Scribbles from the Same Island

by Neil Humphreys

  One of my favourite Singaporean ang mohs, though, is the ‘foreign, talented’ footballer. In my line of work, I’ve met quite a few. This guy has played for every English club you’ve never heard of and claims to be better than David Beckham was when they played in the England Under-Fives together. He could “have been a contender, Charlie”, but Beckham stole his apple juice after the match, so they had a fight, he lost and the psychological scar has blighted his playing career ever since. Will Singapore reach the World Cup finals in 2010 by bringing in such stars to enhance the local football scene? Singapore couldn’t reach a community cup final in Woodlands with these con artists. I’ve watched local footballers listen politely while these English professionals (oh, they’re pros alright) discuss their knowledge and all the time I know the Malay lads are thinking: “If you’re that good, why the fuck would you come to Singapore to play for $5,000 a month and deprive one of us of a first-team place?” The answer is, of course, so that the overweight beer barrel can join up with his happy ang moh gang here and live like a 19th century colonial.

  In all fairness, Singaporeans could think the same of me. It’s a natural assumption to make. But unlike other ang mohs I’ve encountered, I didn’t come here because I couldn’t find work anywhere else. Being 21, I’d never worked anywhere else. Aside from six months in a London stockbrokers’ office, I came here seven years ago with nothing but some decent qualifications, a Game Boy, bags of enthusiasm and a rather dwarfish, but brilliant architect called Scott. I’ve worked my balls off ever since. It’s always been an honest, two-way relationship and I sleep soundly at night. Some of these ‘talented’, ‘experienced’ ang mohs must require huge condos to fit all their skeletons into their closets. If I meet one more suspect teacher, footballer or businessman, who thinks he’s Mr. Chips, Michael Owen or Richard Branson, I’m calling Singapore Immigration. You should too.

  In some ways, though, you can’t blame these deceivers. Utilising their capacity for extreme bullshit, they’re capitalising on the white-man bias to enjoy the kind of respectable living their mediocre skills really don’t deserve. It’s up to those Singaporean bananas, and we all know a banana or two, to wheedle out these buggers and drive them from the country. ‘Foreign’ really isn’t a guarantee of ‘talent’. Sometimes, it can mean ‘a complete fucking waste of space’. Well, it does in my dictionary.

  Ironically, these ang mohs will force me to leave this country quicker than any Singaporean. Their hypocrisy is nauseating. I don’t want to be tarred with the same brush. Keep me well away from that ‘family’, please. At times, I’ve found myself cornered by one or two at a pub or some social function. Not often, but it happens. The bullshit goes into overdrive. I hear about this ‘deal’ and that ‘deal’, this ‘contact’ and that ‘contact’ and how cheap it is to have a maid in this country. And I laugh. Their cover would be blown in seconds in a place like Dagenham and they know it. With all that verbal diarrhoea, the residents of my old hometown would smell them coming a mile off. That’s why these wankers will never leave Singapore, not while they can still smooth talk their way into a luxurious lifestyle. They will never return to their actual family in the west. They’re having too much fun with their adopted family in the east.

  But I will. Undoubtedly, Singapore’s been nothing but good to me. However, those family ties, both in England and Australia, have been stretched to the limit. Sooner rather than later, I will be surrounded with predominantly white people again. The major difference being my parents don’t live in condos they don’t deserve, nor do they profess to having enough skills and working experience to justify a five-page resume. Instead, we’ll sit around and laugh as my mother tells stories about half-naked nurses. Surreal, perhaps, but honest. And that suits me fine. After seven years in Singapore, I’ve heard enough ang moh bullshit to last a lifetime.

  THE LOVERS

  WATCHING your grandparents going through the preliminary stages of sexual foreplay is something you tend not to forget. When she was barely five years old, my mother decided to hide under the kitchen table while her 70-year-old grandmother did the washing up. For reasons she never did divulge, the old matriarch often favoured a baggy string vest with no bra on while she did the dishes.

