Ang Bao, Wǔshī, and Lo Hei – Year of the Dragon Edition

My very first ang bao! I used its contents to buy food.

I already blogged about lunar new year, but then I had some interesting lunar new year-y experiences that I want to share with you, dear readers.

For weeks after the first day of the new lunar year our condo and condos around us were filled with temple drummers. We couldn’t sleep in because at 8 AM the sick beats of Chinese drums would start from a few floors away … and they are loud.  The first time it happened, I awoke with a start, threw on some shorts, grabbed my camera and Rebecca the roomie and ran out the door to find the source of the sound. It turns out these drum parties are privately hired by condo-owners to start the year out right. I had assumed the drummers were putting on a lion dance for the condo.

I’d been hearing about lion dances from my coworkers for a while and my interest in them had peaked when my coworker Grace showed me this gem:

And since, I’d been desperate to see one. Well. (Guess what I’m going to blog about.)

BUT FIRST!

Three or so weeks after the big new year celebration, Becka and I decided to finally climb all the way to the top of nearby Bukit Timah Hill.

She's sad because she doesn't get to feed them. I'm sad because there's enough food in the forest.

Immediately upon entering the grounds, our eyes were accosted by the vile sight of macaque monkeys. I hate macaque monkeys.

Monkey is too close.

Checking each other out.

The climb was pretty uneventful. Roomie Rachel and I had almost climbed to the top once but were deterred by signs saying we shouldn’t attempt the climb in flip-flops, so we turned back. From now on, ignore those signs. The climb is nothing. Bukit Timah is topped by some sort of military communications tower being the tallest natural feature in Singapore at a whopping 163.63 m.

The ubiquitous threatening military zone sign. It's everywhere.Someone wrote a friendly message on this one.

With Becka. Note my bad-ass knee dressing. I scraped ALL the skin off my knee when I tripped during a speed training run. I hadn't skinned my knee since I was 10 or so. Guys, it sucks.

We saw some big ants, a few interesting birds, and lots of people. I think Macritchie reservoir is a nicer place to spend a Sunday  in nature.

We walked home along a secret abandoned railway which was really cool, though, and encountered a surprising variety of insects as well as a tiny shrine under a bridge. A fluorescent yellow butterfly followed my right shoe for about 10 minutes, repeatedly landing on the green accents on it. I think it had a crush.  I saw a dragonfly almost as long as my hand. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how easy it is to forget that I live on what was once a jungle island. I like this side of Singapore.

That week a sign had appeared near our elevators: “LION DANCE SUNDAY AT 1. Lo Hei  afterwards.”  We got back home at 12:40, showered off the tropical stickiness and went to check it out. We found the main communal building swarming with children and about a dozen dancers and musicians from a local temple.

The dancers before the show about to transform into the lions in a way that always reminds me of the way the Power Rangers transformed into the ... big Power Ranger robot.

We positioned ourselves at the back along the wall armed with our cameras. Some bossy auntie came around and made the children sit on the benches facing the centre of the room. The dancers disappeared and within a few minutes the drummers began to play just outside the communal building. And then it started!

A LION!

Just like when I go to see puppet shows I find myself suspending disbelief and getting carried away by the enthusiasm of the performers immediately. The performers are gone – the dancers are gone – all that’s left is a strange new creature, a story, a song, a dance. I had to remind myself continuously that the strange be-tasseled creatures dancing and stomping and blinking and bowing and teasing children were just two dudes wearing funny pants and a tent with a head on. Lion dance is amazing. Amazing.

When the lions came into the room, they first came directly at the standing adults, forcing us to move. We all got a little scared, I think. Most of my brain knew it was just two lion dancers playing with us, but another part of me was screaming at me to get out of the way of the scary lion. Seeing these feelings mirrored in the faces of everyone else was hilarious.

Look at the expression of the boy with his head in his hands. He's totally thinking, "OMG I've had to watch like a dozen of these at school".

I assume these dancers aren’t even professionals - it seems more like a weekend job – but they pulled off some seriously impressive moves. Sometimes the “head/front legs” guy would be lifted into the air by the “bum/back legs” guy and it would seem like the lion was pawing the air. They also had this interesting lettuce interlude: lettuce was laid on the ground and the lions ate it. Then they lay down for a bit while the drums rumbled. Suddenly they lifted their great lion heads and opened their eyes and spat candy into the air. The children went nuts. I’m not sure what it was about and was too lazy to find out (I asked around casually at work and the answers were really vague and all involved words like “prosperity” and “longevity”) but it was so entertaining.

Eyeing the lettuce. "Hey guy, let's eat this lettuce and vomit candy." "Ya ok guy."

Rebecca the Roomie and I were also going nuts. I expected to be standing by the back wall the entire time, but somehow I ended up traveling around the entire perimeter once finding myself on my belly on the ground taking a video of a particularly impressive lion jump.

Posing.

To my surprise, I found one of the “heads” posing for my camera. He opened the mouth of the lion repeatedly and would ‘pop the peace’ and wink cheekily.

You can seem him in there. Part of me wanted to rescue him from the lion's gaping maw.

