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15 – Music Video
Enjoy it, people. And watch the full-length feature, if you can.
Dick Lee songs….
We must eradicate violence firmly.
Links out: Yahoo! News on shooting
Same Same but Different
This story’s about two people gave me charity while I was wandering through Asia. I must have looked like a tramp yet… well… you can read for yourself.
***
There is man called Kassim, I say ‘is’ because he still lives in northern Malaysia. I met him at a beach in Terengganu while resting my weary feet on a thick wooden bench. He has a small white car where the backseat was filled with carpets. He scrunched up to the wheel when he drove. “The Russian Boy is eighteen years old. Sama sama like you. Walking and walking. I gave him a lift and brought him to my house. He stayed for two hours; from 12 to 2pm.” Kassim reminisced just before he stopped the car. He went into a house to do some business with people.
There is a man called Lek. I hope ‘is’ because bombs were exploding with alarming regularity in Thailand’s Deep South. I met him while asking for directions in Yala. He puttered up to me on his rickety motorcycle. He also owns two big cars: a Volvo and a Honda. I happily stretched out my legs in them. “There is a famous Chinese stall there. Many people go there to eat. A bomb exploded and killed twelve people.” Lek pointed out a shuttered shop as he spun his Volvo to the left. He showed me Yala town: bombed shops; Muslim schools; deserted parks spanning the river’s length.
The man called Kassim speaks little English and much Malay. “I have five children. Three sons besar. They have own children. Two children still kechil. They are in Pakistan.” he said over a dinner of Nan, Dhal and Kema. After dinner, we ran into Kassim’s younger compatriot who respectfully greeted us with handshakes and fingers on the elbow of his outstretched arm. They spoke at length in Pakistani; the younger man bent forward a little and deferred much to Kassim.
The man called Lek speaks some English and much Thai. “Two years ago, Yala was nice and clean. Now it is dirty. Everyone is afraid of foreigners because we are afraid that they bring bombs here.” Grey rain stormed and howled outside the café where we had strong black coffee and weak tea. The only other customer was a young girl wearing a tudung (Islamic headdress). She moved inside the café to avoid the deluge.
The man called Kassim lives in a little wooden house hidden with other small wooden houses in a tiny lane off the main road. The rooms are barren but plush Persian carpets cover the floor. White cotton robes hang from nails pounded into rough wooden walls. There is running water, electric lights and little else. “I hope you don’t mind my house. My house is bad. Not beautiful because I live alone. But it is home.” He said as he held the car wheel steady over the stony and bumpy lane.
The man called Lek lives in a double-storey house made of clean ceramic tiles and painted concrete. Inside the house, shelves overflow with books and academic journals. Old Buddha statues cluster in a corner with his collection of old watches. The TV is hidden in a recessed shelf and a laptop connects him to the internet. “Welcome to my home!” Lek exclaimed as he stood outside the main door. His arms were wide open as if ready to give me a bear hug.
In the house of Kassim, I watch Kassim spread out a mat and change his skullcap. He stands on the mat and puts his hands on his belly. He mutters and inhales deeply every so often. Then, he kneels and presses his forehead against the mat. He repeats the process a few times. “Come, I finish praying. We go eat now.” Kassim prays once more when we get back.
In the house of Lek, I saw Lek flush red as he looked at his phone in disgust “My uncle in Bangkok called me and ask me why why? Why I take a foreigner in my house?” All his and his family’s photographed past stared out from the walls. “You saw my friend at the photo shop. They called my uncle and he called me just now. I cannot understand them. I think I am right to take you into my house.” I say nothing but nod in commiseration.
That night, in the house of Kassim, I slept in my sleeping bag and swatted buzzing insects from my face. Kassim snored gently on the floor next to me; he is enveloped by an inverted mosquito basket (a mosquito net which stands on its own). It is deathly quiet and peaceful. I had trouble sleeping. Damn those mosquitoes!
That night, in the house of Lek, I slept on a mattress in his living room. We had been chatting away until midnight. I woke up to something snort, grunt and roar. There it was again; blasphemous obscenities growling from hell’s depths: words from the soldier who was killed just last week by a robber two doors from the house? I had trouble going back to sleep.
The next morning, we said goodbye at the bus station. I waited until Kassim’s little white car dwindled into a speck on the long road out / Lek’s rickety motorcycle turned the corner. Then I sat on my backpack and waited for a bus to rumble to a stop before me.
