‘Vodka jellies?’
Richard is going around offering customers these lethal concoctions. They are free and they are perfect. ‘So difficult to get them right,’ he says, and I have never seen him so proud. ‘You can’t use too much vodka ‘cos they won’t set. You have to get the balance exactly right.’
It’s all a question of balance, yes, and it hurts the liberal in me to admit that on balance Singapore has got it more right than wrong and that its version of democracy deserves to be examined rather than dismissed out of hand. Take detention without trial, where the normal response is the knee-jerk ‘can’t condone it’: like Singapore itself, it deserves a second look. The Internal Security Act was set up in 1948 by the British during the communist insurgency in Malaya. Post-independence, it’s been invoked only twice for threats against the state, more recently against the terrorists of Jemaah Islamiyah to prevent a Bali-like atrocity. Even then things are not so black-and-white: under the Act each case is reviewed every two years and detainees are discharged when ‘they do not pose a significant security threat’. One of them has already been released for ‘responding positively to religious counselling’: Ali Ridhaa bin Abdullah, a Muslim convert whose original name was Andrew Gerald. There is a criminal variant of this act that broke the back of the Chinese secret societies which operate as clandestinely as terrorist cells; Lee Kuan Yew himself has said that this was the most difficult task he faced after independence. Singapore must be the only place in the world – including London – where Triad gangsterism has been routed.
It’s easy to dismiss such laws with a specious sense of European superiority. But keep in mind our reaction to our own anti-terrorism acts: once threatened, did we not readily accept an erosion of our rights to prevent a greater disaster? Do we not clap and cheer for the hero in Hollywood films when he steals a car in order to prevent a lethal explosion? In Singapore, the conundrum ‘does the end justify the means’ has been answered with a resounding ‘yes’ whereas we, in the West, are still wrestling in the dark with the dilemma.
The racket inside draws me back in. A spotlight hits a makeshift stage and a tarted up Dan, complete in a black bouffant, tight red dress and false boobs, starts mouthing the lyrics to One Night Only – more Jennifer Hudson than Ricky Martin. The whole bar is whistling approvingly, and someone next to me asks me whether I know the name of the act. Certainly Dan looks professional enough: he is strutting about confidently with the right dose of camp and competence. It’s all, as we agreed, a question of balance.
But hey, a change of costume! That black bouffant lasts only for the slow part of the song; Dan disappears for a second and wa lao, he’s back with a tighter white dress and a platinum blond wig – it’s Madonna! He finishes with an up-tempo Beyoncé mix of the song and, as we applaud rowdily, I can’t help thinking that such death-defeating exuberance can only emerge from a death-defying experience.
The DJ asks us if we want an encore. We cry ‘Yes’ and Dan steps into a gymnastically perfect ‘Vogue’. His timing is perfect: how long does he spend miming to Madonna videos? I am rendered speechless as he swings his hips and moves his arms around his head with perfect panache. He is so larger-than-life that when he takes a bow the girl next to me shakes her head.
‘Is that all?’ she says. ‘Is that the show?’
I turn to her, explain the situation and she’s impressed. She is Japanese, from Tokyo. There is a mixed party of them here. They look a bit demure.
‘We went to the Powerhouse, but they wouldn’t let us in. Private party.’
Oh, no! This is my last Sunday in Singapore and I really, really want to go to the superclub by the Harbourfront, a converted power station that’s become the hottest night in town. Damn! Why did I wait until today?
I help Dan down, abuzz with the excitement of his triumph, and kiss him. ‘You were fabulous,’ I say and mean it. ‘Is this the beginning of a second career or what?’
‘Don’ be silly,’ he laughs. ‘You come with us to Powerhouse later? Goes on till fo’ in the morning.’
I point at the Japanese. ‘The guys there have been already. There is a private party tonight.’
Dan winks at me: ‘They say that to people they don’ wan’ in.’
Oh.
‘Come outside, we have a bottle of champagne and then we go to the club.’
I hate this American teen word but I will use it anyway: the Powerhouse was awesome.
Of course, being let in to any venue that has just barred a party of younger and more beautiful people would be enough for me to sing its praises, but the Powerhouse really is the Godzilla of all clubs. A cross between a warehouse and a grand arena, the place oozes presence; imagine a rave at Battersea Power Station and you get the picture. Dozens of illuminated structures and a beehive of lighted squares on our left compete with the abstract back-projections on our right. The tribal house sound is as clean and as technically perfect as can be outside the digital showrooms of the Funan Centre. Eight-hundred-odd punters are crammed on the dancefloor, on the overlooking balconies, in its various nooks and corners. To top it all, we don’t have go-go dancers; we have go-go trapeze artists who display their aerial acrobatics above us without a safety net – I suppose we are it. You’d expect this in LA or Tokyo but not in an unfashionable corner of South East Asia. It doesn’t look like it’s going to remain like that much longer – someone tell the Beckhams: Singapore is well and truly swinging.