We really enjoyed the dance and discussed at length how pleasantly surprised we were at how interactive it was.

Form the foyer, we moved into one of the party rooms where tables were laid with red paper, oranges, and gold chocolate coins, ready for lo hei.

This little girl was collecting the gold coins.

Lo hei is mostly a Singaporean- and Malaysian-Chinese new years tradition.   Lo hei is a heaping plate of shredded food, each food having a symbolic new-year-good-luck meaning. People gather around the plate with chopsticks and then on a count, everyone picks up the food and throws it into the air to mix everything up. The best part (other than getting to make a huge mess) is that you have to yell your hopes and wishes for the new year as loudly as you can. We also had a lo hei at school, during which the most popular thing to yell seemed to be, “I HOPE I STAY WRINKLE-FREE FOREVER!” My older lady colleagues took it upon themselves to yell wishes for me. “GRACE SHOULD GET MARRIED TO A RICH AND HANDSOME SINGAPOREAN AND STAY HERE FOREVER!”

Before.

During.

I didn’t have any new years wishes in particular (definitely NOT wanting to get married this year) so I just yelled out my favourite lunar new year phrases.

“AUSPICIOUS GOOD FORTUNE!”

“MAY WE EAT LOTS OF EXCELLENT FOOD!”

“LONGEVITY AND MANY SONS (for my friends who want them)!”

After. Flushed with good fortune.

My auspicious day truly ended in fiscal prosperity when I recieved an ang bao (red packet) from my mentor teacher. She invited a few of the younger teachers to her house to eat steamboat (delish!) and gave us ang bao. Awesome.

Five Insect Stories

Story Number One

Once upon a time, an expat teacher lived in a condo on a swanky condo street. There weren’t many access points to public transport because everyone else drove in expensive cars. So the expat teacher had to climb 67 concrete stairs from the bus stop to reach the swanky condo street. The last of the 67 concrete stairs rose out of a fetid puddle of stagnant jungle water that never seemed to dry up.  Every day the expat teacher saw something interesting at the fetid puddle of stagnant jungle water at the base of the last of the 67 concrete steps leading to the swanky condo street. In the fetid puddle she had seen toads, mice, dragonflies, giant land snails, mosquito larvae of a frightening size, wriggling worms, tadpoles, and once, a baby snake.

One sunny weekend day, the expat teacher noticed an iridescent turquoise flash. It was a Common Bluebottle butterfly. She fumbled for her camera and knelt at the edge of the fetid puddle which had once again yielded up its bounty to the delight of the expat teacher.

THE END

Story Number Two

Once upon a time in a condo on a swanky condo street lived a distinctly unswanky expat teacher and her two expat teacher roommates. One night when all three were about to settle in for a short night’s rest before waking up in the godless hours before dawn, the expat teacher was roused by someone shouting her name.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaace?!?! There’s a huge moth in my room!”

The expat teacher was conveniently just passing by her roommate’s bedroom had narrowly missed being brained by the door as her roommate rocketed out of her room. Her roommate stood in a cold sweat, suddenly still and silent, and mutely pointed at her curtains. The expat teacher locked eyes with the giant brown moth sitting on the curtains. She strode into the room, emanating a mysterious magnetic power. The moth took flight; the roommate whimpered from the hallway as it flew straight at the expat teacher and landed like a brooch on her chest and trembled there.

The expat teacher walked with silent assurance out of her roommate’s bedroom, past the stunned roommate in the hall, and into her own bedroom … and then darted for her camera. The moth-spell broken, the winged monster flew wildly at the ceiling light, stunning itself and falling behind the door where the expat teacher immediately began a photoshoot. The roommate poked her head into the bedroom: “Should I … uh … leave you two alone?”

THE END

Story Number Three

Once upon a time, on a swanky condo street, an expat teacher was just returning to her bedroom from the front door where she had been releasing an enormous moth back into the balmy tropical night. Just as she was passing her roommate’s room, she was startled by a piercing shriek from within, “GRAAAAAAACE! There’s another bug in my room!”

The expat teacher burst into the room, brandishing her camera still warm from the moth’s photoshoot. The roommate was standing in a corner pointing at the curtain. A small praying mantis stood on the curtain with cocked head, trying to kill everything with its furious praying mantis gaze. The expat teacher sprang into action, trying to make her camera go into macro mode with sheer will alone (and failing.) She pursued the mantis from curtain to wall to window, never managing to take a decent picture.

The little praying mantis – as proud as any of its kind – flew into the ceiling light in one last defiant kamakazi gesture, killing itself just to spite the expat teacher. Its small green body joined its brethren in the domed white tomb. It had won.

THE END

Story Number Four

Once upon a time, in the campus of a girls’ primary school in Singapore was a blue railing. It divided the road from the sidewalk and was usually bereft of life. One morning though, the Wednesday sun rose to illuminate a terrible and wonderful sight: two piles of red Singapore ants, all spindly legs and antennaes and beady black ant eyes. They didn’t move. They weren’t feeding. They simply sat in a still pile about four ants deep.

