Pictures and Stories

So where are the restrooms?

2011-02-19T06:26:00.000-08:00

I didn't know those picture-symbols we take for granted -- the ones at airports and other large public places showing us where the restrooms or exits are located and other such important information, originated with the International System of Typographic Picture Education. The ISOTYPE story is fascinating and starts with a Vienna museum director, Otto Neurath, who in 1926 hired a young graphic artist Gerd Arntz, to work on a public education project Neurath got involved with after a study tour of poor rural regions of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Neurath's objective was to educate people who could not read or write on important social, economic, political and scientific issues by creating a pictorial system of symbols designed by Arntz. These symbols went on to become one of the 20th century's most successful information design projects and the basis of those picture-symbols we follow so automatically these days.

------------------------

In defence of Ikea

2011-02-13T00:08:00.000-08:00

In the beginning I was a classic 'anything-but-Ikea' type of person; now in a complete about-turn I am a committed Ikea person. I could spend hours doing the complete walkaround at its Park Hotel store in Causeway Bay (admittedly the smaller of the design company's Hong Kong stores); browsing through the Market Hall; scribbling product reference numbers with those little wooden pencils on scraps of paper pulled out of my bag; studying room arrangements and storage ideas...
I think the reason why Ikea is Ikea is that the Swedish company has remained true to its basic calling -- creating simple basic stuff with smart thoughtful design. My fascination with product design tends to focus on simplicity. Big overly-done pieces are not my style, but it is the small things that catch my fancy like Ikea's heavy yet very simple garlic press or the stark black photo frame with the tiny silver magnetic circles or the thick eggshell colored canvas laundry hampers that I love to bring home, not just because they look good but also because they are so functional and neat.
While Ikea furniture can never become a family heirloom it does serve its purpose well enough, I find the shelves and cabinets particularly useful. I just picked up a nice light wood cabinet-shelf combination that has an easy unfinished, slightly industrial look about it. The piece is slim yet the cabinet is deep enough to hold a fair amount of stuff, the open shelves work well for books, pictures and other little objects. For our present home I'd rather buy this sort of furniture than heavy Chinese lacquered cabinets or plasticky Big Lots sort of stuff.

Eating out with a brief review of DB's Mirch Masala

2011-02-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

I am a fussy restaurant goer. I'm not looking for bells and whistles and when I go out to eat, I'm looking for delicious well-cooked straight forward food. My husband agrees with this philosophy and though we eat out a fair amount we have only a handful of really treasured dining out memories. Some of the best of these are from our time in Seoul when we would eat out frequently at lovely little places full of atmosphere in touristy Insadong in central Seoul. We ate delicious hot stews, scallion and seafood pancakes, the classic bibimbap and some really basic Korean fare including fiery garlicky khimchi and claypot rice meals that were all freshly cooked and always delicious.

During one trip to Phuket we ate amazing home-cooked food at the Ban Nana beach shack restaurant on Bangthao beach. We still remember the tangy, fiery papaya salad with a crunch of fried cashews and shrimps; freshly caught crab cooked simply with black pepper and delicious curries and shrimp rolls all made without fuss by the owner's wife using simple basic Thai cooking techniques and the freshest of ingredients.

In Athens a small cafe near the Acropolis served delicious breakfasts -- omelettes, hot coffee, flaky layered nut filled baklavas and other Greek pastries -- all carefully cooked by the owner and her small staff each day. In Hyderabad we once ate a fantastic Andhra thali lunch in a small unassuming restaurant a short auto ride away from the Banjara Hills area.

Fresh ingredients, strong clean flavors and unfussy recipes usually produce the best meals. Too often restaurant dishes have fancy names and poor quality ingredients combined to create unmemorable and over-priced dishes.

Take the meal we had this evening at the Mirch Masala restaurant in the North Plaza. It was a terribly disappointing experience (unfortunately many of our experiences at Indian restaurants end up this way). We decided to sit outside taking advantage of a really pleasant evening as Hong Kong gets ready for spring, and this was probably our second mistake (the first was choosing to go there in the first place); the lady who came to take our drinks order about 20 minutes later (it may have been faster if we had we sat inside) looked like she was having an awful evening -- she muttered all sorts of things about there having been many complaints about poor service, how overworked she was etc etc.

Anyway drinks order got taken and then the ordeal over the dinner menu began. None of the South Indian dishes were available (which was so disappointing because we chose the restaurant only because we were really longing to eat a nice crisp paper dosa!) -- though of course nobody bothered to tell us this when we were ordering the south indian dishes! And then folllowed a long period of discussion between the wait staff and the kitchen and more explanations to us before we finally figured out what was available and what we could eat.

The starters arrived in a slightly crazy way, the lady who was having a terrible evening just kept bringing things out and bunging them all over the table, it would have been nice if she had remembered to bring out the essentials -- plates, flatware, napkins, glasses of water -- first. Everything would have been forgiven had the food been good but sadly the chicken pakoras had bits of raw batter hidden under all that red tandoori masala; the buttermilk was watery and over-salted, and we could have used an electric saw to cut through the boti kababs. Oh and the paani puri was pretty awful too. The Hyderabadi lamb was anything but Hyderabadi and the rumaali roti was tough and doughy.And the last straw: they forgot to bring out half the food we ordered which actually was a blessing because my tummy certainly couldn't stand the rubbish any longer!

How it all began

2011-02-04T07:12:00.000-08:00

Not only have I been checking Facebook more than once a day, I have even begun to tweet! Why? I am not sure...but I have to say I enjoy blogging the most, because it is the closest to the old-fashioned Dear Diary. I began keeping my first diary when I was around 14 years old, it was very soon after I finished reading The Diary of Anne Frank so my diary was called 'silver' though I really wanted the name to be 'kitty'.

My first diary entries were all about all the stuff going on at home and in school and had I recorded everything faithfully I would have probably filled dozens of diaries in a month, but as it turned out I was a pretty lazy diarist and often condensed several days' entries into a single line. I hardly ever identified people in my diary, using initials and code names instead; I used bad beginner's French to write paragraphs of stuff that would have gotten me into trouble had the diary fallen into adult hands. I kept the diaries on till I got my first newspaper job in 1995 and then there was quite a journal hiatus till I began this blog in 2005.

Just some thoughts...

2011-01-29T07:13:00.000-08:00

In these linea negra worshipping days pregnancy has become a sort of fashion statement -- how well do you wear your bump? How unpregnantly-pregnant do you look? How well can you balance a toddler on your hip and wear that bump? This afternoon I saw a tall blond woman, all biker chic and scarlet lips, when she turned I saw her second trimester bump and noticed she had a toddler hoisted effortlessly on a hip. A catwalk-worthy pregnant princess.

