Number Eleven Singapore Flyer
14 February 2013

Kaye and I headed down to West Coast Park again, this time turning east. Most of that part of the park is behind a big port facility, so you can't see the water. (But you can watch the big cranes and lifts pick up shipping containers.) At the end of the park is the Food Wholesale Centre, where most of the food that arrives by ship passes through. It's amazing how many onions this island uses. Even though it was a Sunday evening, there were still a few vendors set up. Got some carrots and celery for cheap, then bought a piece of turmeric. I'd only seen dried turmeric before; it's a variety of yellow ginger. It will turn your knife orange for about a week.

The Istana (kind of the Singapore White House) is only open to the public a few days a year. One of Kaye's friends from docent training was leading a tour, so it was motivation to visit the building and the grounds. You are only allowed into the ground-floor rooms, but they had two of them set up with the many state gifts from other countries. There were some groups outside entertaining throughout the day. One group was wearing flowery shirts -- they explained to us that they were an "ersatz Hawaiian ukelele band". (It's interesting to see the different activities offered at the community centers. Some are not surprising, such as Tai Chi and calligraphy, but ukelele and line dancing are both popular, too.)

Afterwards, we went next door to Plaza Singapura for lunch and a movie. Lunch was from an Osaka-style tepan grill, and featured "Okonomiyaki" -- essentially a pancake with flour, grated yam, egg and shredded cabbage. I had a variety with noodles inside and shaved pork on the top. The interesting thing about the movie is that they still have assigned seats in some of the theaters here.

Our friends Clay & Erika passed through shortly after on the way to Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand. Clay was a diligent food researcher, and headed us out to the Old Airport Road hawker center. With four people instead of two you get a 200% boost in efficiency - one person holds the table, while there are three to wait in line at different stalls. We had one of my favorites, which is Nonya dumplings. These consist of glutinous rice around a sweet or savory filling folded up in bamboo leaves to from tetrahedra, which are then steamed. (Kaye and I saw dumplings being made in Joo Chiat, and figured out that the way the shops keep track of which has which filling is by the color of the strings they are tied in.)

Digression: The "Old Airport" was Kallang airport. The landing strip was originally a circular grass field, so planes could land into the wind from any direction. There was also a jetty protecting a docking area for float planes. This area now houses a sports complex, where the National Stadium is currently being rebuilt. It will have the world's largest dome roof when finished. The Kallang Terminal is a wonderful Art Deco building that is still visible on the other side of the highway from the stadium. It seems to be in good shape, but it is not currently occupied. There are also some original hangars, but they look the worse for wear. Before Kallang was Seletar Airbase (which still exists as a civilian airport) and after Kallang came Paya Lebar Airport (which is now a military airbase). Singapore's current commercial airport is at Changi, at the far east side of the island, which has the advantage that planes can take off and land over water.

From the hawker center, we headed down to Gardens by the Bay. The gardens are being constructed at a cost of SG$1 billion, and opened this past summer. The most extensive part is the south garden, which is behind the Marina Bay Sands hotel. The signature attractions are the domes and the Supertrees. The domes are a pair of conservatories, featuring different climates. The Cloud Forest dome features a six-story waterfall from a central crag that you ascend by elevator, then work your way down. At the top is a small pond featuring carnivorous pitcher plants of all sizes, and one level inside features cave formations and crystals. There are also various points you can look out from behind the waterfall. The Flower Dome has a milder, dry climate, with cacti, baobabs, bottle trees and ancient olive trees. One marvels at what must have been involved in getting mature trees moved from across the globe and planted. (A few trees look like they might not make it.) The center area has changing plantings -- it had a Thanksgiving theme when we were there. There are also a number of outdoor gardens with various themes: food trees, palms, colonial plants, and Malay, Chinese and Indian gardens. In the center of the outdoor gardens is a plaza of "Supertrees" -- artificial structures with plants growing on the outside. Many of them disguise inlets and outlets for the systems that support the domes, but one has a restaurant at the top. At night they light up.

