It is now about a month since our arrival in Singapore. I'm going to try to be diligent about jotting down journal type entries on a fairly regular basis and will share them with people. Moving to another country definitely changes your time perspective. So much seems to be concentrated into a short period. We needed to get orientated, get used to the time difference, fall sick and get well again, find a place to live and figure out all the different ways of doing things. There are so many new impressions, adjustments; new things learned all the time. This is why we're here!
We spent the first few weeks here at the Albert Court Hotel, which is a bit north of my work place in the Peace Center and just at the southern boundary of Little India. Consequently, we spent a lot of time exploring that part of town. It's a lively area too, jammed full of people, mostly males from Sri Lanka or southern India-Tamil speakers. The southern Indian food is vegetarian and eaten with the right hand, scooping up sauces with pancakes or other bready things. It is cheap and delicious.
Little India is even livelier at this time because it is the festival period of Deepavali, which celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. One of our most memorable experiences so far was popping into an Indian temple one night, right in the middle of a Deepavali service. First, shoes come off and are stacked in a pile before the door. Many people touch the floor at the foot of the entrance and bang the larger knocker a few times before coming in. Much is going on inside! Wildly decorated shrines line the sides, some offset into little corridors. Some are decorated with blinking, multi-colored lights. Others have fruit and various offerings left before them. Different gods have their own areas and people pay homage to their favorites. Most of the people inside are watching the priest chant prayers and spread incense. Another priest brings around a flame and people touch it. Some scoop up ashes and rub it on their heads, others spread it over babies, or just rub it over their hands. Mothers with children are camped out in corners of the temple, just hanging out, as if on a picnic. Other people seem to be in trance-like meditation. The whole experience is hypnotic-the chanting, the blinking lights, and all the activity. We come away overwhelmed.
People at work are extremely kind. They are constantly bringing in treats for one reason or another. Some recent yogis include a red bean popsicle, an egg custard dim sum, a Chinese version of a Kit-Kat bar, and an Indonesian layer cake. The latter was quite interesting, like a pound cake but with many layers. It's supposed to be quite expensive. The person who brought it in is leaving the company. So she brings in an expensive cake for everyone? Different culture.
They work very hard here, long hours, but often not with the best efficiency. I'm relieved to say that Cold Storage has good technical people and they know their stuff, but they aren't always expeditious in implementation. Fortunately, I am beginning to be able to fill that role and carry things out to completion. I'm the head of the sysadmin group here so it is not unnatural for me to take charge and we're starting to meld a bit into an effective unit (needed to put that in for the work censors ;-). There is much to do here at work! Very ambitious plans, but what the hell, I'm game to try for them.
I'm slowly learning the local language-Singlish. It's a cross between English and Chinese with lots of local variation thrown in for confusion. When I first arrived I couldn't understand many of the people at work. This was extremely disconcerting, as I hadn't anticipated language problems. However, I'm getting better at understanding the dialect and restudying Mandarin helps a bit. Soon I'll be interspersing "ok-la's" in rapid fire Singlish.
Our apartment is far, far more than I'd imagined. True, it costs a fortune when compared with the States, but it's really nice and roomy-three bedrooms, a large living room and dining room, three balconies, and a vast, cleverly designed kitchen. Best of all, it is well and almost completely furnished. We're not far from the main drag of Orchard Road and within walking distance (for me anyway, the locals would argue otherwise) of my work place. It's a great place and we're blessed with a friendly landlord, a retired Chinese electrical engineer who can change our fuses in a flash.
Last weekend was typically eventful. A few days earlier a secretary at work gave me two invitations to a party hosted by Fuji/Xerox. The invitation stated that dress was to be "obiang", and in fact the entire theme of the party was "obiang". I tried to get people at work to explain the meaning of this word, but they were unable to.
Saturday comes, the day of the party. First, Sybil and I go to a stamp show, so we arrive a bit late. We are given a bag of props to add to our obiang costume. Mine includes a gaudy tie with a picture of a sunflower and some dark sunglasses, which don't fit. I put the tie on over my Chicago White Sox T-shirt. I'm also wearing shorts and Teva sandals. Sybil is almost as casual. Her props include a scarf and some large sparkly earrings.
We're really just here because the invitation said food. ("If there's food, then I'm there," I'd told the secretary.) We see hot plates standing ready, but they are empty as yet. The place is packed! At least 500 people and maybe more, surrounding a stage full of scantily clad, wildly gyrating dancers. We soon catch on that it is a general variety show, full of comedy, dance, and games. Two screens on the ceiling project everything that happens on stage. A corpulent comic, who Sybil (because she'd been watching the TV at the hotel) recognizes as a famous local comedian, hosts the show. He's genuinely funny, even though we don't understand all of his Chinese ejaculations -- full of crude, lewd humor. At one point he dives under a table and puts his face in a woman's lap. His comedy is physical and raunchy.
Food comes and we get an early jump on the long line. Dim sum! And good dim sum too. We are well satisfied. A real coup-good yogi food and the entertainment wasn't bad. We're just about to take off when we notice the comic is roaming the audience looking for male and female "obiang" contestants for one of the games. He's already picked two guys and two girls and he needs one more of each. He has exhausted his search of the other side of the room and is heading our way. Sybil puts on her (own) sunglasses and the earrings. She looks cheap. We still don't know what obiang means but we've caught on that trashy looking is part of the equation. I move closer to Sybil.