---------------------------------------

On the ferry back from Central this evening I sat behind a couple deep into the dating thing, now that I have been married for a while I find myself looking back on the insecurities of my single years with a nice warm thank-goodness-all-of-that-is-over-for-me feeling. A very smug-married kind of attitude in Helen Fielding's words I guess. But smug or not, it is nice not to have to sit with an almost stranger and talk about favorite plays (hopefully he's heard of Tennessee Williams and agrees that while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is excellent, Streetcar has to be the best); books; the holidays; family; my politics and all the while wonder, 'so what is he really thinking?' and 'I hope there is nothing stuck between my teeth'. And yes to hold all of the above conversation in a sensible way, dressed nicely and without getting too obviously drunk. Very tough.

How very much better it is to snuggle cozily past midnight on a slightly saggy sofa surrounded by cushions in faded Ikea covers; the weekend's newspapers;the Kindle;the Economist, dressed in snug sweat pants and an old baggy fleece, (my husband even has his 'nightcap' -- once upon a time this was a mustard ski cap -- pulled low over his ears), watching a re-run of HBO's 25 years of Woodstock on TV and drinking warm rum toddy. And it doesn't matter at all if my post-midnight conversation is more than a little fuelled by Jamaican rum -- it's the sort of liberty I can take with a very old, very good friend.

---------------------

Watching that HBO 25 years of Woodstock re-run I am struck again by the women singers' hair -- all frizz and natural none of that obsession with no-frizz, flat iron straight hair that is absolutely uniform these days.

Ms Mean at the hardware store

2011-01-22T05:53:00.000-08:00

So I went down to the hardware store in the plaza to get a new potty seat cover and a couple of light bulbs. The woman in the store was horrid. Short and mean (not that the one has anything to do with the other) but well, she needed a step ladder to reach up to the second shelf and she screamed in Cantonese at me every few seconds. She didn't seem to like the fact the I had carried my old potty seat down to the store (it was CLEAN, I mean who craps all over the seat anyway?) and I needed to get the size right so that seemed to be the best way to do it. Anyway Mme Wong really got ballistic over that seat and screamed out all sorts of stuff at me, but I was pretty desperate as the handyman had removed the potty seat and long story short, I needed that seat!

Anyway Wong really shouted and eventually gave me the seat I wanted. She wanted to help out with the light bulbs but I had pretty much lost interest in the hardware store by this time and I certainly wasn't interested in any more Cantonese swear word lessons.

The rabbit hops in...

2011-01-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

The nectarine plants in huge ceramic pots are back on sale in Park n' Shop, the money envelopes are being distributed by the checkout ladies as they do the bill and the little red and gold rabbits are all over the place. As we approach another Chinese New Year it feels a bit overwhelming -- where did the last 12 months go?

Bombay notes

2011-01-14T08:34:00.000-08:00

Bombay Central

I visited the Bombay Central station after almost a decade and the first thing I noticed was that the station was far less crowded than I remembered. The last time I was there I was travelling on the August Kranti express from Bombay to Delhi; this time we were seeing off an aunt who was taking the same train to Delhi.

There was a McDonalds cafe, which of course wasn't around the last time I visited. We waited for the August Kranti to come in at a fairly clean platform. A few well-dressed passengers arrived in time for the Rajdhani which was leaving for Delhi before the AK. Rajdhani First Class tickets cost more than plane tickets to Delhi, which may explain the huge trucks of food stuff that were being loaded on to the Rajdhani by coolies -- onions, potatoes, eggs, UHT milk, fruit juice boxes, fruit baskets -- as the coolies worked a small group of ticket collectors gathered on the platform. Fat, greasy looking, smiling shadily, these TCs looked every bit the dishonest 'fixers' they are generally believed to be.

Sniffer dogs on steel choke chains and leashes were guided through the crowded platform as it began to fill with more people (Bombay was on high alert again as some Lashkar-e-Toiba militants were reported to have entered the city). Minutes after the Rajdhani left, the AK came in and we went to see our aunt off. She had booked the lower bunk for herself and the institutional grey-blue paint of the train's interiors brought back half-forgotten memories of that train journey I had made from Bombay to Delhi a good ten years ago.

----------------

Rasik Villa

I grew up in one city, my husband spent his boyhood and teen years moving around India and the US. His memories are fragmented, played out against the backdrop of different Indian cities, though Bombay (his mother's parental home) plays a key role. When he speaks of Matunga (the Tamil center of Bombay in the Seventies and Eighties) it is a very different, less crowded Matunga that he remembers. We went back to visit Rasik Villa -- the house his grandparents lived in -- where he spent many years as a young boy. Rasik Villa sits on a quiet tree-lined street in Matunga, just minutes away from the busy Matunga flower market that specializes in flowers used by Tamilians in their various religious devotions.

When our driver finally finds the building which has 'Rasik Villa' written on a marble nameplate built into the wall, my husband is suprised at the narrowness of the street; he remembers it as being much wider but then his perceptions and memories go back to when he was a little boy and the scale was much bigger.

Today Rasik Villa seems ready for the hungry property developers that have virtually taken over Bombay, ready to tear down every property (that isnt secured by a Trust or a religious organization) and build in its place, highrises for the city's new rich promising every sort of amenity from gyms to children's play areas and infinity pools. The old low-rise four-storey building is uncared for and has a sad desolate look about it. Years ago it was a happy noisy place with kids playing in the courtyard -- and often even out on the quiet street in front -- women gossiping in the hallway and smells of fried potato, tamarind sambhar, curry leaves and fried dhals wafting out off the kitchen windows of the spacious apartments stretching across each floor.

We walked past the outer wall of the building down another quieter street along the Matunga gymkhana in search of the south Indian mess my husband remembered that served delicious vadas and steaming cups of filter coffee in true Madras style. But before we could locate the mess, our three-year-old had an urgent potty situation and we hurriedly headed back to the car as reality broke into this bittersweet trip down memory lane.

Panvel updates
A nice Cidco park opposite the Arunadaya hospital is a welcome breath of green in the middle of dusty construction-ridden Panvel. A water feature in the center of the park attempts to calm some of the dust clouds that are a part of Panvel's atmosphere, neighborhood children have a place to run around and play and as is typical of open spaces in India, the park is crowded with elderly men and women out for their evening constitutional.

