Three Days in Singapore

On the six-hour train ride from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, I enjoyed seeing thousands of hectacres of palm-oil plantations and the wall of wooded mountains that winds down the center of the peninsula as we chugged along. What the journey lacked in luxury it made up for with low price: 136 ringgit ($36) round-trip, first class. Just after the train enters Singapore, everyone must get off and go through customs, get a passport stamp, and wait until uniformed officers take the drug-sniffing dog through every car on the train.

A longtime player in Malayan history, Singapore spent two years as part of the new nation of Malaysia before the two separated in 1965. Look on a map and you'll see the island perched at the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula, separated by the Strait of Johor, spanned by a relatively short causeway. More than 4 million people live there. More than 75 percent of them are ethnic Chinese.

People have used assorted terms to describe the separation, ranging from "expulsion" and "traumatic ejection" to the milder "withdrawal" and "peaceful secession." The choice of words seems to depend more than a little on whether you are Singaporean. The disagreement apparently centered on Malaysia's selection of Bahasa Malaysia as the national language and the continued protection of the traditional position of the Malay royals.

In any case, no shots were fired when Singapore left Malaysia. That has to be a sign of progress.

This passage from John Leyden's Malay Annals (an 1821 English translation of the Sejarah Melayu, the ancient chronicles of the Malays), is typical in its reference to Singapore as a battleground:

"The bitara [of Majapahit, Java] immediately fitted out 300 junks, together with the vessels calulus pelang, and jong kong, in numbers beyond calculation, and embarked on board of them two cati (200,000) of Javans. Then having set sail, they arrived at Singhapura, and immediately engaged in battle. ... The next morning, at daybreak, Sang Rajuna Tapa opened the gates of the fortress, and Java entered into the town, and commenced an amok or indiscriminate carnage, and the people were slaughtered on all sides, and blood flowed like an inundation; and this is the blood that still marks the plain of Singhapura. At last, however, Singhapura was subdued, and Raja Secander [Iskander] Shah, saving himself by flight, reached Moar. By the power of God Almighty, the house of Sang Rajuna Tapa faded, and its pillars were overturned, and rice ceased to be planted in the land, and Sang Rajuna Tapa, both husband and wife, was [sic] changed into stone, and those are the stones which appear beside the moat of Singhapura. After the conquest of Singhapura, the people of Java returned to Majapahit."

This terrible battle ensued because Sang Rajuna Tapa, the bandahari (treasurer or bursar) to Raja Secander Shah, of Singhapura, had been outraged when the raja executed the bandahari's beautiful daughter by impaling her in public. The report makes very clear that Sang Rajuna Tapa's anger arose more from the method of execution, as he apparently did not question the right of the raja to execute people. But because he had been shamed and disgraced by the manner in which his daughter was executed, the bandahari sent a letter to the bitara of Majapahit and invited him to attack Singhapura. The bandahari aided the invaders by failing to supply rice to the defending army, as well as by opening the fortress gates. The invaders took Singhapura, but the betrayer, the treasonous bandahari Sang Rajuna Tapa, was turned to stone.

You're probably wondering why the raja executed the bandahari's daughter. (Do you like the way I tell the story backwards?) Well, the raja apparently adored her. This made the rest of his mistresses (who knows how many?) very jealous. So they "accused her of infidelity." Furious, the raja ordered her public impalement.

The Sejarah Melayu contains many stories like this. They remind me of Bible stories. There are even a lot of "begats," so you know the full genealogy of each raja or sultan. In addition to the tales of Singhapura and Majapahit, there's quite a lot about Malaca, of course, and Samadra (Sumatra). Raja Secander Shah went on from Moar to found Malaca.

Singapore reminded me of Toronto. I like Toronto. It's not a bad place. The food is good, the population diverse, the buildings tall, the subway clean and reliable. But as for personality, energy, allure -- you need to go to another city. My Lonely Planet guidebook says Singapore is "enjoyable." That's true.

The prime target of my visit to Singapore was the zoo. This is a bit comical because Malaysians have been known to complain that Singapore's zoo wins international accolades while the Zoo Negara in Malaysia does not get equal attention. (I have not yet visited Malaysia's zoo.) On the other hand, Singaporeans have been known to complain that their country has won more global renown for its zoo than for other achievements. I have to say, I really liked the zoo.

In spite of the stunning heat (even at 8:30 a.m., zoo opening time), the Singapore Zoo was absolutely great. It's a modern zoological park, hardly a fence or cage to be seen, and a pleasure to walk in, with beautiful paths surrounded by lush shrubbery. My favorites: Baby rhino, nursing; white tiger, wading in the moat; baboon family, eating. The Hamadryas Baboons / Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia exhibit in itself made my visit completely worthwhile; I'd never seen such a large group of baboons before. I'm fond of the baboon, sacred animal of the Egyptian god Thoth, god of writing. (Maybe I spent too much time in the Egypt wing of great museums?)