Lek and Kassim. The former: a Buddhist, academic and collector of fine, old things. The later: a Muslim, itinerant salesman and far from home.
They’re both same same but different.
| Yala What to do Damn fine question. Getting there From Betong: By taxi or mini-bus (2 ½ hours, 100 bht one-way) From Malaysia: By train from Butterworth or Kota Bahru Sleeping Jertih Getting there Notes |
Journey – Malaysia to Thai border
Don’t get me wrong. I like excellent transportation networks. They facilitate trade, better standards of living and excise a little prejudice in a horribly biased world. But it is bad travelling. Travelling should be eventful; travelling should be insightful. But most of all, travelling must show you a life that isn’t yours.
That is why I will take the long way up.
I’ll start out from Jertih and cut horizontally across northern Malaysia into Pasir Puteh; Machang; Tanah Merah; Jeli; Gerik; last stop in Malaysia: Keroh. Then I’ll head upwards through the mountains of southern Thailand and into Betong.
Instead of hiking, as I’ve done along the east coast, I decide to travel on public buses. I’ll eat just one square meal. It comes, partly, from wanting to see how much I can handle but mostly, my funds are quickly disappearing. I need to make every Malaysian Ringgit count. The rules are set. I leave Jertih in the morning and expect to enter Thailand later on same evening.
It doesn’t quite happen that way.
***
I’m on the bus to Machang now.
It plunges along one of the many tar veins in Malaysia. Rubber trees and wild undergrowth wall us in while unruly branches scritch-scratch at the bus’s metal skin. The bus stops here and there for passengers to get on and off. I’m surprised that there’s civilization here; brick houses with satellite dishes and beat-up cars. I spy a section of the Jungle Railway – a slow mail train that chugs through the jungles – hidden behind some shrubbery.
The bus finally pulls into Machang and plugs a gap in the phalanx of buses. The driver pulls several levers and pushes some buttons. The bus shudders orgasmically and goes dead. I get off and make on unsteady legs for the ticketing office.
Malay women in tudungs (traditional Islamic headgear) mill around politely in Machang’s bus terminal. There’s a big board tacked outside the office that displays bus schedules. The next bus leaves in five minutes.
I arrive at its entrance dry-mouthed and red-faced. My backpack is skewed to one side. I climb hand over foot into another metal monster.
“Pergi Mana?” says the Malay driver kindly.
“Pergi Tanah Merah.” I drop the appropriate levy into his hand. He returns me a wisp of paper with badly printed numbers.
I take a seat somewhere in the middle and pull the window open. I like the roaring wind; it sounds like women screaming loud abuse. Too long in the wind and my face feels covered by spider webs. It’s a rare, wonderful sensation.
It takes me more than an hour to get to Tanah Merah. I look at the passengers around me in between states of fugue. They’re never the same from one moment to the next.
They start off as a gaggle of ditzy young girls. All dressed in modern clothes and sporting long shiny, black hair. They laugh at my attempts to get directions from them. It turns out that none of them speak any English. My Malay is too primitive to ask directions with. They laugh beautifully and it annoys me. Don’t they have school? I turn away from them and look out of the same-same landscape of rubber tree plantations.
The next time I look back, halfway to Tanah Merah, they’ve morphed into an old woman clutching overly full plastic bags. There are boxes and boxes of unknown stuff in those bags. There are bright green vegetables crammed together with cylinders of brown Dodol (Durian sweet cakes). She is sleeping soundly. Her mouth droops open and I see strong yellow teeth. It complements her lacy white tudung. I turn away from her and re-enter my fugue.
There is loud talking behind me. It sounds much too young to belong to the old woman, and the schoolgirls have alit from the bus. I’m curious to whom the talking belongs to. I look back once more.
The old woman has turned into a gang of surly teenagers. They look like month-old zombies: stringy muscle show up clearly against their uniforms of tight Che Guevera t-shirts and pipe jeans; hunger is evident in their smiles, the ends of which point downwards and something nasty glints in their eyes. I look away quickly.
The passengers behind me are never the same when I look back. But the wind never changes. It howls horribly into my face like warrior women roaring for blood.
***
Gerik. 10 am.
That’s what the notice board at the bus terminal says. No more buses for the day. I have to stay the night in Jeli; an absurdly dead town. It’s Friday – Sabbath for Moslems in this state. No wonder none of the shops will open for business.
