Category — Singapore

The kids and I were enjoying nasi ayam (chicken rice) at the local Medan Selera (food court) recently and I chanced upon some local TV channels while we were eating. And this … this thing appeared. There were sanitary napkins in the shape of flowers receiving blue drops of rain from the sky to a happy tune. While women smiled at me from the TV screen, I was told to “Have a Happy Period”.

WHAT???!!

First, the facts. It appears:

the campaign “Have a Happy Period” was created in 2005 by Ms Denise Fedowa who was a VP at Leo Burnett Chicago … According to a report in Adweek, research shows that consumers are telling the marketers to be transparent and frank in their communications.

Now look, you can be “transparent and frank” in your communications, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be incredibly and utterly stupid as well.

Have a Happy Period??!!

Are they serious? While there are hormones coursing through my body telling me that decapitating yonder Perodua driver would be no great loss to the species? While there is something not usually meant to be there between my legs, rubbing against the tender flesh of my inner thighs while I walk? While — and I hate to be explicit here, but think of this and “happy” and tell me it works for you — I can feel fluids from my body being expelled on a schedule that’s sporadic and panic-inducing? While my Fallopian tubes mourn the loss of a potential life by sending aches through my bloated abdomen? While all this is going on, for DAYS at a stretch, you are telling me to Have a Happy Period, Whisper? Oh, and just for the record, it isn’t blue and it doesn’t have the consistency of spring water, m’kay?

Sure, why don’t we also have ads about a thick armoured invertebrate burrowing through a passage and pressing a button at the end and tell men to Have a Happy Prostate Exam?? Or little elves in wee little harvesters, running down fields of mangrove roots telling men to Have a Happy Shave??

This is beyond frankness into complete patronising bullshit. And what if we don’t have a Happy Period, Whisper? Then I suppose it’s All Our Fault, isn’t it? Why don’t men get patronised like this in commercials? This isn’t far above the ole Christmas gift suggestion of buying a new vacuum cleaner for The Little Woman. I had thought we’d moved beyond this, but evidently not. And, just to add insult to injury, we have a woman to thank for this priceless piece of inanity. Thanks Whisper, I’ll know what brand NOT to touch next time I’m at the supermarket.

COMPETITION UPDATE: Both winners finally got back to me! Congratulations Christy M and Ted C! Your packages will be out in the mail this week.

If you’re interested, you’ll find a nice article on PEs (it just takes too long to type “Portuguese Eurasian” all the time) in Wikipedia, under the heading “Kristang people“.

As I understand it from various relatives, the PEs (or Kristang, although that also describes the language) mostly stuck around Malacca/Melaka from 1516 until the Dutch tried taking over that influential sea port a few decades later in the sixteenth century. This caused a number of PEs to flee north (and some, south), where a substantial group settled in and around the capital, Kuala Lumpur, while others went further north still.

Everything seemed to go swimmingly, until the Japanese invaded. Like the Germans, the Japanese also considered themselves a “superior race” and set about, not only subjugating the local population through ruthless brutality, but also making a special effort to seek out those of mixed blood and exterminate them. This is one of the lesser genocides of WWII that you’ll read nothing about in your Western history books. As a result of this, many PE families burnt all their papers — anything that identified them as “Eurasian” — and passed themselves off as members of other ethnic groups. I know older PEs who don’t even know their exact birthdates because of this covert destruction.

Together with other races fleeing the Japanese advance, people ended up in Singapore but the British proved themselves to be as incompetent in this war as they were in previous ones and the population had to bear the brunt of their enemies taking over the island while our colonial so-called masters scarpered, leaving the locals, and some luckless British and Australian military personnel, to the gentle ministrations of the Japanese.

Today, there is a lively Eurasian community in Singapore. In fact, I consider them to be the most dynamic and enthusiastic of all the Eurasian communities in the region. They are heavily involved in social programs, athletics and scholarships. It’s great to see a cultural group do so much, and I say all this as someone who isn’t a Singapore Eurasian. If you’re in Singapore and want to taste PE cooking, there is a very rare restaurant called Quentin’s at the Eurasian Community House. I say “rare” because PE recipes are closely guarded secrets and to be able to eat PE food outside a PE home is quite startling and highly unusual.