--------------------

Varad Vinayak is celebrating another Ganesh festival. The building is tremendously religious and every single Hindu religious date is observed by its residents. On Christmas Day, in keeping with Varad Vinayak's general religiosity, Keralite Christians living in the building sing carols loudly in Malayam somewhat in the tradition of a north Indian kirtan.

----------------------

The new cook at my mother-in-law's place is a virtuous Maharsahtrian lady. She cooks simple home-style food fast and with minimum fuss. Like many ordinary Maharashtrians she is religious and observes a weekly fast, has a non-existent sense of humor and a finely-tuned sense of duty. Not that any of this matters of course, Chhaya isn't winning any Miss Personality contest, she's far too busy cooking drumstick sambhar and potato sabji with a skill that only comes from sheer hard practice.

Calcutta notes

2010-12-29T04:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport

I chose not to use the escalator when we finally reached Calcutta's Netaji Subhas Bose airport a couple of weeks ago at about midnight local time, even though this meant struggling with a large handbag and my 3-year-old asleep in my arms. I didn't ignore the escalator out of any snobby NRI-who-doesn't trust-anything-in India attitude, I was simply too tired to cope with any disaster that may have been triggered by that alarmingly ancient looking contraption. Also practically everybody else chose the stairs too.

The arrival hall at the Calcutta airport would have thrilled Naipaul. It was dimly lit, crowded to capacity, vaguely smelling of amonia, human sweat and hair oil; and then there were the men (officers or something, at any rate people in authority) who sauntered about with overhanging paunches, bored expressions and a perfect determination to do absolutely nothing that would even vaguely signify as being helpful or worse still, efficient.

All of us queued up in various snaking lines -- Indians passport holders NRIs/PIOs/ Foreign Passport holders/ Diplomats -- the queues were close together and the Indian passport holder people looked longingly at the short Diplomat queue and the medium-length NRI/PIO line... my three-year-old studied the faces about her and looked miserably disoriented and sleepy. Suddenly deciding to take matters into her own hands she puked a little phlegm in a nice ladylike way all over my brand new Zara basic brown cropped leather jacket (why was I wearing this on the flight anyway??)

Just then another huge crowd surged into the already crammed arrival hall: these newcomers upset my daughter enough to set her off howling dressed as they were in white robes with long flowing beards and white cloths wound around their heads. These were the returning pilgrims from the Haj.

Outside the airport bamboo barricades had been set up in an attempt to tighten security and safeguard the Haj pilgrims (in India attempts to tighten security often take on farcical overtones) either way, the over-worked and underpaid security officers at the Calcutta airport were so sick of it all by 1 AM that they gave up every pretence of doing their job and officers at the entrance very kindly let me in (after I had exited) without a valid ticket and allowed me to go all the way back to the arrival hall and the luggage conveyor belts so that I could collect the stroller I had left behind. The only thing that worried me a little about this kindness was that I could have simply been making up the whole story and been some kind of manic suicide bomber about to blow Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport into the sky. But on second thoughts I guess the suicide bomber would really have to be manic to undertake such a pointless mission.

----

The Women's Friendly

The weather in Calcutta was unusual: colder than I ever remember it being in early December and rainy. Not that it mattered when we sat around drinking Meera's warming spiced tea (lots of ginger, less milk and a heaping of strong tea leaves) and shingaras from the shop opposite the police commissioner's house on Loudon street. This part of Calcutta hasn't changed over the last decade and these streets are an indelible part of my memories of my growing up years.

Earlier in the day I had walked over to Harrington street, now a mess of security arrangements to protect the US consulate, in a steady cold drizzle to visit the new ICCR building's crafts shop.The building is fancy enough, the shop empty except for two attendants. The crafts typical Indian pottery, stoneware, beadwork and woodwork at rates that can only be described as downright robbery. A ceramic serving plate for Rs 2500 and wooden napkin rings for Rs 1200 a set are plainly ridiculous prices and obviously the ICCR doesnt intend to sell a thing from that shop.

A more rewarding shopping experience was the short walk down to the Women's Friendly Society in Park Lane. If you've never been to Calcutta this may sound impressive, for those of us who know it, Park Lane is a seedy little lane that runs off Park Street (opposite the Loudon street-Park street intersection). Men urinating along the little lane is a common sight which is explain the strong stench of piss as you walk along the very narrow little strip of walkable road. Dilapidated shanties occupy much of this lane and there are just two old shambling large houses almost at the very head of the lane. One of these according to the stone nameplate built into the wall is the Women's Friendly Society.

Over a century old, the society is a charitable institution that provides poor women with an alternative means to earn a small livelihood through its sewing, embroidery and needlecraft program. While much of the society's beautifully embroidered baby and children's clothes, table linen and towels is sold through the upmarket (though now commercially managed) Good Companions store on Russel Street, this rambling old house has a sales outlet on the first floor while the women embroider and stitch in a large workshop on the floor above.

The afternoon I visited the old house was getting a facelift of sorts, a man balancing precariously on some bamboo scaffolding was half-heartedly painting a section of the crumbling portico. Inside the massive high-ceilinged musty smelling room was gloomy and damp in the fading afternoon light. Glass-doored cupboards with chipped and fading cream woodwork are placed all around the room, inside these shelves are dresses and embroidery designs that transported me right back to my childhood. My sisters and I grew up wearing these puffy-sleeved Peter Pan and cabbage leaf-collared dresses with charming bird, flower and teddy bear motifs all carefully hand stitched by the women upstairs.

In all these years the products have changed little. The same delicately embroidered satin rolls of cloth are cleverly folded to make jewel cases, hanky satchets, vanity bags and other little soft, wispy bits and bobs meant to adorn a little (or grown up lady's) dressing table in the days gone by. As time warped as its products are the two old Anglo-Indian ladies who manage the storefront. The darker and younger looking of the two is dressed in a shapeless terrycotton dress, her lips are stained brownish black from years of smoking even now she smokes ceaselessly as she carries out an inventory of the glass cases with the help of a young Muslim woman assistant.

The older woman is dressed in a long skirt made of some rough material and an old-fashioned blouse. Her bespectacled face has a worried frown on it and she sits at the edge of a large wooden desk, legs dangling and fingers tapping nervously on the wooden surface. She slides off the table, temporarily casts aside her secret worry and takes charge of me when I tell her I am looking for dresses for a 3-year-old. I get sidetracked as I come across a pile of prettily embroidered wash cloths -- blue sea horses, yellow birds and cream and brown teddy bears. The woman argues loudly and affectionately with Abdul (Anglo Indians and Muslims was the favored combination many years ago in Calcutta, the efficient English speaking Anglo Indian and the loyal Muslim helper) about 10 rupee notes and driving schedules; she interrupts the debate to make my bill or rather as her assistant puts it: "Aunty cut the lady's bill please"

When I leave Women's Friendly it is already early evening as I walk down the winding lane I determinedly ignore the stench of piss and instead give myself over to the warm fuzziness of nostalgic memories of years long gone when we inhabited a tiny corner of Calcutta that really doesn't exist any more.

