Have you ever had a Singapore Sling? It’s a drink that was invented and has been served at the famous Long Bar in the historic Raffles Hotel in Singapore since the early 1900s. Like other foods or drinks named after cities (think Brussels sprouts, Bolognese sauce, Yorkshire puddings), the place is so much a part of the name that you don’t necessarily think about it separately. Such was the case for me with Singapore.
Long before going to Singapore to visit some friends last week, I had tasted a Sling or two. I don’t know what possessed me to order one in the first place, but I recall enjoying it. In one form or another, you need: 1 to 1 ½ ounces of gin, ½ ounce of cherry brandy, ¼ ounce of Cointreau (orange liqueur), ¼ ounce Benedictine herbal liqueur, 1/3 ounce grenadine syrup, 4 ounces of pineapple juice, ¼ ounce of lime juice, and a dash of Bitters. You shake the ingredients together with ice and then strain the drink into an ice-filled glass, garnished with a cherry and a slice of pineapple.
An interesting mix, don’t you think? Funny how you can blow the dust off enough old bottles of alcohol and throw the contents together with juice to get something that tastes so good. Well, Singapore is just like that. Somebody mixed together a bunch of smart people, a blend of very diverse cultures, and a pinch of unusual history and circumstance, then strained it through the tropics and poured it into a tiny glass of an island called the Republic of Singapore.
The result: an interesting mix. It’s young, but very old. Its youth belies its age, for its history is much older than its birth as an independent country. The known history of the island dates back to the 11th century, but its modern history appears to date to the establishment of a prosperous British port by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1819. Later, after a stint under Japanese control during WW2, a couple of decades of self-government back under the British, and an experiment in partnership with Malaysia in the early 60s, Singapore became independent in 1965.
Singapore is advanced but ancient. It clings to its traditions. English is spoken everywhere and children must learn it and one other national language (Mandarin Chinese, Malay or Tamil) in school. But slip into the Chinese market downtown, or the local neighbourhood markets and you’ll hear nothing but Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, as well as various dialects of older and newer immigrants. Throughout the year, one can witness a wide-range of celebrations that include the Chinese New Year and mid-Autumn Festival, Tamil Thaipusam, Hindu Deepavali, Buddhist Vesak Day, and Muslim Hari Raya Puasa.
Singapore is conservative, but very creative. The very word “conserve” means to keep; to protect what exists. But Singaporeans are imaginative about this. They have to be; it’s one of the densest countries in the world. As a result, you get a mix of colonial and contemporary. Historic ethnic neighbourhoods, places of worship, and old “bungalow” residences, protected by the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Conservation Master Plan, seem to ruffle around the bases of modern skyscrapers whose height is limited to allow safe air flight but whose design and creativity appears to be unlimited in every way. Buildings bend and lean. They weave and wend. They stretch in various directions. They are spheres and ovals and rockets. They are pale green, or shades or orange. Roofs are multi-tiered, curved, and wavy – a tribute to Gaudi or maybe Dr. Seuss?
Singapore is efficient but charming. The port is like a perfect Lego design: neatly stacked containers form long, straight rows and cranes carefully shift loads here and there in a non-chaotic, almost rhythmic way. Empty cargo ships, whose deep water measures bob above the water, wait for loads out in the open water. Then, you call a taxi, and a weathered gentleman speaking broken English pulls up in a rickety old car, which resembles a Lada for awkwardness and effectiveness, and welcomes you into its sweaty, vinyl depths. Or, at midnight, you order a noodle dish from a hawker stand and sit amongst a crowd of people jabbering in various languages. Or you stumble upon a row of heritage Tudor houses. Or, at the market, you watch a young salesman feverishly gesticulating and comparing various toothpastes, all glued to a flimsy, white poster board.
In short, Singapore is just like its Sling: delicious in every way!
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Tuning In
I am bonding with my morning people. Not my morning kids; they’re kind of grumpy in the morning. My son’s okay, after he shakes off the weight of his slumber – tail starts wagging, a little morning hug and hungry as a bear. But, my pre-teen daughter ... well, that’s another story: she doesn’t want to bond in the morning. In fact, come to think of it, she doesn’t want to bond in the afternoon or evening either. In subtle ways, she’s asking for more space and, in not-so-subtle ways, she wipes away my kisses with a back-handed swipe of her hand.
No, the morning people I’m bonding with are the members of morning radio team on a St. Louis station. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing morning radio! In Belgium, I walked the kids to school and used my bicycle to run errands, so I wasn’t in my car much. When we were in the car, we’d surf for good stations, but the strength of the signals is not great in and around Brussels so, ironically, you’d lose French stations not long after crossing the “language barrier” into Dutch-speaking Belgium and vice-versa.