Sure enough, the comic spots us and says: "Oh look! An obiang couple!" We beam at him and get invited to the game. Our fellow contestants include a bizarre Belgium guy, the only other non-Asian at the party. He is wearing a large cowboy hat, a suit with two Russian medals pinned to it, a "normal" tie, tight leopard skin leotards, and jack boots. When the comic interviews him before the game he says he's been in Singapore for five years. When the comic asks him to say, "How's the weather?" in his native language he freezes and says he's forgotten how to say that. Later he whips out some nunchuks (which are illegal here) and starts swinging them around. Still later in the show he dances about frantically in the Mr. Obiang contest, in which he takes third place. He is really, really weird.
His partner in the contest is a shy Singapore woman. The other couple, both locals, don't seem to be dressed too strangely. The comic tells the men to blow up three balloons and when the Singapore guy has trouble doing this he receives all kinds of abuse from the comic ("All that practice and you've finally gotten good at the blow job."). The comic notes that I look more like I'm ready to hit the beach at Bali than obiang, but he gives me the benefit of the doubt. When Sybil is asked what her favorite local dish is she says "Laksa!" and a lone Malaysian woman in the almost entirely Chinese crowd applauds loudly as this is a Malaysian dish. Everyone applauds when they learn we are newlyweds.
The contest is simple. We have to break the three balloons. Once by smashing it between our chests, once with our behinds, and once with the woman sitting on the man's lap. Sybil and I have a decided advantage! We get off to a quick start with the chest smash. Then we have a mix-up as Sybil misunderstands the rules to be "smash the three balloons in any of the three ways", not "smash each one in one of the three ways." So Sybil is trying to put the second balloon between our chests while I'm trying to put it between our butts. However, adaptable couple that we are, we soon sort it out and finish off the last two balloons with lightning speed, well ahead of the competition.
For our efforts we receive two of those Pyrex coffee makers with the plungers, along with modern looking glasses. Fortunately they work perfectly for tea as well, so we make good use of them. We stick around for the rest of the party, watching the show and dancing. At one point, while we're dancing, a gay looking guy, who we'd noted before as an excellent dancer, seems to join us. He teaches us the moves to a dance, waving hands around and shaking the derriere. Only later do we realize that this is the infamous Macarena! Somehow we'd both missed this fad and had only heard whispers of it without having any idea of what it was about. We had to go to Singapore to learn how to do the Macarena.
So what is obiang you ask? Well, I still don't have a definition. However, here's what I would guess encompasses its essence: vulgarity, uncouth appearance, sloppiness, and gaudiness, ostentatious in displaying a lack of taste. No wonder we were picked for the contest! We're naturals!
Oh, and it turns out there weren't any other people there from my company. I think Fuji/Xerox sent out a few invites to each of their big customers (we've just purchased an incredible printer and some fax/copy machines from them). So I'm still regarded as normal around the office.
On Sunday we went to Chinatown. We'd been there once before but wanted to have a proper look. We pop into a Chinese temple (full of incense and located right next to the modern ABN-AMRO building) and a Moslem shrine. When we get to the next Chinese temple we hear all sorts of drums and music. A foreign tourist, a youngish (Aussie?) woman with very bad teeth comes up to us and asks if we saw the dragon dance in the temple. We say we haven't been inside yet and she says we missed out. Just then everyone comes pouring out of the temple to start a parade down the street: dragon dancers, drum beaters, fakirs with needle pierced flesh, heavy swords in mouth, and blood dripping off flayed backs, guys with whips, guys chanting prayers, guys swinging huge thrones. We follow the strange and incredible cacophony for a block, amazed at our luck at coming down here just at the right moment.
We walk back to see the temple and find it to be the best of the bunch, richly detailed in ornamentation and decidedly old. We watch a priest anoint a young boy's head with oil as he and his mother pray diligently. People light incense and burn red paper in a huge oven. A group stands around a shrine, throwing coins at a bell. I've seen tricks like these before at Chinese temples. Usually you have to toss a coin into a Buddha's hand to get your wish. It is hard, so the temple collects lots of coins. I lean over very far to ensure my coin hits the bell. Our wish is for prosperity and virtue as we've heard these are the specialties of this temple.
We wander around Chinatown some more, eating at a hawker court, old hat to us now but still a treat, and passing by some of the older buildings. I've been trying to teach Sybil some Mandarin so she makes me practice with vendors, speaking in Chinese even when it's easier to use English. So, I ask for prices on dishes and other items, just for the sake of practice. We head inside a tiny antique shop and I go into my usual limited Chinese spiel. However, this time the response is immediate attention from the young, previously bored looking woman seated inside. Usually my badly pronounced, Beijing accented Chinese is indulged as a peculiar foreign quirk, but it turns out this woman is newly arrived from Beijing! She is trying to learn English and is combing the want ads for work. Her relative owns the shop and lets her stay there. She is very nice and even though we can't communicate all that well, it is clear she is very happy we dropped in.
It was an extremely enjoyable weekend.
Well, we're pretty much settled in here. The twin disasters of SE Asian currency crisis and haze from the Indonesian fires seem to be slowly clearing up. We've received our company discount cards for the various stores they own. Sybil is studying the bus routes and picking up info on where everything is. We've obtained excellent maps and are starting to make plans for site seeing. So far, we haven't seen any of the local "attractions" except for the Chinese/Japanese gardens (good but nothing spectacular). I usually tend to avoid "attractions" but since we're here for so long we may as well get the entire experience. We'll make plans for the Bird Park, the Night Safari, Changi Village, etc. We can't leave the country yet because my permit card isn't ready but there are local islands to explore. I'll write more next time about the two local passions: food and shopping, both taken to extremes here.
So far, so good would be a vast understatement. Just about everything is going our way (best of all possible worlds) and we anticipate that the best is yet to come. It is a very pleasant position to be in.
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