of touch heightens. Something happens in your head that magnifies everything you feel, be it the breeze, the touch of a leaf, a mosquito or even just the touch of your friends who are pushing to see the animals better than you.

For the entire time the four of us brushed our arms and legs, thinking we were being feasted upon by the pesky mites. It’s a good job that at the entrance gates, amongst the merchandise and foods, there is a small stash of anti-mosquito products. We selected the Tiger Balm patches, impregnated blue spots about three centimetres in diameter, because Lady is pregnant and these patches simply stick to your clothes giving you an aura of protection without the direct skin contact.

Once you walk through the gates and get past the tribal dance group with flaming batons (which is mighty impressive, if not smokey) then you do lose most of the other people and you feel like you’re on your own to some extent, with the animals as your entertainers. Normally zoos are chock-full but the Night Safari seems to be relatively empty.
Admittedly it is not pitch-black, it couldn't be. However the lighting is low and strategically placed for maximum exposure to the animals. Lights are placed near the walkways, where keepers will have just recently placed food-stuffs to entice the wildlife out to say hello.
The variety of life is wide, from otters and bears to start, through various tree-dwellers with big eyes for seeing at night, then the carnivores; lions, tigers, hyenas, wolves, leopards. The zoo is segregated by clearly sign-posted trails that weave through the jungle and also two tram paths that take you through the open areas where animals such as deer and tapir do come right up to the tram.
In addition there is a 40 minute show that runs through the night which is very funny and very entertaining. It showcases some of the zoo's favourite and more loveable animals in a large amphitheatre but be warned, the queues are very long and you need to get into one early to avoid disappointment. But do go, it's very entertaining.

The only down side we found, okay, so it’s not so much a down side as an annoyance, the only annoyance was the shocking commentary and driving on the trams that ferry you around two sections of the park where animals roam free. The various guides had learned the same patter (we overheard another tram from the elevated lion viewing platform) and all pronounced the words as if they’d been to the Disney Club School of Elocution and taken the same minor degree as taught by Dick van Dycke during his time in Mary Poppins.

We had to listen to the regular lead-in to every new section,
“ovah ‘ere on tha roight ‘and soide of da tram”
and endless dramatic pauses when none were really warranted;
“a capybara weighing…seventy-five kilo……grams.”
We know where you’re going, when you say ‘kilo’ so you don’t need to string out the ‘grams’. It’s the same when we learn that a rhino can charge at speeds of “twenty-five kilometers an……hour”. It would be an impressive fact if Singapore Night Safari rhino could charge at 25 kilometres a second, but we all know that’s rubbish, so just tell us alright, don’t lay the drama on.

And the driving, oh my gosh, the painful part of the visit, the driving!
I didn’t realise the Singapore F1 Grand Prix course ran through the zoo. That's amazing isn't it? The drivers were taking part in free practice! Every time we pull up to an exciting new animal enclosure, we would slow but not stop, continuing to move forward while the commentary kept rolling, even before Minnie Mouse had finished telling us about the Malaysian Tapir. The most frustrating was to run past two elephant enclosures, the tigers, bearded pigs and numerous other animals who were up and about late at night, whilst we stopped for an elongated moment at the capibaras. FLAMING CAPYBARAS??? They’re giant rodents! I don’t care that you’re driving the last tram of the night, but you DON’T speed through the zones on our tickets.

So, some recommendations for other animal-lovers visiting the zoo; wear comfy shoes, it can be a warm walk. Take some mosquito repellant and reapply. Take some spare water, the price of refreshments jumps when you reach the far side of the park and you’re desperate. Agree not to use the flash on your camera. Agree and abide by it. Make sure you jump in a return taxi before midnight or the price sky-rockets.

Shovel

Mall Shopping – a nation’s favourite sport

2010-05-29T11:52:00.000+08:00

Katong Mall/Parkway Parade is the big mall along the east coast. We’d wandered along n the weekend to see what was what and where we could get our groceries from. Don’t get me wrong, there’s much shopping to be got from wet markets and the endless fruit shops that have accumulated around Still Road and East Coast Road. I like to help the little guy, the one-man-band, so I do hope to purchase most of my fresh goods from these stalls, however every now and again you just need to go big.

There’s two options at Parkway; Cold Storage and Giant. Cold Storage, unlike it’s name suggests, is not for frozen foods, but is a normal store. A normal store except that it carries every expats smallest wish for food from the homeland; for me there’s tea from Marks & Spencers, Dorset muesli, Twisties, Cheezels. “Just like home” should be their tag line. Obviously this comes with an expat price too, so beware, once in a while is OK.

The second option is Giant, now that does live up to its name, it’s massive. Narrow aisles mean you can cram in more, and cram they do. The shelves are a real-life pop art wall of blocked colour as cereal boxes, tins and bottles of sauce overload your vision with symbols and bright labels whilst yours ears are subjected to 1950s love songs. Just like any other supermarket the world over, you enter to the fresh fruit and vegetable section; everything here is FRESH, this is FRESH shop (thanks Eddie Izzard)!

You look along the aisles to see fruit, veg, meat, fish, breads, tins, jars, boxes, buckets, bags, packets and then TVs, radios, clothes, home furnishings, outdoor tables, EVERYTHING is here. It’s the Vegas of supermarkets.

It’s all going so well, there are so many brands at very reasonable prices, but which one is best? Which one is cheapest? Why are three packets of almonds from three different almond suppliers sized in three different weights? That just makes the mathematics harder to calculate price per 100g. I don’t need this on a Sunday morning.