An expat teacher stood at the blue railing, blowing hard at the ant pile. Some students stood a few metres behind her, horrified. Slowly the ants started moving but they didn’t go anywhere, the just started moving their limbs around. Three hours later, they were still there. Four hours later, they were gone. What were the ants doing? By what fell means will they achieve their sinister goals? Were they ants at all? We may never know.

THE END

Story Number Five

Once upon a time, a woman went for a hike and saw a one-legged cricket trying to sing. It was heart-breaking.

THE END

Happy Lunar New Year!

Major sales at the decoration store.

A lion dance marionette.

Calculating discounts.

Taking a break.

Watching the festivities.

Singing Carmen’s Habanera in Mandarin with a life-sized puppet of a Chinese belly dancer.

Selling plants for the new year.

Huat la!

Charms.

Too much red to handle?

My new year friend.

Closed for the holidays.

Flower seller

Special good luck boughs.

Don’t get carried away. (Oh no! Was that a pun too?)

Buddha’s hands.

More decoration stores.

Lovely colours.

Kusu Island or I saw a dinosaur

You know when you go somewhere mildly interesting for one reason, and end up leaving that place outrageously excited for a completely different reason? This is one of those stories.

*EXCITING BIT SPOILER* I saw a dinosaur. …And I didn’t take a picture of it.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the mildly interesting bits.

Pammy and I hopped a ferry a couple of Sundays ago to visit St. John's Island and Kusu Island. The weather was gorgeous when we got on the ferry. Everyone on the ferry seemed to be either a tourist or on a picnic date.

First stop: St John's Island. There was a small swimming area with a view of the Singapore skyline that we eyed but we only had enough time to walk to a public restroom before the ferry started honking at everyone irritably and we had to re-board for the trip to Kusu.

Yeah, just picnicking on a tropical islet. No biggie. (Really, it isn't.)

It's strange to see a turquoise watered-beach so close to Singapore, but I learned recently that there used to be gorgeous coral reefs about a 10 minute drive from my place. 60 years ago *sigh*

First peek at Kusu Island through the open ferry door. Kusu means turtle (in ... Malay??) because legend has it some sailors were drowning in the area when a giant turtle emerged from the depths and became an island for them. Turtles, right?

The burner of the Chinese temple. You find these burners outside all Chinese temples. Some office complexes in my neighbourhood and condos also have less ornate versions of them. People burn joss paper (money for the dead) in them.

Someone lives at the temple. Nice view, minus all the cargo ships I strategically kept out of the shot. You're welcome.

The Chinese temple also had a little tiled enclosure filled with turtles (and one very chill-looking tortoise.) This long-neck guy was definitely the trouble-maker of the turtle pit; he's looking smug for a reason, I'm sure of it. Not shown: tortoise pit further along the path and the poker-faced women feeding them kangkong.

In the lunar month of the Hungry Ghosts (month 7), thousands of Singaporeans make a pilgrimage to Kusu. With the faithful come the hawkers who set up to feed them (praying be hard work!) It was sad to see the food centre so empty. It made my stomach rumble. I imagined a tumbleweed blowing across the path lonesomely.

Pretty shrine colours. The incense holder is a stone turtle. Of course.

There he is!

People write wishes on the yellow-painted rocks . There were more than a few heart-breaking wishes by 12-year-olds wanting to ace the Primary School Leaving Exam. "I wish to excel in studies". When I was 12 I would have been wishing for the power of flight.

The Malay shrine’s claim to fame is actually it’s fertility help. Lots of people come to pray for children (read: sons). In fact, lots of older women come to pray that their grown daughters will finally find a decent (read: wealthy) husband and finally marry and finally bear her some grandsons. Pammy and I were cautious.

Despite our caution, an old man beckoned us over said, "I bless you now, where you from?" rolled some scented oil on our palms and then held our palms over some incense while he prayed, "your <insert every family member ever> is healthy, good life, long life, happy, your <insert every friend degree ever> is healthy, good life, long life, happy, your <insert pet> ..." And then, "Now I give you sweet." And then he gave us a candy.

One of the many niches in the shrine. I'm not sure how the system works: choose your favourite niche? Some seemed to be themed: "Find a rich husband" "Bear healthy sons"

You tie a baggy of rocks to the tree branches.

Prayer flags and whising rocks.

The "floating temple" we assume came from Sentosa carrying plenty of Caucasians we saw on our way back to our own ferry.

 

THE EXCITING BIT:

…and then I saw a dinosaur

Like yesterday when I was walking the choir’s travel agent to a parent briefing meeting and I saw THE BIGGEST GRASSHOPPER EVER. It was so big I totally lost interest in what the travel agent was saying to me, and I pointed at it, and interupted her with “Look at that grasshopper!” And I didn’t have my camera. And I couldn’t go get it. LIFE: WHYYYYYYYYYYYY!?

We were sitting in a rain shelter/picnic hut staring at the ocean and eating Indian snacks while waiting for the ferry. It started to pour. And just as we saw the ferry pull up, I saw a strange swinging up-turned line moving along the shore. It was a tail. A HUGE TAIL! Attached to AN ENORMOUS MONITOR LIZARD. I’m talking about a 4-foot-long monster. I yelled for Pammy to look and she exclaimed, “It’s a dinosaur!” I rushed out of the hut with my camera but when I rounded the dirt pile it had disappeared behind, it was nowhere to be seen. I was disturbed. It wasn’t in the water, it wasn’t in the soil, was it a ghost lizard?!