Quentin’s is near the first floor lobby of Eurasian Community House (139 Ceylon Road) and their phone number is 6348-0327 (for reservations and opening hours). I’m not getting paid to promote the restaurant but, barring a dinner invitation from a PE, this is the closest you’re going to get to PE cooking.

* Singapore Sizzle, in the Cougars & Cubs anthology, featuring a handsome PE stud by the name of Adrian Pereira, will be released by Total-E-Bound in May.

My bitch of a friend

I was sitting having a coffee with a friend in Singapore recently. Let’s call her Gwen. Gwen is in an enviable position for someone in IT. Her company recently won a large deal and she has the responsibility to ramp up a team of developers, negotiate deliverables and deliver the first phase of a system by the end of the year. I used to live for opportunities like that. Gwen, however, was rather glum.

“I’m going to get a reputation as a complete bitch,” she told me morosely, stirring her coffee.
“Why?”
“I have to build a team, right? Well, I went through about forty resumes last night.”
“And?”
We’re always told how high-tech Singapore is. How much more advanced it is compared to its neighbours, and how it always attracts only the best. Creative. Innovative. Fast. Tech. Dynamic. I was happy to pick Gwen’s brain because I was curious as to whether the facts lived up to the hype.
“Most of them are useless,” she told me.
I raised my eyebrows. “How so?”
“I’m after C++ developers,” she said. “They have to already know their stuff because we have our first deadline in a matter of months. I don’t have time to mollycoddle anyone.”
I nodded.
“Well, out of the forty resumes, seven have Computing degrees.” She frowned. “What’s that work out to? About fifteen percent?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.” I actually yearn for times when I don’t have to do any thinking and, as far as I was concerned, Gwen was going to be the one doing the heavy lifting in this conversation.
“The rest…,” she shook her head. “All I’m getting from India are civil engineers and all I’m getting from China are chemists and mathematicians. That doesn’t mean they’re not smart, but how would they like it if I tried to build a bridge or come up with a new malaria vaccine? I wouldn’t last a week! Yet, according to them, they’re now software developers.”
She sighed. “So what am I supposed to do now? If I employ a chemist to do programming, sure, they might be able to do some robot stuff but how will they know how to code their way out of a sticky problem? If I say to one of them, ‘okay, I want you to write a web app but what are you going to do to stop an SQL injection?’, they’re not going to know where to start.” She raised her voice. “Why are they even applying for a job which they’ve never trained for?”
“Eighty-five percent, huh?”
“Clueless,” she said. “In desperation, I interviewed several of them. They don’t even know what a left join is. And that’s not all. You should see the salaries they’re expecting.” She paused. “How much does it take to live in Singapore?”
“Well, obviously more than I have which is why we don’t live in Singapore,” I quipped.
But Gwen was impatient and waved away my feeble joke. “Right, right. But how much?”
“For a single professional? Maybe four thousand a month for a start, and that’s only if you can find an HDB flat to rent. For a family, you can’t do much with less than seven or eight. Not if you’re a foreigner.”
“And a good starting salary for an IT developer?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Good results at Uni. Maybe a year’s commercial experience. Six maybe for a junior?”
“That’s what I thought.” Although my confirmation seemed to make her even unhappier.
“Do you know how much they want?” she finally asked.
“Who? The Indians and Chinese?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a clue.”
“Two and a half to three.”
“Thousand a month?”
“Yep.”
“To live in Singapore?” I gaped at her. “Are they nuts?”
“You can see what happens, can’t you?” Gwen told me, sipping her coffee. “Some bridge builder or maths teacher comes along and says they’ll do C++ or Python or Java or whatever coding you want, and they want less than three a month for it. Who’s going to look that kind of gift horse in the mouth? It has a knock-on effect, though. Take me. What happens when it’s time to move on? There’s so much downward pressure on IT salaries that I’ll be earning less money with more experience as time goes on. And what about my project? HR only has to read over the same CVs to complain about how I’m only picking the expensive candidates.”
She stared at her coffee. “No matter which way I look at it, I lose. If I pick only the IT-qualified guys, I’m going to get reamed for running a too-expensive project. If I pick chemists, I’ll get reamed for missing our milestones. Either way, I end up looking like an absolute, incompetent bitch.”
I didn’t know what to say because Gwen was completely correct. All I could do was agree with her, but that would make her feel even worse.
“I’ll get another round of coffee,” I said and temporarily escaped.

