China Graduates

My recent posts on Hong Kong and China were really only pond-skipping a few impressions of changes in the last 10 years. In more reflective mode, I am struck by how little Hong Kong has changed since reunification in 1997. It's still pig ugly above the ground floor glitz and is a tiring, heaving mass of people, tourists, delivery guys, self-appointed recyclers, copy-watch vendors, tailors and potholes. Cellular antennas crudely bolted to building tops point their signals directly down into the tight, old streets or, when mounted at street level, point up at 45deg into the glass skyscrapers. The new airport is a vast improvement over the old Kai Tak "strip of fear" and the AsiaWorld Expo next door is even better than the visually awkward, downtown Convention Centre. They still do a mean Double Skin Milk desert, almost as good as the Guangdong shops. HK is more exciting than Singapore, but also more tiring, ruder, dirtier and the weather (i.e. pollution) is astonishing.

China, on the other hand, feels like it has come of age. So many things have improved and developed it's hard to relate. If you want, you can talk about the quaint anachronisms that persist such as the office worker eating lunch from the obligatory oval lunch box (rice, green veg & a couple of strips of pork) while sat on the Ronald bench outside McDonalds; there are kids in punky hairdos jaywalking across roads openly ignoring the traffic cop and his hi-viz flag. People still fly kites over the river but now they're plastic sports models, not traditional square bamboo & rice paper. Poor people scratch out a living, collecting cardboard and scrap metal at the base of Executive Condos.

But these are old images with new twists and the juxtaposition of traditional and Western is no longer even news. When I first visited in 1991, China was badly under capitalised and with a vast labour pool, really would employ 6 women with scissors to cut a lawn (I have the picture). There were spittoons everywhere, public buses needed to be pushed up hills and all cars were Government vehicles. But there was a collective hunger for better times which has blossomed into the current national pride, so much pride in fact that the sense of hurt over the disrupted Olympic Torch tour is in danger of escalating out of Beijing's comfort zone.

As a footnote, much as I enjoyed the retrospective tour (despite 3 days of wicked gastroenteritis) I am glad to be back in Singapore. It's home, it's safe and the sun is shining but modern China left a deep impression on me. China has embraced capitalism and nationalism to become a self-sufficient and bold world player. Learn Mandarin, go East.

Two great takeaway ideas from the trip: the electric scooters in NingBo and the stencil of a house fly on the urinals at Singapore's Changi airport; it just invites you to take aim and thus ensures as splash free a visit as possible. Both are winning ideas.

Don't You Oppress Me

It's a line from Monty Python's film The Life of Brian where Stan, played by Eric Idle, declares to his fellow subversives of the People's Front of Judea that he wants to be known as Loretta and have babies. Reg (John Cleese) points out that he can't have babies, being without a womb necessary for gestation, and Stan/Loretta indignantly replies with "Don't you oppress me". It's an effective response, claiming victim status over a factual refutation.

I'm reminded of this exchange while sitting here, coughing, eyes watering as my (Chinese) neighbours burn hell money, joss papers and other offerings to discharge their filial duty towards their dead relatives. Lighting the fire on the landing of the HDB means using a wok or old oil tin as a container. The conflagration is intended to be smoky (think transubstantiation); smoke & ash gets blown by the wind, mostly it seems, in through my front door. My computer is turning grey and the keyboard is the same colour as your tongue when you have a nasty bout of flu. (Ed. this post was written before my current cold and has an ominous Dorian Gray feel to it)

Googling around the forums, nuisance burning is a common topic of debate. Asthmatics have it really bad, having to retreat indoors, put the air con on and wait it out. Even reasonable, intelligent posters display cognitive dissonance, either claiming they do their offerings at a temple, or away from other people or just go for the "don't you oppress my religious freedom" line. It's not strictly religious but "don't you oppress my traditional beliefs" is less persuasive.

You might imagine that such anti-social behavior wouldn't be permitted in tidy Singapore; let's find out. First, ask a policeman at the local kiosk: "So long as the fire doesn't burn property (the building) then the Environment Agency says it's Okay." That's clear enough. The NEA are responsible for enforcement and any burning that is a nuisance can be reported and NEA officers will investigate. Let's check their NEA website FAQ:

Q: are people allowed to burn joss-papers and candles in public places?

