Singapore's kampong revisited

After waxing exuberance over my visit to Pulau Ubin last March, I promised my wife that I'd bring her to the island when we next visit Singapore. On the 10th of this month, that was where we went as we wound up our short trip there.

With the help of my old friends of course! Jeff Yeo and his lovely Evelyn. According to Jeff, each of us must've taken about 22,000 steps during the four hours on the island. That was about 15 kilometres. Nevertheless, that wasn't even covering the whole place.

Despite it being a Saturday, we felt that the crowds were just not there. There were more people on the island last March. Our first destination would be the Puaka Hill in the middle of the island.

Along the way to Puaka Hill, we came across this sign at the side of a path leading to a small temple called the Fo Shan Ting Da Bo Gong Temple. However, there is a bigger temple with the same name just a short distance away from the Pulau Ubin ferry terminal. I am told that the locals distinguish the two as the country temple and the town temple. Below is the altar of the Tua Pek Kong deity at the country temple.

 And so, finally, we reached the junction to Puaka Hill. We turned off the main road and for the next five to 10 minutes, walked along a gradual track to the top. 

Breath-taking view from Puaka Hill

Gorgeous  blue sky at the Chek Jawa Wetlands' boardwalk 

 The visitor centre at the Chek Jawa Wetlands

Picturesque scene while walking back to the jetty

Bohemian Rhapsody

I was bemoaning to my daughter that there was some eight to nine hours for my wife and I to kill inbetween arriving at KLIA2 and departing from KL Sentral on the 11th of this month. Why not watch a movie, my daughter suggested. Which movie would you recommend, I asked back. Bohemian Rhapsody, she said. And so, Bohemian Rhapsody it was. She purchased the tickets for a cinema located at a sub-urban shopping mall and so off we trooped to the cinema.

Now who hasn't heard of this bio-pic movie? I learnt of it about a month back when a friend posted its trailer on social media. I was impressed because the actors who were selected to play Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor were almost splitting images of the real Mercury, May and Taylor. I had thought that the song itself, Bohemian Rhapsody would be played at the end of the film, as its highlight, but of course I was wrong. The highlight of the film was the re-enactment of Queen's seminal 20-minute performance at the Live Aid concert of 1985. It was done very well and breath-taking watching the segment up close. An in-your-face experience. Completely immersive.

Despite the musical inputs from the real Brian May and Roger Taylor, the film producers took creative licence and littered it with some historical inaccuracies. For instance in the film, Mercury had contracted Aids before the Live Aid concert happened. In reality, Mercury was diagnosed with this disease at least a year after the concert was well over. I am sure there were other instances as well.

Finally, I want to say that I did watch Bohemian Rhapsody a second time, in Penang. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to re-watch the biggest bio-pic movie in decades. I only hope that the next bio-pic, Rocketman, about Elton John, will be equally good.

Ticket misadventures

I started writing the draft to this story whilst at Changi Airport's Terminal Four on 11 Nov 2018. We had already spent two full days - and one evening - in Singapore, and my wife and I had now arrived at the airport at the almost unearthly hour of 6.15am on the 11th morning, waiting to catch our 10 o'clock flight. The frustration was that instead of taking a flight directly to Penang, we were flying to Kuala Lumpur and from there, we would change to the ETS train service to take us back to Bukit Mertajam.

So why weren't we flying straight from Singapore to Penang? We could even have flown at a later time and enjoyed more of Singapore. It was all my fault, really. Our original plan was to fly down to Johor Bahru on the 11th to visit some friends and relatives there before hopping over to Singapore on the 13th and then onward to Kuala Lumpur for a few days there.

That was the intention. It would entail flying from Singapore on the 15th morning so that we would arrive at the hotel  in Kuala Lumpur right smack after lunch time. Well, that was the plan. But no matter how well plans are, there is usually something that screws everything up. Mine was no different. When I was buying the flight tickets from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, somehow the date of travel was keyed in as 11 Nov 2018 instead of 15 Nov 2018. I didn't notice it until the transaction was well and completed, meaning paid up as well.

Then it dawned on me that I had made a mistake. A Big mistake. A mistake so big that it left me, for several minutes, wondering what to do. Could I amend the tickets? Can the date of travel? Certainly, the airline's website allowed that. For the customer to change the date of travel. So I tried to change the date of travel. Meticulously went through all the steps. Clicked all the changes required. Then it came to the payment page. I was prepared to pay a small fee for the change of travel date. But what was this I see? A penalty fee that was more than the cost of the tickets themselves. If I had agreed to paying, the tickets would have cost me more than twice what I paid for. What shit was that?? Effectively, the airline was telling you to burn the original tickets and buy new ones. No way could I agree to it.

No choice. We had to change our travel itinerary instead. Let's forego the Johor Bahru sector and go only to Singapore. This suggestion came from my wife. I was relieved. Going to Johor Bahru was her original proposal. So if she said to forget about Johor Bahru, I was more than agreeable to it. We'll just fly down to Changi on the eighth and then travel to Kuala Lumpur on the 11th.