How dare you!

J and I have had the occasional domestic dispute over the past 12 years (ahem). And in the post-dust up analysis, we’ve both come to the conclusion that we’re both “highly strung”, though me more than him. And I’ll cop to that. The thing is, after speaking with a few other friends, it appears that an awful lot of Asian women are “highly strung”. Let’s have a look at that a little bit more closely.

What do we mean by the term? I’m just throwing out stuff that I’ve heard, and think about myself:

• a bit on the defensive side
• can get too focused on one thing
• exhibits insensitivity to others when they are perceived to be in her way
• easy to anger when perceived to be insulted/put down
• very ambitious
• tendency to jump to conclusions, usually to the detriment of her partner
• high expectations (sometimes too high) of her partner
• can be very money/status-focused
• very analytical

I hope you’re starting to get the picture. (And, just to repeat the implication in plainer text, men can be highly-strung too, but we’re not talking about them in this post.) Now, let me wander off a bit to an anecdote.

J was recently at a workshop where an engineer was giving a highly technical presentation. Because the workshop was quasi-public, there were a lot of people standing around watching. An acquaintance of J’s, being short, asked him to take a photo of the engineer because she (the photographer) couldn’t see over the crowd and she (the engineer) wanted to send some photos of her presenting her workshop to her parents.

Just as J finished relating the story to me, a piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

“I bet she’s single,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes. We got into a conversation afterwards, and she told she she was. But how did you know?”

You know how you get an insight that takes many hops but coalesces in your mind in a heartbeat? That’s what happened here. I’ll try to explain it to you in fewer words than I used with J. Tell me what you think.

What is of absolutely no doubt in Asia — at the risk of descending into stereotype — is that education is important. You may find a parent who’s inordinately happy with their son for everything he buys for them because he’s a successful, let’s say, landscaper. But no matter how proud his parents are of him, there is always some niggle that they’d be prouder of him if he had a degree. And perhaps worked in an office instead. Or had workers who toiled on his behalf. In an office. Or school of some type.

Here’s the problem with the Asian female. One, they’re told that Education is Critical. “Nobody will love you if you’re stupid.” She gets lots of pats on the head when she tops the class in school, becomes prefect, snags a spot at a good university, and graduates, beaming out of the photo frame that sits proudly in her parents’ living room. So far, so good.

The next obvious thing is to get a job. And that’s where the problems start. You see, the young Asian female thinks that she worked so hard, studied so hard, to get somewhere in life. The young Asian female’s parents, however, have inexplicably changed their tune. From, “So why aren’t you getting first-class honours?” it becomes, “Isn’t it time you got married?”

Now, this will throw any reasonable human being for a loop. What?! Why did you ride me so hard if all you’re going to say when I’m 23 is, “When can I expect the grandchildren? I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

At this point, our young lady is caught in an unfortunate case of cognitive dissonance. Of course she doesn’t want to throw it all away just to play mother, especially not if she’s smart and knows she can climb the corporate ladder. So, instead of marrying, she says to herself: “I just have to make my parents proud of me. And once they realise how important it is that I make something of myself — as a person in my own right, rather than just as a wife or mother to someone else — they’ll understand and approve of me and then we can put this marriage nonsense to the side for the time being.”