A: The public must clean up the place after they have made their offerings. When burning joss-papers, candles, etc. they should use containers. Residents in town council estates should make use of the burning pits and containers provided by the town councils.

To minimise problems when burning joss-papers, candles, etc., the Government introduced the following control measures on 1 March 1998:
• Joss sticks shall not exceed 2 metres in length and 75 mm diameter. For large joss sticks up to 2 metres in length and 75 mm in diameter, no more than six may be burnt at any one time.
• Candles shall not exceed 600 mm in length. For large candles up to 600 mm in length, no more than two may be burnt at any one time.
• The burning of large joss sticks and candles shall not be within 30 metres from any building.

Ignore the stuff about big candles, that's not the issue. The key phrase is "Residents in town council estates should make use of the burning pits and containers provided". Near all HDB blocks there are permanent brick incinerators and semi-permanent oil-drum burners. These are almost universally eschewed in favour of tins on the landing, grass verges or the old favourite, drain gratings.

In my technical work, "should" is a command, equivalent to "must". But this is just an FAQ, let's call the NEA helpline to confirm. Susie was very nice but only had the same information available to her. When pressed, she confirmed that she understood "should" to mean "must".

So the local police (all 3 of them) and the NEA are inconsistent. The bobbies push a softly-softly "it's Okay" to inquisitive foreigners. The NEA confirm the legal position and will investigate but with what vigour or success? Enforcing environmental nuisance (fires, noise) is notoriously hard as a couple of visits by officers are rarely coincident with the problem or sufficiently threatening to induce a change of behavior.

The Government clearly follows a tolerant, low enforcement policy lest they offend their constituent's traditional beliefs (behaviors). This is another example of how Singapore's international stereotype of an uptight, rules-obsessed society of automata is naive. <cough>.

Towering Inferno

It must be one of those times of the year when Chinese burn things to appease, acknowledge and venerate their dead relatives. The big Ghost festival is held in the seventh lunar month of the Chinese year (circa August) and so is still months away. I think this one must be QingMing held 104 days after the winter solstice, around 5th April. You can tell because the intensity of smoke pollution rises dramatically.

People are lighting fires from 6am onwards, likely before going to work, whereas on a typical day it would be just the usual suspects between 8am and 10am. These recidivist fire starters return to the same spot every time with a consistent MO:

1. Take good handful of papers, hell money and optionally 10 - 15 joss sticks
2. Find a suitable spot near your house. Don't use the incinerators provided but instead consider the concrete apron around the HDB block. On top of a metal drain grating is popular (the ash doesn't fall through much but it feels like it might). A grass verge will do and after a couple of days there won't be any grass to kill, so no worries. If it's raining, move under the void deck and find a quiet corner up against a concrete wall; don't worry about the paint
3. Separate papers by folding each one over to create a loose pile
4. Light pile in several places
5. Wait a minute until it gets going
6. (optional: throw joss sticks on fire)
7. Hold hands together and concentrate briefly on your filial duty. The exact form is unimportant as this is not a religious activity, rather a Confucian-inspired homage
8. Pickup & carefully dispose of any packaging from the papers & joss sticks
9. Bugger off home.

Jade, schmade

One piece of direct mail caught my eye from "Lotus on Water". There's a World renowned (sic, that's their capitalisation on world) Feng Shui Master called Yun Long Zi who holds Jadeite Workshops on how Jade can bring protection, luck and happiness.

It's only S$38 (£14), which for a personal reading from an acclaimed master would be a bargain indeed. The top tier Feng Shui masters in Hong Kong wouldn't unpack their astrolabe for less than US$100k if you wanted advice on a major building construction. And the bonus for your S$38 is that you get the opportunity to buy jade of the appropriate colour right there and then.

I've long been suspicious of jade because it can command very high prices, yet has no single definition let alone quality standards. Glass, plastic and a host of other minerals can pass for jade, plus dying, heat treatment, bleaching and resin injection techniques can transform junk into a valuable looking stone. Unless you carry a spectrometer, you can't tell and have to trust the vendor. People talk about the value of deep green Jade, of stones changing colour with long-time wear all of which create a mystique around a lump of rock.