I lose Dan almost immediately and roam around drunk. Cocktails, coke, beer: everything is cheaper in pitchers and, this being Singapore, nobody says no to a bargain. Well, I do: like hell I am going to hold one of those monsters on the dancefloor, so I order a normal-size vodka and tonic. I am served reasonably quickly but wait interminably for my change; by the time it arrives I have almost finished my drink and I haven’t moved away from the bar. Instead of working myself into a fit, I sigh with resigned sentimentality. There is always a place in Singapore where some choreography is attached to ordering. Here, the barman puts your dollars in a leather folder and hands them to a cashier at the end of the bar, along with your order sheet. It is the cashier – always a woman, why? – who handles the payment. It makes some sort of sense until you realise that, in practice, the folders stack upwards and the queuing is ‘first in, last out’: if too many people use the bar after you, you’ve had it.
Clumsily, I turn and spill what’s left of my drink onto a guy’s shirt by accident. I apologise. He nods unperturbed and continues talking to his mate.
I squint. It can’t be… Yes, it can!
‘Excuse me,’ I say, knowing in advance my question will sound stupid, ‘you are chewing gum.’
They look at each other. ‘Yeah,’ says the culprit who is sporting a goatee.
‘But I was told you can’t buy gum in Singapore.’
The guy picks up a packet of Wrigley’s from his top pocket and draws back the silver foil to offer me a piece.
‘Thanks, I’m drinking alcohol,’ I excuse myself, slurring my words. ‘I will only swallow it and it will get stuck in a corner of my bowels where it can only be flushed with a colonic.’
They both look at me suspiciously and leave. I wonder if they were dealers. They certainly tried to push their gear.
Jimmy James’ ‘Fashionista’ hits the decks and I can’t believe it; people on the podiums are mouthing the words with the ease Dan mimed Madonna: ‘New York, London, Paris, Milan/Tokyo, I think it’s in Japan.’ These dancing girls and boys have known nothing but the PAP and nothing but prosperity, and I wonder what’s going on in their heads that are woggling weakly to the rhythm: ‘Asia, Malaysia, Las Vegas to play/LA, if you pay my way.’ Do they care about politics or have they given up altogether because it’s not advisable to raise their heads above the parapet? The West has been scorned by the Asian tiger economies for caring more about abstract human rights than real, concrete ones like poverty and hunger: get the people fed first and free them later, they counter in unison. Alr
ight, fine. So what happens now that the only hungry souls in Singapore are ghosts wandering aimlessly during the seventh lunar month?
I always leave Singapore with a question more subtle than the last one.
- 37 -
South Boat Quay’s godowns are so Disney-drawn that they feel like an urban planner’s folly, set as they are against the glass-and-metal skymonsters of the CBD. Yet they have been there forever – well, since Raffles reclaimed the unhealthy swampland that covered that tract of the rivermouth. For half a century about three quarters of Singapore’s freight business was transacted through this small strip of land, until the late 1860s when Keppel Harbour started handling the new Suez Canal traffic. Nowadays, I wouldn’t blink if I learned that Boat Quay might well be responsible for three quarters of the tourist restaurant turnover. There is many a museum that a threeday-tourist en route to Australia may miss, but everyone is sure to dine al fresco at Boat Quay.
I meet Jacky at Harry’s Bar, which became internationally famous as Nick Leeson’s favourite watering hole, although his most legendary escapade (mooning at a party of Singapore Airlines’ stewardesses) occurred at Off Quay, a few doors up.
Ah, the Leeson case; it has become part of Singapore folklore. What with Rogue Trader, the book and subsequent movie starring Ewan McGregor, everyone knows how historic Barings – bankers to the Queen and fund managers of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase – collapsed in 1995 after Nick Leeson lost millions and diverted the losses to a clandestine account. Leeson fled Singapore in order not to face charges here and was arrested in Germany hoping to be tried in the UK. But being a rogue trader means exactly that: the boys in the city didn’t try too hard for his extradition and let him sweat it out in Singapore where he was sent down for six-and-a-half years. After serving just over half his sentence, Leeson – suffering from colon cancer and having lost his wife who divorced him – was let free; on the night of his release, a party was held at Harry’s Bar which he, unsurprisingly, did not attend. Having survived the disease, he remarried and moved to Ireland, where he is now general manager of Galway United and enjoys his status as an after-dinner speaker. In a recent interview, he said he is considering going back to trading full-time. You’ve been warned.
Still, he is one of the most iconic figures associated with Singapore. He represents not only the greedy face of unfettered capitalism that encompassed the island and the whole of Asia in the 1990s, but also the maturing of Singapore’s financial structures. It was the local regulator that eventually discovered Leeson’s scam and it was Singapore’s not the Bank of England’s report into the scandal that was more highly rated more among the City eggheads– including Nick Leeson himself. The whole sorry episode, if anything, strengthened the reputation of the city-state as a place to do business.
