Wildlife

The braces wearing National Health specs sporting 10 year old and member of the RSPB was unleashed during our first few weeks in Singapore as we saw kingfishers in the gardens around the pool, hornbills in the trees above us and some sort of sea eagle type thingy along with various birds of prey soaring in the skies above our apartment.  It caused such excitement.

That said, like a good sweet juicy mango, these things are all seasonal and I have not seen a kingfisher or a hornbill in four months. 

I have seen two dead mice and a good many pigeons, my London nemesis who have clearly followed me here to make my life an ongoing ducking hell.  Pigeons are like bats.  Bat's we all know pretend they have sonar so we think they are as clever as whales, but like pigeons are unable to fly without brushing your cheek with their diseased wings or take off without caressing the top of your head with their horrid little clubbed feet. 

So, while Singapore probably has one of the best zoo's in the world, free roaming orang-utan's, giant panda's, white tiger's and a host of other wonderful creatures and we had a fortnight of seeing some terrific bird action locally, the last month of my life has been spent dealing with a variety of less welcome infestations.

First we had strange tiny black scarab type beetles all over the place.  They were rather crispy to touch and I spent most of three weeks picking them off cupboards, walls, floors, just about everywhere.  Luckily, I found the source of the problem was the fact they were breeding in the brown rice that clearly cannot cope being stored in the humidity.  In the bin it went.  The little bugs however seem to have made a home for themselves somewhere inaccessible within the cupboard, so we are still seeing them around.

Then we have the giant ants which we traced back to a hollow door frame in the bathroom.  It was quite a shock when I stumbled into the bathroom in the morning half asleep to then relieve myself and find four huge ants in the toilet.  At 6am, it is plausible to think they fell out of your body.

We also have some tiny little itsy bitsy teeny weeny insects that run single file from our balcony into the living room skirting the wall.  They are rather annoying as you don't really want a thousand insects however small in your house.  However we tolerate them as we have noticed they provide a valuable service.  

I live with two nail biters who not only bite their nails but spit them out.  We found a small pile of said bitten nails collected in a heap in our bedroom where these little creatures had collected them. 

My solution to all of this is petroleum jelly of which I am going through tubs.  Blocking up holes, vents and gaps.  So far it seems to be working as we have found a few little bugs trapped like Frodo in Shelob's web.  We leave them there as a deterrent to future insects that try to take us on.  Our own version of the Tudor’s Traitors Gate.

Furthermore, I am sure you are thinking the fact I have these infestations is due to the fact I have a dirty house.  I can happily reassure you that I have a cleaner who comes once a week and does a mostly crummy job.   

Yet, I don't want to be one of those women who is too lazy to do her own housework and then moans about her cleaning lady.  I am so ashamed of my laziness that when she comes over I sit on the balcony with my laptop, phone and iPad and pretend I am a stock broker who works from home.  I even wear my glasses so I look more cerebral.  I sometimes call my husband with regard to something like what we should do for dinner and say a few things loudly in a business voice.  Drop a few "touch bases" and "bathing level reality checks" in for a bit of convincing office bull.  

I am sure she can see through my facade given when she looks over my shoulder I am invariably on Facebook or watching Homeland.

Anyway, the fact of the matter is I do forget occasionally that even though Singapore does have the architecture of Canary Wharf on acid it is still located in South East Asia and Asia is hot and is a playground for the insect world.  It will continue to be a battle ground I fear but as long as the ones who are useful continue being useful clearing up toenails and not getting into my food stores I am happy to share my apartment with them.

The Ubud Crisis

Have you heard of Ubud?  I hadn't, until I read my guidebook to Bali and learned that it was a major artistic and cultural stop on the Bali tourist trail.  

Pictures of Ubud looked wonderful and we were at that point where we had decided that every holiday out here shouldn't just be about the beach. The children are now old enough I feel to be subjected to a bit of culture and Ubud was a short hop from the airport and the beach.  The perfect cultural break for three to four days getting away from the udder sporting Cujo's, hair wraps and leathery skin.  I will leave you to work out whether I am talking about the tourists or the dogs. 