In comparison, diamonds are easily assessed (refraction and 5Cs) and setting aside that gem prices are held artificially high by a cartel, are at least useful industrial materials. Gold is a chemical element with specific physical properties, is nice to look at and vital in manufactured goods particularly electronics. Ditto silver and platinum. You can believe what you like, I know what value is, and it's not astrology with matching jewelery, although at $38 per person it looks like I've missed the point again.

Manners Squad

Stereotypes about Japan are many, just look at their trains; guards wear white gloves, platform "packers" push you onto crowded carriages and then etiquette squads patrol the cars to shame fit, seated people to stand up for the infirm. It's all true, although the last one about good manners patrols is new.

Of course, declining social graces are not confined to Japan, they just take it more seriously; a respect agenda is a verb, not a slogan. In Singapore, mobile phones, iPods and PSPs (PlayStation Portable game consoles) are the self-absorption tools of choice for the determined sitter. Newspapers like the Today freebie are handy last-minute substitutes. Snoozing is good but heads lolling over onto your neighbour is extremely bad here, whereas in Japan it would be understood and tolerated more. So remember: "fake sleep good, real sleep bad".

Singapore has had a seemingly endless stream of public education schemes. In 1969 they launched the "Queue up at the bus stops" campaign and there is an official Singapore Kindness charity that does school events and posters in libraries I think. In 2001 they subsumed the National Courtesy Campaign that launched in 1979. MRT trains have advertising on the outsides and a couple have the current slogan "Practise courtesy for a pleasant journey" down the sides.

So would Smile-Manner squads work in Singapore? No. The Japanese system is voluntary and requires the seated target to have a sense of shame that can be tapped. There are MRT seats designated for the infirm (called Silver Seats in Japan) but the few people who do stand up do so out of empathy such as a woman standing for a mother and baby. There might be a racial bias as well - Chinese making way for a Chinese. Getting a seat is a prize to be fought for and congratulates the occupant on their good fortune and guile.

No, I watch as self-absorbed people heedlessly push onto trains, past those alighting and rush for seats & I laugh. My style now is to wait until everyone else gets on then saunter on last and stand the whole way. Better for the leg muscles & karmic balance.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

For a while, in England, I was a freecycle junkie. If you don't know, it's all about giving things away, locally, for free. You advertise (offer) an item on the mailing list and people claim then collect it. No money or payment in kind is allowed (although one chap insisted I take 2 bags of horse manure in compensation). Good quality goods go very quickly and at one sad point in my life, I changed the automatic Get New Mail interval down to 10mins to try and get ahead of the crowd.

I've followed the Singapore freecycle group for a while but I ended up marking the incoming mail As Read upon receipt. Low critical mass is one issue. Singapore seems to struggle to tap long tail effects and the local freecycle, craigslist and eBay are all small. Maybe there are more scam artists around but people are more wary of online transactions and arranging to meet at private homes. You need a car to collect anything large or heavy so posts tend to be for smaller items like books, CDs & toys. There's no DIY culture here (it's cheaper to get a tradesman in), so you don't see offers for bricks, paving slabs or even large furniture. However the biggest downer with the mailing list is that it feels like most posts are Wants, not Offers.

Time for some hard data. In 2007, the Singapore group had 4,684 posts, of which 42% were Offers, 16% Taken and 33% Wants (based on the text of the subject line). In comparison, Oxford had 48% Offers, 20% Taken and 30% Wants. If you add Offers + Takens, the gap widens to 10 points (58% vs 68%) which validates my instinct that the SG group is less ... giving.

There's more social effects at work here than just these numbers. It shows how the culture of a group (whether online or not) finds different equilibrium especially where leadership from moderators is weak. I've argued before that while untidy, leaving an old sofa in the void deck affords residents a chance to re-use it for free before it is trashed the following day by the maintenance guys. The local council will collect such large rubbish without charge but then there's no re-use.

The bring'n'buy sale, WI, car boot attitude of social generosity displayed by middle England has different outlets in Singapore. At the middle to lower class that SG freecycle seems to cater to, the discards at the HDB void deck offer more.