I hope you can begin to get an inkling of where the young engineer is in this timeline? Caught in the throes of this mis-thinking, she’s well on the way to seeking approval by sending her parents tangible proof that people hang on her every word. That she is doing Something Meaningful. And it doesn’t involve a wedding ring. Pity it won’t work.

The fact is, it never works, and the nagging grows in scope and frequency. “You’re getting so old, lah. No man will want you soon.” “Why are you so smart? Men don’t like smart women.” “You’re too big for your boots, thinking you can get this promotion/start your own business. No wonder you can’t get married.”

And the young woman keeps on thinking that if only everything looked a bit more sparkly, a bit more meaningful, then things would come good. After all, her parents were serious when they said her education was important. She has more examples than she can poke a stick at to prove that point. So if she can’t sway them from their one-track marriage mind now, it must mean she hasn’t proven the worth of her education — of herself — to them hard enough.

And that’s how it begins. She must be perfect. Her boyfriend must be perfect. Her apartment/house must be perfect. Her car must be perfect. Her wardrobe must be perfect. And, as I’ve said before, because the parents have completely and utterly changed their tune, it never is. The problem is not with her, it’s with them. And, because she’s Asian, that’s a verboten thought because, from Turkey to Taiwan, the authority figure in the family is Always Right.

I am of the firm opinion that one of the biggest obstacles to female empowerment in Asia are the parents. I have seen too many worthwhile lives descend into some kind of obsessive-compulsive tail-chasing because the parents have now summarily decided that they want grandchildren and bugger what it means for their daughters. Marriages have been destroyed through the kind of desperate, serial approval seeking that starts with a conceded ceremony and continues from there till the day somebody drops. For the sake of sanity, it’s got to stop but, short of just waiting for all the ignorant old farts to die out, I’m not sure how.

Hearts and tigers!

So, both Valentine’s Day and CNY fall on Sunday this year. This means a double celebration for all those people of Chinese descent and all those hangers on (like me!) who just like to gorge on Chinese food goodies! However, I will say that this is NOT the time to go shopping. It’s a jungle out there!

After being solemnly informed by The Wast that J and I are not entitled to celebrate Valentine’s Day (“You’re already married, so you can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day and you only give flowers to girls you want to marry”), we probably won’t do very much. Our son’s right of course; Valentine’s Day is a day for lovers, not grumpy married couples with kids and warring domestic pets, so I hope that all lovers everywhere have a great day.

As for Chinese New Year …. Although I’m not an adherent of things mystical, I really do hope that the new year brings a change of luck for me. The last decade hasn’t been fantastic and I could do with being thrown balls of a different spin. To everyone celebrating CNY, have a great time and do take care on the roads, won’t you?

Monday and Tuesday are public holidays in the region, so I’m not sure if I’ll be sufficiently motivated to do a post. We’ll see.

And, in writing news, edits for “Singapore Sizzle” have come and gone, and I’m working on the second book in the “His Bodyguard” series and having a good time. Sian Bernardine and Chris Lance are quite different to Helen Collier and Yves de Saint Nerin, and so is the setting. More on that, maybe next week.

Have a good weekend everyone and have some fun.

Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.

BoingBoing is on fire at the moment with the case of Dr Peter Watts, a Canadian scientist and s-f writer who was held, beaten up and charged with assaulting a federal officer at the US-Canada border while on his way back to Canada after helping a USAian friend move house. For the record, he was beaten up by US guards, although Canadian authorities can be equally brutal, as the case of Robert Dziekański clearly attests.

BoingBoing are putting together a fund to help Dr Watts’ defence, and you can contribute via Paypal if you are so inclined. As a sideline, it’s an interesting observation that the USA is a place that makes a big deal about what “rights” a person has, until the time comes to actually exercise those rights (whether medical, economic, or judicial). At that point, you find out that the person with the most “rights” happens to be the one with the deepest pockets. Nobody else need apply.

What has been equally interesting to me have been the comments on BoingBoing, including a fair few that imply that Watts had it coming because he was probably “lippy” or “uppity”. And that got me thinking back to an incident at the Malaysia-Singapore border almost two years ago.