Harry’s Bar is another winner from this sordid affair. Busy and important, with a website, a newssheet and several new offshoots all over town, it stands in a modest, two-storey old warehouse at the end of Boat Quay. It’s a difficult joint to pigeonhole. On one hand, it is decorated with pictures of BB King, Art Blakey and Grover Washington and offers live jazz, but on the other, it serves Heineken beer on tap, Premiership football on TV and fish and chips to its patrons. The decor downstairs is modern with aluminium-frame chairs and tall, iron bar stools, but the more exclusive upstairs bar is more akin to a Mayfair Gentlemen’s Club: the furniture is teak and leather rather than rattan; sofas and poufs replace the chairs and stools; and a pool table makes an appearance instead of a sports widescreen. Like the Raffles of times past, it is creating a new urban narrative for the city in the twenty-first century. It doesn’t yet have its own Singapore Sling, but it’s working on it. May I suggest the Madame Butterfly for your delectation – although, lest we forget Nick Leeson, there is the Bank Breaker, too.
That’s what I’m drinking now with Jacky. ‘
Tim couldn’t make it?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t tell him,’ she answers. ‘I fucked up.’
I wait patiently to hear the whole story.
‘After you left us at Taboo, I thought I’d clear the air. “About that awkward episode in your flat last week,” I said to him. “Do you remember?” He said he didn’t.’
‘Good.’
‘So I reminded him.’
Oh, no.
‘I told him what happened. Or what I understood happened. And what I meant.’
She lights a cigarette.
‘And then I snogged him.’
I should not have left her alone.
‘But Tim was not interested. He was stand-offish. He said I was too forward.’
‘He was sober and you were drunk,’ I reminded her. ‘What could he do? If he made a move he’d be accused of taking advantage of you. Tim is too much of a gentleman for that.’
‘Now I don’t even have his number. I deleted it, embarrassed, this morning.’
‘You overcompensated.’
She looks at me downcast.
‘John, I’ve been married for too long, I don’t know how to date anymore.’
I look at her and realise there is more to it.
‘This has happened before, hasn’t it?’
There is a long pause while Jacky finishes her Martini.
‘Well, yes, it has,’ she says. ‘There was this ex-boyfriend of mine. He was the first man I ever loved. We went out for a few years when I was a teenager and then we split.’
‘Why?’
‘He had another girlfriend. I asked him to choose between me and her but he couldn’t make up his mind. I was younger than her. Maybe he thought I was less mature. Anyway, I split with him and never saw him again.’
She takes a big puff from her cigarette.
‘Until a few years ago.’
She talks softly, taking a long time between the sentences.
‘Do you remember the tsunami? I suppose no one has forgotten it. He was in Thailand then and lived through it. As his life flashed in front of his eyes, he realised that he still loved me, that I was the only one who mattered to him. Or so he said. A month later he sent me an e-mail out of the blue.’
‘How did he find you?’
‘It’s not too difficult. Let’s say, I have a high profile.’
I order more drinks.
‘I didn’t reply at first. I said to myself, “God, not another tsunami rebirth experience.” But he persisted. I thought that if he says he loves me after all this time, it must be genuine. So I agreed and after twenty years we met again. I took two gay friends and one girlfriend with me. I dressed in my grungiest gear in order not to encourage him. I was frightened. And the reason I was frightened is that I was still in love with him.’
‘And?’
‘We met.’
‘And?’
‘He’s got a wife and two kids.’
‘And?’
‘Like the first time, it wasn’t meant to be,’ she says and stubs out her cigarette.
‘History repeats itself,’ I mumble.
‘I still think of him. But he is someone unattainable, someone I think of and it hurts. We talked a lot. I asked him: “How did you choose this woman to marry? How did you know she was the one?” He replied with platitudes. “First I thought she would make a good wife, then she would make a good mother.”’
‘Confucian crap.’
‘Precisely. That’s what they’ve brainwashed him with. That’s why he comes back twenty years later and realises he’s made a mistake and wants to correct it. What I think of is: can I grow together with this man? Do we have the same interests? Can we communicate? Can we be friends? ’Cos after a while, the sex and the passion diminish.’
I look at Jacky’s pretty face for a long time. Sometimes the more you learn about a person, the less you like them. In Jacky’s case the opposite is true.
Like this city itself.
‘Is this why you are so confused about Tim?’ I ask her.
She nods. ‘I don’t want to make the same mistakes again, but I do
.’
We stop talking, but Harry’s Bar is far from silent.
‘You know what Jacky?’ I finally blurt. ‘Do you know why I really, really like you?’
‘Why?’
‘Because we come from completely different backgrounds, our experiences are so different, – you live in Singapore and I in London – but our minds can meet. We click. And I find this comforting.’
She leans over and kisses me on the cheek. We remain silent for some time; we don’t need to speak to communicate.
‘Will you come to London to see me?’ I ask her eventually.
‘I come to fashion shows in Europe once a year.’
We sit back contemplating our parting.
‘If I come, can I stay with you?’ she asks.
‘Sure. Anytime,’ I say and squeeze her hand.
‘Will you let me smoke in your house?’ she asks with a smirk.
I smile. ‘You can smoke in the kitchen.’
She giggles involuntarily but quickly turns quiet.
‘When is the best time to come?’
‘For me, the autumn. It’s cool, but not cold. The trees shed their leaves and the colours look beautiful. It’s the only time when you expect rain, so it doesn’t bother you. And when a shower does come, the leaves become musty and a mild, sweet smell is in the air. It’s the only time when London smells sweet.’
Singapore Swing Page 25