I also learned that Ubud featured significantly in the book "Eat, Pray, Love" and the movie of the same name, which starred Julia Roberts.  I have not read the book but have seen short clips of the movie so I was unsurprised to see the majority of tourists to Ubud were young couples making a little cultural stop, the fledgling writer (as the Ubud literary festival was taking place when we were there) and the remaining 90% of lone forty something pouting women in flowery skirts carrying a big camera with a big lens and strolling around with a wry smile on their faces.

Our main joy on holiday is to people watch.  We get little time for this with the children these days but we are beginning to catch a few opportunities to stare and comment when the kids are goggle eyed playing Angry Birds.   Therefore, how my husband and I hooted with laughter every time we saw the cliche on legs that is a lady on her own wearing a moomoo, carrying a journal and staring into space while eating some nasi campur.

I have to hold my hand up as the most cynical of the Witch and Warlock that we are on holiday, who scoffed about the ladies of a certain age trying to "find themselves" in Ubud. Probably after a divorce, maybe hoping to fall in love with a rugged expat masseuse who has made a serene life for himself in Ubud after throwing in the towel working in high finance in New York and opened up a rustic bed and breakfast looking after people with great hospitality between meditation and toning his finely tanned physique practising tantric yoga.

Yet, after a couple of days of leaving Ubud and arriving in Sanur which was the sun and sand end of our trip to Bali I really was yearning for Ubud.  And that was because I am nearly forty and I do really like massages and taking photographs and strolling and shopping in markets for colourful skirts and tiny bottles of perfume made from local flowers and if I could find a partner who would at least be willing to do yoga with me than ask whether he should take his Kindle to his first massage I would most certainly jack in my current life and run off to Ubud for a wonderful, beautiful, cultural and peaceful midlife crisis. 

I mean, if you are going to have a nervous breakdown, you might as well do it somewhere pretty.

Assimilation Part 2

Last week I failed at qualifying as a bona fide Tai Tai in Singapore because I am short, brown and continue to wear a selection of shorts and t-shirts from Primark.

This week I continued my determined assault to get in with the locals by trying out the two words in Mandarin I have learned from the children.  It started ever so well and then backfired very quickly.

My efforts to assimilate into the local and expat community like some sort of subtle but pervasive flesh eating parasite, is really not working very well.  I am making good in roads but keep tripping up.  Obviously, looking like the help is not aiding my position amongst the locals as a "lady what lunches" and my efforts at shopping locally and speaking in Mandarin is making me look like a buffoon.

I am a determined chap and will continue to grind them down until I am treated as an equal amongst all the communities in which I foist myself.

My latest foisting I think has now resulted in someone developing a crush on me.  Yes, unbelievable, particularly after last week's toes story.

This 17 year old youth who works behind the fish counter at the local Chinese supermarket is my new love interest and I can only assume that he thinks I am some sort of Desperate Housewife requiring my printer fixed when he has finished work gutting barramundi.

I have acquired this unwanted attention because I said thank you to him one day in Mandarin.  He responded by bursting out laughing and telling his co-worker something in Mandarin about me saying thank you in Mandarin.  Anyway, I felt like a bit of a fool but since that humiliation and because I am a fool I have continued to say good morning and thank you to the fish boys in Mandarin.  As I said, I am determined and believe they will eventually not think of me as a joke if I persist.

Unfortunately this has gone wrong and he clearly thinks I am in love with him.  As soon as he sees me now he constantly peeps over the counter to try to make eye contact which I initially avoided as I didn't want him to ask me to "go steady" or whatever kids do nowadays.  But as I get excellent cheap fish from this supermarket I have to keep going there and just resigned myself to the fact I have a boy crush.  He continues to smile, try to make eye contact and waits for those alluring words "thank you" in Mandarin to part from my lips before his little face lights up.

I did go there once with my husband and the children but it did not stop him grinning at me.  I guess he thought I was their maid.