Curteous Singapore

The Institute of SE Asian Affairs, Singapore (ISEAS) held their 40th aniversary session in January and the the 9th January edition of the Times reported an interesting exchange during an event hosting MM Lee, the elder statesman of Singapore and a much respected figure of political life.

Here is a reply prompted by Dr. Euston Quah who asked about Singapore's progress in terms of social graces and environmental consciousness just as the country succeeds economically:

"I will not see it, maybe you will live long enough to see it; I wish you well.

I think it will take more time to develop and mature culturally as a people.

Even the British sitting at a very high level over an empire for nearly 150 years before they developed their culture and then being invaded by football hooligans and foreigners who are now joining them and coarsening their society.

So it's very difficult to get a rough society onto a cultivated plane and it's very easy to bring it down.

Environmental consciousness, on the other hand, will come very quickly when something happens and they say, you do that, your whole environment changes and you are in trouble.

The idea of a gracious society where people are considerate to one another, where you don't make more noise to upset your neighbour more than you need to, where you tell the other motorist, please have the right of way is harder to come by.

It will take time, but I hope it will come with cultivated living over a long period of time.

45 years ago Singaporeans wanted to take their chickens with them when they were resettled from kampungs into high rise flats.

So it took some time to get adjusted. A more cultivated way of life takes a very long time.

That's typical MM Lee thinking; drawing sweeping lines through history to connect the dots for the benefit of his audience. In this case, he could have chosen better dots. British football hooligans never invaded and were not a mass cultural movement but a criminal minority that should have been addressed more quickly by the football authorities by banning fans from away games and docking points from teams with violent supporters. How an Empire is relevant to domestic cultural attitudes eludes me.

More relevant are globalisation trends since the mid 20th century. Ever since we traded hats for baseball caps, the Queen's speech for Neighbours and the WI for GNO, the relaxing of social courtesies has been relentless. Peace and prosperity hasn't made opera the dominant music influence, instead it's Hip Hop.

It also entirely fails to distinguish between the hectic, surly lifestyle of modern super cities and more moderate semi-urban / rural communities. The Government has already floated a policy of immigration to grow Singapore's population by about 50% to 6.5m, making it the world's most densely populated city. Singapore has picked a tough point in history if it aspires to transform a curteous society into a courteous one.

Universe: One Year Older

Phew! what a Christmas / New Year / Chinese New year / Vacation combo. I managed to get through without major casualties but for local Singaporeans, it's the obligations around CNY that will have dominated. CNY is a time of renewal, so the shops do a roaring trade in bras and knickers as, in theory, you should change out your wardrobe. It's also a time to throw out old furniture and household goods so the local council organise "big rubbish collections" to avoid the inevitable discarded sofas in the void deck. You still get discarded sofas in the void deck, right in front of the lifts where people normally leave stuff. Civil servants must despair at the lack of public cooperation in their well-crafted schemes.

Salesmen run around for weeks with cars full of diaries as gifts to their customers, no matter that the client will likely receive one from their own company and then many more from vendors. It's an obligation.

Much fish salad will have been consumed at 8-course Lo Hei lunches, with the wise eaters just snacking their way through to avoid bloat while the restaurants charge S$100 (£35) a head. Their year starts with a nice bonus.

As for the pause in postings, I'm conflicted because I'd like to believe you've missed the usually steady flow of posts but perhaps I'm hoping you haven't noticed the long gap. Status update: I'm back, the universe is one year older and nothing big has changed. Stay tuned for more small stuff.

Material Aspirations

The traditional aspirations of Singaporeans are the well enough known to have their own Wikipedia page - the five C's: Car, Cash, Credit Card, Condo, Country Club. Inspector Clouseau would say that makes 7 Cs but stay with me. These embody the Singaporean dream of being rich enough to own an expensive house, expensive car, expensive club membership and have money left over to spend. All very materialistic stuff and no one is denying the essential truth of it.

An analysis piece by the Straits Times claimed it contained a new list: Competitiveness, Cohesion, Compassion, Compact, Choices. This roughly translates to "stay economically successful, watch out for the poor, keep the old in the loop". This is political spin designed to soften the collateral fallout from capitalist policies. So no place in our trivial treatise.