  On this particular occasion, her husband came in and sneaked up behind her, grabbing a part of her body that had long since given up the fight against gravity. Then, he kindly said: “Ooh, You’ve still got a fine pair of knockers there, haven’t you, love?” The elderly pair both giggled. He went back and read the paper, she finished the washing up and my stunned mother vowed never to play hide-and-seek on her own again.

  Outraged members of the moral brigade, who tend not to get out enough, would denounce such a vulgar incident. But, it’s a wonderful story.

  My great-grandparents endured tremendous hardship in a post-war London. They lived in the east London borough of Bethnal Green, which was ravaged by the Blitz and largely ignored by Westminster policymakers. Yet they loved each other dearly. And they went at it like rabbits until my great-granddad died. A heart attack killed him. I’m not bloody surprised. My great-grandmother lived on for another 20 years and died a week before her 90th birthday. But she never did the washing up with the same vigour after her husband died.

  But I was truly delighted to discover that my great-grandparents were not alone. In late March 2002, some 300 Singaporeans, many of them elderly, picked up and passed on love tips at a public forum. That’s right. A load of oldies voluntarily came together to discuss their relationships. From keeping the partner happy in the bedroom to learning to duck when the wife attempts decapitation with a kitchen plate, many aspects of maintaining a harmonious marriage were discussed.

  This forum, which was organised by the Singapore Action Group of Elders and Lianhe Zaobao, has unearthed 300 Singaporean superheroes. There were men in their 80s asking, quite sincerely, how they could sustain their sex lives. Aware of my ‘energy levels’, I’ll be lucky if I can raise a smile when I’m 80, never mind anything else. I’m fairly sure that the word “erection” will not be part of my vocabulary by then. Words like “adult”, “diapers” and “incontinence” almost certainly, but not “erection”.

  My favourite hero at the forum was a hip 86-year-old, clad in jeans and sunglasses, who wanted to know how he could be more loving to his wife. How he could be more loving? What a truly humbling thought. Apparently, there was another elderly chap suffering from a failing sex drive and seeking views on how it could be rectified. He asked: “My wife is demanding and I’m not getting any younger, you know. I’m worried I can no longer satisfy her. We used to make love every day but now, it’s dropped to six times a week. What should I do?”

  The virility of some of these old-timers is terrifying. I’m only 28 and, increasingly, my idea of a night of hedonistic pleasure is a DVD and a bowl of instant noodles. Yet, there are couples who were making babies long before the People’s Action Party was born and they’re still doing the business in the bedroom.

  At the time of the forum, Singapore was enveloped in a gloomy depression, thanks to the war in the Middle East and the deadly virus at its doorstep. But the trusty elderly led the way once more, by coming together to discuss the importance of a loving marriage. I just wish the nation’s pioneers could hang around for another 50 years to sort out the younger generations. Though, I’ve heard rumours that if anything does go wrong, one or two of the more prominent senior citizens will rise from their graves to correct any problems. I certainly hope so. They speak about love and relationships, while their dour children fret over the economy, incompetent maids and the latest ringtones. Where did it all go wrong?

  We needed these fun-loving pensioners at the recent Rolling Stones’ gig. Some friends of mine managed to secure a couple of tickets by forfeiting most of their CPF savings and were rewarded with some good seats, which they found once they’d fought past the middle-aged Caucasian men with young Singaporean women that made up much of the audience, of cour
se.

  During the concert, my friends received a public dressing down — for having the audacity to sing along to the Stones’ classic Angie. Fancy that! Singing at a rock concert! What a gaggle of selfish, inconsiderate bastards! Quick, grab the cane and bring back public flogging before this self-destructive nation descends into anarchy.

  In fairness, I’ve heard my friends sing before. Collectively, they sound like a goose farting in the fog. But, that’s hardly a cause for complaint, is it? It was for a group of women, in their early 30s, who were sitting in front. One of them turned and said: “We must thank you, gentlemen, for ruining a beautiful song.” To which my friend replied: “You’re most welcome. I usually charge for our performances, but seeing as you are devoid of a sense of fun, a personality and, quite possibly, a life, you may continue to listen to us geese — free of charge. You miserable fuckers.”