What can I do to fit in here and not just with the power Mum's I meet at my children's school, whom I actually fit in less with than the lady who sells eggs at the market.  I think persistence is key here and I do hope I will increasingly be able to converse with the local people at the wet markets and Chinese supermarkets as I shop there regularly.  

As for my new boyfriend, I guess I will know I have truly assimilated when we move from grinning and smiling to eventually meeting his parents.  I do look forward to that day when he asks and I say no.  By then, I will know that I truly belong.

Assimilation Part 1

Last week, I had my first experience of what they call in this part of the world, "Tai Tai" and one hour later was knocked right back into my place.

Tai Tai is a Chinese colloquial term for a "wealthy married woman who does not work".  In the case of my dear friend and I who hit the town the only part of that which is accurate is "married and does not work" and in my friends case, "woman".  It is an interesting term as it is sometimes considered flattering in being referred to as a "lady" and yet also carries with it a subtle insult.

Anyway, our Tai Tai experience started as a coffee at my apartment followed by a stroll into town to have a pedicure.  This was virgin territory for me having in 38 years never had anybody family, friend or foe near my feet.  Firstly I am intensely ticklish and secondly after having the beautiful feet of an innocent child when I was a child I now have the gnarly, green hued thick toenails of a 38 year old who has done a lot of hiking and worn those stupid shoes that lots of short girls wore in the late 90's that were actually platforms disguised as nice shoes.  This was my ankle buckling falling off the kerb phase that required me to always be holding on to someone when I walked anywhere.  Furthermore as these were platform shoes nobody was going to fall for the fact that I was actually 5ft 7 as they would clearly see I was 5ft 1 wearing 6 inch blocks on the bottom of my feet.  In order to make the illusion more impressive I wore trousers that were too long to cover the blocks.  Of course, I then tripped over those.

I digress.  My first pedicure was wonderful.  We were given beverages and Hello magazine.  Fodder for the bitter and vindictive mind.  We sat next to each other and chatted away while some poor young lass tended my revolting appendages.  If quasi modo was a toe then I have 6 modo's.  My big toes look like a tortoise's head appearing from a shell.  Lollipop toes if you will. Lindsay Lohan.  Stem with a big head on top.  My little toes are rotten through and through.  And yet this young girl worked a complete miracle.

As I mentioned before about quasi modo, my middle toes are all hump and little head / nail.  She managed to painlessly slice the skin back so I actually had more than a 2mm deep toenail that could be painted.  She chopped away at the kettle chip passing for my little toenails and made them shapely and paintable.  There was nothing she could physically do about the lollipops but you can't have everything.

The feet were then given a thorough pumicing, filing, creaming and massaging during which I squealed with laughter.

We were each given a basket of finger nails from which to pick what colours, styles we wanted.  Initially, it looked like the sort of basket you would find at a serial killers house but once I saw that each one was painted pretty I realised it was the equivalent of a Dulux colour palette.

My friend and I made our selection had our toes painted beautifully and then had our feet put under some sort of portable disco which dried the nail polish to perfection.

Amazingly, when I slipped back into my Birkenstocks, I could hardly walk.  My feet were so smooth that I was sliding in my sandals.  It was like the natural velcro that I had grown on my soles these 30 years had been removed to be replaced by silk.

I decided that I could get used to this and intend to justify having a monthly pedicure on health grounds.  As I am always in sandals my poor little feet are always exposed to the elements, the searing sun and the flooding rain.  In fact last week my feet were stained orange for three days following a massive downpour that took most of the orangey clay soil off the flower beds on the pavement and provided me with a gritty foot bath.  Luckily Singapore is very clean otherwise I would probably have needed both of them amputated.

So my initial foray into the expat Tai Tai world had commenced and as I sauntered through the shopping centre with my extremely lovely and very beautiful friend also from my hometown of Guildford, strutting my new toenails for the world to see, I felt rather swishy.  Of course this came crashing down when I noticed, as we walked together, the various people from the shops handing out flyers for their products only seemed to be handing them to my friend and not to me.  I suddenly realised and mentioned this to her that I think they think I am her maid and therefore do not warrant receiving their flyers.