Lets face it, stalwart reader, you may think that being a writer is a cool thing but writers, by and large, really don’t fit into the normal, quiet mainstream population. They may seem quite okay from the outside, but there’s always some kind of dysfunction that separates them from the rest of the herd. And that dysfunction mostly manifests itself as questions. Writers need questions the way we need air. Without questions, quite simply, we wouldn’t exist. What if human civilisation dominated our galaxy? (Stories set in the Republic.) How would a romance work between a female bodyguard and the male she’s assigned to protect? (Guarding His Body) Is it possible for me to even think of a likely steampunk story and thus jump on the latest trend? (Alas, no.)

So, when questions are like life’s blood to us, it’s obvious that we will start asking them whenever something interesting happens. And therein lies the problem, because our Neo Dark Ages™ world doesn’t like questions. It doesn’t like anyone asking them or otherwise being lippy. Used to be that only applied to niggers, wogs, slopes, kikes, spics, etc., and women. But now, it doesn’t like anything other than silent subservience from anybody who doesn’t wear the appropriate uniform, period.

I’m reminded of the time our family crossed from Malaysia into Singapore. There were five of us, two adults with two kids, and J’s mother, who was visiting with us at the time. And it was also the time of the Mas Selamat flap. Singapore is very proud of Mas Selamat because he is their very own Muslim terrorist, and is thus like a badge of honour Singapore can wear and be inducted into the Western nations’ Hall of Countries Who Are So Wonderful That Everyone Else Wants To Have A Piece Of Us Out Of Sheer Jealousy. Unfortunately, this short man with a noticeable limp had escaped the detention centre by climbing out the bathroom window.

Anyway, the security at the border was pretty tight after he fleed (I believe he also threw spare rolls of toilet paper out the window before he jumped, to help cushion his fall) , and everyone had to submit thumbprints via an electronic reader, ostensibly to check against the thumbprints of Mas Selamat that Singapore had on record. They let our kids pass without any comment, but I had to wonder when they insisted that my mother-in-law submit to a scan. Yeah, I muttered to J, because Mas Selamat is so obviously hiding in the skin of an older, white woman from Europe.

If you tell me that this was not the smartest thing to do, especially within earshot of the Immigration official, I’ll agree with you. But, you know, it’s that question thing again that I was talking about. You think, “why the hell are they fingerprinting someone who so obviously isn’t Mas Selamat?” and, before your brain has time to answer “because it’s their job, stupid, just shut up”, your mouth opens and out comes some smart comment.

At this point, we were directed to another office, had our passports confiscated and were left watching a blank wall while the rest of the border world went on behind our backs. After twenty minutes, an officer came out, smiled, handed us our passports and told us we could go. No explanation was given, although she was very courteous. You’ll be pleased to know I kept my mouth shut that second time.

In retrospect, and after reading what Watts and others have gone through, we got off very very lightly. Which is scary when you realise that the courtesy in newly-developed or developing countries actually currently exceeds that in fully-developed countries. We may rant and rave about lots of things, but I wouldn’t want to be in the line entering the USA, Canada or the UK. In contrast, Singapore was an absolute cakewalk, despite my overt sarcasm. Terrifying, isn’t it?

It’s retail therapy time for the Augustin clan!

I’m over at Novel Spaces today, talking about why, if you love an author, you should buy direct from her/his publisher, rather than going through, say, Amazon. There’s some quick and dirty maths I set out, but I think you all can cope!

And today is a public holiday in Malaysia and Singapore. It’s Hari Raya Haji, which marks the end of the two-month pilgrimage period to Mecca. I found a site that has a great explanation of the festival, so go here and have a read.

Selamat Hari Raya Haji and have a good weekend everyone. I’ll catch you on Monday.

But from a different angle this time.