The hut nearer to it was filled with Philippinas. They stared at me prancing around in the downpour. “Did you see the montor lizard?” The looked at me like I was nuts, but the looks also carried some props. “No. We believe you though.”

Seeing that lizard made me so happy. It carried me through getting off at the wrong bus stop on the way home, getting lost, and trudging 10 minutes uphill in the torrential downpour sans umbrella (it was so NICE just 3 hours previous.)

Less talk, more bugs

Agreed:

Happy Deepavali

I remember dragging myself out of bed way back in June and braving the MRT to explore Little India when the last thing I felt like doing was exploring anything. And then! The teeming masses of Indian men, nowhere to stand, nowhere to stop, just thousands of Indian men walking and walking and talking and looking. Oh Little India, you own a special place in my heart.

LIGHTS! (camera, action)

Guess what? October 26 was the Deepavali/Diwali civic holiday in Singapore, so the roomies and I bussed down to Lil’ India to take in the sights and smells. The streets were all lit up with light displays overarching the roads, and buildings were glowing with little fairy lights. The temple (above) was looking particularly whimsical, IMHO.

Starting on this squeeze-tube of a street.

My favourite part of the evening was going through a covered street-cum-market alleyway that was packed with revellers. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere, talking on their phones, fingering shiny goods sold at the stalls, lighting firecrackers, yelling, laughing.  At one point, for a good 7 minutes, no one could move because it was so packed. I had a blast in that packed alleyway. Maybe I got groped — I don’t know! Possibly I trod upon dozens of feet — no way of telling!  Sometimes freedom can be found in the riotous anonymity of a suffocating crowd of people.

Wares

Rachel: GRACE SOMEONE IS TOUCHING MY TUSHY!

The alleyway was filled with stalls selling shiny and smelly goods. There were a few oil lamp stalls and a few firecracker stalls.  The firecracker stalls all had displays of their wares on the ground between the feet of the packed-in crowds, which was a major fire hazard as well as just being really, really dangerous (but so pretty). The roomies were attracted to colourful mobiles of tiny elephants and I bought a print of some mysterious-looking seated characters.

I'm in the middle of saying something like, "Should I pose, or is it better to fake a candid snap?" You can see the elephant mobiles behind me.

More wares, this time Diwali-themed: oil lamps.

We had another exciting time back on the main street upon seeing large amounts of smoke. I thought maybe a restaurant was burning down (someone told me this is a common occurrence in Little India) and we went to go find out. What we ended up seeing was this:

WOOOOOO!

PARTTTYYYYYY

The street was filled with firecracker smoke from a double row of men waving sparklers around and generally having a good time. Pyrotechnic-related fun is superior to regular fun, wouldn’t you say?

Look carefully into the heart of the sparkler-flame, son. Therein lies a world of pyrojoy.

We took pictures from across the street (while other men took pictures of us taking pictures…) until I got bored and walked up to the man-crowd to ask what was going on. Before I could open my mouth, someone thrust a sparkler into my hands. Immediately distracted, I stood there silent and happy, and waved it around for a bit with the other silent and happy revelers until it went out.

Like a baby with a particularly interesting rattle

I turned back to my sparkler patrons and opened my mouth to ask if I could pay or buy some more for my roommates when someone took my eye contact to mean, “I would like more now, please,” and handed me three lit sparklers. Surprised, I said, “Whoa. ALL of these?!” And he took that to mean, “I want ALL of the sparklers, please,” and responded by mutely handing me about 10 more and miming for me to touch them to the lit ones.  He was grinning the grin of a boy who has mastered fire. Here is the result as viewed through Rachel’s camera.

Here, have ALL of them.

Suddenly igniting.

Overjoyed.

I thanked everyone, then went back to ask if we could buy some for the roomies, but instead I had this conversation:

G: What is all of this for?
Man in business-wear: We’re a lawyer’s office for migrant workers. We’re having a party for our clients.
G: Wow! That’s great!
Man: Yes. This is Singapore’s poor.
G: *feeling bad for having fun with the workers’ sparklers*
Man: Where are you from?
G: Canada.
Man: Are you bankers?
G: No, we’re all teachers.
Man: With the international schools?
G: No. We teach in Singaporean schools. *proud*
Man: Oh! I am a lawyer.
G: Ah … that’s great. I’m glad to hear someone is working to help the workers.
Man: Here is my card if you get in trouble.
G: Thanks. Thanks for the sparklers. Bye

I returned to the roomies and gave them his card (because, you know, they’re trouble.) We moved on, feeling a little guilty about the firecrackers-of-the-Singaporean-poor (mostly me.) We went off in search of an available henna artist for Rebecca’s henna craving then continued to stroll, ogling lights and eating Indian sweets (no monkeys to steal them this time!^^)

…then we went home and slept in on a Wednesday — HAPPY DIWALI!

Deepavali!