-------------------

Flury's (with an apostrophe)

When we were growing up Flury's was an institution. This very colonial hangover tearoom was the place to be seen at. Fading Bengali cinema stars had Sunday brunches with their families here, the barefooted Husain once walked in here to pick up some pastries (my sister who saw him leave Flury's could not stop describing his very ' soft-looking pink feet' to us all). We would get our regular bread supplies from here and would think nothing of the celebrity of the place while going in every morning after we finished walking our dogs to buy the bread -- sliced bread wrapped in blue and white striped grease paper was the staple while milk bread was a family favorite reserved for Sundays, sweet buns on occasion and chicken and cheese patties and assorted chocolate pastries for a tea time treat. Years later when I have eaten pastries and cakes all across the world, I still find myself craving the lemon tart from Flury's. When I bought it this time I noticed how the tart itself had changed in shape (it is now a larger flatter round than it used to be with the word 'lemon' frosted across the top in long chocolate lettering) but tasted exactly the same with the same heavy pastry base and slightly tart, sugary lemon curd filling.

Flury's itself has inexplicably lost the apostrophe from its name and its interior has sadly become something of a design mess what with the dining area untidily extended to include almost the whole shop floor, minus a tiny semi-circular space from where the baked good are sold. The wait staff are comatose and dressed oddly in ill-fitting western uniforms, the shop color seems to be an ugly hot pink. The bread still tastes good by Indian standards (where something in the quality of flour used makes baked goods heavier and more chewy), I love the lemon tart and the chicken envelope is good enough though I missed the odd crown-shaped cottage cheese pastry that used to be my vegetarian sister's favorite.

----------

Back to school

I took my daughter and my niece to the Christmas fair organized by the Loreto House alumni. For me it was back to school after almost 15 years. The thing that struck me most was how tiny the swings and slide and climbing frame looked! Only later did I realize that the swings hadn't become smaller, I had just become bigger! My daughter loved the climbing frame, my niece has just got into Loreto House which means another generation of Loreto Chorus girls in the family! Mrs J looked exactly the same as she did when we were in school which is a bit eerie -- her not having aged a bit in 20 years -- while the Hindi teacher passed me by on the stairs looking definitely older but sprightly enough still. I didn't stop to chat with these ghosts from the past, I didn't want them sifting through years of memory, instead we passed each other on the wide marble staircases with vague smiles of stirred recollections and half-awakened memories of long ago days when I was a very naughty schoolgirl who had to stand up on the stage during school assembly thanks to an impressive collection of 13 de-merits in a week (most kids averaged four or five de-merits during this time).

--------------------------

Lunch at an old friend's place

An old friend's apartment felt like a step back in time. Large black and white family pictures are placed around a the high-ceilinged room where once his ramrod straight father sat with his mother -- a woman very much her own person whatever that meant to the other members of the family. His upstairs chambers are even more ghost-like, though fabulous works of expensive contemporary Bengal art adorn his walls, the bookshelves are lined with books and posters collected over many years; a paper light bulb holder covered thick with dust hangs low into the room, the red cement floors are cold; the single bed in the inner room looks hard and uninviting, wooden cupboards line a wall of this room. Everything is austere, essential and very basic.

The lunch we eat in the dining room below is delicious home-cooked bangaali raana at its best like it has always been at his place. My favorite is the chaatni made from coriander leaves blended with chillies and tamarind. The fish (katla maach) is flavorful and light, the chingri maach excellent and sweet. The light refereshing salad is perfect and the mishtis that end the meal are classic Bengali winter treats.

------------------------

You can never go home again

Karnani Mansions has now been been painted pink, the courtyard has been cemented over, the building has one functional (though very small) elevator, the staircases are clean and NO SPITTING signs have been prominently placed all over. Outside my mother's apartment balcony -- now converted into glass-paned windows -- we can see Dunlop House being replaced by Pataka Bhavan (named after the biri people) . The apartment itself with its high ceilings and huge rooms and fantastic Burma teak furniture is too much a part of me to be analysed clear-headedly. As we sift through old black-and-white photographs we find pictures of my dad when I was 10 or 12. There he is looking fresh-faced, handsome, young, not a care in the world. That is how I have decided to remember him. Not as the tired, world-weary, 60 year old whose eyes filled with tears the afternoon I was leaving for Japan after 2 weeks in the city, some seven years ago soon after I was married.

Design dreams

2010-11-12T06:37:00.000-08:00

Today I was reading about designing man caves in homes and then about mom caves and from there another article on this really beautiful Shanghai apartment in the French Concession (nothing to do with man or mom caves!) but it just made me think of our own apartment (not a rented one!) and some of the things I'd really like to do with it.

The French Concession apartment was really beautiful and I think the nicest thing about it was this huge dining table, custom built, that ran almost the length of the apartment. A nice long dining table is such a wonderful thing to have -- long dinners, longer mommy late afternoon get-togethers with lots of nice snacks and tea laid out, just a place to sit and get some work done...the possibilities are endless. The other room I'd love to do is a nice cosy family den. In most of the apartments we've lived in that third room gets overlooked, too often ending up as little more than a glorified store room, a place to junk the extra furniture and stuff. But that room has so much potential and I'd love to do a nice place where we could sit and unwind with a little bit of all our favorite stuff in it plus the books, a lovely comfy chair or two and the best floor lamp ever. A mom cave if there ever was one :)

Pujo memories

2010-10-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Nabami bhog this afternoon included 'kishmish pulao', maacher kalia, chorchori and chingri maach fried with lal saag. For Bijoya we'll have the daakbangla murgir jhol with loochi, aloo and begun bhaja and tomator chaatni. Over the ten years I've been away from home, Durga Pujo has become a nostalgic and somewhat embellished memory. After all, we grew up in the 'saheebi Park Street para' where there was no para pujo or communal eating over those four days.

But even with all our saheebi ways we would still be invited over to south Calcutta friends for Ashtami bhog, kumari pujo or Bijoya lunch and then all the anjalees/ sandhi pujos etc every year. I loved best the sound of the dhakis, the beautiful sarees the older women wore and the bhog, (and some of the older men in their crisp starched dhuti-kurtas and leather 'pumps') . I remember sitting at the long communal wooden tables, mouth watering all ready for the khichuri, chaatni and papor, mishtis and mishti doi. Or the kosha manghso and loochi or the pulao and bhaajas.