Malaysia is a beautiful country, and I’m not saying that just because I was born here. Coming back after decades away has meant that I see the country anew, with its sweeping vistas of green, hills and mountains draped in soft clouds, and the occasional touch of exoticism to tickle the fancy:

But Malaysia suffers from the same malady as most other Asian countries. It’s too good for the people. I’m referring to scenes such as the following from Sibu Island, as an example of the high regard with which Malaysians treat their natural environment:

And, my particular favourites, well above the tide line:

It appears that in both Singapore and Malaysia, used sanitary napkins are the female litter items du jour.

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why boast to other people about what a beautiful country Malaysia is, then throw your litter out of the window? Singaporeans, I’ve seen you driving along the North-South Expressway (in Malaysia), tossing out milkshake containers and burger wrappers with gay abandon. Do you have such little respect for others? No wonder Malaysians despise you. You do in other countries what you don’t have the cojones to do in your country and if you noticed any car occupant clapping and giving a thumbs up sign to you when you were pulled over by the police for speeding, that was probably me.

So, there are two issues here: one is the attitude of Malaysians to their own common space. To be blunt, it’s disgusting. The way a locale is maintained is a true indication of the level of communal pride of the locale’s inhabitants. It doesn’t matter if itinerants come through and litter; the residents have already organised — through their local councils — regular clean-up crews to deal with it. At least, that’s the way it should work. But the bureaucracy here is so lackadaisical that nothing seems to make a dent. Remember that email I sent to the Johor branch of Tourism Malaysia after our disastrous visit to Desaru Beach? Never heard boo back. Lazy bastards.

And let me tell you something else. The waters around Sibu Island are supposedly the Mersing Marine Park. which means it’s supposedly protected from fishing and marine development areas. But not only is dredging of marine rocks going on, but one resort is holding its fourth annual fishing competition soon! With prizes! And, of course, you’ve already seen the scenic pictures. If this is how a protected area of the country looks, you can just imagine the rest of it.

Don’t you understand, Asians? Not everything in the world revolves around YOU. And while you may know where you threw that broken glass bottle, how would you feel if one of your children cut their foot open while stepping on it? Or one of your grandchildren? Seemingly courteous and hospitable people from throughout the region are revolting primitives once you get them beyond the confines of their homes. And I don’t know what to do to help stop it.

What’s that, you say? Institute stiff penalties like Singapore does? (That don’t work anyway except for the touristy Orchard Road, Bukit Timah and Holland Village precincts, but that’s a different point.) Nope, that isn’t the solution. Externally-directed punitive measures fail the minute these people (and I use the term lightly) visit another country. Oh, Singaporeans will be law-abiding little rabbits when they go visit Western countries, cowed by the surrounding orang putih, but put them some place where they can feel superior to the locals (Indonesia, Malaysia, or Thailand, for example) and they revert to the littering, thoughtless bullies that they are.

Malaysia has problems. I know that. Got a couple of days? I’ll list them alphabetically for you, some from recent bitter experience. But while the locals can claim (illegitimately, in my opinion, but still) ignorance, there is absolutely no excuse for our supposedly superior and better-educated cousins across the Johor Strait. With regards to looking after the environment, Singapore, you can talk the talk, but you can’t walk the walk. Malaysians, I wonder when you’ll grow up and realise the environment isn’t your own personal rubbish bin. And for the country that is Malaysia, I continue to weep for you.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s time for me to take a break. Rather than post in a haphazard fashion and thus frustrate you, gentle reader, I’m giving myself till the end of the month to recharge. I’ll still be posting over at Novel Spaces on the 11 and 27 of this month, but Fusion Despatches (that’s this blog) will remain in suspended animation during that time.

This is the second week where a Wednesday has gone wrong. This time it was a telecommunications upgrade in our estate. So apologies for yesterday and here’s the post ….

In one of my less recent posts, I related the story of the young Indian checkout lady, looking for a Western man to marry. I ended with a rhetorical question regarding orang putih:

Only, you and I know that they’re not always all they’re cracked up to be either, don’t we?

The problem is this. When people see J and I together, they jump to a particular conclusion. This conclusion isn’t limited to people who live in south-east Asia. I’ve found it in every country I’ve lived in. And the conclusion is this: white man with an Asian woman, huh? Wow, he must really be a control freak. Probably couldn’t hack marrying another white woman because he has some kind of inferiority complex, so he went for a more docile Asian chick.