Finally, 45 minutes later, (which I was pretty chuffed with, given the amount of stuff we have crammed into our trolley on this our first shop in the new place) we are loaded to busting with multi-packs of tissues and toilet roll, vats of cleaning products, larder spices and sauces, rice, pasta, noodles; the basics. Serious shopping and we head to the checkouts, checkouts that stretch for about 300m along the entire shop front. We pick at random aisle 36. Never pick 36 on a roulette wheel. It’s a bad number, here’s why.

It took us a further 45 minutes to line up (we were 4th in line), pack and pay. That’s as long as our shopping excursion itself. We found that the Giant staff (in that they are employees of the corporation called Giant, not that they work for a giant nor indeed are they gigantic humans) have an orderly, rigid, don’t-be-messed-with approach to packing bags. Certain products live together and therefore get packed together.

You don’t get a multi-cultural shopping bag in multi-cultural Singapore.

No, you get three items in a non-biodegradable plastic bag which is then placed inside your reusable bag like a polluting version of Russian dolls.

Faced with our large collection of reusable heavy duty bags from various supermarkets in various countries there was some confusion and a little hesitation from the poor girl as we insisted she just throw everything in together. Gosh, it took so LONG! Instead of scanning each product as it reached her, she was cherry-picking along the length of the conveyor belt to select like-products before placing them in the bags. Arrrgh!! Infuriating! We then faced a 15 minute line up for a taxi. Good job we had no frozen products.

So, be warned, sort your purchases wisely and take your recycling bags. Singapore recently held a six week long trial for one day a week where customers were required to use their own bags. They have now stopped that and are back to plastic. Sigh.

Orchard Road on the other hand is a mecca of shopping, if Giant is like Vegas, then Orchard Road is like Paris; excess but with the glitz and glamour in equal amount. A new mall has been built recently seemingly just for the luxury brands; Luis Vuitton, Prada, Armani, Gucci, D&G, Rolex…yadda yadda yadda and the list goes on until you’re in debt to your extended lash eyeballs. If shopping is a national sport, then this is the Singapore Olympic Stadium for the 21st century. It deserves its own blog entry.

Visiting China - a drive in Beijing

2010-05-29T11:43:00.000+08:00

After obtaining my visa for China, I finally got to enjoy the first week of travel for work, holding meetings to discuss new technical issues that impact the business. I get to finally meet the teams in Beijing and Tokyo who I have previously only spoken to.

However as I’m working all the time, the peak-hour taxi to the office driving through Beijing’s traffic is pretty much my overriding memory of Beijing from this trip and the extent of my cultural engagement, for the moment that is.

Everywhere there are cars. Thousands of cars. There are thousands of people. Everywhere you look there are people. It’s truly busy, but not in the same way that Bangkok is overtly in your face, but it’s a constant, humming busy.

Perpetual human motion.

Cars are weaved within inches of each other, straddling lanes. People do a sort of stop-start action at pedestrian crossings, trying to cross the road. These are pedestrian crossings that are really more akin to spilled paint on the road than formal markings. Bicycles are peddled in line or in formation of fours or fives, taking the place of a car on the road. Electric powered bicycles are cruised, serenely easing past their muscle powered ancestors. Everywhere you look is jostling, bustling, bumping, pushing to get ahead. It’s gutsy, no fear, forceful. It’s pretty loose when it comes to road-sense, just frightening enough to get you on edge so you don’t need a coffee but not enough to scare the living daylights out of you.
One morning, after having sat in a traffic jam for 10 minutes trying to get onto one of Beijing’s ring-roads, our man took a back route out of frustration, leading us through a local area where the world was getting ready to trade: three wheeled bikes pedal bags of lettuces and noodles to the restaurants or carry lashed up bags of refuse for recycling. We see one bike loaded 12 feet in the air with recycling materials, the top load being plastic bottles, tied together with string so that they look like an opaque bubble-cloud.

Sitting at traffic at a later time, I heard a clicking noise, it wasn’t the tapping of blackberries coming from the back of the car, it was coming from the driver. I looked over to see him palming a pair of varnished mahogony walnuts in his left hand, like some sort of worry-token. It brought a smile to my face as I thought that it wasn’t just me that thought Beijing driving required a certain level of testicular fortitude, he was also driving with his nuts out.

America's most backwards airline?

2010-05-09T11:15:00.001+08:00

I'm sitting here at Hong Kong International airport, bare-footed, admiring the majestic, mist-shrouded hills that surround Hong Kong, contemplating the next thirteen and a half hours on a plane. Based on the last three hours from Sg to HK, I am less than excited.

I took this United Airlines flight because of the connections to Star Alliance, allowing me to rack up more frequent flyer points. It's starting to look like a long term decision with short term pain, not least the fact that I am tired and running off three and a half hours sleep (I prised my non-compliant body off the bed up at 03:30 this morning to check in and have held it hostage since. Human Rights allow me to hold my own self for so many hours before I can release it to sleep) but because the flight is going to be stupendously, arse-numbingly, DVT-inducingly, uncomfortably dull.
And this I attribute to the fact that I have become so accustomed to being entertained every step of the way, so the prospect of this transpacific flight without an extensive multi-media selection just fills me with dread. I am going to have to watch whatever they have decided to show us. I watched The Blind Side from Sg to HK, which I admit, i thought was good and brought tears to my eyes (but then again, people know that i'm a big sook and cry at the drop of a hat), but the most recent crop of movies on airlines doesn't excite me.
There are also the restrictions on using PDAs or advanced cell phones to amuse yourself on flights (ok, so there's a flight-safe mode, but how long is your mini battery going to last you and how long can you play solitaire for anyway?). I can't imagine how the Singaporeans must feel, they seem to be symbiotically attached to their devices.
To be honest though, I should be sleeping. If I follow the mantra of water, water, water and live in the timezone you're heading to, i should be polishing off the litre bottle of Watson's Water (that sounds bad doesn't it, but the blurb i can read that's not in chinese says it's distilled and the water is clear) and brushing my teeth right now. It's 22:26 in Chicago. Maybe a few pages of The Economist and a glass of wine might help. And that's not to say the informative pages of The Economist are boring, far from it, but they make you think and i get sleepy when i think on planes.