I remember visiting the Maddox Square pujo in the first year of high school with friends and eating greasy chicken rolls with synthetic tomato sauce. We were all prettily dressed up, giggly and silly. Aashiqui songs blared over the microphones, the boys were pimply-faced and self-conscious with Rahul Roy haircuts and Maa Durga was largely forgotten in this ancient rite of passage that had little to do with Maha Ashtami and a whole lot more to do with out-of-control hormones.

My first Fay Weldon

2010-08-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

I read my first Fay Weldon, The Fat Woman's Joke, and it reinforces an old thought of mine: we urban Third World women owe a lot to these British and American feminists of the Sixties. I think the debt is not acknowledged as often as it should be among the many wives and women who sit drinking skinny lattes and frappucinos in coffee bars across Asia and Europe, but writers like Weldon and Lessing did lay the ground and I at least am grateful.

[ok after i wrote this i realized the use of Thirld World and then a bit later Asia and Europe may seem like I'm confused about the geographical boundaries of the economic First and Third Worlds so, a kind of clarification is needed. I had a specific picture in mind as I wrote that particular sentence: a picture of well-heeled Third World women vacationing or living easy comfortable lives abroad, and in the course of one such day, drinking a skinny latte somewhere and in the freedom and ease of that moment totally oblivious to the work that went before Carrie Bradshaw and her kind caricatured the movement, the work done by serious clever articulate women like Weldon and Lessing and Iris Murdoch.]

I haven't seen the second Sex and the City movie but all the TV episodes and the first movie confirm the basic insecurity of women everywhere, the sense of being incomplete without a man which is in a sense sad. We don't need men to define us, we should not, but inexplicably most of us still do (even those of us who claim we don't). I know of friends -- successful women who have dumbed down, done sillier things simply to ensnare the men who are so important and necessary for their so-called advancement.

I am the mother of a very little daughter and while I teach my daughter small little things: nursery rhymes and folktales and language and songs to sing before we fall asleep at night, I am also teaching her the sense of self: I want my very little girl to grow up to be her own woman one day; to own herself; to be her own person and then to decide whether --and how much -- she chooses to share herself with someone else. This is the greatest gift I can ever give her.

A room with a view

2010-07-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

On clear summer days, the kind we have been having this past week, the view from our 9th floor DB apartment is spectacular. I know I've said this in an earlier post but looking out at a clear blue sky with clumps of perfect cotton wool clouds, a very blue Tai Pak bay dotted with colorful sail boats, junks, cargo ships and ferries, and the green mountains that make a quietly majestic backdrop for Hong Kong's famous skyline, I cannot helping talking about the spectacular view once again.

When schools close for the summer break DB becomes if not exactly a ghost town, at least a significantly emptier place for about six weeks. The buses are emptier (and quieter), it's actually enjoyable at the supermarket when the checkout queue doesnt feel like the crowd outside an opening night show and the swimming pool has more water than kids and inflatable toys in it. And now as I write this a fantastic fat half moon (like a perfectly broken Kettle chip in a perfect world) just slipped out from behind a gauzy web of black cloud and is hanging right there in the night sky far, far above the magical skyline. Amazing.

A different ferry and a brawl

2010-05-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

Some rainy summer days are truly spectacular in Hong Kong. Not when it's actually raining, but just after the shower stops, as the sky clears and bit by bit the city's famous skyline is silhouetted against a clean sky much like one of those 'magic' paper paintings that start to show their design as the paper is held against a light. Early evenings or late afternoons, this looks fantastic -- the colors a perfect pastel palette. The night sky is just as enchanting with the whole skyline outlined in flashing neon and tiny glimmering points of light.

From our Discovery Bay apartment windows we have a fantastic view that stretches from the green mountains of Lantau Island to Disneyland and the Kowloon bridge, to the homes on the Peak and the sleepy fishing villages of Peng Chau and Mui Wo.

We took the Star ferry this evening as we had some shopping to do at the Ocean Terminal mall in Tsim Sha Tsui. My little daughter called the Star ferry the 'rocky ferry' and declared she didnt like it all. I guess she's been spoilt by the fancy DB ferry! The Star ferry with its no frills wooden benches and open deck makes a short journey across to Kowloon, over slightly choppy waters as the rain lashes the deck (open except for a few roughly tied plastic protective sheets). The waters are busy with junks, larger ferries, cargo ships and a massive multi-level Star Cruise ship that begins its slow journey out of the harbor guided by a tiny tug boat. Passengers on this Star ferry are mostly tired ordinary folk with worry-creased faces, a world away from the DB ferry's blackberry checking, well-heeled men and women sipping their lattes or ice cold heinekens as they make the 25-minute journey over to Central.

-------------------------------------

Back in DB on our way to the bus stop after dinner we encounter a brawl outside McSorleys pub. Huge muscled men hit and punch each other, much filthy language eggs the drink-sodden fighters on. In a while they are separated by more large men and a woman, overly made-up, big and drunk, hugs the man who was bashed up. It's stupid but unfortunately it's also fast becoming a regular weekend feature in Discovery Bay where beer is seemingly consumed by the gallon by the growing population of this community's over-muscled brainless louts.

An afternoon in Soho

2010-04-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

There really can be too much of a good thing. Take living in Discovery Bay for example, the place is idyllic in a charming south Lantau sort of way. Green hills, the Tai Pak bay, the Victoria Harbor skyline (when pollution haze permits you can see it that is), no vehicular noise just a couple of harmless buses and the absurd little golf carts packed with mothers and kids shuttling between home and the Plaza. But sometimes it all gets a little too much... after all this is a small community so it's the same faces, the same shops, the same bus (of course) but the exact same people on the bus at a given time. A little too predictable at times. Which is why every now and then I like escaping into the annonymity, chaos, rudeness, smells, unpredictability and tower block ugliness of Hong Kong island.

From the 22nd floor of an apartment building in Soho my toddler and I peer down onto the distant narrow street, a few cabs drive by, a steep climb of steps lead up to Caine Street. In the strange Hong Kong way dingy looking buildings end in fabulously done up terraces complete with stone gardens, little fountains, white wicker outdoor furniture and fancy plants. From one window we see the zoological gardens home to the gold and black monkeys with a fancy name I've forgotten now; from another side we see the high dull red stone walls of the now defunct prison (my daughter is fascinated by this).

