Toe update: it seems to be healing relatively well, with little or no leakage yesterday. This is a very good thing. I shall use it as a reason for not going into work until Friday next–it still needs to get used to being in a shoe, I think.
Yesterday I met HWMBO for lunch downtown with C, our friend CB’s ex (CB was our host in Shanghai, if you can remember that far back). He was a bit late so we went upstairs in Bugis Junction to buy a new battery for my handphone. It was Sg$48, which is a touch under GBP 16. You can’t beat that with a stick. (in case you wanted to do that).
C is doing well; I had fried dumplings and a coffee, which was a terrible cup of coffee. But I needed to finish it anyway. Then we went off to a dessert shop where I had Mango Sago with Pomelo (all mised with ice–it was delicious and not very sweet).
Then I had to persuade HWMBO to part with some cash for luggage. On the way back from Shanghai, the rolling handle broke: it wouldn’t extend, so HWMBO had to kind of crouch while holding the carrying handle to roll the case along. I insisted he needed a new suitcase, and we bought one that included a carry-on bag. I will use the carry-on bag and he will use the large suitcase, and maybe we will return to the UK intact.
Back home for some R&R before we went out for dinner with our friend VV and his partner, E. We were going to go to a Japanese restaurant in the Paragon Centre downtown (very posh merchandise on sale). But there was a huge queue. So, we went to (wait for it!) a Lowry’s Steak House in the same building. The cheapest steak on the menu was Sg$55 (about GBP 18, or US$36). I had that, and it was good, but the whole thing was a performance and quite a complicated one at that. Spinning the salad around in a bowl of ice was supposed to do something or other that I couldn’t make out (it tasted fine). The wine was good (wish I could remember what it was–I was the only one who partook). The conversation was interesting tho.
We began with money-laundering, as E has a professional interest in detecting that (which I will not be specific about) and I of course worked for a company that produced software to detect money-laundering in financial transactions. Singapore has a (partially-deserved) reputation as Southeast Asia’s money-laundering haven. There is a thought here that money, whatever its source, is money and it’s not polite to enquire how your customer made it. This will have to change eventually, as money-laundering, besides being a criminal activity in and of itself, aids and abets lots of other criminal activities such as drug dealing (imagine Singapore, where drug smuggling is a crime punishable by hanging, helping drug dealers store and launder their cash!) and terrorism (it takes cash to mount bombings and terrorist acts). I wonder how long it will take for the government here to crack down hard on the banks who are allowing money-laundering to happen.
Then we talked about the inequalities here. I have noticed a rise in the number of street beggars here. They rarely just ask for money: they sell something small like a packet of tissues, but it’s still begging. Disabled people play musical instruments in the subways under the streets (not to be confused with the rapid transit system), young people in wheelchairs hold placards asking for donations. It’s rife.
Yes, there is begging in London, New York, and the like. I admit that. But how many of them outside of Singapore are elderly people who have no pension and no means of getting support (as there is no government social safety net here, to speak of). The government had to pass a law requiring children to support their parents, on pain of imprisonment. That springs from a sense that children were neglecting their parents because they didn’t want to waste money on them. There is also a sense that raising a family is so expensive that parents have to take second place (I think). There are some people who never had or couldn’t have children. Who is going to support them here? So they go out on the streets and beg.
One of our dinner companions volunteers for social welfare charities connected with his church, and he felt that if people didn’t want to beg, they would go to those charities for help. But, I pointed out, there is no central place where people can be referred to charities for their needs. They have to find these places themselves. Many of them aren’t equipped to do that (for language reasons, or reasons of pride). Until Singapore comes to grips with the question of how it treats its weakest and oldest people, it won’t be able to state that everyone is participating in its economic boom.
I’m troubled by this situation: so much so that I gave Sg$2 to a woman who was selling tissues at Somerset MRT station as we went home after dinner.
Remembrance of things past: Madeleine Department. I found in Shanghai that our host used Dettol shower gel (not available in the UK, I believe). My first Singaporean partner, Tom, also used that particular shower gel. The scent drew me back 12 years and I think I might buy a bottle or two for use in London. Not to remember Tom, but to remember Singapore.
We are thinking of coming back at Chinese New Year 2008 (January/February time). We are hoping that my host, BK, will come to visit us in London in September.
I am also thinking that there would be worse things than to have to come here with HWMBO to look after his aged parents. But I will probably change my mind when I’m back in London. At the very least the weather is normally pleasant and there aren’t many natural disasters like earthquakes or typhoons to deal with. They had a waterspout a few months ago, but it didn’t touch land.