Wednesday 15 January 2014

How Time Flies!

My last post to this blog was in December 2012 ! Not that I have run out of things to say but there weren't many opportunities to sit down and organise my thoughts.

We sold our house in Ponte Vedra but started to regret it when we returned to pack up. So we ended up with another one - but a fraction the size. It was just the beginning of lots of activity and some agony - I needed to tailor it to our way of life and so ended up with having to deal with renovations.

I must have forgotten what we'd been through building our house in the first place and then renovating it several years later. Sometimes the mind conveniently buries past experiences especially unpleasant ones!

Or is it hope eternal that spurs one on?

Anyway it was all worth it, Lin and I are delighted with our new house; I had to drag him away to come back to Hong Kong and Singapore.

After all this, my Construction and Trades scorecard would read:  HK number 1, while old fashioned N-E Florida would be number 2 and ever-growing Singapore  number 3 (think of cutting edge architects and designers but third world workers).

It's a thought - in Ponte Vedra we are in a community of less than 600 families and yet several of our residents have written books.

In comparison, I can't say that I know of any published authors in our condominium complex in Hong Kong which has about 1000 families. A journalist who was given a drugged milk shake by a woman who bludgeoned her husband to death is the closest to a writer that I know of!

And, in Singapore, I can only claim to know or know of only a handful among them a past Prime Minister who has written a few books, a young man who writes books for children, a woman who wrote about her father, a renowned educator and a cousin who wrote about my great grandfather (to be precise she lives in Johor Bahru, Malaysia).

In Florida we are in a golfing community, with our own golf course. In Hong Kong and Singapore we are members of a golf club.

In an ideal world, for life to be replete, I'd have the Hong Kong Golf Club with the immaculate golf course we enjoy in Florida (not to demean either but to say that my perfect golf club would be a combination of the two). The golf club in Singapore is like a vast public facility (it boasts over 7000 members and double that number of users) with the atmosphere and environment to match.

Some Americans despair of President Obama and wish their economy would pick up. Some Hong Kongers distrust and dislike Chief Executive CY Leung and grudgingly put up with the influx of mainland Chinese. Some Singaporeans are no longer enamoured of the PAP government  and are unhappy about the rapid increase in population, mainly due to immigration.

I sympathise with all of the above! On the other hand Obama and Leung will not be at the helm for much longer.

To be fair, look around America. Where would it be if not for immigrants and immigrant workers, even today. Or should I say more so today. Singapore is in the same boat - we need people in almost all walks of life for businesses to run and families to cope.

Sometimes I think of life in the western world and how people cope with work, children and their homes. Well in the west there are house husbands whose wives are the main breadwinners, there are women to give up their careers for their families. And, significantly, there is infrastructure and 'software' in place to facilitate caring for young children while parent(s) are at work.

In much the same way that there are senior communities, home care, public and private initiatives for older people so that they can live and operate as they age. These are lacking in Asia.


While there are many good things about Singapore, I look forward to returning as much as I looked forward to returning to boarding school after the holidays!

Perhaps it is the attitude of those in power; it is telling that a well known Singaporean recently wrote: "..... American doormen who would look me in the eyes and treat an ambassador like me as an equal, and not act in a submissive manner like any Asian doorman would."

Not all Asian doormen are particularly submissive and as a matter of fact it depends on who is coming through the door; it's just that more Asian and particularly Singaporean VIPs (and those who consider themselves VIPs) expect servility and "insist on feudal-type privileges" (here I have borrowed his words and taken them out of their context to fit mine).

It's not beyond some to say,"do you know who I am?" and name drop to try and get their way.

Americans may be the polar opposite (and sometimes stridently so), but then they do not have to suffer employers, club committee members and self-important people who wield the rod.

The same writer went on to say. "The good news for our world is that this American egalitarian spirit is gradually infecting other societies, including Asian societies, and therefore making them less feudal." Perhaps when the Singapore Girl is allowed to become less of a doormat for demanding travellers!

When I was growing up we were told that we were 'the rugged society', we were the exemplars for the rest of Southeast Asia. Our government was never bested by any opponent, inside or out.

Somewhere along the line we slipped from our place as Number One. Maybe that's what bugs me most.

We don't lead and we don't want to follow. So we came late with more environmentally friendly taxis (HK had LPG-fuelled taxis years before Singapore introduced CNG taxis).

Public minibuses in HK are equipped with seat belts, Singapore's yet to make them mandatory in school buses.

Singapore reversed a decision to take their old London cabs off the road because this would have diminished transportation for the disabled.

Hong Kong has a small fleet of new taxis with tailgate lifts for wheelchairs AND a tiny fleet of all-electric taxis.

Nowadays, it seems we are better at talking the talk than walking the walk.