Jeli’s bus terminal is tiny – three rows of ten plastic chairs occupy half the terminal. There are never enough people to fill up a quarter of the seats. The bus terminal has a fleet of six buses that leave and return like clockwork.
Where will I stay? I don’t see any hotels nearby. Besides, I do not have enough money for a hotel room. I curse and swear under my breath. I plonk my backpack on one of the seats. My stomach sinks and I don’t know what to do now.“Kau balik Tanah Merah,” says one of the bus drivers.
“Tak mau. Aku pergi Gerik.” I will not retrace my route. He shrugs and disappears into the ticketing office. I had stayed overnight in Jerantut bus terminal while waiting for the bus to Taman Negara National Park earlier in my trip. I could do the same here.
I sidle up to the ticketing office. There is a door inside that leads to a room which should be the drivers’ resting place. There are two people in the ticketing office. One of them has kind, crinkly eyes. The other has a curly black beard.
“Hello. Can I sleep in bus office tonight?” I say as clearly as I can through the window.
“No. I’m sorry but my boss cannot allow people to sleep in the office. You can put your bag here because I will lock the room tonight and you can get it tomorrow morning. You can sleep on the chairs outside.” says the man with kind, crinkly eyes.
“Oh. Is it safe here?”
“Yes. I think so.” He looks at me as if I had asked if the sun would rise tomorrow. “It’s not a big city.”
Afternoon. I try to hitch-hike my way out to Gerik. No one stops for me; a bald guy in a ratty singlet displaying outstretched up-turned thumb and a wooden board with “GERIK” in bold, black lettering. All the drivers stare at me with huge disbelieving eyes as they zoom past.
My best hope comes in the form of a middle-aged couple who are waking up from a short nap in their car. The car looks lived-in. There is a small mountain of junk in their back seat.
“Excuse me, abang. Pergi Gerik?”
The portly man looks at me and nods his head. He’s smiling for some strange reason.
“Can I…”
“No.” cuts in the woman, “We are not going to Gerik.”
I stand there awkwardly. The man whimpers obedience. He never looks me in the eye afterwards. Mumbling apologies, I step away and pray fervently that she becomes a nubile virgin for the endless pleasure of those who died for the Jihad. Bitch.
Evening. Fine sand skitters across the concrete floor as prayers blare from a nearby mosque. The few people disappear. Far-away lights illuminating someplace else tease out long shadows from nearby buildings. The man with kind, crinkly eyes locks the door to the ticketing office. He winds a length of chain around the handles and fastens them together with a sturdy padlock. I sullenly watch him.
“I am sorry that I cannot bring you to my house to sleep but my father, my brothers, their families, my wife and my child live in my house. There is no space. Good night. I will see you tomorrow.” and he roars off in his red, flat Proton.
Then I’m alone.
I unroll my sleeping bag onto a bench and wait. It’s too early for sleep. I eat my dinner – a packet of rice bought for me by the man with kind, crinkly eyes. The call for Allah’s faithful to prayer echoes in the deadness. I leave my bench to throw away the packet and wash my hands.
I find, on returning, that a frumpled old woman has hijacked my bench.
“Get up!”
“Grrr… Urmph…” she babbles something else that I don’t understand. Her fleshy arms hang loosely over the bench.
“Bench. Aku! Go away! You take those seats!” I draw myself up. I outweigh her at least by half. She mutters darkly under her breath but gets up from the bench. I see a little fear in her wide eyes and feel pleased at myself. I have won my bench back. I snuggle into my sleeping bag; my eyes squeeze tight. Hopefully nothing comes crawling out from the deeply black spots.
I snap awake!
Ominous chanting. It grows louder. It’s broken by snorts and gurgles. The chanting restarts. It grows louder. It’s broken by snorts and gurgles. The chanting runs on eternal-repeat mode – chant, snort, gurgle, chant, snort, gurgle.
I cannot move. I don’t dare to look up. Please, please, don’t let there be something else here. Something just touched my leg! Chanting, chanting. Calling Malayan demons to worship: blood-loving pregnant women; waddling blue-veined foetuses; flying heads dangling intestines; lechers lathered with black oil.
Slowly, I crane my neck upwards. My spine creaks too loudly. I open my eyes. There is nothing around me. Maybe the monstrous faithful are invisible. Chanting, chanting. I must find out who’s that chanting. I crane my neck further upwards and see a baggy silhouette at the edges of the terminal.