So, with a fond farewell to the high-rises of HK, which do put the Singapore HDBs to shame, both in scale and uniformity, they're calling the massed throng to board. Actually, they're calling important people to board and I'm in group 4 of 4. So last to get my kit in. I'll just continue to admire the view and let my feet breath.
Shovel

Clarke Quay - bright lights, food, drink and people watching

2010-05-05T22:04:00.002+08:00

The weird world of Clarke Quay - a heritage location with a distinctly non-heritage cooling system

After living on Clarke Quay’s doorstep for nigh on 6 weeks, it was time to actually venture in and sample the night-life. To get the best out of it, we wanted to sit and watch so we decided on middle-eastern bites.

Two places on Clarke Quay are available, restaurants called Marrakesh and Shiraz. Marrakesh looks to be more of the sit down, chill & chat type establishment which was what we were after so the plan was to order a couple of appetisers, nibble on some pita, hummus, mountabel, have a drink and watch some people.

I abstained from the sheesha/hookah/hubbly bubbly (depending on your choice of colloquialism) this evening; I’d recommend that you have a few friends around to experience this if you’re not a regular puffer.

We selected a mixed grill shared appetiser, a bit of everything. We’d been to Kabul on Cuppage Road up in town last weekend and had a really good experience so wanted to compare and contrast the quality.
Unfortunately, the food was out on our table before our drinks arrived (a sprite & bottled beer) which was somewhat unusual. Surely it would take longer to prepare some kebabs and warm the pita than to shoot a post-mix sprite into a glass, right?
What arrived were some distinctly average koftas and kebabs, a ‘salad’ of cubed cucumber and carrot with thin tomato sauce. We assumed the tomato sauce is meant to be some harrisa derivative, but it lacked spice of any sort. The pita were like quarters from a dough-frisbee, and were not warm but hard instead.

All in all it wasn’t a good dining experience.

However, as a people watching corner, it’s great value. Across from the debauched drinking establishment of The Clinic we sat back and mused over the passing patrons: based on their clothing what is their home country, employment status, ability to use the very expensive camera slung from the shoulder. Cheap fun!

A day that has run like the weather - the embassy

2010-05-05T21:43:00.001+08:00

Oh man, I had an up and down day when I went to sort out my visa to the People’s Republic of China. It’s my second visit to the efficient, perfunctory but super busy China Embassy on Tanglin Road. Everyone says to go early so I arrived before opening time to see the line up moving through the entry-vestibule that’s the same size as a walk-in wardrobe.
I guess it’s for security purposes to limit access, but it makes for a very crowded and potentially ineffective security area. Everyone who enters passes through a metal detector, which subsequently then beeps for everyone because there’s been no prior warning to remove metal from your bag or person. The poor security guard has to check everybody and by doing so, checks nothing in any detail at all. I opened my laptop bag but he didn’t blink at the mass of wires and papers popping out the top.
Once in, the lines snake to the numbered desks,
1 for payments,
2 for collections and
lines 3 to a million for visa applications.

The line up this morning for me to pay for my visa was 50m long and the second line for me to collect my visa was also 50m long. That was at 9am, bang on opening time. I mean, there’s a lot of people already in China, let alone the people wanting to visit!

A half hour later, I reach the ticket counter, thinking that I just have enough cash to cover the $75 fee (cash only, again, cash counts! There’s no getting into China on credit!), only to find to my embarrassment and loss of face that I was $2 short.

So straight back out front I find it puking with rain, no taxis and I didn’t have my umbrella. Not good.
I called Lady to come and help bail me out. Not a good start to the day then for either of us. While reading the paper and catching up on news, I see my team got “bundled out of Europe”, by the Germans. So, my morning is waning, the chances of silverware to associate myself with are gone and I’m listlessly passing time standing in the tiny, wet China Embassy entry-way, eaking out the tiniest article in the Today freepaper which as you would expect is 50% advertisements.

I find to my distain (literally, a stain) that newspaper printers in Singapore have not discovered the benefits of ink that doesn’t transfer to one’s hands. My fingers are now filthy with today’s lacklustre news.

Anyway, my wonderful Lady rides in on the back of a triumphant taxi to my rescue and resume queuing, cashed up, for another attempt, but by this time, it’s 10:15 and the lines are noticeably shorter, there are fewer people here and the atmosphere is much more agreeable.

My advice to the world trying to get China visas in Singapore is not to go early; this just exacerbates the problem, but to go later in the window. By that time, all the rabble, very much showing the trait of kiasu (not wanting to lose out), have lined up and gone. So my guidance is to go late, lah, and miss the queues.
Shovel

Weather – never underestimate it

2010-05-05T21:22:00.001+08:00

There's a storm a-comin'!

We both knew that Singapore would be hot and with guaranteed rain. My boss said to me when he moved out here that you must always expect it to rain, you just don’t know when or how much. Our UK habit of carrying sunnies and umbrellas at the same time comes in handy. The last couple of weeks have been around 2pm, daily, with gross thunder and an unhealthy discharge of rain from the ever-giving heavens. What’s become a laugh between Lady and I is that it’s not just thunder, it’s escalating, cataclysmic thunder.

When the thunder started a couple weeks ago, I mean started in earnest, it was loud. Every day Lady would tell me, rolling her eyes, saying “Wow, that’s the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard”, even louder than yesterday! But that was the loudest rumble until the next day, and then the next day. The walls and desk around me have actually shaken. Physically shaken.

