Singaporean Sometimes

Some time on Wednesday, or perhaps on Tuesday night, the haze rolled in from Sumatran forest fires, and the sky’s been a muted insubstantial blue ever since, which isn’t as bad as it sounds, because when it’s gloriously blue, it also tends to be gloriously hot, and I then get ingloriously sweaty.

Walking along East Coast Beach on Wednesday, on the way to dinner with Luke, Zakir and Walter, I passed an incomplete pier, where people were ignoring OB signposts, maybe because it’s nicer to dangle your feet over the edge without railings in the way.

We got dinner from the hawker centre and found a bench near the shore. Nasi goreng (Malay fried rice, red, spicy and scrumptious), apple pearl tea, sea breeze, quirky conversation and REM’s I’ve Been High playing somewhere in the back of my head. Nice.

And the saga of curiously named Singaporean places continues: dinner last night was at tamade (Chinese swear word if broken up into Ta Ma De), with Terry, at Robertson Quay. The waiters apparently scrupulously avoid explanations of the name; the one we asked said we’d have to ask the manager, but at any rate, he thinks it’s a mismatch, which I thought was the perfect answer showing himself as loyal employee but still down wit’ the Chinese hood.

The restaurant itself is sort of like a minimalist Wagamama (for the Londoners), and has great desserts. We had three. The stereotypically bitchy/luvvie gay waiter was a strange but entertaining touch.

Robertson Quay is lovely, and I wish I’d discovered it sooner. Lots of riverside eateries, but nothing with the garishness of Boat Quay, and all blessedly tranquil, just people and quiet coffeed conversations, beautiful asymmetric bridges which I wish I’d brought the digicam to photograph, and night-empty skyscrapers reflected in the dark shimmer of the river.

(NoBlogLove post #1: Tuesday 3 July, sometime in the morning, nostalgic)

I was all ready to dive into reading and not surface till Tuesday when I came back from the library yesterday, but then Luke called, and I went to the beach for dinner with him and Song Ching. The waterfront area’s changed quite drastically since last year – lots of new restaurants with a central alfresco promenade, but it was peaceful, and breezy, and I still got that old laid back East Coast vibe, which was good.

The only change I didn’t like was that they took away the Viking. It was one of those generic fairground rides you find around the world, a much less frilled version of Pirates Of The Caribbean, which had been there since as far back as I can remember. For a nine-year-old in 1989 Singapore (where proper fairground/theme park type rides didn’t exist apart from ferris wheels and carousels), living in the East, the Viking was pretty much the scariest ride around. I’d arrange my place in the queue so that I got a place in the highest deck, so as to maximise that thrilling stomachless moment right at the peak of the ship’s swing, when I’d wave my hands madly and stand up in my seat as far as the bar allowed so that it’d feel even more like I was falling down towards the people on the other side.

When I was fourteen, there was an airshow at the beach one day. It was a school day, but the principal had said that classes could go to the airshow (the beach is walking distance from the school) if accompanied by two teachers. Our form teacher that year was Mrs Choa, who was in her late fifties, crochety, horrendously pernickety about all things English, and generally not a high scorer on wannabecool fourteen-year-olds’ teacher wishlist.

We’d started the year hating her, but there’d been improvements along the way. She mentioned at a camp that she had no problems with single dating for girls our age, and gained a little street cred. We started to understand that her fussiness and mini-rants were because she expected high standards of everything from us, and from the world.

So we went to look for her, filled with hope and trepidation. She asked if we’d managed to find another teacher to make up the two teachers. We hadn’t – other teachers were already taking their own classes, or had been snapped up by other classes. She considered this fact silently for a moment. We stood there, already crestfallen.

I remember her waving airily to the principal as we trooped out of the gates.

After the airshow, other classes went straight back to school. I think it was time for her lesson on our timetable. Demanding fourteen-year-olds that we were, we decided to see if we could push our luck and asked if we could go to McDonalds. She said yes. Amidst fry-munching and Coke-slurping, we then asked if we could go on the Viking. Amazed when she said yes, we asked, wouldn’t she get in trouble?

Her answer: “If you’re going to get hanged for stealing a lamb, you might as well get hanged for stealing a sheep.”

That afternoon at the beach was a watershed (no pun intended) for the relationship between my class and Mrs Choa. After that we started realizing that the challenge was to do things so well as to satisfy even her. At the end of the year, more prefects were chosen from my class than from any other. We were runners-up in the swimming carnival, despite having only one trained swimmer in the class. We organized a schoolwide food’n’fun fair that raised $5000 for the school building fund. She remains the most influential and memorable teacher I’ve ever had.

All that was left of the Viking conquests, as far as a mob of laughing, screaming, blue-pinafored schoolgirls knew, was that aging fairground ride with peeling gilt paint. The conquest Mrs Choa made that day, and that year, lives on.

* * *
(NoBlogLove post #2: Thursday 5 July, in sheepish afternoon aftermath)

I haven’t quite figured out how I came to be dancing to I Should Be So Lucky on the platform at Zouk last night, but I’m sure grievous lapses in judgment were involved.

Temporary aberration. Temporary aberration.

