Singapore Bling
It has been interesting this year to experience a tropical Christmas. In some ways it has been good to escape Tesco starting their Christmas playlist in late July, and the Kerry Katona adverts for frozen bits of oddly shaped crap, but in other ways I have to say Singapore hasn’t quite lived up to Blighty for that quintessential Christmas experience.
Firstly, the music. It’s everywhere. OK, it didn’t start until November but once it had you would think that one of those famous Singapore government mandates dictated that yuletide tunes must be pumped out from every available speaker and audio system on the island. Singapore favours several types of festive tunes:
- choirs of Chucky-style spooky children singing carols really quietly, sometimes in Dutch
- elevator style “jazz” interpretations
- really bad “gospel” versions of carols sung by massed choirs of Chinese god-botherers
- electronica / slightly hip-hop-esque interpretations – this particularly heinous style was blasting out at the taxi rank on Orchard Road outside Lucky Plaza the other night
But, criminally, not a Pogues-Kirsty McColl rendition or a proper Mariah Carey “All I want for Christmas” (contrary to “Now What I Call Christmas Music 3”, the Samantha Mumba version is NOT acceptable) is to be heard anywhere. I have heard “Do They Know It’s Christmas” (the version without Dizzie Rascal, thankfully) but it came on in Raffles just as we were congratulating ourselves on the volume of oysters, champagne, cheese and chocolate we had just consumed at Steve’s final brunch. Inappropriate.
Next, the decorations. Now, Singapore isn’t a particularly Christian country but they are just lapping up all the Christmas related bling they can get their hands on. Decorations are everywhere and they are big. Christmas trees as high as 10 storey buildings, lights, baubles and Christmas wreaths on every available surface, giant Santas. Raffles is decked out in massive red bows like a Victorian child on a Christmas card.
Then the weather. I know that London rarely gets the crisp, twinkly snow so beloved of Christmas cards, but it’s been pissing it down with monsoon rain for the past month and every now and then I get a twinge of homesickness for days where it gets dark at 2pm and the wind whistles up your trouser-leg on the walk home from the tube station so that by the time you get home your legs look like that did when that fascist games teacher made you play hockey in sub-zero temperatures when you were 14.
Finally, the work Christmas parties.
Party #1 – organised by expats, attended by multiple nationalities
This party took place in a room at the top of one of the big city hotels, with a great view over Singapore. It was a pretty conventional scoff, booze and disco arrangement as favoured by most westerners with a “party smart” dresscode much mused over by the different nationalities. The Filipino team manager took a draconian approach and mandated that each person attending the party should bring in their proposed outfit the week before so that she could veto any she thought would create a bad impression of the Filipino nation. One girl who claimed to have no party clothes whatsoever had to try on an assortment of items brought in by her colleagues and choose an outfit.
I had a hosting role which always brings me out into a cold sweat. Things got off to a tricky start for me when I went to have my nails done late afternoon (it is Christmas after all) and only got out 2.5 hours later. Lurching back (still unable to walk properly after my football injury) I crashed round the flat, ruining my nails and getting more agitated by the minute. Andy set himself up in the corner of the room available for butler duty and proved surprisingly useful for bra-fastening and shoe-doing-up duties as well as general encouragement. On the way my boss called in a strop and berated us for not having everything prepared even though we did in fact have everything prepared. On arrival the only drinks available were Singapore Slings but it was an emergency so down they went.
Surprisingly for Singapore, no-one was on time. People gradually wandered in and engaged in the usual early party small talk / cooing about dresses / emergency Singapore Sling consumption and waited for something to happen. My boss got even more agitated as the hours slipped by and everyone was accounted for except for the entire Filipino team. I finally got hold of one of the girls on their mobile and they reported that all 11 had duly assembled ready to leave, about an hour late, only to learn that one of the girls wasn’t happy with their hair-do. All 11 promptly abandoned the taxi rank, ran back to the girl’s room and fixed for hair. When they finally arrived my boss was in a barely suppressed Glaswegian rage and the formalities finally began.
Everyone seemed to have a good time. There was the usual amount of painfulness at the set tables as everyone was forced to bond with someone from a different country that they would never see again but that’s all part of the corporate party experience. The westerners loved the food but the Singaporeans moaned about it and the Japanese moved it round their plates, staring at it with barely concealed horror. They’ll eat snake brains and poisonous fish but they looked at the foie gras and roast turkey like it was bad witchcraft. One of the Japanese team had a dodgy stomach from the previous evening in Chinatown and walked around all night clutching a glass of orange-juice and groaning.
The music was standard tack and one of the Australians led us to the dancefloor, danced until her feet bled all over her shoes, then carried on dancing in bare feet. Everyone else joined in and did synchronised V-signs when anyone came within 100 feet with a camera. Our Filipino ballroom-dancing colleague flung one of the Australian girls round the dancefloor and one normally silent Singaporean colleague got wasted, flirted all night, and flung himself round the dancefloor to “Footloose” culminating in a slide across the floor on his knees. On Monday morning he declared that the party hadn’t been very enjoyable and the music was crap. Gotta love that upbeat Singaporean attitude.