Not that losing the station was worth crying over anyway. I’ve never heard so much Barry White and ABBA in all my life. Also, do you pay lower royalties for not playing the whole song? I mean, what was with that? No matter what station you tune into in Belgium, the songs get cut off at the end with some goofy announcer naming the song or some enigmatic ad for grocery stores, computer repairs or dish soap.
In addition, there was this weird voice-over thing that would interrupt any station to give VERY LOUD TRAFFIC UPDATES. They reminded me of those weird station identification/ emergency preparedness signals we heard as kids. Do you remember that? I grew up near Toronto and from time-to-time, you’d hear a startlingly loud, long, solid tone not unlike a ship’s whistle but with no rise at the end. After about 30 seconds, you’d hear a man announcing, in a serious but mildly urgent way, that we had just heard a practice emergency signal and that, in the case of a real emergency, instructions would follow. Well, the traffic voice-over in Belgium was like that. As if announcing an impending air raid, a loud voice would urgently reel off a list of all traffic obstructions and accidents of which to be wary or avoid.
I did okay with the traffic updates in French, although it was faster than I or anyone I have ever met would (could?) speak. The Dutch announcements, however, were a real mystery. All I could ever catch was blah, blah, E411, blah, blah, and then Barry White would be back on. The Dutch channels only played English (by that I mean mostly North American) music, albeit two or three decades old. The French channels played a mix of French and English songs. On some stations, you’d hear a hint of what I’d classify as a morning program, but it was usually pretty silly.
Here in St. Louis, I spent the first month or so looking for radio stations I liked. While stopped at traffic lights, I’d use my scan button to jump from one station to another, depressing a pre-programmed key when I heard something I liked. Then, my husband would drive my car and change the stations to baseball play-by-play and talk radio channels – yuck. So, I’d start all over again. I have to say that there’s a lot of preachin’ and cryin’ (religious and country ‘n’ western) available here, but I’ve been gravitating towards more of the soft rock genre. At least with the soft rock stations, you get some new songs, as well as the tried-and-true, so my 11-year old girl will stop asking me to change the channel all the time.
Mostly, I tune to 98.1, where my morning people work. It is a soft rock station that plays a lot of new songs. They don’t bill themselves as soft rock, but they are. It reminds me of a station that I liked in Toronto before I moved; just a good mix of music, banter and news. When I was a kid, I remember thinking it sounded soothing, but super boring, so I forgive my daughter for impatiently asking for MUSIC whenever the talking comes on. Now that I’m super boring, I like that kind of station. I love the banter and I usually turn up the volume to catch the funny stuff.
Here in St. Louis, my morning team consists of two men and two women. I know their names now and I can tell their voices apart. I know which one is more serious and which one will tease the serious one. I find myself listening closely and laughing along with the jokes and stories. After I drop the kids at school, I turn up the radio louder. Today, I nearly drove off the road for laughing! They were doing some kind of improvisation comedy thing where each person had to start the next sentence with the subsequent letter of the alphabet. They got stuck at F and although no-one swore, it was obvious what they were thinking and, as they broke into giggles, so did I.
Bonus: no emergency signals so far!
No, the morning people I’m bonding with are the members of morning radio team on a St. Louis station. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing morning radio! In Belgium, I walked the kids to school and used my bicycle to run errands, so I wasn’t in my car much. When we were in the car, we’d surf for good stations, but the strength of the signals is not great in and around Brussels so, ironically, you’d lose French stations not long after crossing the “language barrier” into Dutch-speaking Belgium and vice-versa.
Not that losing the station was worth crying over anyway. I’ve never heard so much Barry White and ABBA in all my life. Also, do you pay lower royalties for not playing the whole song? I mean, what was with that? No matter what station you tune into in Belgium, the songs get cut off at the end with some goofy announcer naming the song or some enigmatic ad for grocery stores, computer repairs or dish soap.
In addition, there was this weird voice-over thing that would interrupt any station to give VERY LOUD TRAFFIC UPDATES. They reminded me of those weird station identification/ emergency preparedness signals we heard as kids. Do you remember that? I grew up near Toronto and from time-to-time, you’d hear a startlingly loud, long, solid tone not unlike a ship’s whistle but with no rise at the end. After about 30 seconds, you’d hear a man announcing, in a serious but mildly urgent way, that we had just heard a practice emergency signal and that, in the case of a real emergency, instructions would follow. Well, the traffic voice-over in Belgium was like that. As if announcing an impending air raid, a loud voice would urgently reel off a list of all traffic obstructions and accidents of which to be wary or avoid.