Our friends David and Susie paid us a visit over Thanksgiving weekend. (I'll report on our Melaka trip in my next installment.) Our usual stop the first day with guests is The National Museum, which gives a good introduction to history and culture. While I have been there several times now, I still manage to learn something new. This time, it was the Chettiars, members of merchant castes from southern India, who the British brought in as intermediaries between British banks and local borrowers. They would come to Singapore for two years at a time and live in a kittangi that served both as residence and place of business for multiple money-lenders. It was a somewhat circumscribed life. They lived as bachelors (though they may have had family back home). A Chettiar would conduct business in the kittangi in the morning and early afternoon. In the later afternoon he might go out an visit clients who hadn't made their payments that day. Then a visit to a Hindu temple, dinner and back to the kittangi by 7p, after which he'd stay in for the rest of the evening, socializing with others who lived there. One of the exhibits is a money-lender's "office", which is just a small wooden box, with paper, pens, a ledger, a cylindrical ruler (for making lines in the ledger), stamps (required on certain documents), a picture of Ganesh and an almanac (to find good days to make loans). A Chettiar would typically designate a portion of his capital as belonging to God, and all interest made on that capital would be given to the temple. (The most prominent Hindu temple in Singapore, Sri Thendayuthapani, is also called the Chettiars' Temple.) In the economic depression of the 1930s, many loans defaulted, and Chettiars ended up as somewhat reluctant owners of rubber plantations and tin mines.

At the museum, I also learned about a couple of prominent Singaporeans. Goh Keng Swee gets much credit for the industrialization of Singapore. As Minister of Finance, he set up the Economic Development Board and started the Jurong industrial estate. The somewhat swampy area was dubbed "Goh's Folly", but there were a couple dozen factories within two years. I also took time in the Film and Theatre gallery to watch clips from the 1960 movie "Lion City", the first Chinese-language movie made in Singapore. It was interesting in that it had a lot of outdoor views of various parts of Singapore, plus various vignettes of everyday life, such as a geography lesson in night school.

Downstairs was a special exhibit on Kao Pao Kun, a playwright and theater director who established multiple training companies and theatre groups in Singapore. Part of the exhibit was a long timeline of his life, spanning from 1939-2002. There were also side galleries dedicated to particular plays and groups. He and his wife were detained without trial in 1976, presumably for leftist leanings. (Detentions are still permitted under the Internal Security Act.) He spent 4+ years in detention, and his citizenship was revoked. It was only reinstated in 1992. On a later visit, I had an opportunity to see a recording of the English version of his play "The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole." It is a one-person one-act where a grandson relates his tribulations at his grandfather's funeral, where the fancy coffin is too large for the grave plot, and the cemetery director is trying to enforce the rule that no individual can have multiple plots, because land is scarce. (The director does suggest to the grandson that the family find someone small who can be buried in the adjacent plot.)

Finally, certain creative businessmen here have done one better than a pyramid scheme -- I'll call it an "obelisk scheme". Here's how it worked here and in Malaysia for a company called Genneva. You buy gold from Genneva, but at a price marked up 30% or more over market rate ($96/gram vs. $70 elsewhere). You get a discount of 2% off the inflated rate. At the end of the month, Genneva buys the gold back from you at the full 130% price. You just made 2% profit in a month! Now you rebuy the gold from Genneva, again with a 2% discount. You can even take possession of the gold, but if you leave it with them, you get a bit better return. It's an obelisk scheme because it works with even one customer. Since you paid Genneva a 20% premium, they can pay you back 2% for 10 months, even if you took the gold. If you left the gold with Genneva, they can keep paying you back your money for years. The operation was closed down recently, and investors who didn't take possession of their gold are quite distressed. They seem to imagine the company actually had it, and are asking when the police will release it to them. When Genneva was shut down, another company "The Gold Guarantee", suggested that Genneva customers could move over to them. However, as of last month, no one can seem to get in touch with the owner of The Gold Guarantee.

I was wondering why this scheme was structured in such an odd way. I think there are two aspects. One, since it involves purchase of a physical commodity, it doesn't fall under the financial oversight that a stock or bank deposit would. Second, they may have been trying to structure the offering so it did not contravene Islamic law on interest payments, though Muslim authorities have said it does not meet requirements. (There is a thriving market for sukuk or "Islamic bonds" here. There are several ways they are structured, but the most common requires that the proceeds for the sale of a sakk go to purchase (a portion of) an asset that the company uses (e.g., machinery). The regular payments on the sakk are then treated as rental on the asset, and the final redemption is the repurchase of the asset back from the investor.)