  My Singaporean superheroes wouldn’t have tolerated such sullen behaviour. “Now listen here, young lady,” one of the 80-year-olds would’ve retorted. “You think you’ve got problems. You youngsters moan about the economy, the price of cars and HDB flats. Well, listen to me missy. I’m 82 years old and now, I can only get it up six times a week. So, get some perspective and get down to Jumping Jack Flash.”

  Let’s hire these virulent, vivacious aunties and uncles to track down boring buggers islandwide. They’ve been around long enough to know what it’s all about. After all, they talk ‘love’ while everyone else talks ‘war’. Sounds bloody good to me.

  THE HUNCHBACK

  SHORT of chopping my head off and handing it to the bus driver, I don’t know what else to do on single-deck buses. For the umpteenth time, I suffered a right bloody whack against the roof of the bus as the excitable driver treated his handbrake like a bicycle pump. Fellow commuters were treated to an ang moh beanpole rubbing his head furiously and shouting: “I’ve hit my fucking head... again.”

  In some respects, my lack of courtesy to my fellow passengers can be attributed to the Singapore Science Centre. Don’t get me wrong, I love the place and I believe every child should visit it at least once a year. When I was in primary school in England, we took annual coach trips to London’s Science Museum. The excursions were so tedious that the highlight was the peanut butter sandwiches on the bus, largely because they weren’t mine to start with. I had cheese. But my old mate, Ross, used to decorate the windows with his cornflakes just as we pulled out of Dagenham. So the tear-stained teacher got her handkerchief ruined, and I got Ross’ peanut butter sandwiches. There was very little educational advancement involved during these museum trips.

  I suspect that’s why I get a tad irritated at the impressive Singapore Science Centre. Its hands-on exhibits merely serve to remind me that I have the scientific understanding of plankton. My mathematical knowledge barely gets me through a Barney VCD with my Singaporean goddaughter. Now Nicole’s moved on to Sesame Street, I struggle to keep up with Bert and Ernie’s number counting. Incidentally, are those two gay? Only I’ve never seen them in the company of women, have you? And they’re always bloody smiling.

  Back in the Science Centre, I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to take a number of wooden bricks of various shapes and sizes and fit them into a cohesive cube. A 10-year-old boy, patiently waiting for his turn behind me, whispered words of encouragement like: “ang moh so stupid” and “so slow, blur like sotong (squid)” just to spur me along.

  Finally, his patience snapped: “Aiyoh can I show you how? ... Okay, this rectangle goes there, you see? ... That square one fits in there and you turn that round ... aiyoh ... you had that one upside down ... wah lau ... and then you slot that one inside the hole and you’re finished, can?”

  “Look, I went to university, you know?” I hissed, in a rather pathetic effort to resurrect my self-esteem. The brat’s brief, but vocal, demonstration, had drawn a crowd.

  “University ... Really ah? ... Wah lau ... Can I take it apart and build it for myself now?”

  “Of course. Tell me, have you ever put the cube together after being poked in the eye?”

  “No.”

  “Well, now’s your chance. You little bastard.”

  We left the Science Centre soon after. Apart from the cube incident, the security guard caught me going down the slide in the pre-school playground. Shouting “whoopee” was probably not a good idea.

  An hour later, I was performing my excruciating, cabaret routine for a captive audience on my local SBS Transit bus. The No. 232 is a single-deck feeder bus that serves the residents of Toa Payoh Lorong 2. And when I board, young children actually cry: “Mummy, here comes the Homo erectus man. He’s so funny. He can clean the roof with his neck and sweep the floor of the bus with his knuckles ... all at the same time!”

  You see, I am 1.92 metres tall. And single-deck buses in Singapore aren’t. Scraping my neck and shoulders along the roof of the miniature buses, I have collected everything from bus tickets to stunned mosquitoes saying to each other, “what the fuck was that?” in my collar.

  On that brief journey following my sojourn to the Science Centre, I suffered multiple neck lesions and stumbled around the packed No. 232 bus like Frankenstein’s monster. By the end of the trip, I had perfected the posture of Quasimodo and staggered off the bus a full two inches shorter than when I had boarded, shouting: ‘The bells! The bells! They make me deaf, you know?”