I did okay with the traffic updates in French, although it was faster than I or anyone I have ever met would (could?) speak. The Dutch announcements, however, were a real mystery. All I could ever catch was blah, blah, E411, blah, blah, and then Barry White would be back on. The Dutch channels only played English (by that I mean mostly North American) music, albeit two or three decades old. The French channels played a mix of French and English songs. On some stations, you’d hear a hint of what I’d classify as a morning program, but it was usually pretty silly.
Here in St. Louis, I spent the first month or so looking for radio stations I liked. While stopped at traffic lights, I’d use my scan button to jump from one station to another, depressing a pre-programmed key when I heard something I liked. Then, my husband would drive my car and change the stations to baseball play-by-play and talk radio channels – yuck. So, I’d start all over again. I have to say that there’s a lot of preachin’ and cryin’ (religious and country ‘n’ western) available here, but I’ve been gravitating towards more of the soft rock genre. At least with the soft rock stations, you get some new songs, as well as the tried-and-true, so my 11-year old girl will stop asking me to change the channel all the time.
Mostly, I tune to 98.1, where my morning people work. It is a soft rock station that plays a lot of new songs. They don’t bill themselves as soft rock, but they are. It reminds me of a station that I liked in Toronto before I moved; just a good mix of music, banter and news. When I was a kid, I remember thinking it sounded soothing, but super boring, so I forgive my daughter for impatiently asking for MUSIC whenever the talking comes on. Now that I’m super boring, I like that kind of station. I love the banter and I usually turn up the volume to catch the funny stuff.
Here in St. Louis, my morning team consists of two men and two women. I know their names now and I can tell their voices apart. I know which one is more serious and which one will tease the serious one. I find myself listening closely and laughing along with the jokes and stories. After I drop the kids at school, I turn up the radio louder. Today, I nearly drove off the road for laughing! They were doing some kind of improvisation comedy thing where each person had to start the next sentence with the subsequent letter of the alphabet. They got stuck at F and although no-one swore, it was obvious what they were thinking and, as they broke into giggles, so did I.
Bonus: no emergency signals so far!
Advanced and Disadvantageous
Yesterday, I mentioned to someone from St. Louis that I write a blog about being an “alien” here. She asked if I wrote every day, which made me realize that I hadn’t written in a very long time. I’d love to write every day, but I can’t seem to find the time lately and, quite frankly, I’m acclimatising, so I don’t feel quite so foreign anymore. In other words, I feel less alien.
Every once in awhile though, I’m reminded that I’m not from here and never will be! In fact, it was a policeman who brought this salient fact to my attention. You see, he pulled me over because I got stuck in an intersection. Picture this: he was facing me in the left turn lane but he criss-crossed two neighbouring lanes to catch me after I finally made it out of there alive.
You just have to imagine this – especially if you’re from Europe where the beloved roundabouts eliminate the need for traffic lights and, especially, advanced greens, which allow left turners to make their turns before other traffic moves. (By the way, does it bug anyone else when the “advanced” green comes after all vehicular traffic has moved through the intersection? I mean, that’s not advanced; it’s retarded. No, no, I’m not being mean and I hate that label anyway. I mean it in the TRUE sense of the word before it was misused, meaning “later”.)
In every city in which I’ve driven – and there have been PLENTY in the past 30 years (oh geez, has it really been 30 years since my sister and I got our licences on our 16th birthday?) – left turners advance into the intersection on a green light to await their chance to turn, unless otherwise signed that they are to wait for an advanced green arrow or signal. Well, welcome to St. Louis! Here, you wait behind the white intersection line, even though all lights, including your special one, is green and the sign simply says, “Yield to oncoming traffic on green”.
On the fateful day when I was lucky enough to fully understand the unique driving rules of this city, while facing an officer of the law, I pulled into the intersection on the green and waited. When my light turned yellow, I advanced a little more, preparing to make my left turn and clear out of the intersection (you know, the way other people all over the world do it ...) when I noticed that the oncoming traffic was not slowing down. They just kept barrelling through the intersection. I threw up my hands in exasperation and whined, “They’re running the red light!” to no-one in particular, although my kids were in the back seat trusting me foolishly with their lives.
Finally, the oncoming traffic slowed, but then the opposite direction got the green and those drivers advanced quickly, like lions on the last hyena at the water hole, honking and making a show of slamming on their brakes and making “You are insane” motions with their hands. (Oh ya, as if you didn’t notice me stranded there before!?) Well, I scooted out of there fast, but pulled over to the side of the road for the inevitable ticket from the officer, whose face I could plainly see across the intersection. He was licking his lips, calculating the size of the ticket he would give me. Do they get commissions on those tickets?