Harsh tobacco stinks up the terminal. A red dot flares. Chanting, chanting. It’s coming from the frumpled old lady whom I forced off the bench. She’s at the other end of the terminal and points accusingly at some dark corner. Oh god. She’s pointing at the clump of banana trees just hidden around the corner. Is she calling to beautiful blood-spirits living in those trees?
She swears loudly, snorts then goes quiet. She takes the time to light a cigarette. Its harsh incense fills the terminal. Oh god. I’m alone with this mad woman. What will she do to me?
Chanting, chanting again. Maybe if I ignore her, she’ll ignore me. I slouch far into my sleeping bag. Again, my eyes are shut tight. It’s silent once more. I drift off to sleep.
She screams! I’m jolted awake. Then it’s quiet. I sleep again, chanting my own curse on her, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” She scolds that dark corner. She mutters darkly under her voice and waves her arms around. She rants and rants meaningless messages. She walks up and down beside me while doing all those things.
I do not sleep for the rest of the night.
“Was last night ok?” inquires the man with kind, crinkly eyes.
***
I shiver while seating on a hard rock. My fellow passengers hug their jackets closer as they eat breakfast at the rest station: Nasi Lemak (coconut rice) and sweet coffee. I am dizzy. My last meal was in Jeli and it is now early afternoon. But I cannot afford any more food. There might not be enough money for the bus to Thailand.
I want to go now; get out of the cold.
But we’ll be here for a while. The bus-driver is dragging plastic bag after plastic bag of burger buns out from the bus’s storage bins. He deposits each bag in front of a smiling man who, in turn, calls his boy to carry them into a room.
This is a rest-stop on the highest point of the East-West highway. It took us the whole morning to get here: 150 kilometres from Jeli by my reckoning. The engine made far too much noise as the bus crawled up the mountains. I was worried that it’ll sputter, smoke then die on us. But it didn’t.
It has to go faster from here on. After all, we can only go downhill.
Time to go. I get back into the bus and take my place. As the bus chugs downhill, I sway between a bony man and a petulant young punk. My backpack is squashed against someone’s leg and mine. It’s cold in here as well. Iron-tasting air chugs out from the air vents. It eddies down to my feet.
The way to Gerik is bounded on one side by tree-tops which almost touch the asphalt road. I cannot see where they begin. It’s just shadow underneath. Flicker. Flicker. The leaves blur into a moving picture mottled sunlight and shadows. We cross over an azure reservoir with brown sticks impaled into the water. There are chalets sprawling on the hillside. Why will someone come out here to stay the weekend?
It takes us another one and a half hours to get into Gerik. The bus station is a massive construction of concrete, tile and people. It looks prosperous as compared to the dinky towns that I’ve passed by earlier. Eventually, I board another bus, this time dimmer and much stuffier. It is helmed by a surly young driver who doesn’t much care for questions.
I alight at Keroh, a mere 6 kilometres from the Malaysian-Thai border. There is a bus to the border but I’ll have to wait for it to arrive. I trudge into a bus office. A pretty girl in clinging yet flowing clothes sits in there. She’s unsure what to make of me.
“Excuse me! Have bus to Thailand?”
She rattles off a string of words. I have no idea what’s she saying but I understand the shake of her head. No bus for today. Not again!
“Terimah Kasih.”
I trudge back out of the office and sit on the steps. I’m almost at the end. So close that I could hotfoot it.
The past 25 hours had me at the mercy of mismatched bus schedules, wild bus rides; showed me a crazy woman; starved me until a man with kind, crinkly eyes gave me charity; taught me that people fear strangers; exposed me for the bully that I am; uncovered towns bypassed by everyone except for satellite TV and and now… well, now what?
I hail an old taxi helmed by an old man with fake teeth. It turns out I have just enough for the ride to the border.
Lunch at Din Tai Fung. Apr 14
I couldn’t think right. What should I eat? Where should I eat? My stomach gurgles. It demanded to be fed. I wandered up and down Takashimaya. I went into Wisma Atria. I saw Din Tai Fung. I’m surprised. The usual hordes aren’t there yet.
Here’s a snapshot of my thoughts, ‘Heh. Food. I need fo Oooo…. Dumplings. I haven’t had dumplings in a while. Look! There’s Din Tai Fung. Mmmm… Din Tai Fung dumplings. Yum yum. Not many there? I go! Rush now! Go Go Go!’