Note: all photos in this post were either taken by Rachel the roomie or Rebecca the roomie. Thank you, roomies!

Teacher’s Day Dinner

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Singapore celebrates Teacher’s Day (and HOW!)

There was an assembly and some students put on an extremely long-winded skit about teachers. The students laughed at lot at it, and teachers laughed too, but for other reasons. If you’ve ever spent some time with a group of kids, you’ll know what it’s like when one kid tells a “joke” that is either totally lame or not funny at all (“What’s bigger than a duck? … A duck!”), and the rest of the kids find it hilarious and end up rolling on the ground laughing. The entire 10-minute skit was like that.

Students also bought teachers little gifts and made them cards. I have a student neighbour which originally terrified me, but has ended being awesome because she’s such a sweet person. Sweet Neighbour and her friend gave me a glass bottle filled with tiny hand-made shiny paper stars and a little note. I loved that. I also received more plastic dangly phone charms than I will ever, EVER use. Also 4 Bible-themed purse hooks. The teachers pretended not to be too excited, but I could tell everyone had an awesome time ripping gift wrap off of everything and comparing. I actually managed to trick my desk neighbour into believing a student had given me a brand new iPad2:

Grace: Guess what I got? *opens iPad2 box revealing shiny new iPad2*
Desk Neighbour: *looks* *jaw drops*… Noooooooooooo. Noooooooooooooooooo!

We had him fooled for a full 10 minutes before I admitted the iPads for the iPad music program had arrived and it was just on loan to me.

I also got two enormous plastic bags stuffed to ripping with chocolates and muffins and cookies. So did my roomies. The living room table disappeared beneath our motherload of baked goods and chocolates and we steadily ate our way through it within a week or two.

Now the eve of Teacher’s Day (the day itself actually being a holiday  – yusssssssssss) was a themed dinner at a hotel downtown. I love costumes and I was pretty pumped for it. My favourite costumes are ugly, low-budget, homemade monstrosities manically hashed together in 2 hours of inspiration and improvisation. AWESOMMMME! (Colourful examples: fan death with Alice. Another time, Becca and I were loose-moraled Christmas flappers using tinsel and Zellers dress slips. Thankfully images of this travesty/triumph do not survive on the internet as far as I know.) The theme of the dinner was “Retro and Futuristic”. Retro is easy if you have the clothes already, but I think futuristic is easier to do on a budget … at home. I started eyeing things around me as potential costume pieces. This is the result:

TREMBLE BEFORE MY GREATNESS!

Vaguely futuristic costume recipe:

- 1 shiny grey shirt
- 1 long grey skirt borrowed from roommate, preferably a slightly different grey from the shirt
- 1 big yellow belt also borrowed from roommate
- 1 pair black leggings because you will be flashing your panties to all your coworkers otherwise
- 1/2 roll aluminum foil for accessories or to cover your belt should it not be garish enough
- 1 fluorescent pink child-sized hula hoop “borrowed” from your school’s music room

1. Put on clothes, makeup, and accessories as usual. Be sure to do your hair in a lumpy bun and the wrap it inexpertly in tin foil.
2. Bring hula hoop under skirt, then “trap” the hula hoop in your skirt by tucking the ends of the skirt into your leggings.
3. Now you are from the future. Dance the robot.

I had been warned that “no one actually dresses up” but when we arrived almost everyone had put on some form of costume. The thing was that despite the theme being “Retro and Futuristic”, I was the only representative of “futuristic”. A spy I will never be.

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Enormous Kuala Lumpur Post Episode One

EPISODE ONE: RAMBLING PREAMBLE

The first Friday in October is Children’s Day in Singapore. I told my students that Canada doesn’t celebrate a Children’s Day and they were so appalled that they did research and found out that Canada does have a Children’s Day. Just, you know, no one pays any attention to it. I vaguely remember a springtime Children’s Day in Korea: parents have a day to take their kids to the zoo or something. Nice, right?

Singapore’s Children’s Day tradition is to buy little gifts for the special children in your life and say things like, “Happy Children’s Day. Study hard.” It’s only fair for teachers to play a part in this day because a month before Children’s Day is Teacher’s Day (also present in the ROK) which is celebrated by students presenting little gifts or tokens of their appreciation to their teachers past and present. (Man, I cleaned! out! on Teacher’s Day, the reason for which will be explained later in this post.)

Most teachers buy pretty school supplies or cute jewelry from various travels for their classes. A couple of my coworkers bought adorable little boxes and filled them with candy. They started ordering for Children’s Day in September. When the mass emails started going out, all “Let’s buy for our students!” I had a little panic attack because I teach 800 students. (Actually I teach 784. I counted.) Even if I spent 50 cents per kid — and what can you get for 50 cents that isn’t completely meaningless? — I’d be spending $400! Yeah, no.

When I asked them, my coworkers were all, “Um … yeah, you probably don’t have to buy anything. I guess.” And I was all, “Oh, now I feel all crappy and cheapskatey.” And my students were all, “Ms Hutton did you like the gorgeous card I handmade for you when I found out it was your birthday?”

They used their favourite sticker and then sang to me in an adorably embarrassed cluster of 9-year-old girls.