Now, anybody with that notion, if they ever care to speak to us, will be disabused of it quite smartly within — oh — about three nanoseconds. But, if they don’t, they’ll continue to think that. Even my friend Parvathy’s husband, Ramesh, confided the same to me during a characteristic Malaysian bout of offhand candour that still takes me by surprise from time to time.

“I looked at your husband,” Ramesh told me, “and I thought he was like all the other Western men. He looks so serious, I thought — for sure — he was a very arrogant and controlling man. Then I met him, and he is completely different to what I expected. He’s very friendly and gracious and I like him very much. He’s very different to the kind of Western man I usually meet.” Now Ramesh has had a lot to do with all kinds of — literally, thousands of — people for decades, being a senior public servant associated with immigration matters, so I found it an interesting vindication of my own personal observations of how Western men are perceived in south-east Asia.

Bear with me while I attempt to pull some threads together. (Fair warning: I may not succeed.) First, there are a lot of independently-minded Asian women out there. Second, there are, by sheer geographical circumstance, fewer single Western men available. Using the law of supply and demand, supply thus significantly outstrips demand. And, just as with house-buying, where a seller’s market means the vendor can ask for more money, a supply overbalance means the Western men can be as arrogant as they want and still score the women. Just keep your eyes open on a Friday night around Singapore’s inner-city streets and you’ll see what I mean.

Secondly, it requires a certain amount of courage to approach somebody and a tad more than that again to approach somebody not of your default cultural group. So, it’s the more aggressive people who are going to score first. And where you have people with those bigger risk-taking characteristics, I believe you have a greater propensity to, shall we say, a certain brashness in their approach.

Thirdly, within this narrow context, who are the orang putih men who move to s-e Asia? For a start, they are not the staid types, content to potter around their little corner of England, or wherever, till the day they die. They are usually open to adventure, to the exotic, to the lure of money and prestige. And they are either young … or getting on in middle age.

What do you get when you put all these together? They are not so much relationships as business transactions, to my mind. Each party has certain social and mercantile expectations that they believe only the other can satisfy, whether it be the lure of a slim, exotic-looking woman who gazes adoringly at you while you drop a couple of thousand dollars at the nearest Isetan store, or a White Man you can flaunt to your local friends who isn’t as sensitive to Saving Face or appearances. In fact, the white man is focused almost entirely on appearances, but it’s just that his idea of them meshes with the woman’s rather better than a local man’s.

Within this seething milieu of money, cachet and smooth, submissive skin up for grabs, how many genuine relationships do you think get forged? So I can certainly understand the scepticism with which my own marriage is viewed, although that’s becoming less obvious and more tinged with respect now that we’re getting older and it’s obvious J isn’t with me because of my svelte figure, teetering heels or perky breasts. (Ah gravity, thou art a bitch!*)

Still, in such an environment, it’s difficult to separate the mercantile from the genuine and it colours (oops, sorry, bad pun) all views of Asian-other couples. I’m sorry to say, even mine.

(I know I have quite a few Singaporeans reading this blog. Any of you like to weigh in?)

(*) Quote from Sheldon Cooper, “Big Bang Theory”.

I see them around a lot, particularly when I visit Singapore. Young women in faded t-shirts and capri pants, long straight hair pulled back and tied, backs eternally bent, picking up a child, carrying grocery bags, or plucking a dropped possession from the floor. I see them in restaurants, sitting off to one side, maybe cradling a tall glass of carbonated drink if they’re lucky but, more often than not, feeding a toddler or infirm adult or patting a baby to sleep. In Singapore, they are called Foreign Domestic Workers, and they are everywhere. And I don’t know what to think of them.