  Unsurprisingly, I wholeheartedly concur with a couple of Singaporeans, who recently asked SBS Transit for more double-deck bus services. The transport authority replied that on certain bus routes that just isn’t feasible, due to a number of tree-lined avenues and low flyovers.

  What kind of excuse is that? Has no one at SBS Transit seen James Bond’s Live and Let Die? In one scene, the fleeing Roger Moore steals a bus and coolly drives it through a tunnel, slicing it in half, without raising even one of his trademark eyebrows.

  Now that could work. It would certainly reduce stuffiness on the upper deck and create more headroom for those who remembered to duck. But I doubt the transport authorities would approve. An SBS Transit spokesman would soon be informing the general public: “We’d like to reassure passengers and remind drivers that removing the top half of their buses is not permitted, even on humid days. Whether it is via a tunnel, a bridge or any low-lying apparatus for that matter, unapproved bus separations would litter the roads, disrupt traffic flow and scratch the buses’ expensive paintwork. And we’ve only just changed the logos on most buses, so that could prove rather troublesome.

  “But we thank Quasimodo for his feedback and suggest a weekly massage to reduce the hump.”

  So, in desperation, I’m turning to the guillotine. That’s the only solution for lanky buggers like me on single-deck buses. Place a sensor-triggered guillotine above the ez-link card reader. Anyone who registers above 1.9 metres in height gets his head lopped off. That’ll speed up commuter flow and increase headroom, so I’m sure the transport authorities will commission a guillotine feasibility study.

  Apparently, Joseph Ignace Guillotin, who championed the cause of painless executions during the French Revolution, was most unhappy at having his name attached to such a murderous device. He only advocated more humane killings, not the actual machine that had been around for centuries. Until his death, he sought to distance himself from the old head-chopper. Both in literature and literally I would have thought. But then, old Guillotin never travelled around Toa Payoh in single-deck buses, did he? I do, every hump-inducing day. So get that bloody blade sharpened.

  THE PROTECTORS

  UNDERSTANDABLY, many concerned Singaporean parents have been obsessed with their children’s personal protection and cleanliness of late. My mother was no different. She, too, was preoccupied with my personal hygiene, or complete lack of, when I was growing up in England. She would challenge my powers of contortion by making impossible requests, such as: “Just look at the dirt behind your ear, you dirty bastard.”

  Invariably, I would cut my head in ha
lf and examine the aforementioned area. Her frequent threats of death were most unnerving. On hearing that I’d crossed the road without checking both sides first, she’d bellow: “How many times do I have to tell you? I mean it, Neil. If you get run over by a bus, I’ll bloody kill you!”

  My personal favourite, though, was when she spotted a smudge on my face on the way home from school. Employing a technique popular with many British mothers, she’d take out a tissue, spit on it, or in some cases lick it, and then, scrub my face with it. Having rubbed a hole into my cheek, she would stand back, admire her handiwork and say: “There, that’s better.”

  “What do you mean, ‘that’s better’? I’ve got a face full of your saliva and a smidgeon of lipstick and I’ve lost all feeling in my cheek.” I usually got a slap on the other cheek for that. It helped to balance the redness on both sides.

  With the spread of a deadly virus, Singaporeans have been concerned with the hygiene standards of their children and their families recently and it’s a legitimate concern. There have been rational requests to don face masks in crowded areas, wear gloves when handling food or rubbish and use tissues when sneezing. But the need for greater personal protection becomes a tad irritating when it descends into moralising, not to mention patronising, condemnation.

  I’ve lost count of the number of letters written to the media that have said: “Please don’t spit, ladies and gentlemen, in the street, at each other, or on your own clothes, because spitting is ... wait for it ... bad.”

  At this point, I assume four million Singaporeans are supposed to jump up simultaneously and cry: “That’s it! My god, she’s bloody right, you know? Spitting is bad. Give that woman a hankie.”

  Perhaps we should rename Singapore ‘Asia’s Animal Farm’ and we can all wear woolly jumpers, crawl around on all fours and bleat: “Spitting bad, hankies good. Spitting bad, hankies good”.