Bad weather +30 minutes - Good weather!

It could also have something to do with the flimsy interior renovation conducted at the soul-destroying offices that I’m working at for the current month, but I’d like to think that the Norsk god, Thor, retired out here because of the quality of the seafood and the warmer climate. He’s just keeping active incase he’s ever needed. You know, topping up his pension. As every Singaporean has told me,

“Singapore’s a great country to live in, but a bad place to retire in. So ‘spensive, lah!”.

Shovel

Practical matters of setting yourself up

2010-05-05T21:15:00.001+08:00

When you move into a new place, you have a short period of time when you’re in between rental deposits; either you’re cashed up but you know it’s leaving you soon or you’re strapped for a big chunk of cash until your old real estate agent clears that last property. Normally, deposit in equals deposit out +/- a few bucks, depending on where you’re moving. Lady and I found that Singapore is a lot of extra bucks, and it’s not just deposits for rental agreements; there’s deposits for a lot of the basics.

Starting with the new home, yes we’re still renting, we read up that there would be big deposits, but it really hits home when the real estate agents walk you through what you need up front. Upon finding a place you want, you sign a letter of intent that you wish to be taken seriously and that you would like the landlord to take the property off the market. For that, you pay a deposit of 1mth’s rent, you pay it immediately and it is not refundable. If the colour of your money is not flashed then you’re not a credit worthy tenant. Once this is accepted, you pay another month’s rent for bond and one month rent up front. This is paid one week after the first letter of intent is signed. Payments are either cash, cheque or direct bank transfer.

Now bearing in mind that you won’t see the two months’ deposit until you leave the property at the end of your two year fixed term tenancy, that’s a lot of money to tie up. And we’re not talking low rents either, we were being shown three bed apartments starting at S$5,000 a month, which expects you to find at short notice a spare S$15k just lying around. That’s some culture change from credit to cash. Don’t ask about stamp duty, it’s not so big, but again, it’s up to the new tenant to pay stamp duty on their new rented property. Not sure I understand that.

Bank accounts are a similar beast. To prove you have sufficient credit and resources, all bank accounts require an initial deposit. Most are S$1,000, others are higher. POSB who we went with is a lenient S$500. That’s per account; so one for current account purposes, one for savings, one to hold your monthly tax (which you have to set aside yourself) and for us another savings account to take advantage of my employer’s savings scheme and suddenly we’re handing the bank S$2,000. For the pleasure of having a bank account to manage our money, we are lending the bank two grand (at an interest rate of less than 1%) and are not allowed to withdraw it until we close the account. Well, that’s not strictly true, we have a S$500 minimum balance which we can go below but are charged a penalty on it. Needless to say we’re rethinking how we manage the money! To own a chequebook, well don’t go there. As foreigners we would have had to pay S$3,000 as a deposit and retain a minimum balance of S$1,500, to ensure that we don’t write a bad cheque and run off without paying. Again, you’re funding the bank, for no benefit to yourself, until you close the account or pass away and leave it in your estate, presumably to cover the cost of your casket or urn.

Singapore is totally a cash based society, or rather the culture is cash based. You either have it and doors open or you don’t and nothing happens.

Utilities are the next step for us as we move into Chez Shovel. We’re excited to be paying for electricity and water services (gas we buy a calor gas bottle for S$30, no deposit paid!), telephone and cable TV. Whatever else we don’t know yet, but we’re waiting, cash ready and waiting!
Shovel

To AC or not to AC, - that is the question:-

2010-05-05T20:35:00.001+08:00

Whether ‘tis easier on the wallet to suffer
The misery and sweat of outrageous humidity,
Or to take air-conditioning against the stifling oppression,
And by creating a breeze end it?- To cool,- to dry,-
No more; and by dry to say we end
The clamminess, and the thousand chafing burns
That thighs are heir to, ‘tis a Paradise
Continually to be wisht. To cool, - to dry;-
To dry! Perchance to go out again later; aye, there’s the rub;
For in that chilly state of aircon what delusions may come,
When we have shuffled off this cotton t-shirt,
Must give us three further shirts a day: there’s the catch
That makes charity donations of so grand a wardrobe;
For who would bear the burning and dehydration of equatorial heat,
The weatherman’s monotony, the doorman’s insistence on dress-code,
The pangs of relentless thirst, the condensation drip on your crotch,
The cessation of aircon in the office after six of an evening, and the moistness
That the commuter meets, unwarranted all be it,
When he himself might be jostled against another drenched wretch
With a bare arm? Who would bear their employer’s ergonomic backpack,
To puff and pant under a laptop or files so as to work on the weekend,
But that there is a chance of someone else to foot the AC bill,-
The 24 hour coffee shop, from whose caffeinated, icy cold couches
No worker returns,- it puzzles the will how they can afford to cool us all,
And makes us rather bear ill towards those early birds who already have a table
Than fly to another coffee house that we know not of.
Thus humidity does make slaves of us all;
And thus the pale-face immigrant’s hue of pastiness
Is ruddied o’er with the steaminess of a sauna;
And images of an outdoors life and getting back in shape,
With this draining heat, these endeavours fall away,
And lose the name of action.

What Hamlet might have said, had he ventured outside of Elsinor for a summer vacation to Singapore instead of bemoaning his unhappy lot in rather more temperate Denmark.
Shovel

Multi-Culturalism – a phrase oft-used in reference to Sg

2010-05-05T09:06:00.001+08:00

It is important to look at the make-up of the population if you’re going to have any idea of how Singapore works, its positives and pressure points alike. The population of Singapore including non-residents is approximately 5 million, with Chinese people forming an ethnic majority with large populations of Malay, Indian and other people. According to government statistics, the population of Singapore as of 2009 was 4.99 million, of whom 3.73 million were Singaporean citizens and permanent residents. Government facts are always helpful to get your hands on, regardless of how much massaging other hands may have done to them.