In 2007 (I think) geneticist J. Craig Venter made a comment about the movie Blade Runner in Wired magazine. And he said:

“The movie has an underlying assumption that I just don’t relate to: that people want a slave class. As I imagine the potential of engineering the human genome, I think, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have 10 times the cognitive capabilities we do have? But people ask me whether I could engineer a stupid person to work as a servant. I’ve gotten letters from guys in prison asking me to engineer women they could keep in their cell. I don’t see us, as a society, doing that.”
– from Wired interview with Ridley Scott on “Blade Runner”

If I had enough money, I’d buy Dr Venter a ticket to Singapore to see for himself the slave class that, it seems, everyone does want. Dr Venter’s “guys in prison” are us. And it’s not a good look.

The problem is, it’s like winning the lottery. You’ve always wanted a lot of money but, now that you’ve got it, you don’t know what to do with it. FDWs are like that too. Everyone thinks they want one but, once they get one, they really don’t know how to behave.

Just because someone can afford an FDW doesn’t mean they should have one. I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve read of workers being physically and sexually abused by their employers, to the point of malnutrition, severe injury, repeated sexual assault and death. And it only takes a brief stroll through the expat fora to also read first-hand anecdotes of expat children slapping their servants or yelling at them, all without a single word of retribution from their parents. One long-time (English) resident of Singapore gets so incensed, he deliberately makes it a point to film any child on his mobile phone abusing his/her maid in public just to try and shame the parents into decency.

And because I was curious about this whole situation, I visited a few maid-hiring websites, only to find that most these women are wives and mothers themselves who have left their husbands and children behind so they could go overseas and earn better money to send home. One site suggested that, in order to maintain good relations, employers should let their maids phone home once a week for a limited time and fly home for a holiday every two years. Such actions would result in a “grateful” worker. Could you, I wonder, stand to see your children only once every two years, or talk to them for only 20 minutes one day a week? And, in between, pick up after your masters, cook the food, babysit the kids, wash the windows and car, and go to sleep every night in a tiny non air-conditioned space with zero privacy? I know this because our Singapore apartment had a Maid’s Room, which doubled as a pantry, and I wouldn’t have been so heartless as to put our cats in there to sleep, much less a fellow human being.

But, on the other hand, I have no reply for those people who say that this is the only way for poor families from other countries to try and get ahead. And surely having one ill-mannered child yell at you is better than working 16 hours a day in a locked, uninsulated warehouse making sneakers or clothes for wealthy patrons till your fingers bleed. The problem is so big, the objections so practised, that I feel impotent before them.

And don’t think I’m singling out only Western people here, although they do tend to go a bit crazy the moment they realise they can afford servants in this part of the world. Wealthier Asians have servants too. Hell, I had them growing up — my parents employed a nanny, a cook, a gardener, a house-cleaner, and a driver. As the spoilt child of privileged parents, I used to order them around with impunity, and I cringe now every time I recollect it. J, as a male growing up in socialist Europe, is horrified by the concept of the FDW. He considers the employment of overseas servants as a manifestation of sociopathy.

It probably doesn’t surprise you to know that we don’t have a live-in maid/servant. The kids help us vacuum the place, brush the cats, sort their own laundry, and are often marched into their rooms to tidy up their beds and toy piles themselves. We’ve also started teaching them how to cook.

If we ever needed extra help around the house for any reason (and it would need to be a pretty big reason), I would choose a local casual worker. Someone who could do a few hours’ work and go back to their family at the end of the day. Not someone who would be at the mercy of my largesse. Who’d have to work 7 days a week with only one day off a month. Who’d only hear her child’s voice at the end of a crackling line once a week. Who’d have the threat of deportation constantly hanging over her head. Who’d have to sleep among the sacks of rice and towers of tinned goods in the stifling heat while I sleep in air-conditioned comfort.

These women, torn from their home communities, look so sad, so resigned, so worn-out, that I feel almost physically hurt every time I see them. Except for an accident of birth, I could be that person. And so could you. And if you and I deserve dignity and respect, then so do they.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m sorry if I’m making it appear that only Singapore has the problem of mistreating servants. It’s a pervasive problem. Hell, it’s human nature.