The Gujarati lady's daughter is sure I am from Bangladesh -- at least this is what she tells her mother -- as I buy a set of pretty colorful bangles for my little girl. I speak with my daughter in Bangla and to the young Gujarati girl that means I am from Bangladesh. The shop is chock full of Indian stuff among the hideous salwar kameez sets with silver and bead work, the scarves and mojris are some genuinely pretty tops embroidered in the delicate chikan way and some quite nice bits of costume jewellery but it would need a practiced eye to sift out the junk from the good stuff in that shop. Two western women are buying a salwar kameez for a 'Cowboys and Indians night' because as one woman tells the other that would include those Indians and the salwar kameez wearing Indians. Right. It is the kind of conversation that makes living in DB boring.

We finish off our afternoon in Soho with a search for flowers as my daughter loves to smell them and she wants me to get her some roses. We buy some at the wet market along with a lovely purple hydrangea, a kindly woman taxi driver stops when I have just about despaired of ever finding a cab on Hollywood Road at 5 pm and as we scramble into the taxi my little girl asks: "Why is the driver a lady?"

And how could I forget to say the chocolate yogurt cake served with a generous dollop of vanilla icecream at the O Cafe is simply delicious. We loved it.

Year of the Tiger

2010-02-14T06:02:00.000-08:00

After about seven years in Asia, the Lunar New Year has become a rather familiar holiday. The 'lai see' envelopes, the huge banquets with abalone and black moss, the closed down feel of the city and the 60 % Ikea sale. Here in Discovery Bay, the holiday gets a few extra touches like the man dressed up in typical Chinese costume down at the Plaza handing out rose shaped chocolates to little kids; the 'photo set' put up in the center of the plaza, the Lunar New Year specials on offer at the restaurants and the darling parade the little kids of Sunshine House put up on Friday. This is the Year of the Tiger; Playhouse Disney is celebrating it with a new Tigger movie. I remember once reading a columnist who wrote: "Be a Tigger, not an Eeyore." Quite right Tigger's hysterical energy is rather infectious. Anyway, Kung hei fat choi!

December 31st in Panvel - volume lagaa de!

2009-12-31T07:53:00.000-08:00

This must surely be the most surreal of New Year Eves I have ever experienced. My father-in-law is in intensive care after major surgery, my husband and mother-in-law are camping out at the hospital; my two-and-half year old is fast asleep in the living room of my in-laws apartment (as the bedroom we use when we visit here is hellishly noisy tonight the result of a 'grand New Year's Eve party being thrown by the residents of Varad Vinayak Complex in Panvel). The New Year's Eve extravaganza (as it has been called on the notice board) is a bad sound explosion. Four massive microphones have been set up near a makeshift wooden stage covered in tired red and blue satin. The white satin used for the upper part of the stage is a bit stained not that anyone cares. The emcee is an enthusiastic young woman blaring inanities into her microphone; the impromptu songfest (which is happening as I write this) seems to have attracted unfortunate participants -- a man whose voice must surely have seen better days, a woman who sings so badly that even the jovial Varad Vinayak crowd hold back on the applause. I am waiting for the dinner break, the endless screaming may stop for a while. Till that happens (or we mercifully reach midnight) it is 'volume lagaa de' for tuneless Bollywood songs and jokes that would surely make a slightly more sane audience cry.

The dinner menu for this extragavanza is listed as follows:
two kinds of starters
vegetarian manchurian
vegetarian biryani
vegetable preparation
2 kinds of sweets

A talent contest has been promised. The children are in their element. The emcee is shrieking again as the music changes to 'dance songs'.

Dusty days in Panvel

2009-12-30T08:13:00.000-08:00

A family medical emergency has kept us here in Panvel longer than expected. Panvel is a dusty surburb of Bombay, the postal address locates it in New Bombay, district Raigad. Which to me is irrelevant, as Bombay proper was just as dusty and disorganized as here.
Urban Indians are full of themselves and Indian newspapers are full of urban Indians being full of themselves. The tragedy is that the country appears to be falling apart quite literally. Take Bombay airport - but even before that, the Jet airways aircraft we took from Hong Kong appeared good enough, though the restroom nearest to us was filthy -- someone had quite casually decided to take a dump all over the potty and of course leave the disgusting mess for everyone else to admire. The horror was several passengers obliviously used the filthy restroom, eventually when the flight landed in Bombay the flight attendants had to lock down that restroom.

And then there was Bombay airport -- an airless smelly hell with multiple queues of passengers, not a single luggage trolley in sight, not a kiosk selling a bottle of water and of course luggage belts where the luggage did not appear for an hour after the flight landed. Yet in the middle of this complete hell, westernized Bombayites with bad skin, western clothes, peculiar hairstyles and a lot of jewellery spoke loudly in Indian English about 'people waiting for hours to welcome me'; 'driver not answering his mobile'; 'chachi wants to stop at Colaba' and other such things.

Driving through Bombay, past the dusty sprawling slums of Sion and Dharavi it seems insane that the so-called opinion makers of the city waste valuable newsprint on detailing the brunches of ageing Bollywood superstars, or write terrible columns on Christmas in Paris or marathons that must be run for charity, or the new jewellery boutique of an Ambani wife. It is sad and rather stupid.

======================

I've said this before but it can be said several times over, Panvel is dusty. The leaves on the trees are dusty, people's feet and hands are thick with dust, hair and skin acquires a patina of greyish black dust. On the bright side, this is an area rich in water resources so frequent baths may be had.
Panvel is gradually being built up, it is a sort of Vashi in the making, so the government is busy setting up parks (with many benches, small trees and idiosyncratic timings), schools, an orphanage, housing complexes with religious names -- Krishnaleela (A and B), Varad Vinayak, Sai Saaj and so on. There is a supermarket local Panvelwallahs are proud of: DMart. It is flush with Chinese-made products, local vegetables, instant noodles (Maggi clones that have caught the Indian consumers' fancy), some over-sodiumized proccessed cheese, grains, pulses. It is actually quite a good supermarket. But like everything in India there is a desperate fatigue about the place, only just visible in the dusty shelves, yellowed produce that may occasionally be past its expiry date, tired careworn staff and terribly behaved shoppers.

Seoul story

2009-11-29T17:24:00.000-08:00

My husband and two-year-old daughter crowded into the tiny ultrasound cubicle. I was lying down on the spotless white bed, a Korean man sat with an expressionless face (this should have alerted us had we been a little less cocky about our second pregnancy) at a machine on one side of the bed, tapping something on the keyboard in front of him with one hand; while with the other he moved the little suction cup like thing across my gel-smeared tummy. My husband and I tried to get our daughter to look at the plasma screen to the other side of the bed: "Look at the TV...you will soon see new baby there" we told her. "No" she said firmly and instead went after more fun activities like trying to climb on to the bed with me or better still pressing a couple of buttons on a machine she found in a corner of the little room.