Meantime, the aspirations of Singaporean wives appear to have risen over the last 20 years according to this list:

I don't need a CAR, but I want a BMW
I don't need a CONDO , but I want a BUNGALOW
I don't need you to have CASH but I want you to own a BANK
I don't need you to have a CAREER but I want you to be a BOSS

... or better expressed as the new five B's: BMW, Body, Brain, Billionaire, Bungalow. More fantasy than the original five C's as how many single billionaire bank-owners are there?

Or how about the 1 - 5 lists for the different races. Singaporeans' recipe for Simple Living:

1 - One Wife
2 - Two Children
3 - Three Bedroom Condo
4 - Four Wheels (car)
5 - Five Figure (monthly) Salary

Malaysian Malays' recipe for Simple Living:

5 - Five Children
4 - Four Wives
3 - Three Figure Salary
2 - Two Wheels (motorbike)
1 - One-Storey Link House

Birdmen of Singapore

Bird fancying. What's that all about then? It's hugely popular here and within an HDB area, there will be a place with bird cage racks on the ceiling of the void deck, labelled with the type of bird to be appreciated there. My local one is for the Merbah Jambul.

Sunday mornings is the main event with, say 20 - 50 men, and it's always men, sitting looking at a ceiling full of hanging bird cages, smoking and chatting. The bird cages are all of an exactly uniform design and size for a particular bird species so it's a pretty sight and they are song birds, so there's some twittering audible over the traffic noise.

At other times, you see the cages hanging on the window bars of the flats. Animals are not allowed on trains or buses so moving them around means car, pickup truck, walk or cycle. For multiple cages, they use a carry stick to hang them off and the cages have neatly sewn cloth covers for transportation. This hobby has equipment.

My take is that it's Singaporean fishing; an ostensibly acceptable activity which men use to get out of the flat and away from the family for a while.

Little Darlings

Pop quiz: scenario is an older Malay woman, a middle aged Chinese mother and her 10 year old son board a train and there's one free seat. Who gets to sit down?

Answer: in Singapore, it's the kid. Mums rush onto carriages and point out seats where their children can sit down. They even encourage them to go right up to the doors and run in past the alighting passengers and find seats. Nobody ever complains about this behavior.

It's a cultural, generational inversion. The old(er) are respected for their contribution to the past, but the young are revered for their role in the future, particularly for their potential earning power. Kids have it tough at school, and the pressure to succeed at examinations, move up to better schools and achieve scholorships is intense. But their elevation to Dauphin at the expense of common courtesy baffles me. They sit there fidgeting with energy while work-weary travelers slump into corners.

The MRT trains are running a campaign at the moment with several trains emblazoned their whole length with the tagline "Practise courtesy for a pleasant journey". It would appear courtesy is strictly relative.

Two Stories

1. The new Airbus A380 started service with Singapore airlines a couple of weeks ago and was an instant hit. People took their kids to Changi airport to watch it fly as if it was the Great Exhibition of 1851. As you know, it's big (compared to a 747, it's wider & taller but shorter) and the plush upper deck has separate, twin "cabins" with seats than become effectively a double bed. And many people have had the same thought, prompting the airline to issue a request that passengers behave only in a way that respects other passengers and aircrew.

As one couple interviewed after its maiden flight to Sydney, pointed out

... they make it romantic and ply you champagne, everything in fact except serve oysters. What do they expect?

2. The Malaysian ruling party, UMNO, is having their conference at the moment (imagine a 1970's labour conference in Blackpool but with more hats). One of the delegates who spoke during the debate on religion (!) was Madam Zaleha Hussin, a representative from Kelantan, who complained about the uniforms of AirAsia's (local budget airline) stewardesses. She was unhappy that they wore fitting skirts that ended slightly above the knee.

"They expose their calves, thighs and knees".

The UMNO assembly speaker, Badruddin Amiruddin went further to say that "the skirts were too short and exposed women's private parts".