Speaking of museums, I didn't visit any in Singapore. Guess I'll have to go back!

I did go to several temples -- one Buddhist, one Chinese, one Hindu. I walked around Chinatown and appreciated the old shophouses (we have plenty of those in Malaysia too). I strolled (jalan jalan) on Orchard Road, the famed shopping street of Singapore: pedestrian crowds like Manhattan sidewalks in the morning rush hour. Multi-story malls crammed with all the best Western brand-name shops for fashion. Why do people go there? Nothing is cheap. I went to Sim Lim, a well-known alleged haven for electronics bargains. I couldn't find any. Prices are better in Malaysia.

Of course, I ate. Singapore is lauded as a foodie capital. I avoided the foods most common in Malaysia and went for everything Chinese -- chicken rice, char siew, dim sum. Okay, okay -- chicken rice is common in Malaysia, but it's different here (covered in chili sauce).

On the train back to Malaysia on Sunday (April 24), I read this in a Sunday Times op-ed column by Leong Ching:

"There was once a young man who knew how to fish. He did not worry about the future because the seas were fertile, his needs simple and his family rich. They owned oil wells, tin mines and land with rubber and fruit trees.

"One day, his elder brother, who ran most of the family business, decided to kick him out. He gave him 1,000 silver coins and a long hose, from which the young man would be supplied with water.

"'Now, if you disobey me, I will turn the tap off,' said the brother."

If it's not clear to you, the young man is Singapore, and his elder brother is Malaysia. Leong goes on to say that younger brother has done quite well for himself, even learning how to desalinate seawater so he needs not rely on that hateful "hose."

True enough. And hey -- the public toilets are very clean. (If you've been to Malaysia, you'll know why I mentioned that.) But I think I'd choose Kuala Lumpur over Singapore for just about any purpose, except visiting the zoo.

News Consumers Wake Up

"It is widely believed that this ... data represents, in some ways, a sea change in both consumption patterns and in how news is consumed. Those Jon Stewart viewers or consumers of popular blogs ... have, it would seem, changed the way they approach and view the news. Active consumers are unlikely any longer to rely on single sources for coverage of issues that matter to them. And they'll never be consuming news without clear chunks of opinion as part of the mix."

Source: Abandoning the News, page 4 of 5. Carnegie Reporter, 3(2).

The report concerns a a survey of 18- to-34-year-old Americans, conducted in May 2004. What it tells us, many of us already knew. But it's always good to have data.

Adobe Buys Macromedia

09:00 AM Apr. 18, 2005 PT -- Adobe Systems said Monday it had agreed to buy Macromedia for about $3.4 billion in stock, in order to extend its lead in the market for creating and distributing digital documents.

Source: Wired News/Reuters

This is huge news for people in online media. The rest of you probably are saying "Huh?"

The Book in My Hand

After two years of hard work, my book is a book. Today I received two copies from my publisher, Focal Press, a division of Elsevier.

Find it here (at the Focal Press site). Or go to the book's companion Web site.

Race Matters

Someone once told me that race is artificial. We treat it as a reality, but humans invented race. I didn't accept that idea, at first. I grew up in America, where race is always visible, always an issue. Over the years, though, I moved toward acceptance of the idea that race exists because we learn to recognize it, and what we learn, we are often taught.

The three races in Malaysia are Malay, Chinese, and Indian. As three words, they sound so simple. But ask yourself, is "Chinese" a race? There are Chinese people who would say yes, who would say their race is different from the race of, say, the Japanese. If race is a combination of skin color, eyes and noses, then Malays are not very different from Filipinos. If race is culture, however, there are many differences between Malays and Filipinos.

Here in Malaysia, race is always treated as a three-sided issue. The official view is that 61 percent of the people here are Malay, 30 percent are Chinese, 8 percent are Indian, and 1 percent are "other" (source: Malaysia Official Year Book 2004, published by the Department of Information Services). In reality, it's not so clear; for example, a number of tribal groups in Borneo (e.g. the Dayak and others; be warned that both of these links go to old Eurocentric texts) are counted as Malay, but their cultures vary from the traditional Malay culture. There is another group, the Orang Asli ("original people"), many of whom are racially similar to the Aborigines of Australia. (There are different groups of Orang Asli. Some groups resemble the Malays more; some less.)

What's been most educational for me is the recognition of race. I'm not very good at differentiating the three races here. When a person's face is very dark and distinctly Tamil, then I know that person is Indian. But many Indians have lighter skin and different facial features.

There are Chinese people whom I can identify as Chinese. There are others, however, whom I cannot identify with confidence. My inability to racially identify people amazes Malaysians of all races. "Look at her nose!" they say. "Look at his eyes!" Or, "Look at how dark he is!" Dark? As an American, I have a completely different palette of dark and light than a Malaysian's.