The man had begun to make incomprehensible mewling little noises, small little 'ehs' and 'eehs' and 'aahs', more disturbingly the screen was a blurry pixellated mess. Where, I asked my husband, was the image of the baby that should now be at least 12 weeks old? The man called in a woman assistant and some conversation was exchanged in Korean -- for my husband and I it was the beginning of being in Oz, except I knew this wasn't going to be a very nice Oz at all.

"You have a problem" the man finally told us in English, adding that he was going to get the doctor.
"What problem?" I asked a hysterical pitch to my voice.
"Calm down" said my husband as his own laughing boyish face suddenly crumpled with worry.

We were in the middle of a two-month stay in Seoul that had coincided with the beginning of my second pregnancy. All that was supposed to have happened was two routine prenatal visits, the second one including the OSCAR test for a Down's Syndrome screening. What actually happened was one prenatal visit that went off fine; and the second that showed I had experienced a 'missed abortion' almost a month ago. Meaning for almost four weeks I had been carrying around a baby with no heartbeat inside me.

I clutched my two-year-old to me as my husband and I stood bewildered and unbelieving (it had been such an apparently normal pregnancy these past few weeks and anyway aren't these things supposed to happen only to other people?) in the crowded spankingly clean waiting area outside the doctors' rooms on the 4th floor of Yonsei University's Severance Hospital.
Some tears splashed untidily on my cheeks, my daughter looked at them closely, studying their course for a few seconds: "Amma are those tears falling in your eyes?" She asked in her careful way. Then putting her arms around my neck she continued: "Are you slightly sad?"

Lots of things happened very quickly over the next two days during which time my husband and I learnt a whole new lexicon of missed abortion-related terms like blighted ovum, spontaneous abortion and active bleeding. All horrid sounding things which cunningly go on inside your tummy even while you are taking your folic acid and vitamins and doing whatever it is you are supposed to do to ensure healthy babies get born.

The curettage and evacuation was scheduled for Tuesday, June 16th, two days after we had had that ultrasound in the little cubicle. The hospital had arranged a very nice little private room for me and English speaking interpreters to help us understand what was happening. We were also assured that the procedure would take around 10-12 minutes and I would be discharged the same evening.

We decided to limit the time our little daughter would have to spend in the hospital, despite the comfortable little room we had been given. So rather than spend the entire day with me at the hospital, my husband and daughter made a couple of short trips through the day.
It was about an hour after their first round at the hospital and I was on the IV drip waiting to be taken down to the OR, that I was visited by a young slightly giggly woman. She introduced herself as an intern and told me she was there to explain the risks of the procedure I was about to undertake. Over the next very long ten minutes she went through three neatly printed pages listing every possible risk (and the probability ratio of each risk) of curettage and evacuation. Now and then she would giggle a little more than usual, particularly as she went through the more far out risks (like death, injury to the bladder, massive and sudden blood transfusions) and then taking note of my scared-to-death expression she would add comfortingly: "Don't worry, this happens to only one in 10,000 people, so it's very rare."

After the intern left I was certain the procedure would leave me bleeding to death and my daughter motherless. I panicked about the future of my forgetful husband without me to help him find his spectacles, his socks, his blackberry...The image of him hunting around the apartment with that abstract look on his face brought tears to my eyes and for a minute I felt sadder than I had when I found out my baby had no heartbeat.

My fears spiraled ridiculously as I was wheeled into the Star Trek-ish Operating Room bay. Very gratefully I gave myself over to the anesthetist as he came over and introduced himself to me a few seconds later.
=======================
After I survived the curettage and evacuation (rather painlessly actually) I felt only pure relief that it was all over.
A few days later as I was changing my daughter's diapers she poked my tummy and said: "Is that the new baby in your tummy amma?"
"No...the new baby has gone away"
"Where has it gone amma?"
"Oh to... to.. Singapore." (I wanted to get this line of questioning out of the way as quickly and unsoppily as possible. My daughter was born in Singapore and for some not very clear reason this is what I said)
"Can I also go to Singapore and take dolly with me? Now? Please!
Can I also do potty with the potty ring?

Can I..." I interrupted her with a very big grateful hug because though of course she doesn't know this, her random little important questions have suddenly become my secret prayer beads.

Eavesdropping on the ferry

2009-11-27T06:36:00.000-08:00

The 9:10 ferry leaves the Discovery Bay pier with the usual crowd of office goers (mostly male, DB is in some ways a very Stepford-ish community of working dads, SAHMs and predictably pretty home interiors. The big difference being these SAHMs aren't programed to cook/ clean/ keep house/look after baby -- they simply employ 'aunties'); a couple of moms heading to Central for a typical morning of shopping, cut-and-color, massage and pedicure and a smaller number of people that can't be easily pigeon-holed.

The women in the seats behind me are on their way to make Christmas cards (I am not an active eavesdropper but some conversations just make their way into my ears). They chatter on about the cards, photographs being chosen for the cards, children -- their own and other peoples -- and then sibling rivalry and reasons to have multiple children. This is the thing about the ferry, people talk (especially the women) and sometimes they get loud but unlike a bus or subway, there is no stop so no rush and flow of changing passengers till you reach the Central Pier and through the 25 minute journey, the ferry is mostly quiet except for these snatches of conversation so if you happen to feel queasy reading while on a boat, there is little else to do but listen in to the chatter. The multiple children bit gets me (maybe because we are now in the final round as it were of deciding whether we should attempt to change our cozy single-child family), especially as it seems one woman needed her second child to rather ominously 'keep the relationship from going'.

A heavily pregnant woman (with a toddler in tow) discusses a breastfeeding and baby massage class she is attending to 'refresh the stuff' in keeping with our hyper-parenting times; the man in the aisle seat across her studies his Blackberry intently, gently tapping one elegant winged brown shoe against the seat leg ahead of him.

We pass the red and steel Shun Tak building which brings back memories of the hydrofoil that took us to Macau when we made our visa run soon after arriving in Hong Kong and I see the sleek smart cobalt blue Cotai Strip* boat (or jet or whatever it is called) and as usual I wonder who uses it and for what. The towers of Central loom up ahead, people start getting up and queueing before the still-secured exit hatch. I think this urgent need to queue up even before we actually reach the pier has to do with getting as close to the front of the taxi line outside as possible. In any event the urge to queue is infectious and more than half the ferry is standing in front of a closed hatch waiting patiently for it to be opened. I join them -- it is time to stop eavesdropping.