There was general bemusement around the award giving. The lady who got “hero of the year” was out having a fag when her name was called and afterwards hissed “so what do I get then?” The Singaporean girl who got “best-dressed lady” was pretty chuffed and made the best use of the long walk to receive her prize, but the Japanese “best-dressed man” looked as though he couldn’t imagine anything more tedious, grabbed his prize (a crappy camera; I guess he wasn’t the ideal prize-recipient) and went back to not eating his dinner.
I collapsed gratefully into some champagne when the party-proper was over and Steve went off to rave for another 8 hours at Zouk Out with his tatts out.
Party #2 – Singaporean BBQ
Please understand, I mean no insult to the Singaporean nation but this was one of the most bizarre social experiences I have ever attended in my life. It was organised by a couple of people in our Singapore team for us and the Singapore client people and as we were informed many times throughout the evening, this was a proper Singaporean BBQ party, not like those pale fakeries that us westerners have.
The BBQ was meant to start at 6.30pm but learning from our previous party experience, Steve and I cunningly arrived at 7.15pm…. to find no-one had arrived. Not a good start. About half an hour late some client types arrived. I don’t want to say much what with the internet being public and all that but let’s just say that we don’t get on too well with some of our client contacts. I was determined to be nice though. When they came over one woman looked me up and down disgustedly and announced “ah, you should never wear jeans to a Singaporean BBQ – haven’t you ever been to a Singaporean BBQ?”. Aarrggghhh.
We were ordered to eat – lots of bee hoon, sweet potato in foil like blackened willies, half-cooked chicken wings and mouth-blistering sambal sotong. Sometimes you just want a Birds Eye beef burger. If at any point in the proceedings you weren’t eating, someone would appear at your shoulder like a BBQ dungeon-master and say accusingly “You not eating? You don’t like Singaporean food? You never been to a Singaporean BBQ before?” to which I would mutter through gritted teeth “I’ve been eating for an hour and an half before you arrived, and I’ll eat again. I’m just breathing right now”.
Steve and I were directed to open the drinks. Excellent. We furked around in lots of cardboard boxes and plastic bags and found… cartons of white chrysanthemum tea. And some green jasmine tea. Hmm. More furking. “Shit, there’s no beer” I whispered. “What?? But they told us not to bring any drinks” whispered Steve. Crap. This was very bad.
After some more blackened willies and cartons of tea, our big-chief-alpha-male-top-dog client bloke arrived, with his female colleagues padding in at his side like particularly eager labradors. Oh god. He hates dealing with me because I am (a) a girl and (b) quite blunt, though I like to think not in a bad way. But… what is that he’s carrying? Is it… yes it it… wine!!!! Hallelujah. He poured us some red wine and a centimetre of Muscadet for the troops, and they proceeded to engage in some sort of wine-driven haka, roaring at the tops of their voices. Not for the first time in the evening, I felt a bit left out.
Client dude came over and told us how much money he has, what a nice car he has, how good his taste in wine is, how many holidays he goes on. This kind of chat always brings out the stubborn inverse-snob in me so I gleefully told him that I sold my car for £150 before coming out here. He looked at me like a bit of curled up bee hoon he’d found on his Italian handmade shoes. Chopper.
Once the food was hoovered up we got the 3 line whip to move indoors for games. Naked twister, anyone? Better make it quick cos Steve’s getting twitchy – he has to check in precisely 24 hours before his flight home or he may not get the ONLY seat on the entire BA plane which is acceptable for him, providing precisely the right amount of engine noise and the correct head-tilting angle.
To the games. There were a lot of balloons and a lot of kids running around screaming but no twister. After another 30 cat-herding minutes we were told to stand in a circle. We closed our eyes and were told someone would be tapped on the shoulder and they would be the murderer. They would murder people by winking at them. Oh my god! Wink murder! I haven’t played that since I was 8. I swear to god I have never seen 20 adults and 3 kids so excited as during that game. There was hysteria, there were 40 year old women jumping up and down on the spot in excitement, there were people doubled-up with laughter, there was punching in the air. Big chief alpha male dude was the murderer and cos it was him, everyone claimed they had no idea who the murderer was. Brilliant – so the game went on for about four and a half days. When he was finally discovered, I thought the glass would shatter from the shrieks of disbelieving joy. After wink murder we had a version of jenga played with a glass of water – each team had to pour a bit of water in the cup without spilling any over the side. That went on for weeks.
Now I’m not knocking this, and clearly it was all wholesome fun, and for definite the team enjoyed it way more than the expensive hotel bash we laid on for them, but after a few hours of that party, I felt that we were in the 9th ring of Hades and in fact there would never be a time in my life that I wouldn’t be in that room with a bunch of shrieking Singaporeans, sucking up to boss-man and gazing longingly at the outside world still functioning outside the window.
Mercifully, the time eventually came for the secret santa present exchange and exit. I handed over my lovely M&S cookies all wrapped up and ribboned. Not sure what I got yet but Steve opened his and it was a massive box containing… 1 face towel. Yay.
Then the final turd in the waterpipe from our beloved client… senior boss-man dude comes over, shakes my hand and gives me… an Il Divo CD. Time to leave the country.
Jo 20 December 2007
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Priceless – I hope you took photos. G xxx
Gillian Harris # Dec 20