Hawker Centres and the Five Foot Way

Food Courts are the very heart of Singapore culture, representing their love of food, entrepreneurship and community cohesion. The history is a little more mundane. In the early days of Singapore, traders and hawkers routinely set up their stalls along the edge of the road in front of shops. Unregulated, the pavements were becoming clogged with stalls, stock, customers and traders. Sir Stamford Raffles mandated a minimum of 5 feet of clear space in front of shops, creating a "five foot way". The cries of complaint (riots) from hawkers who were pushed off their pavement space was met with the creation of "hawker centres", areas typically on street corners where traders could legally setup and operate. Thus the modern, covered hawker centre is a fixture of the Singapore street scene.

Hawker centres have a complex culture of their own and are not easily described. There are folk stories of hawker millionaires driving around in Rolls Royces collecting rents, and there is the rub. Sure, if you own 20 hawker centers, you can be a millionaire, but the average stall is rented for a few thousand dollars a month and run by people working 12+ hours a day for, say, 1 - 2 thousand a month take home.

Usually, there is an anchor tenant for the center who then sub-lets the individual stalls, arranges the common facilities (table cleaners, washers, trash) and does the advertising and promotions. They usually take the best stall, say the drinks concession in the corner but still, they are bearing much financial risk. They have to keep it popular, clean, safe and manage the sub-lets which turnover regularly, partly because the margins are so low. Even if they do this well, they are at the mercy of the weather (rain discourages walking out), local companies especially manufacturing with cyclical hiring and firing and even local parking or roadworks.

The curious facet for Westerns used to shopping malls with their carefully arranged McDonalds and Burger Kings is that stall owners work much more cooperatively with little overt competitive marketing. The dynamic here is that it is better for the whole center to succeed than for one stall to gain a slight advantage over their neighbours. An 'all ships rise on the tide' mentality.

Promotions can be flyers, new shop signs or even running a free bus around the local area to pick people up from companies during lunchtime. Fridays are probably the quietest days, with the busy hour between 11:45 - 1:15.

Life in a food court starts early with the breakfast crowd then stall owners preparing food for the lunchtime rush. This could be cutting up a bucket of chillies (why don't you just use a Moullinex blender?), making won-tons or cooking fish heads. It's all in the open - the granny cutting chillies will just use the nearest customer table.

One presumes that the signs over the shops are there for marketing purposes but their effectiveness is an open question, viz:

• 6006 Claypot Delights
• Feng Sheng Economic Rice
• Wonder Cooking Home Kitchen
• Soon Lee Pork Porridge / Macaroni

No matter, every Singapore has their favourite stalls and they will happily regale you with recommendations. Really famous stalls are sometimes notable for their bolshy owners who, for example, will only serve people sat at the few tables nearest their stall. I think this primadonna attitude is secretly admired and aspired to by Singaporeans.

I find myself entirely at home in food courts now but to Western visitors they are a daunting prospect. The shop signs are a rough guide only (remarkably, even if you read Chinese), you wander off and order your own food and usually it's "Self Service" meaning you pay at the stall and carry back to your table. Drinks are bought from another stall although there is usually a wandering drinks waiter, especially if they can sell a beer (good markup). You need to bring your own tissues as napkins and when you're done, just walk away and the table cleaner will collect, wash and sort the cutlery for return to the right stall (they all use different colour plastic bowls and trays). This habit of just walking away is pervasive and they look at you funny if you clear your own table in McDonalds. Plus making a complete pig sty of the table with chicken bones or anything else just discarded on the table is Okay in Chinese culture. It honours the Table God apparently. Yah.

Guess What I'm Pointing At

Number #2 on a list of 10 travel faux pas is to pat someone on the head in Thailand; it's a Buddhist taboo where the head is considered to be sacred, the seat of the soul. Not one I'm likely to be troubled by but carrying on the same theme, and abandoning the numbered list format, it warned about pointing with a finger in Malaysia. You notice this as they sort of close their fist but leave a little bit of the thumb sticking up. A bit like Bob Dole when he was campaigning for the presidency before he lost badly to Clinton.

At least this gesture works because the fist and vestigial thumb are at the end of an arm which has of the directional effect. The article continued with the Filipinos' habit of "shifting their eyes or pursing their lips and pointing with their mouth". And I thought they just fancied me.

My contribution would have been self delusional Asians who point with their noses, or more precisely, their nostrils. The action is to tilt the head back slightly and then jut forward with the neck. Using a gesture, while no doubt suitable for Romans, but adopted by people whose noses can hardly hold a pair of eye glasses is a cultural miss and makes "looking with the eyes" seem inspired.