Once one of my students was explaining that he is "medium," but the woman next to him was "light" or "fair" (the most desirable attribute among Malaysian woman of all races). I walked over to them and laid my forearm on his desk. "Put your arm beside mine. You too," I said to the female student. Our three arms, side by side, were very close to the same color. "Who is light here?" I asked. All the students laughed at this, and they seemed genuinely surprised.

Race is taught to us. My friends here are trying hard to teach me. I'm not a willing student, but it's impossible not to learn. When I was trying to describe a popular Malaysian singer whom I had seen on TV, a colleague said, "You mean the Indian one?" My friend Halimah was quick to jump in: "She can't tell." Our colleague's mouth dropped open. "How is it you cannot tell?" he said. Then I remembered something about the singer, whom I had never identified as Indian before: "Oh, yeah, his nose is ..." Then I touched the bridge of my own nose and gestured outward. His nose is "high."

My two companions smiled and nodded encouragingly. Yes, yes. I'm beginning to learn.

"Inter" Monsoon, My Foot

It is raining heavily almost every day in Shah Alam. Not all day. Usually it begins in the mid- to late afternoon. It may last all night, but usually it's just an hour or two. Heavy, heavy, torrential rains.

It's like Florida -- people who have lived there for many years say the rain used to be very predictable. Then the developers drained the Everglades, and now we have droughts.

I don't know what all the developers and other money-grabbing industrialists have done in Malaysia, but it seems they have screwed up the rain timetable here as well. I know they have burned a lot of forest in Borneo.

Anyway, right now I can see blue sky to the north, past the pouring rain that's drenching the campus. So I hope this one is a short rain.

Movies in Malaysia

On Wednesday, the U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia had a dinner for all the U.S. Fulbrighters here. It was a very enjoyable group for conversation. One of the topics was VCDs and the pirate video business.

I am trying to buy only legal VCDs, but the ambassador told me that even though I buy them in a regular shop (not at a street stall, and not from a boy who walks up to you at a restaurant and offers you a fat binder full of VCD covers from which to choose), and even though they have all kinds of holographic stickers and seals attached, my VCDs may still be pirate copies. So he advised me not to take them home, although the worst that would happen to me is probably that U.S. Customs would confiscate them.

Ever since I saw the movie Sepet (which just came out on VCD), I have been learning more about the movie business in Malaysia. The short version is "Malay movies used to be great. P. Ramlee." That is, back in the 1950s and '60s, a Malay actor-director-musician named P. Ramlee made a ton of movies that people here still talk about. I have seen two or three of them on TV. They have English subtitles. And they ARE good.

In my digging around for information about Malaysian movies, I discovered one of the best Malaysian Web sites (in English) I've seen yet, Windows to Malaysia, and their Brief History of Film in Malaysia. (The home page for Windows to Malaysia is actually terrible, but the interior pages are excellent. The content is clearly backed by the government, but you can fill in the obvious gaps elsewhere.)

The other key to the story of "What happened to Malay movies?" (as one character in Sepet asks another) -- apart from P. Ramlee (who died in 1973) -- is the Shaw Brothers. Yes, Run Run and Run Me Shaw, much more famous today for their Hong Kong movie studio, from which came many great kung fu movies in the 1960s and '70s. The Shaw Brothers got their start in Shanghai but soon moved to Singapore, and their studio there, Malay Film Productions, produced the best of the famous P. Ramlee movies. They had a sweet setup like the Hollywood studios, with their own movie theaters (typically called cinema halls here) that showed only their movies. When the sweet deal went sour (similar to the demise of the studio system in Hollywood), the Shaw Brothers packed up and moved to Hong Kong. After 1964, P. Ramlee continued to make movies at Studio Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur, but the consensus seems to be that his films for the Shaw Brothers were his best.

Anyway, what's fascinating to a foreigner like me about those P. Ramlee movies is that you see people living what appears to be a kind of typical 1950s Malay daily life. That life is different in many ways today, and yet some things stay the same. One of the things that always strikes me is the men wearing sarongs. I see them any day in the mini-market or anywhere else in Shah Alam -- especially older men. (Not a lot of men, just one or two on a typical day.) On Fridays, there are more than usual, because it's good to wear sarong to the mosque on Friday. In the P. Ramlee movies, lots of men are wearing sarong. And they're out in the kampungs (villages), hanging out on the veranda, talking ... this is the village life that's slowly going away here, from what I understand, for the usual reasons: TV, Western influences, education, modernization, development. Anyway, I think the P. Ramlee movies are something like Frank Capra movies, maybe too good to be true in some ways, and yet certainly there is truth in them, and we (they) like to think that's how we (they) were back then.