This was the best part of the card. SOMEONE has an unmarried cousin and pushy aunties.

And I’m all remembering the time I used to bake and decorate cupcakes for each and every one of my Yamaha music students.

MASTERPIECE ca. 2006

I love this sort of thing — homemade gifting — because I can put all the time and feeling into a gift. Granted back in 2006 I only taught about 30 students. As with most of my favourite gestures or lesson plans, in Singapore I just have too many freaking students for it to be viable. Poor Ms Hutton’s 784 students. But I refused to go down without a fight.

Brainstorming began immediately: something that I could handcraft that was inexpensive and wouldn’t take too much time to give. A real present would be to learn all their names, but that wasn’t going to happen. Then, I remembered that the Thursday before Children’s Day was a big ceremony at school. I remembered that all my students will be sitting there. I remembered the email I received from the organizer calling for performance acts from the teachers. I remembered that I’M A MUSIC TEACHER (weird!) I decided to write a song for my students and perform it for them on Children’s Day.

As soon as I get the footage, I’ll post it. I was famous, though, for 4 minutes and I’m glad I could show my students that I can do more than just play recorder and teach clapping games. Music skills can be useful — I saved hundreds of dollars with mine.

Anyway, that was me putting ‘ramble’ in ‘preamble’ just to explain:

I went to Kuala Lumpur on October 7 because it was a holiday

…for me, but not for my roomies because they teach at secondary schools. No children there, no sirree. Any grade 7 or grade 8 teacher can confirm that children do not reside in those sacred halls. Oh man.

The Tsiers, or more appropriately, the “Cheers” visit

Alice, my dear friend who is the blogger of Seoul Adventures, came to visit Singapore with her brother, Paul a few weeks ago. Both of them have this particularly special way about them which is a thousand times multiplied while they’re travelling: it’s a bubbly combination of burning curiosity, openness, easy-going attitude and recklessness. Of course, Alice tries to travel for a large portion of her life and so is always rad to be with.

I went to pick them up from the airport which is almost as far as you can get from where I live, and ended up being late and then waiting at the wrong gate before my atrophying problem solving skills kicked into gear and I figured things out. I found them sitting huddled around Paul’s laptop trying to find free wifi. (Apparently you need a National ID number in order to use it in the airport … doesn’t make much sense.) I ran up, gave them hugs, and we shared a few moments of intense glee which was further intensified after Alice and Paul mentioned how hungry they were and I replied by pulling out the curry puffs I had brought for them in anticipation of their hunger.  I think Alice had some sort of life-affirming happy moment. It was the beginning of a very goo weekend.

With some difficulty, we made it back to my apartment where we had a jam session in my room with Paul’s very cool new carbon fibre guitar. The thing is indestructible. You can use it as a canoe paddle. WANT.

The plan was to head out to the Singapore Flyer and catch the National Day Parade rehearsal fireworks in the air. We left late because we’re slow movers and then didn’t anticipate a) how hard it is to catch a taxi when you want one b) the traffic because of the closed roads BECAUSE of the rehearsal c) that they would have pushed the fireworks to an hour earlier than they were on the rehearsal I attended. So we caught the fireworks in the taxi. They were still pretty nice.

We bought our tickets, ate some carrot cake and pao, then boarded the Flyer for our slow nighttime swoop in the Singapore sky. Having done the Flyer both in the daytime and the nighttime, I would suggest going at sunset so you could get the best of both worlds. The night is nice, but it wasn’t as sparkly as I wanted it to be. It’s not noisily multicoloured. The Esplanade and surrounding buildings are nice, but beyond that you can see more in the day.

The Tsiers in Asia! "Life cannot POSSIBLY get any better," as Alice says frequently. I get the feeling she's daring life to get better.

From the Flyer we tried to find the famous Old Airport Hawker Centre touted as the most delicious and “authentic” Singaporean food centre. We got there at around 10 to find every stall closed. Internet, you failed me. Three different sources said that its hours were early until midnight. We sighed and fought our way home stopping briefly for those Japanese octopus balls on late-night sale and some milk tea. Alice and I were wrecked by the time we got back my condo at 12, both of us waking up at 5:00 every morning. Alice planned on getting up at 5:30 the next morning because she’s training for a marathon and then had to finish up her internship project before she went on to Indonesia.

We left around lunchtime and headed to Little India along with roomie Rachel where we tried some delicious murtabak and visited Tekka market for the food centre.  I finally tried a dessert drink called chendol on a whim – it had been calling my name siren-like since I’ve arrived in Singapore – and it was … like coming home.  Chendol is liquid palm sugar all brown and gooey, pandan-flavoured rice flour … worm-shaped blobs, coconut milk and ice. It is heaven. Heaven with green worms floating in it.

It's a lot more appetizing-looking that it sounds in words right? And trust that it's a lot tastier than it looks.

Other hawker food specialities we tried were the mee goreng, rojak (a favourite of mine), Japanese gyoza soup, and food from the stall with the longest line which turned out to be some curry chicken dish. Paul’s friend Wei and Iwona who is another foreign teacher joined us at this time.  We eventually talked Wei into coming along for the Night Safari and the Tsiers, Wei, and I split from the others to go to the Esplanade (the durian buildling) and later check out the Asian Civilizations Museum.