Interestingly, to combat a falling birth rate, the government is encouraging foreigners to immigrate to Singapore and have children. See my thoughts later on who is driving the country forward; is it the locals or the foreign workers? According to the collective intellect at Wikipedia, various Chinese groups form 74% of Singapore's residents, Malays 13%, Indians 9%, while other groups form the rest. Reflecting this, you have four official languages; English, Malay, Tamil, and Chinese (Mandarin), all prominently displayed on all public signs which I think is positively inclusive.

Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) signage - the underground, subway, metro...

Spot the difference

Singapore is indeed a multi-racial and an effective multi-lingual nation. The national language of Singapore is Malay for historical reasons, and it is used in the national anthem, "Majulah Singapura” which still plays, gloriously, on the free-to-air channels at close of scheduling every night I believe.
English is the operating language of Singapore and has been heavily promoted as such since the country's independence, principally with the aim of allowing Singapore to run on an even playing field with the business world outside of Asia. However, as I am becoming more familiar with it, most Singaporeans speak a localised hybrid form of English known as Singlish ("Singapore English"), which incorporates vocabulary and grammar from Standard English, various Chinese dialects, Malay, and Indian languages. It is one of the things that I have immediately fallen in love with, the wit and humour that is used to create many of the Singlish phrases that are in wide use.
While Mandarin is a more pure form of Chinese, you’re more likely to come across a regional dialect because most Singaporeans are descended from immigrants who came from the southern regions of China where other dialects were spoken, such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese. Bahasa Malay is generally spoken by Singapore's Malay community, while Tamil is spoken by about 60% of Singapore's Indian community. Indian languages such as Malayalam and Hindi are also spoken in Singapore.
As you can imagine, it’s a buzzing place with all manner of chat going on around you when you walk down the street. Moving from Little India, to Chinatown to Raffles Place is like taking part in a big language class.
Shovel

Wonderful Singlish or is that just an error?

2010-04-23T14:41:00.001+08:00

Apparently the Ministry of Communication wants anyone to report incorrect use of English. It’s brilliant; like the Stasi in post war Germany but with more focus on grammar, everyone is free to inform on everyone else!

At times the use of the English language in print is wonderful, simply magical in its descriptive power. Last week I read in the paper the story of an unfortunate young lady who was the victim of a drugged drink and she woke the morning after to find an older man “outraging her modesty”. “Outraging her modesty”? Where does one conjure up that turn of phrase? It’s glorious in it’s ability to not inform the reader of the facts but to still leave a tone of unpleasantness. Very Singaporean indeed.
However, in the same article is the detail of the man “licking her private parts” and also including the alleged victim’s address. Somewhere along the line the journalist lost their way and flicked from opaque to transparent in the sip of a late-night deadline coffee.

I saw an excellent sign at a taxi rank, see what you think of this one for punctuation. I think it’s alright. ” No Smoking While In Q’ ”How many apostrophes should there be after Q when you refer to the queue?

I’ll see what I can do to get a good collection for you, although I can assure you that this won’t become a crusade for me.
Shovel.

THE P.A.P. - Politics And Policies

2010-04-23T14:34:00.002+08:00

A little general knowledge, just to keep the blog on the sensible and discussional.

The first elections in Singapore were held on 30 May 1959 with the People's Action Party (PAP) winning a landslide victory. Singapore eventually became a self-governing state within the British Empire on 3 June 1959 and Lee Kuan Yew was sworn in as the first prime minister of Singapore. Singapore declared independence from Britain unilaterally in August 1963, then exited the short-lived interim Federation of Malaysia in 1964. Singapore officially gained sovereignty on 9 August 1965, with Yusof bin Ishak sworn in as President, and Lee Kuan Yew the first prime minister of the Republic of Singapore. The two-tier governing system has remained in place ever since with the PAP setting the course and the President taking on mostly ceremonial duties. In Singapore, the PAP may officially be the “People’s Action Party” but it is more commonly refered to, somewhat bitterly I would say, as the “Pay And Pay” party, on account of the endless cashflow from one’s bank account to any service that one might need. Given that I am enjoying the lower tax rates and also paying the deposits, upfronts and seemingly endless bills, I can see what they mean.
It’s a type of government policy that says to the nation, ‘we will create the infrastructure for you to live in, yes. But, your part, as model, sensible and responsible citizens (which we know you are) is to take care of yourself. We give you lower taxes, but that extra cash in your pocket is to use to look after yourself and your children into your old age’. It’s a noble aim, to trust your people and to delegate the responsibility to them. Whether it is the correct policy, the world shall see in time.

Discussing this with a friend last night, we agree that this may have worked when the penalty for not complying with the Government line was a severe caning or imprisonment and that overriding family values were those of austerity and prudence from many generations of chinese. But now that the brutal stick has been largely removed from the equation, globalisation has shown the nation objects of material desire and things feel like they are relaxing a little, what incentive really is there to ‘do the right thing’? Who is taking on the jobs that no one can do or wants to do? Maybe not by numbers, but by earning position at both ends of the scale are foreigners: senior management expatriats and unskilled labour from the surrounding ASEAN nations. What is the message that the endless commercialism and shopping is sending to the next generation of Singaporeans, that the latest and greatest handbags and gladrags are what it takes to be at the top? My initial thoughts are that at some level the populace is running on a tangent to the original values that the PAP espoused. In two generations time, who will be sweeping the streets, washing the cars, serving the drinks, clearing the tables? Who will be sitting in the driving seat, inventing new ways of doing things and ultimately setting the direction for a diverse region that Singapore feels like it is already leading? I don’t know. I honestly don’t and couldn’t hope to say right now. But these are my first thoughts on coming to a new country. I will certainly be looking to understand the motivations and concerns of Singapore; why there is a need to own a Lamborghini, Ferrari, or heck, even a gigantic Mercedes in a nation where the average speed limit on a busy motorway is between 50 and 60km/h and there is always a scrape or a ding coming your way in the tight back streets. Or why there is the need to own the latest mobile phone at the expense of your healthcare or pensionable savings.