Turks use a similar nose up gesture (imagine a kind of mildly disgusted tut) as a way of indicating "No". The Japanese apparently say "Yes" but mean "maybe, probably not". The French say "Non" just to be awkward. Working at the United Nations must be an absolute riot.

Hokkien is Chinese for Yiddish

Yiddish has given the English language some great words. Who hasn't admired someone's chutzpah, been called a klutz, kvetched about work, aspired to be a mensch or watched a schmaltzy movie? We sprinkle our thoughts with these strange words whatever our religious persuasion, partly because of their evocative, onomatopoeic charm and sometimes they are just the bon mot.

Singaporeans use Hokkien in the same way, as raisins in a linguistic scone. And there is a saying that the 5 'k's define the Hokkien character:

1. Kiasu: afraid of losing, being beaten
2. Kiasi: afraid of dying
3. Kiabo: afraid of having nothing
4. Kiabor: afraid of the wife
5. Kia Chenghu: afraid of the government

There's a couple of others that spring up. Kaygao means to be very calculative, scheming, Ke kiang means trying to be smart while Kiamsap means stingy.

I am bemused by the tension between kiasu and kiasi when applied to stocks and investments. They correspond to bull and bear sentiments and for a Hokkien holding stock, it must be a sort of personal hell trying to avoid either losing out or losing the lot. Oy vey!

Day of Celebration, Let's Eat

Saturday was the public holiday marking the end of Ramadan, called locally Hari Raya. I know what you're thinking: do I get a workday off in lieu? Yes, to be taken anytime in the next month but if I was Muslim, I'd have got Friday afternoon off as well. The Lord giveth and he taketh away.

Hari Raya (it's Malay for "Day of Celebration") is super simple. You go home and have a family party. I knew this was coming actually as I was in the baking ingredients shop at Sembawang station a couple of weeks ago (buying bread flour) and the place was packed with Malays buying cake mixture, blocks of lard and arguing the finer points of single versus double chocolate chips.

Sunday was visiting day with everyone in their best clothing. Mothers desperately trying keep the hats on boisterous boys and young ladies checking the line of their new outfits. I met one such visiting party waiting to make their way up to the 12th floor. As I descended, I could hear the clamour getting louder and the lift doors opened to a wall of bright silk & batik. I slightly wish I hadn't been holding an empty wine bottle at the time as the Westerners' reputation for alcoholic obsession needs no reinforcement by me. Recycling can be a socially thankless task.

Singapore Confidential

I have the whole of Singapore visible, exposed and revealed right outside my window. Its inner secrets, its unspoken desires and aspirations, its sheer ordinariness. HDB blocks are dense, urban flats; 12 - 16 floors of cookie-cutter housing with walls of windows facing each other.

The Heartland.

It's inevitable that you get to know your neighbours really well. Not well enough to know their names or even recognise them on the street, I mean really well, like what colour shorts he wears around the house (beige) and when he does his ironing (Sunday, 5pm). It's enforced voyeurism. Like Rear Window without the optical assistance or dead body.

My fellow-travellers include the Indonesian construction worker on the unfurnished 12th floor who is rarely in and empties whole ashtrays out of the window. The Singaporean mom cornering her son in the second bedroom threatening to hit him with a cane if he doesn't study harder. The nicely decorated (carpeted) 4th floor flat with a huge, white-covered reclining chair in front of the big TV and the work laptop abandoned at the dining room table. The Filipino maid working a constant cycle of washing, hanging up, ironing and folding. The quiet family with the God's table permanently aglow with 2 red bulbs that look like the eyes of a slumbering demon at a bleary 5:30am. Lap dogs following their owners around hoping to be let downstairs so they can chase a stray cat down a drain culvert. Kids screaming until their throat hurts more than the lack of an ice lolly. And below, maids washing their master's car of the city's dust, tired workers slumping their way home, reckless pizza delivery bikes banking around the corners, taxis dropping fares and going on shift, mad joggers and embarrassed husbands with pampered dogs on long leads.