A few words about the museum: it is definitely within the top 3 best museums I have ever been to ever. Possibly THE best. The exhibitions were organized logically but not too logically, if you know what I mean: people could still wander at random if that’s they way they take in their museums.  There were interactive features everywhere: from 3D ancient armour puzzles, to oversized storybooks, to touch screen installations featuring a person from a certain ethnic group explaining things about their people. And its layout is beautiful. Someone put a lot of thought into this museum and it shows. Especially after the Phnom Penh museums which were emotionally replete of lacking in cohesion, I appreciated this museum. It is AWESOME.

Now, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto hosted the terracotta soldiers from Xi’an while I was at home but neither me nor Alice got the opportunity to go see them (read: wouldn’t get off our lazy bums to pay the $25 entry fee.) On our way into the museum we saw a huge banner:

They're heeeeeeeeeeeere!

Obviously we got really excited.

I love Singapore museums so much (this is the only one I’ve been to … I’m saving the rest for really oppressively boring days during the rainy season) not least because they’re FREE for me because I’m a teacher. Students also get in free, so Wei and Alice were well pleased. Alice was as effusive about the museum as I was and especially seemed to enjoy the exhibits on Indonesia because that was her next destination with Paul. If only I could have gone with them: 3 weeks of Tsiers in Indonesia, chilling with orangutans, diving in Bali. Bliss! Bliss!

Everything was beautiful and/or interesting.  Even the textiles were interesting. I liked the sarong from East Timor and the ikat from Indonesia. The colours are gorgeous and the way they mean so much to both the individual who made it and the individual who is intended to own it. Then there were the masks and puppets, both weak spots for Alice as I’ve mentioned before. We spent a long time, faces pressed against the glass, salivating over them just being our typical indecently-excited-about-life and self-congratulatory selves. I’m sure we’re just terrible to be around.

A little piece of a sarong. The colours!

We got kicked out of the museum when it closed, but we managed to milk about an extra 10 minutes staring at the terracotta warriors, which are badass. The horses especially are badass, and the artists. Did you know they had certain artists who specialized in sculpting the faces of certain areas of China? So one would be really good at North-Eastern Henan faces, while another was especially skilled at depicting Jiangxi faces. Nuts. And badass. Go China, for being really really good at things thousands of years ago.

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For dinner, Wei brought us to the Lau Pa Sat market which has a very pleasant colonial feel to it while being in an 8-sided building so also must have good feng shui. We were lured to a satay street stall called “Satay Power” by a charismatic man who assured us “Satay Street is happening”.  We ate delicious satay and lemonade until it was time to take a taxi to the Night Safari.

We missed all the shows, but happily joined the queue for the tram. Alice busted out her uke which we had been playing and singing to in various places around Singapore (videos to come …) We finally boarded the very back of the tram and embarked on our safari. It’s very cleverly set up. There are thin wires the enclose the animals’ territories with a current, but no cages with few exceptions. It’s a little surreal to drive past a little hillock covered in lions or enormous, lumbering, shaggy Indian bears.

The tram ride mostly features the big aniamls: elephants, hippso, rhinos, tapirs, a few gorgeous cranes just chilling in the roadway. It was when we started doing the walking paths that we started to appreciate the Night Safari to its fullest. I think the favourite of the night was definitely the shocking  mouse deer with its weird, spindly, needle-legs and mouse-body. It looks exactly the way its name implies. We went nuts the first time we saw them, and because there seem to be 6 or 7 …herds of them, we had plenty of opportunity to go nuts. One …herd was particularly round and we spent a while deciding whether they were pregnant or just fat. We decided they were fat. Paul kept exclaiming, “I can’t believe they exist!” I don’t think he would have been more excited if there had been a real live unicorn.

Another favourite was the Red Giant Flying Squirrel inside a special netted enclosure. You get to step through a few doors and some hanging chains to make sure they don’t escape, but you’re essentially trapped in this netted enclosure with the animals. Wei was the one who spotted them (it was almost closing time at this point so no other visitors were around.) We had been looking for squirrel-sized flying squirrels but these things are freaking enormous! They’re like large house cats, but red and with the ability to glide long distances. Amazing. I’m sorry there are no pictures because my camera died just as we arrived at the safari, but keep an eye on Alice’s blog for an impending update.

There was also a netted enclosure filled with bats. And they were really active. Tiny  toonie-sized bats totally nomming down on pieces of fruit suspended from hooks by the safari staff to flying foxes hanging upside-down by the lights, wings spread Dracula-like while it light-bathed, and all sizes in between flitting by your ears and just being adorable. My friend Nada would disagree in the most violent way, probably by vomiting and fainting. She hates bats with a revulsion stronger than mine for spiders.

In conclusion, the Night Safari is totally rad. Pay up and go. We got chased out of the Safari because we wanted to spend half an hour making fun of the shaggy Indian bears who perched on rocks and swayed cumbersomely and slowly to and fro, sniffing the air.  And we wanted to creep ourselves out by squatting by the leopard cage until it looked us right in the eyes and our instincts screamed at us “RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!” and we would giggle madly. And we wanted to go nuts by the mouse deer enclosure. And we wanted to do all these things after closing hours. We spent just over 3 hours there and it was not enough at all.