Looking at the early history of a self-governing Singapore may give me a hint. The very basics are that early after the split from Malaysia there was mass unemployment, housing shortages, and a serious shortage of land and natural resources. For those who haven’t been here, it’s important to know that the island is a diminutive 50km east/west and 20km north/south, and equally short of natural resources. On top of that it was mostly jungle back in the 1960s. About 23% of Singapore's land area consists of forest and nature reserves and seemingly relentless urbanisation has eliminated many areas of former primary rainforest, with the only remaining area of primary rainforest being a place called Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big set of lungs for a small island, but poor Bukit Timah has to choke its way through a few hundred thousand cars on the island that idle at medium pace in fifth gear and the smog from the annual slash and burn fires from Indonesia’s reckless farming.

Taking the bull by the horns, during his first term as Prime Minister (1959-1990), Lee Kuan Yew’s administration tackled these problems, raising standards of living, extensive housing development and dredging up the very sea-bed to create more land. It was during this time that the foundation of the country's economic infrastructure was developed; the threat of racial tension was curbed; and an independent national defence system centering around compulsory male military service was created. Right from day one, the Government took on the responsibility to create the infrastructure, giving almost a blank canvas to new Singaporeans to build anew.

The PAP has been the ruling party in Singapore since self-government was attained. It’s got a lock on the driving seat, a tight Government system that has been described by The Economist Intelligence Unit as a "hybrid regime" of democratic and authoritarian elements. I like the following term from Freedom House, which ranks the country as "partly free". Partly Free, what exactly does that mean? Who is not free, who is free and what are they exactly free to do? Looking into the most simple barometer of openness, the media, it’s easy to see what this might mean. The Government says the media play an important role in the country, and describes the city as one of the key strategic media centres in the Asia-Pacific region and the aim is to be the major media hub in Asia. However, in line with the ‘partly free’ rating, Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore 147 out of 167 in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index. That’s not a glowing endorsement for freedom of speech.

State-owned MediaCorp operates all seven free-to-air terrestrial local television channels licensed to broadcast in Singapore, as well as 14 radio channels (that’s pretty much ALL the radio channels, but I look forward to finding the independents). Radio and television stations are all government-owned entities.
The print media are dominated by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), the government-linked publisher of the flagship English-language daily, The Straits Times. SPH publishes all other daily newspapers, including a free bilingual daily, My Paper, which claims to be the world's first with equal coverage in both English and Chinese. Having read a few editions of My Paper, it’s a far-cry from the regurgitation of news in the London Lite or Metro free papers in London. It’s more like reading the serialisation of Days of Our Lives, with action photography to match; very sensationalist and over-the-top chatty language. If it is an attempt to offer a less overbearing form of journalism, it’s somewhat below par. I think I’m missing the point here and need to really understand the purpose of the paper.

The government has also chosen not to follow some elements of liberal values in as much as I read that there are no jury trials and there are laws restricting the freedom of speech that may breed ill will or cause disharmony within Singapore's multiracial, multi-religious society. That’s an interesting standpoint to take. If you can’t say anything, you can’t annoy anyone. Surely though if you can’t say anything, where does the discussion and understanding go? That’s a tough nut to crack.

Beverages and Coffee Cards

2010-04-23T14:29:00.001+08:00

I have been looking to try as many new things as I can recently. When I ask what people have to drink at the hawker stalls, I generally pick the one that I can’t understand. When I’m in the food centres, more notably Sheing Song (a malaysian lower cost group of stores, with more local foodstuffs) I’m drawn to the cans and bottles that I can’t quite read or which have fantastic names.

Two interesting drinks I discovered this way are firstly Kickapoo Joy Juice (I kid you not, a superb name)– a Singaporean drink of water, sugar, tartrazine and caffeine. That’s it, that’s all it is. It’s not worth mentioning that there is a diet version, as I’m not at all worried about the sugar content. Pouring it out, Yikes! It’s bright green! It’s something like Mountain Dew or Pib, highly caffeinated drinks I’ve had in the US. Secondly but no less colourful is Bandung – a drink I chanced upon at the East Coast/Eunos hawker centre. It’s hot pink, honestly, hot pink and super sweet. Flavour wise it is liquid turkish delight, a slightly milky, aromatic rose water drink that would go well with anything really spicy. I had it with bak kut teh in a rich gravy. Not quite the perfect match.Other good drinks taken so far are lime juice, wonderfully refreshing, sugar cane juice, freshly squeezed from two-feet-long canes and something that I think is rice-water.

Now to coffee cards. Gosh, I shake my head. The expansion of coffee houses here is astonishing; the market-place harkens back to the Spanish Royal court when the Conquistadors returned with the cocoa bean and some luke warm water from the Americas. Starbucks, The Coffee Connoisseur, Coffee Bean to name but three major chains, drip out the black stuff like a texan gusher. The range of drinks is bursting the seams of the cardboard cup holders, with green teas, chai teas, soy latte and as I heard this weekend, a soy, green tea latte. No, don’t ask. Don’t try, just order a coffee.