There was one final piece of the jigsaw puzzle remaining. The return to Bukit Mertajam. I knew that there was an ETS train leaving Kuala Lumpur at 2.40pm. Unfortunately, all seats were sold out for the 11th. The only seats left were on the 8.40pm train. Thus, no choice but to buy the tickets for this train. The only snag was that the train would arrive at Bukit Mertajam at 12.45am. But after a whole day of misadventure booking flight tickets, all I wanted was to be able to come back to Bukit Mertajam on 11 Nov 2018, no matter how late it was going to be.




 

Every square is filled

....and I'm glad to have survived this far!

Tie in a bottle

In case anyone is wondering what is this, let me just say that it is one of my ties in the cut-off bottom of a plastic water bottle. What happened was this: when I learnt that there was a possibility that everyone would have to wear batik or a tie with his normal office attire to the Old Frees Association annual dinner in Kuala Lumpur last month, I decided to go prepared.

But the problem was that I would be travelling from Penang and if I were to just throw my tie into the luggage, the chances are great that it would end up creased and crumpled. And it wouldn't be the first one. Even if I were to fold it up carefully and place it in the luggage, the tie might suffer the same fate.

So there I was, pondering how to solve the problem when I happened to glance at a few bottles of mineral water on my kitchen table. The idea struck me. Why not just cut the bottom off one of them and stuff the tie in it? I was sure that the plastic would be sturdy enough to resist normal crumbling attempts. I wasn't wrong. My tie went to KL and back in tip-top condition. Everyone should try this!

Realising objectives (part two)

On the 22nd afternoon, I accompanied my wife and sister-in-law to the Dewan Tunku Chanellor at the University of Malaya for the convocation ceremony of my nephew. Leaving them there, my next destination was the unlikely Xiao En Centre in Cheras.

Why the Xiao En Centre? Well, this was the unscheduled stop in my short visit to Kuala Lumpur. The previous evening, I received some text messages to inform me that Dato' Tan Chin Nam had passed away at the age of 92.

People who know me well would realise that Dato Tan was the main man behind the growth of chess in Malaysia. He was the first president of the Malaysian Chess Federation and for the past 15 years or so, had his company sponsor the Malaysia Chess Festival, possibly the largest chess and most popular event that the country had ever seen.

Some people would also know that I've known Dato Tan since 1974. With such a long history between the two of us, it became imperative that I should pay my last respects to him, especially since I was already in Kuala Lumpur.

So that was why I had to go to the Xiao En Centre with some urgency. I shall be writing a separate story on remembering Dato Tan later, a sort of tribute to him.

From the Xiao En Centre, I dropped off at the Pasar Seni MRT station and took a short walk to the Junk Book Store in Jalan Tun HS Lee. I had heard about this second-hand bookshop from Facebook and was curious to see for myself the range of old, second-hand books there. True enough, when I entered the building, there were rows upon rows of second-hand books, all wrapped up carefully in plastic sheets.

I went through the ground floor and then the proprietor told me that there were more books on the first floor. So up I went there. Took a slow perambulating walk round the passageway and then my attention was diverted to three boxes on the floor that held some 300 pieces of vinyl records. Immediately I sat down to go through the dusty pile of records and I pulled out several titles that interested me.

Then I asked whether they had any books that dealt with the history of old Penang. Maybe, he said, and then he asked his assistant (could be his wife) to open up the second floor for me to check on some titles there.

So up I went too to the second floor. Took a quick look around because the lady said they would be closing at five o'clock. then went downstairs again with the records to haggle with the prices. Felt spending RM150 on seven records was a fair price to pay!

On the way back to the MRT station, I came across the Soong Kee coffee shop. I had been here with a cousin some two or three years back, but it was at night, to eat the beef koay teow there. I was alone this time but it was as good a time as anytime to order a new bowl of the said beef koay teow to try again. Superb stuff. Very happy with THIS decision.

The next day on the 23rd, my daughter brought my wife and I to the Batu Malai Śrī Subramaniar Swamy Devasthanam (more popularly known as the Batu Caves Temple) in Batu Caves. Although we had visited the temple some three to four years back, I had felt that it was time to revisit it as so much had been written lately following a decision by the Temple Committee to give the whole place a new coat of paint. Yes, Batu Caves is now a riot of rich, bright colours. The main temple at the foothill has been gaily painted in multi-coloured hues, as also the 272 steps that led to the biggest of the limestone caves at Batu Caves.

Whether or not the Batu Caves temple will lose its national heritage status remains to be seen although I hope not! The colours themselves do not mean that the value of the temple has been devalued. It is the very nature of the Indians to celebrate colour in their everyday lives as well as in worship. For the Batu Caves Temple, much value and heritage are still attached to it as could be seen in the numbers of devotees present despite the day not being any religious occasion. The cave walls still have a history to tell. So I would suggest to the National Archives to leave the Batu Caves Temple well alone and let the Temple Committee do their job.