And so I went down.
***
Queues are the barometer of tasty food in Singapore. If you want something good to eat, then you need to join a queue. Din Tai Fung takes the cake for queues. Mealtime hordes wait patiently outside the restaurant to enter the inner sanctum. Not surprising, since the Taiwanese restaurant supposedly offers the best xiao long bao (aka steamed pork dumplings) in Singapore.
Ahhh… xiao long baos: sachets of pork meat and rich brown soup. Each dough sachet is as thin as a Japanese paper window and the fillings show up as silhouettes under just-right light. The Taiwanese name for sachets of that quality is ‘Q’. I’ve had similar dumplings in China and it blew my taste buds out of my mouth. Would the xiao long baos at Din Tai Fung (version Singapore) satisfy me?
***
I stood infront of the reception counter. There was a moon-faced lady smartly dressed in waiter black and white. She blinked at me once, “How many people?”
“Just one. Me.”
She handed over a fill-it-in-yourself menu. On the top right hand corner rests a scribbled 139.
That’s me. Number 139. I have to wait for my number to show up on the red number counter overhanging a gloriously oversized menu. It’s showing 136 now. Nothing for me to do except to slaver over the menu.
Din Tai Fung copes with the daily hordes by feeding its customers assembly-line style. Here’s how it works: get a seating ticket; look at the pretty menu and fill in the fill-it-in-yourself menu; wait for your number to blink on a display screen; be escorted to your table; sit; hand over the filled in fill-it-in-yourself menu to a smartly dressed waitress; little dishes of ginger and cups of tea magically appear; wait for your food to swing by; gobble down your scalding xiao long baos; haul ass out of the restaurant.
Their assembly-line approach minimizes waiting times for tables and food. However, its efficiency makes me feel insignificant – a little cog in a great, churning machine.
10 minutes.
*BLINK* 139 *BLINK*
My table is between a pair of leggy Russian blondes and a lonely middle-aged man. I handed over my menu to a waitress. She, a rosy-cheeked alabaster complexioned girl, confirmed my order in lilting Mandarin. I failed miserably at imitating her accent.
The restaurant was walled in by sound. Click, clack chopsticks. Hurried, scuffling shoes on linoleum. The tables were so close that I could hear every word but I didn’t understand Russian. Snatches of talk clashed away with piston-like urgency. A group of burly men and women laughed loudly in the middle of the restaurant.
Din Tai Fung uses an open kitchen concept which means everyone can see what’s going on in the kitchen. The kitchen was fenced in by clear windows. An army of white-clad cooks – complete with face masks and little caps – busily put together xiao long baos. Everyone has a specific role in the assembly-line: Sachet-makers roll out and flip skinny dough pancakes in front of the stuffer. The stuffer fills up the sachets with pork and gelatin. He also presses out Din Tai Fung’s signature 18-pleats on top. Each sachet is placed into a round bamboo basket. When the basket is full, it is sent to the steaming room. After it’s cooked, a chef hurries reams of steaming-hot xiao long baos to their final destinations.
Five minutes after I’ve sat down, one of the white-clad chefs swung by my table. He was hugging reams of bamboo baskets. I could barely see his torso. He dispensed one bamboo basket on my table and muttered, “Thank you, enjoy your meal.” into my xiao long baos before he swung away.
Thus on my table, I had a bamboo basket of 10 xiao long baos and a bowl of sour-spicy soup. I popped one of the xiao long baos into my mouth and bit down hard. It exploded. Rich soup scalded my palate and inundated my tongue with meaty essence. Its opulent flavor drove away the taste of other food. For a long, painful half-minute, I knew nothing else apart from that sachet’s contents. But it was different from the ones that I had in China. It must be the pork; it’s always less fat in Singapore. The ones in China had more robust and heavier flavors.
After the first one, I ate the rest of them slowly.
Bad move. They’re best eaten hot. When cooled, the soup, while still laden with flavor, seemed to coagulate a little. And the xiao long bao skin isn’t as pliable as before. Despite that, I was surprised by its consistency – each one tastes the same as the one before it. There’s hardly any variation between each dumpling; now that’s quality.
After a xiao long bao, the sour-spicy soup was quite ordinary. It was chockfull of ingredients: beancurd fries; crunchy wood ears (a fungus: 木耳); twisted morsels of meat. It wasn’t as spicy as it could have been. An eminently forgettable dish.