To my point, you’d think the market would be tripping over itself to garner addict’s loyalty to their bean of choice using the innoquous coffee card, tucked into your wallet, stamped and traded like Panini football stickers in a ten year-old’s playground. I was conditioned, I had the expectation to buy nine and tenth is free. Simple, effective, easy. It fits into your working week, anything else is a bonus. It reasonably means that a one-a-day regular enjoys a free cup of coffee every two weeks.

I asked at one reputable establishment this morning how their card worked. As per the deposit culture, you pay S$1.50 upfront (non refundable) and for every dollar you spend you get one point. Each point, I was told is just like cash and when you reach 500 points you can redeem them. Wow, sounds good, doesn’t it! I asked how much cash 500 points gets you. Five bucks. Five measly dollars. That’s a 1% rebate on your money. Which, to be honest isn’t bad compared to the bank’s interest rates of 0.1% (even on savings accounts).
So using the same logic as above, to save for S$5 rebate, that’s $500 coffee spend. At S$4 a coffee, that’s 125 days, or 25 weeks of regular coffee buying. Essentially I would ‘earn’ enough redeemable cash to have two free coffees a year.

I declined the card.
Shovel.

Out running for the first time in weeks

2010-04-23T14:22:00.001+08:00

Finally, finally, I found myself an hour to get back on the exercise schedule. Running in the 25th storey gym, one that has a view of nothing much, is no substitute. In fact it was still hot and even more dull than running can be; I’m not exploring anywhere on a treadmill and am resigned to watching Singapore’s Channel 8, the mandarin channel, with the subtitles on.
So, in an effort to start to explore this city and to improve my woeful sense of direction (talk to my Lady about that), I took myself out along clarke quay, still humming quietly at 8pm on a Sunday evening, out to the esplanade with its dual durian marvels of architecture, their pin-prick LEDs destroying any night sky that might be on display (for example the near-full moon), onto the marina promenade, dodging past groups of amahs and youths enjoying the darkness for a final meeting before the work-week kicks off at its full-tilt pace, underneath the spinning Singapore flyer (largest in the world, also filling the night with neon pink), the slick-tarmaced F1 pit-lane and finally underneath the soaring, harbour-crossing Benjamin Sheares bridge before turning round.
It was so nice to be out and bouncing along the busy city that I had kicked along Clarke Quay at a healthy pace wanting to get past the tourists. Even though it was evening, it was still warm. Actually it was on the hot side of warm. Warm enough that within 6 minutes I was sweating and within 15 minutes I was thirsty: the hot breeze was helping to evaporate the sweat but was also ripping the moisture off my tongue. I pretty much knew I’d gone out too hard and resolved to buy myself one of those waist-belt water carriers, no matter how short a distance I may be running.
Coming back past the esplanade, still heaving with tourists and locals alike, I am staggered by how bright everything is. For a country that just ‘did it’s bit’ to raise the green bar, by partaking in the Earth Hour, I didn’t see too many establishments turn off their lights for the ear-marked sixty minutes, in fact our own hotel simply dimmed their lights. I can’t say that at street-level Singapore is the greenest or most eco-aware country, but everyone has to start somewhere. Don’t get me started on the paucity of recycling facilities, I’ll have to save that for when I have a little more knowledge.
Back to the esplanade, lit up like Changi runway, I took a right turn past the Fullerton Hotel, sitting gloriously in its little bubble of architectural history. It used to be the General Post Office and to be honest reminds me a little of the GPO in Sydney, a little nostalgia may have been the reason for what happened next.
After my right turn I suddenly realised I didn’t know where I was. Jogging slower, I saw a street sign that I recognised, Chulia Street, but that’s in the banking district. And then I ran past Raffles Place MRT, clearly now I had no idea where I was so I stopped at a coffee store and asked two guys where Circular Quay was. Blank looks. “Circular Quay?”, again mumbles in tamil, but nothing. A third chap joined them, “Circular Quay”? Nope, no idea either. And then it dawned on me, slowly, like the dehydration that had taken hold in the last 40 minutes. In my head I was asking about Singapore, but coming out of my mouth was Circular Quay, Sydney Australia. I apologised with a smile to the guys who duly cracked up with laughter and pointed in unison the same way down the street.
Off I set again, hoping that I was just a step away but reassuring myself that the longer the run the better it was for me. Too many noodles and the odd laksa here and there have added a few extra fat cells round my waist (although my doctor’s scales weigh me 4kg less than when I left the UK – I refuse to spend my time wondering why). Before I knew it, I was running onto Eu Tong Sen St, past Central Mall, across the Singapore River, past the 5G reverse bungy catapult contraption and back amongst the tourists of Clarke Quay, all looking like they were far more comfortable in the warmth than I was, despite my skinny runny clothes.
Sliding apart the hotel doors, the sexily cold air-conditioned lobby greeted me and in return my heart-attack face greeted the receptionist. Not wanting to stink up the poor man’s front desk, I skipped straight to the pool. The luxury of having a swim straight after a run in this hot stick country is not to be underestimated and I am looking forward to kicking along the East Coast in a couple of weeks when we move into our own place.
To be running by the ocean as the sun comes up and then to be able to cool off in our unit’s pool will be wonderful. The benefits of a regular schedule cannot be underestimated and I’d like to think (after a few weeks of trying to get my feet under not one, but two desks) that I can get back onto a good schedule, whatever that might be here. Here, where the sun comes up at the same time, sets at the same time and knows no difference on the weather, why would a schedule need to change?
Shovel

Chope that table man!

2010-04-06T17:06:00.001+08:00

I learnt a new verb in the first couple of weeks here. It’s a mighty useful action and good to know about from the get-go:
I/You chope. He/She chopes. We chope, You all chope, They chope.