I know these people. Men comfortable, wearing just a pair of shorts and a paunch. Women solving domestic chores in a t-shirt reduced to an grey, non-colour by constant washing. Kids bouncing off soft furnishings. Teenage daughters talking for hours with the boyfriend at the window.

And last but not least, the hairy ang mo watching and typing.

China's Unsung Heroes

There are already 93 million Chinese called Wang and the number's growing (the top 10 Chinese surnames are Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Zhou, Wu). The problem is that Chinese names are traditionally 3 characters, starting with the family name, then adding 2 personal names. The Chinese Government controls the choice by publishing a list of acceptable family names. The resulting surname (or as seen in a recent e-mail: "sir name") shortage is causing confusion apparently.

The ministry's suggested solution is to allow double-barreled combinations. China Daily gives the example of a baby whose dad's surname is Zhou, the mother's Zhu, and who could therefore be called Zhou, Zhu, Zhouzhu or Zhuzhou.

Note that wives usually retain their own name but children would take the father's. We can now play the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue game where we announce the arrival of Mr. Ng and Mrs. Sung with their son Ng Sung He Ro.

You don't need double-barreled names to have problems. Everyone one I know here has problems with romanised Chinese names, most notably in e-mail where I hear daily Long/Leung/Leong or Chee/Chie/Chea debates amongst people of all levels of Mandarin fluency. Worse yet, a Mandarin Seng is a Hokkien Sing so people pronounce the same name according to their language bias.

As far as I know, my company's e-mail always uses the Mandarin romanisation but that just means they may be called something slightly different and you can't tell. A minor additional confusion is that Westerners are shown as "<first> <last>", but for some reason, Indians are added "<last> <middle>-<first>", leaving their given name in the wrong place unless they complain to the Admin and have it switched around. It's no wonder business cards are so important and exchanged with almost Japanese levels of reverence.

My chief gripe is with Chinese who take a Western name as well. While Mike Tan is easy, it may be used in addition like TAN Kuan-Hiat Mike. So he might be "Mike" at work, "Kuan-Hiat" elsewhere but you still need to be able to spell the whole thing for e-mail. It can occassionally be fun such as a lady I worked with a few years ago: Ms. Heidi Ho. Strangely, I've never forgotten her name.

My Ghost is Richer Than Yours

My neighbours are engaging in a one-upmanship contest to see who can burn the most paper Hell Money to enrich their ghost relatives in the afterlife. I'm awarding the current record to a bunch of guys who executed a lightning raid on Monday afternoon. They bought boxes and boxes of Hell Money and constructed a circular wall of paper wads about 1m high, over half a meter across like a fat oil drum. They then filled the middle with loose sheets before setting the whole thing on fire and retreating.

On one level it was quite impressive but I take issue with their chosen location - on the pavement next to the green area. The result was a mass of smouldering paper, loose sheets scattered across the grass and burnt grass and scorched trees. Even after the torrential rain all day Tuesday, the soggy mass was still warm. Morons. The maintenance guys cleaned up the mess quickly enough but that's not the point.

Such ad-hoc fires are illegal of course. There are brick incinerators between the flats and at this time of year, the council puts big metal cages on the grass field so fires can be lit safely, in a contained space. But it's technically a spiritual devotion so the authorities turn a blind eye and we have to tolerate the anti-social pyromania of the few.

The Church of Tai Chi

My alarm is set for 06:30, but I know it's time to leave for work when I hear music from downstairs echoing around the concrete blocks like a cathedral choir. The local ladies congregate before 8am, stand around a ghettoblaster at the kiddies play equipment, limber up for a few minutes then, with varied levels of skill and enthusiasm, practice their tai chi exercises.

I say enthusiasm but it's pretty tame stuff - upper body and arms mainly, certainly no swords, lengths of silk, flying drop kicks or Jaws of the Tiger. They don't even stand with their knees off lock. If it's raining, they could easily move a few yards under the void deck and continue but invariably they just sit down for a chat.

One morning I walked past and a Jane Fonda workout tape was punching out a disco beat and instructions which meant the volume had to be kept down so as not to drown out the gossip. By 20 past 8, everyone's sat on the benches chatting or reading the paper. Which is all they wanted to do in the first place I reckon.