Yes, I am a bore about the treatment of maids out here and yet I will continue to wear my shorts and t-shirts and not trade up to a selection of dresses from Mango to prove I am something other than what a lot of people here perceive me to be. 

But in future and because I am slightly irritated, I might ask my friend if I can walk in front of her wherever we go, talk with my poshest English accent very loudly and try to find some of those 6 inch platform shoes from the 90s as I think being tall and dusky as opposed to short and dusky might enable me to get hold of some of those fancy pants leaflets that I so desperately want.

Life Through A Lens

The cultural and behavioural differences between peoples, countries and continents are certainly what make life so rich and unusual but also make us baffled and irate.

We took our children to the Sea Aquarium on the leisure island of Sentosa this weekend.  The aquarium is absolutely phenomenal and my 4 year old who is ocean obsessed after getting a set of top trumps on deep sea creatures was beyond excited.

We had a lovely day which would have been perfect if we could have actually seen anything due to the five deep throng of people standing in front of every fish tank combined with their tablet PCs, camera's and phones taking pictures of every single thing in the tank before moving on to the next tank to do the same.  I don't believe anybody actually looked at anything in those tanks with their own eyes.

My husband being a man of little patience lost his temper quickly as my four year old was shoved out of the way by a lady wanting to take a picture of a fish.  He put his arm out in front of her and told her not to push our son using a few choice words, to which her response was "it's okay I am taking a picture" and he said "no, it is not okay to push a child so you can take a picture" plus a few more choice words.  She then said "okay", took the picture anyway and said "thank you" with no hint of sarcasm and moved off to the next tank.

As I tried to find a bucket of cold water in which my husband could douse his steaming head I reminded him that shouting and screaming does not work here and the camera snapping folks of this part of the world will continue to snap away irrespective of how much he stamps his feet.  Nobody is aggressive, just determined.  But when you are being butted out of the way over and over again, the motives are frankly irrelevant.

The UK is a unique place in that we place great store by manners, polite society and our ability to queue for hours without getting even slightly stressed.  However, a lack of manners, impoliteness and queue jumping or being inconsiderate of ones neighbour causes major patience loss within seconds.  Unfortunately due to the "Generation Me" effect sadly sweeping the modern world, I worry that very soon everywhere will be standing in front of a fish tank holding a tablet PC above their heads while small children stand at the back unable to see anything.

The funnier part of this tale was this lady seemed to wander around with us from tank to tank and chat to our children as they oooed and aaaaed at the wonderful tanks of tropical fish and deep sea monstrosities.  My husband was still developing piles elsewhere but I was all forgiveness, particularly when I saw this lady forcibly position her little girls head against a cylindrical tank holding jelly fish to take another picture.  In fact she pushed her daughters head about three times against the glass to make sure she was in shot with the jellyfish.  She then told her to stand on the other side of the tank and whacked her head into it a few more times before getting the money shot from a different angle. As we all know, cylinders don't really have sides.

Of course, with the exception of the inconsiderate determination of the photo obsessed folks of South East Asia we had to wonder when they actually looked at all these pictures.  When pondering this fact all I could do was just feel terrible sympathy for their families at home who would be subjected to hours of boring photo montages of endless fish behind smudged glass squashed against a small child's cheek.

Papoose

I wanted to relate a lighter parenting moment that I witnessed after last week's moaning about maids.

Talking of maids and my firm stance on the subject, I just saw an amazing film called "Ilo Ilo".  It won the Camera D'or at Cannes and was a beautiful tale about an ordinary Singaporean family and their newly hired Filipino maid at the time of the Asian economic crisis.  I came away from it feeling totally confused about my feelings to the hiring of maids in Singapore.  It did seem like everyone loses in the end but part of me felt we should hire someone because we will be so nice to them and make them comfortable so they can earn money to send home to their children.  As I read that back all I think of myself is "yes, you really are a stupid simplistic expat prat".

Moving on. 

On arriving at Singapore Zoo when it was in full family filled flow we saw a young family with a three year old and a 1 year old.  The 1 year old was in the buggy and the three year old was forward facing in a Baby Bjorn sling being carried by its mother.