In other news, I spent the two days before this debacle in a less embarassing fashion. Tuesday was another excursion with Pei Ee – we scoured Bedok for cheap shoes and she introduced me to the joys of the McFlurry with Oreos. Wednesday was lunch with Luke and Mrs Goh at a rather good Vietnamese noodle place in Holland Village, plus terrarium searching for her daughter’s science project, then beloved Ghim Moh hawker centre for Luan Qi Ba Zao, which deserves a little elucidation.

Luan Qi Ba Zao is the Ghim Moh hawker centre’s special creation for its numerous Rafflesian patrons (our college was across the road, and there’s nothing like a sugar’n’ice overload to make the heat, dust and undone tutorials of the day go away). Loosely translated, its name is a Chinese idiom which means “everything crazily everywhere” (er, very loosely translated), although in the stall’s English menu it is inexplicably referred to as Get Down. Go figure.

Anyway, it’s a wild concoction of condensed milk, ice, fruit cocktail, peaches, longans and chunks of almond jelly, which may appear strange cupfellows (hence “everything crazily everywhere”) but work together wonderfully well once slurped.

Rafflesians first learn about Luan Qi Ba Zao in the orientation booklet the student council produces. On first reading about it, I asked Luke (former student council hack) if it was for real, or if it was just part of a cruel joke played on unsuspecting JC1s – I’m not quite sure how to explain this to non-Chinese speakers, but going up and asking for a Luan Qi Ba Zao if no such dish actually existed on the menu would be something like going to a NYC hotdog vendor and asking for a Whimmy Whammy Ding Dong Phlugelwhip.

Luke’s reply: It’s real, but if they tell you to try the Ta Ma De (it’s a Chinese swear phrase), think twice.

Luan-Zi-Ba-Zaoness was then mitigated by the structure and logic of debating, or rather, watching the new team debate, and then being hypercritical of their flaws in a rather merciless debrief.

Then full speed ahead to Orchard Road for dinner with assorted CAPers (alumni of the Creative Arts Programme) and thwarted Memento viewing attempt, finally ending up in the arcade, where my stagger into temporary aberration probably began with Dance Dance Revolution.

I should have realized at that point that I was inexorably destined for cheese.

Yesterday I worshipped at the altar of Consumerism, a last flailing attempt to take advantage of the Great Singapore Sale before it ends. The gods of dollar voting must have been fairly appeased – I bought earrings, shoes, skirt, bag, lingerie and CD (The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), and came home near midnight shamelessly pleased with myself.

And still more remains to be bought, bought, bought, and it’s almost all unnecessary. More shoes, more clothes, more bags (all’s well now on the lingerie front though, just so you know), definitely more CDs (first, recent releases like Reveal, 10000 Hz Legend, Miss E, Bachelor No. 2 that I can probably get cheap, and then I start badgering Borders staff to order Wagon Christ and Sigur Ros and Unwound), definitely more books (this depends on what I can find in the library, though. Anthropology and Cryptonomicon will probably be bought, but I think I’ll have to wait for a cheaper version of American Gods, which makes me sad), and this all makes for definite steps towards financial ruin.

Today was dinner with CAP Council 2001 at Marche, which is as overpopular and overpriced as it always has been, but at least they suffered the antics of our “table for 13?” for three hours before politely asking us to leave.

I was making a list of things to do over the summer in Singapore, and was struck by the contrast between my life here and my life in London.

I’m wondering how much my change of surroundings will be reflected in what I write here. Certainly, the people and places mentioned will change – readers who aren’t familiar with Singapore or South-East Asia will probably come across a couple of strange words every now and then if I happen to lapse into Singaporean patois. But just let me know if you ever want something explained/translated, and I’ll gladly oblige. (God only knows how bewildered I’d be in the UK if I didn’t frequently ask for translations from Newcastlian/Irish/Scottish…).

For now, the main thing I actually meant to write for today was that I’ll be away for the next week helping to run a creative writing camp for 110 students, and probably won’t be able to get online. Or get a moment’s rest. Or any food that satisfies minimum hygiene and nutrition requirements.

I am looking forward to it, though – involvement in the Creative Arts Programme is one of those things that’s been a major part of my life here but not in the UK, and this’ll be my sixth year (it would have been seven, but I missed last year’s) of acute fatigue, malnutrition coupled with a desire for bulimia every time I do actually eat anything, dealing with sometimes annoying, other times endearing adolescents who often unfortunately remain socially dysfunctional despite mostly being in the top five percent or so of the IQ bell curve, and incredible satisfaction at the end of it all, nonetheless.

I’m home.

I may be watery-eyed, stuffy-nosed, and shaking my sweaty fist at the sweltering heavens above for giving this country of mine such a blasted climate, but I’m home.

Home is partly the same (brother still spends all his free time playing Civ II and composing chess problems, sister is still a workaholic) and partly not (brother’s quit teaching and become a cryptographer, mother’s taken up line-dancing and father’s new hobby is charging wild-eyed around the house brandishing a fly-swatter in search of a swarm of marauding and, he claims, hostile, ants that have overrun us. I should say that no one else has seen that many ants, let alone lost a limb to them, but that’s my father for you.)

I went to a shopping mall in my neighbourhood and a new women’s fashion store’s opened there. It’s called Wanko. I kid you not. I’m tempted to buy something from there just so I can bring the bag back to London and carry strangely and provocatively shaped things around in it.