He leapt out of his car, censure on his lips, mockery in his eyes. “That was a really stupid thing to do, you know”, is how he greeted me. Yes sir. He looked into the back seat where my little angels tried for that mix of: I’m afraid of you – Yes, she is a bad driver – She’s our mother so she can do no wrong. “You could have gotten yourself killed, you know” is how he followed up. Yes sir. As I reached for my licence and insurance papers, he stopped me and told me benevolently that I should stop and buy an ice cream for my kids, ‘cause I’d just saved myself $130. And, off he went. Yes sir.
When I’m wrong, I’m wrong and I’ll admit it (although not always fully and completely if I’m in the heat of an argument with my hubby – ha ha!). But, I didn’t think I was wrong. You see, as a foreigner, I had to qualify for a Missouri licence recently. That’s right; the multiple choice test with several pimply 16 year-olds and the driving test, where someone sits beside you and marks everything you do. I think I lost a lot of marks right off the bat for trying to chat to the examiner, who was nearly half my age. Anyway, I studied the manual. I passed with flying colours, might I add! When I got home from my left turn incident, I consulted my much-studied copy of the Department of Transportation’s driving manual. Guess what? Nothing.
Still, lesson learned. This little alien will dutifully stop her UFO well behind the line until there’s room to go!
Every once in awhile though, I’m reminded that I’m not from here and never will be! In fact, it was a policeman who brought this salient fact to my attention. You see, he pulled me over because I got stuck in an intersection. Picture this: he was facing me in the left turn lane but he criss-crossed two neighbouring lanes to catch me after I finally made it out of there alive.
You just have to imagine this – especially if you’re from Europe where the beloved roundabouts eliminate the need for traffic lights and, especially, advanced greens, which allow left turners to make their turns before other traffic moves. (By the way, does it bug anyone else when the “advanced” green comes after all vehicular traffic has moved through the intersection? I mean, that’s not advanced; it’s retarded. No, no, I’m not being mean and I hate that label anyway. I mean it in the TRUE sense of the word before it was misused, meaning “later”.)
In every city in which I’ve driven – and there have been PLENTY in the past 30 years (oh geez, has it really been 30 years since my sister and I got our licences on our 16th birthday?) – left turners advance into the intersection on a green light to await their chance to turn, unless otherwise signed that they are to wait for an advanced green arrow or signal. Well, welcome to St. Louis! Here, you wait behind the white intersection line, even though all lights, including your special one, is green and the sign simply says, “Yield to oncoming traffic on green”.
On the fateful day when I was lucky enough to fully understand the unique driving rules of this city, while facing an officer of the law, I pulled into the intersection on the green and waited. When my light turned yellow, I advanced a little more, preparing to make my left turn and clear out of the intersection (you know, the way other people all over the world do it ...) when I noticed that the oncoming traffic was not slowing down. They just kept barrelling through the intersection. I threw up my hands in exasperation and whined, “They’re running the red light!” to no-one in particular, although my kids were in the back seat trusting me foolishly with their lives.
Finally, the oncoming traffic slowed, but then the opposite direction got the green and those drivers advanced quickly, like lions on the last hyena at the water hole, honking and making a show of slamming on their brakes and making “You are insane” motions with their hands. (Oh ya, as if you didn’t notice me stranded there before!?) Well, I scooted out of there fast, but pulled over to the side of the road for the inevitable ticket from the officer, whose face I could plainly see across the intersection. He was licking his lips, calculating the size of the ticket he would give me. Do they get commissions on those tickets?
He leapt out of his car, censure on his lips, mockery in his eyes. “That was a really stupid thing to do, you know”, is how he greeted me. Yes sir. He looked into the back seat where my little angels tried for that mix of: I’m afraid of you – Yes, she is a bad driver – She’s our mother so she can do no wrong. “You could have gotten yourself killed, you know” is how he followed up. Yes sir. As I reached for my licence and insurance papers, he stopped me and told me benevolently that I should stop and buy an ice cream for my kids, ‘cause I’d just saved myself $130. And, off he went. Yes sir.
When I’m wrong, I’m wrong and I’ll admit it (although not always fully and completely if I’m in the heat of an argument with my hubby – ha ha!). But, I didn’t think I was wrong. You see, as a foreigner, I had to qualify for a Missouri licence recently. That’s right; the multiple choice test with several pimply 16 year-olds and the driving test, where someone sits beside you and marks everything you do. I think I lost a lot of marks right off the bat for trying to chat to the examiner, who was nearly half my age. Anyway, I studied the manual. I passed with flying colours, might I add! When I got home from my left turn incident, I consulted my much-studied copy of the Department of Transportation’s driving manual. Guess what? Nothing.
Still, lesson learned. This little alien will dutifully stop her UFO well behind the line until there’s room to go!
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