Finally we left to the employees relief, and taxied back home. Paul and Alice went swimming and packed for the next leg of their Asian adventure while I crashed in preparation for my 5:30AM wake up call. It was only a day and a half of Tsier time, but it was so lovely. It’s too bad they live in North America.

But! Happy ending!

Paul came back to Singapore and I got to see him briefly before he flew back home. He and Alice got me an absolutely stunning wayang puppet from Indonesia for my birthday. They think he’s Krishna. He’s the prettiest thing I own. Thank you, Alice and Paul!!

All the colours! All the detail! All in leather!

I Am a Vehicle for Propaganda

I am a primary school music teacher.

What do primary school music teachers teach? Songs? Yes, some. Music theory? Yes, some. Recorder? Yes, some. Rhythm games? Yes, some. Empathy? Yes, some. Blatant flag-waving propaganda? Yes … some.

You might be surprised at how often I’m asked what I teach by my co-workers — I know I am. Every day at least one person will turn to me in the elevator, “So, what do you actually teach?” They’re probably just grasping for small talk in a very uncomfortable situation (the elevators are extremely slow and stiflingly hot.) Usually they make a guess before I can reply with my vague, unsatisfying answer. Usually their guess is, “You teach them songs, right?”

Usually I reply, “Um, well …”

Please understand that all I want to do with my students is show them that music is precision and hard work and academic; but also that it can be a social, mind-blowing, life-altering, infectious, wonderful, eternal thing. And that it’s open and welcoming. And that it’s for them. And that school has very little to do with it, because it’s about sound and people; not about study and students. I don’t know if teaching songs is the way to teach that.  Ok, sorry, let me clarify: Teaching songs is not the way I want to teach that. Or at least, not the only way.

(Note: “teaching songs” means handing them a lyric sheet or a unison line music score and playing a CD with midi instrument accompaniment.)

But I am employed by a foreign government to get students to perform to a certain standard and to know a set amount of facts, and I can’t escape the songs. The very first bullet point in the syllabus is for students to learn National songs. Ok, Mr. Minister, O Mine Exalted Employer, so be it.

The only problem is that I don’t feel right teaching these National Day songs. They’re all about patriotism and Singpore-is-the-bomb and I’m-so-glad-I-enjoy-all-the-freedoms-Singapore-offers and Nowhere-is-better-than-here, and while I agree that, yes, Singapore is a pretty special place, and good for Singapore for putting on a business suit, I’m not Singaporean and I’m not a Singaporean patriot. Hell, I’m not very patriotic for my own country. I’m not even a fan of the whole idea of patriotism. But here I stand in my classrooms, pressing play buttons with cringing finger so that my girls can dissolve into song after song about “our one true home.”

I really didn’t want this to turn into a rant, but I’ll allow myself to be whiny just for this paragraph. The part that actually bothers me isn’t the fact that I’m teaching children to wave flags madly. I think that kids should experience the frightening joys of mob mentality at least once; the part that bothers me is that the vast majority of the enormous repertoire of these songs is almost completely lacking in musical value. I am totally going there. Paint me a snob. It’s the musical equivalent of eating cotton balls. I really, really don’t want make midi-accompanied, soft rock ballad clones a staple in my students’ musical diets.

To be fair, a couple of the songs are pretty good, and I plan on only making my girls sing those ones. They’ll learn the others by osmosis at flag-raising ceremony every morning.

In the meantime, I’ll do my best to teach music and geography as penance for having to teach blind pride in one’s country. I’ve already managed to teach the P6′s that “African music” is not a single genre. (And that “Africans” are not a single ethnic group.) And you thought American kids didn’t know anything about the rest of the world? Well,  … enjoy:

I was playing 20 questions with some 11-year-old girls and I was being Germany. They knew I was a country in Europe. This is an EXACT remembrance of the conversation we had.

Girl 1: “Are you Paris?”
Me: “No. Paris is a city.”
Girl 2: “Is it? How about Florida? Are you Florida?”
Girl 3: “Nooo! Florida is in Mexico.”
Girl 4: “Mexico is where rats live.”
Girl 1: “Africa?”
Me: “That is a continent and it’s not in Europe.”
Girl 4: “I had a map once.”
Girl 1: “You’re England!”
Me: “No.”
Girl 1: “Ireland!”
Me: “No.”
Girl 1: “Paris!”
Me: “You guessed that already. Do you want me to pull up a map of the world? Will that help?”
Girl 4: “No. Don’t bother. We don’t learn about the world.”
Girl 3: “Yeah! I thought Canada was at the bottom of Australia until you showed us that picture.”
Girl 4: “The picture of a map!”
Girl 2: “Are you Italy?”
Me: “Good guess! But no.”
Girl 2: “Rome?”
Me: “Rome is a city in Italy. So no.”
Girl 4: “Isn’t Europe in Asia? Is this a trick question? Can I go to the toilet?”