To Chope is to reserve a table at a busy foodcourt (called Kopitiam over here, the Malay words Kopi (Coffee) and Tiam (Shop) I believe) by way of placing a small token of yours in the centre of the table, leaving you free to visit the foodstall and return with your lunch. It’s brilliantly simple; a small pack of tissues will do it, and it is unbendingly observed by all visitors to the establishment. Though shalt not ignore or move the choping-token. My only problem is to make sure that I carry something small and of no value in my pocket when I go for lunch. We have tested this with a colleague’s faux-leather blackberry case, that worked too!

Go nuts, chope away and always have a seat to come back to.

The lay of the land - original and reclaimed land that is...

2010-04-06T16:58:00.002+08:00

I figured I’d put down some basic facts about Singapore, (borrowed from my high-school atlas and the some-time oracle Wikipedia) to cover the period between the last time I was here, about 10 years ago until current day. As I said, it’s a forward moving nation, moving at some pace, so bear that in mind when reviewing these basics.
Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsular, 137 kilometres (85 mi) north of the equator. At 710.2 km² (274.2 sq mi), Singapore is the smallest nation in South-East Asia but is substantially larger than Monaco and Vatican City, the only other surviving sovereign city-states on the changing map of the world.
From taxi drivers that I’ve spoken to, I hear that in 1880 there were tigers and wild boars still roaming the island, although the british soldiers, an arsenal of muskets and a hundred released prisonners put pay to that, clearing the island of animal threats in the blink of a colonial eye.

Before European settlement, the island now known as Singapore was the site of a Malay fishing village at the mouth of the Singapore River. Malay refers to the racial group of people that live in the peninsular, covering mostly Malaysia, southern Thailand, most of the populations of Indonesia and Brunei as well as a minority in southern parts of the Phillipines. Several hundred indigenous Orang Laut people also lived along the nearby coast, rivers and on smaller islands. In 1819, the British East India Company, led by Sir Stamford Raffles, established a trading post on the island, which was used as a port along the spice route. Singapore became one of the most important commercial and military centres of the British Empire, and the hub of British power in South-East Asia, providing a rival port to the Dutch port of Malacca in Malaysia.

During the 2nd World War, the British colony was occupied by the Japanese after the Battle of Singapore, which Winston Churchill called "Britain's greatest defeat". Singapore reverted to British rule in 1945, immediately after the war. Eighteen years later, in 1963, the city, having achieved independence from Britain, merged with Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to form Malaysia. However, the merger proved unsuccessful for Singapore, and, less than two years later, it seceded from the federation and became an independent republic within the Commonwealth of Nations on 9 August 1965. Singapore was admitted to the United Nations on 21 September of that year.

Since independence, Singapore's standard of living has risen dramatically. Amazingly for a population of so few, Singapore is now rated in the top ten wealthiest countries in the world in terms of gross domestic product per person. And of course with high income per capita comes a similar rating for being one of the most expensive cities in the world. You have to then remember that this is all built on the back of a country that was 18% smaller in terms of land mass in the 1960s than it is now. With a strong and on-going land reclamation program that takes earth from Singapore’s own hills, the seabed, and neighbouring countries it has grown to 710 km² today, and may indeed grow by another 100 km² by 2030. While Hong Kong and Japan have resolved to build skywards to house their massive populations, Singapore has just decided that if there isn’t enough land, it will make some more.
Logical really when you think about it. It’s like America in the 19^th century, boldly pushing west-wards towards uncharted territory, the promise of your own land, your own domain, except this time there are more diggers, dredgers and water pumps involved. See the fiberglass rocks in the picture on t he left. Singapore can build anything!
Shovel

New beginnings - a fresh start

2010-04-02T12:36:00.001+08:00

Shovel digs…one foot in Singapore. The learning of a new arrival to the Lion City in the year of the tiger.

Having just moved to Singapore, this is a chance to exercise my traveller instincts, observations and vocabulary gained from the last few years of seeing the world. Singapore’s a magnetic place for me; it holds a distant personal history and then late in 2009 it offered a professional future in a manner that you normally read about in mid-tier pool-side novels or in mid-afternoon American TV dramas. But, novels and dramas aside, here I find myself, with my wonderful wife, shipping our well travelled furniture through one of the busiest ports in the world (Port of Singapore, second busiest in 2005), to take up residence on this small but energetic city-state that is bigger than either Monaco or the Vatican City but also the second-most densely populated independent country in the world after Monaco. Interesting to note that Singapore is in the process of opening two super-casinos. Free to foreign passport holders, S$100 entry to locals.
When I was offered the role out here, Lady and I had been in the UK for three years and four months. Looking back on our recent countries of residence, that’s the longest we’ve stayed in a country for a while and we were ready for a change. Not that it’s itchy feet, as we were very happy where we were, but ready for a new challenge. It just so happened that this challenge was sitting just one degree or so from the equator and not really anywhere in relation to either of our notional homes; whatever home is any more. Answers on a postcard please.

Thinking it through, a role in Asia could be located in several places when the global economy is thrown into the mix: Shanghai or Beijing, Tokyo, Bangalore, Singapore. Any one could suit a multinational centre of expertise, but with operations in all of these places, Singapore wins from a geographical superiority. It’s right in the centre of things, 8hrs to China, Australia, 5hrs to India (although I am yet to test this one out) and a hop to anywhere in South East Asia. The decision itself was not too difficult; Singapore is a great place to live and, by extension, to work. The English language is so rigorously implemented (except for maybe the most local of wet-markets) that it makes day one easy to navigate, an effective administration and a direct and forward focussed government makes for logical and constant planning and execution.
All that said, I happily accepted the move.