Customers came and went. I finished my food and smartly-dressed waitresses bundled the remains away. It’s busy busy busy in the restaurant. No time to slow down. Apparently, the flagship restaurant in Taipei gently ushers customers out after 45 minutes into their lunch. I didn’t stay long enough to test it.
As I left, I saw the menu again. It was a glorious montage of all their dishes. I wanted a snapshot but was stopped by the moon-faced lady at the reception counter. She clucked her hands and flapped her arms at me.
“Sir! You cannot photograph the menu.”
“Why not?”
She gave me a dirty look. Maybe she’s not used to queries outside the standard ‘How long will I have to wait for my table?’ She ran off to get another smartly dressed lady to talk to me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell the difference between them.
I waited at the entrance; my camera in hand. The reception lady pointed me out and sulked back to her counter. The smartly and similarly dressed lady said in Mandarin, “I’m sorry, sir. I cannot let you photograph the menu.”
“Why?”
“Even if you go to the other restaurants, they will not let you photograph the menu.”
“Why?”
“It’s the restaurant’s rules. Even if you go to other restaurants, they will not let you photograph the menu.”
How could I argue with hand-me-down authority? No matter what I could say, all I would get would be a repeated party line, “It’s the restaurant’s rules…”
So I left the restaurant – full on juicy xiao long baos and “It’s the restaurant’s rules…”
* Photos taken from http://chingling.net (A blog by a babelicious lady). The original posting can be found here.
| Din Tai Fung
Where: When: What’s good: Cost: Notes: |
Asian times
“Dude. You know what your problem is? You’re too punctual.”
I’ve never imagined that punctuality was a problem. Yet, my friend’s words – he was probing the root of my grouchiness after I had waited 45 minutes for him – cut true. In a nation of chronic belated-ers, the punctual are aberrations and abominations.
Already, I hear the belated-ers cheer, “Of course! YOU SHOULD LEARN TO BE LATE! I can’t just put my things aside just to meet you!”
And we do learn. We learn that we can waltz in unapologetically without censure – it happens only if you look guilty; we learn to anticipate the arrival of the worst belated-er so that they, not us, are the first to arrive; we learn to lie on our handphones. Here’s an example: “Oi Edwin? X. I’ll be late by ten minutes. I’m on the way.” But X has just stepped out of the front door and is far from getting there.
In fact, an editorial in the Sunday Times (a March weekend) asserted that handphones destroyed punctuality, eroded discipline and screwed over our time management. We can call our appointments anytime (usually ten minutes before we’re due) and shift it backwards – as shown earlier. No need to panic. Conversely, without her handphone, the writer was on time for all her appointments. She was panicking over missing her appointments. The editorial suggested that the fault belongs to the damn handphone.
Bull crap.
The truth is: we’re Asians. And Asians aren’t very punctual.
Howls: “How can this be? Look at Changi airport! It’s first-class and everything runs on time! Look at the buses and trains in Thailand. They’re on time! Malaysian buses run on time! How dare you say Asians are not punctual!”
But these are businesses. And time-sensitive businesses too, where delays mean less money. Knowing Asians; money-making takes priority. Also, I’m not talking about businesses. I’m talking about ordinary appointments with ordinary folks: going to a movie, getting dinner, going for drinks, or a book-club discussion.
That’s where we fail to keep time. Much of it can be traced to our cultural attitudes. South-east Asians are remarkably laidback. Each country has a mantra for it: Malays say, “Relac.” Thais say, “Sanuk.” Laotians say, “Sabai.”
It’s common to see south-east Asians sway on hammocks, lounge on verandahs, sip coffee and chat away the afternoon. It’s also common to see lunch extending into dinner and supper. We’re so laissez faire that we move as if we’re wading in molasses. We do not hurry through everyday living. Also, our timeliness is taken quite lightly and with a large pinch of salt.
“It can’t apply to Singaporeans! We’re cosmopolitan! We don’t have our own word for being laidback! We’re very advanced (in a very western way)! Everything runs on time!”
That’s all quite true. But despite our ‘supposed’ advancements, we are still Asians; immigrants from regions who like to take it easy. So, culturally speaking, it seems that Singaporeans are cursed to be chronically late except for the few aberrations and abominations.
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Tips on being punctual:
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Wend Right 