Needless to say this clearly very fit broad shouldered young Mum was buckling under the weight of this enormous child as its head sat just under her chin and its legs dangled below her knees.  Before you all start squealing at me, I know that it is hard to pin point children's ages and maybe she was just a very young child and was just really tall and we should not make assumptions blah blah blah.  Anyway, in my capacity as thorough fact finding amateur journalist I am making up the fact that this girl was definitely around three years old.

I didn't really understand why they didn't just put the baby in the sling and the toddler in the buggy.  Anyway, this is one of many unusual things you see when you move to a different country.  Little behaviours can prove an oddity at first. 

In fact I saw a man taking his dog for a walk the other day and the dog was wearing baby shoes.  One colourful little leather booty on each paw so his feet didn't get wet on the damp grass.  The fact that he was probably going to get his own urine on them was neither here nor there.

I have no doubt as I gradually make Singapore my home and become more assimilated that I will probably end up carrying my 7 year old in a papoose even though like this 3 year old she has those remarkable things attached to her bottom, called legs which I believe are quite useful in enabling one to get from A to B.

Wushu

There really is something quite extraordinary in watching a lady bend your child's legs backwards so they actually look like they are broken while sitting on their chest to get it flat to the floor at the same time.  I am assuming for this reason most parents do not stay to watch their children take part in the Chinese Wushu classes that we subjected our children to this weekend.

Now that I am native Singaporean Chinese having been here for two months I am speaking local.  For you non-Chinese folk, I am talking about Kung Fu.  The beautiful, disciplined and powerful art of Jackie Chan and Po the Panda alike.

Singapore provides a multitude of activities and sports for children ranging from "speed pot stacking" (this is genuinely an extra-curricular activity at my children's school and before you ask, it is not related to illegal drug manufacturing) to the usual football, tennis and gymnastics.

Even though I have invested a small fortune in swimming, football, rugby and gymnastics lessons for my children these last four years and was keen to continue those lessons to not make our investment a waste and help them build on their skills, I began to feel it would be a missed opportunity not to get them trained in a sport or activity that had its origins in Asia.

I looked into Taekwondo, Judo and Karate but all are combative which I knew my daughter would not like and given my son spent last week being beaten up on the school bus, I didn't feel anything with a shade of fisticuffs would be a great idea.  Kung Fu or Wushu seemed ideal.

I tried to find a class not run by expats as unfortunately they do try to make the classes fun for the children and our children have had enough fun.  They need to do some of that hard learnin'.

We wanted something very local and found a class not far from Little India taught by a Chinese lady, expert in Wushu who is extremely nice to the children but is strict to the point of giving them a smack on the legs if they are not listening or being disruptive.  My kind of girl given I was chased around the house frequently by my Mum and her wooden sewing ruler in my youth. 

This really was a grilling in discipline, flexibility and gymnastics.  They were instructed in English and Mandarin which we thought was wonderful. 

Of course before the children can really take on some of the dynamic moves of Kung Fu they have to become flexible and given my son is like a five day old cadaver in terms of flexibility he did amazingly well and his teacher in fact thought he was very good and had potential (could not see it myself).  My daughter did well too but as she attempted some of her stances, my husband and I could not help but be reminded of the fabulous episode of Blackadder when Prince George is learning from a couple of Shakespearean actors how to stand with authority when orating.  If you have not seen it, it is very much crotch forward.

Their teacher informed us at the end of the class that within a few weeks the children will become very bendy but each week she has to keep pushing them and forcing them physically into these contorted positions.  As a parent it really was eye watering watching their legs being bent backwards and their feet pointing the wrong way.  When we returned home I tried one of the moves myself and got stuck in the position, ended up with horrific cramp in my thigh and calf I had to be untangled by the children.

I am now looking forward to my children becoming the next Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh and spent the evening watching the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with great hope.  My daughter spent her evening practising the new moves that she learned and my son overjoyed with his new Wushu kit spent the evening prancing around in his black satin trousers not doing any Kung Fu moves at all.  Once again, money well spent.