*Now I know...the Cotai Strip is in Macau and the boat ferries people, presumably tourists, across.

Turkish Airlines takes us home

2009-08-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

There are no luggage carts to be found outside the Ataturk International airport in Istanbul. Either you hire a porter and trolley or just pull all your suitcases along by yourself as you best can. Inside past the baggage security check, we were greeted by the longest queue ever at the Turkish Airlines counter. For some unfathomable reason the airlines operates a 'common check-in' which mean everyone going anywhere by Turkish Airlines has to check in at the same set of counters, which means the counter staff look bedraggled and a little manic as they attempt to deal with the hordes of people and tons of baggage (people here seem to travel with a minimum of four suitcases and I counted up to 10 suitcases piled high on a trolley accompanied by two men).

The chaos continues through to the immigration and passport control area (actually split into two areas but the notice is cleverly hidden so not many people eventually get to the second area). While we were waiting in the medium-sized queue, an airport official pushed past, she was followed by a family: a short man, two women dressed in black abayas, five children. The whole group walked right through the queue and went up to the passport official and got their papers checked. This of course took half an hour and the rest of us waited our turn patiently.

That was the beginning of many waits that night before we would eventually reach Hong Kong the next evening. The boarding gates were a free for all and the departure schedule at each gate changed randomly as if the authorities in charge of that felt all the passengers needed a good bit of exercise. At times the terminal did end up looking like a gym of sorts as harried passengers raced from gate 320 all the way across to gate 218 and then back to 320 again only to realize that the flight had been delayed by 50 minutes.

Gate 218 looked like a Halloween party was in full swing as some 100 people (men and women) dressed in long flowing white robes shuffled about with vague lost expressions on their faces. The flight was going to Jeddah.
At another gate was a small crowd of heavily made up women in colorful tight velvet maxis and big turbans. This group was headed to Ashgabat. The airport announcer screamed out panicky messages in Turkish every few minutes as more Ashgabat ladies rushed to their boarding gate each clutching a load of plastic shopping bags in their hands.

A large water massage system occupied one section of the waiting area. No one seemed interested in climbing in and getting their 'muscles relaxed' even though the sign outside the massage contraption said you could do this without taking your clothes off.

-----------------------

The crew on our Turkish Airlines flight (when we eventually boarded it almost one hour after its scehduled time) looked surly, tired, a little disheveled and very unhappy. As we got to know our flight attendants better this initial impression only deepened. They walked up and down the crowded aisles (the flight was full and as each passenger carried about four pieces of hand luggage and each crew member seemed to have brought on another four pieces each, the overhead luggage bins were crammed full and the extra hand luggage was tucked away all over the aircraft) looking bored to death and yawning hugely even before the flight took off.

One male flight attendant -- who looked like a rather young college kid -- grumbled under his breath whenever a passenger requested anything. Another large woman attendant bossily scolded anyone doing anything she didnt approve of, while her sad-faced colleague spent most of the flight worrying about a chipped finger nail and nibbling from the food trays stowed in the galley. For the most part, the passengers didnt give a damn anyway, they walked up and down determinedly as the aircraft rocked through big pockets of turbulence and the 'seatbelts fastened' sign glowed bravely; they queued up outside the bathrooms to chat and laugh at 3 am while mothers of the many small kids on the flight walked right from economy to business class and back to economy as they soothed their wailing children to sleep.

The lot in the cockpit seemed to fit right in. Most times they forgot to announce that the aircraft was about to hit a massive pocket of turbulence (and this happened several times during the flight) and while everyone bounced and lurched about inside the cabin during a particularly bad spell of turbulence, the flight attendants decided to grumpily serve another over-salted, undercooked meal and to hell with it if your tasteless boiling coffee sloshed all over you.

We were happy to get home in one piece eventually.

The last day

2009-08-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

Our last day in Istanbul was also the first day of Ramzan and we were lucky enough to see the breaking of the fast that evening. Closer to the hour of sunset (quite late here, almost 8 pm) small crowds of people were moving about the stalls outside the Blue Mosque which were now finally all set for business. Along with the stalls selling chicken and beef doner, were stalls selling chickpea and cucumber salads, cut fruit, dried fruit and juices, various kinds of bread and meat, there were also novelty stalls including one selling toys and another photo stall where tourists could dress up in brocade 'pasha' robes and get themselves photographed.

The little parks around the stalls had a festive atmosphere with families sitting at the makeshift wooden tables getting ready for the iftar meal. At some tables, the women had spread out cloths and plastic plates into which they were arranging sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and slices of bread. A thin man dressed in a black suit wandered about on stilts much to the delight of the older kids all around, while the younger ones (like my daughter) seemed a little afraid of this very tall man!

------------------------

The restaurants and cafes were serving a special iftar menu and the Dervish cafe (close to Hagiya Sophia) was offering an iftar menu for 25 lira -- a soup (halim and a yogurt soup), kofte with piyaaz, halva and a rice dish. At the same cafe we were in time to watch the dervish perform. As two musicians played a haunting sufi composition, the dervish gradually 'unfolded' himself and began twirling increasing his speed to match the rising tempo of the music. Watching the human figure all dressed in white whirl around like a top on speed made me feel a little giddy.

--------------------------

Milk pudding by the Bosphorous

2009-08-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

The Turks love their sweets and yesterday we visited a charming little sweet shop called Lokum here in Sultanahmet. The sweet shop is painted a pretty white color with pink trimming, inside the most delicious selection of Turkish delight, halva, chocolates and candy is laid out in glass cases, while delightful glass and white wood vintage cabinets built in beneath the display cases are filled with wooden presentation boxes that are decorated with pretty watercolors and ink sketches of Istanbul scenes. Along with the assortment of sweets, the shop also sells some handmade soap, the dark green mehendi powder, glass jars of saffron and little packets of Turkish coffee.

--------------------------------

Sultanahmet Square and the Blue Mosque are ready for the month of Ramzan. The square has been lined with blue and white plywood pavillions that house different stalls selling various kind of food and drink to be eaten when the fast is broken. Makeshift wooden benches and tables have been set up along the little grassy spots opposite the mosque, Coca cola vending machines have been brought in and small stages with lighting and sound systems have also been set up for the various entertainments that will mark the iftar hours.

A middle-aged Chinese woman tourist clambered on to one of the makeshift iftar pavilions and posed suggestively while her older male companion photographed her much to the amusement of some local women sitting nearby.

-----------------------------------

I felt a strange sadness as I went through the beautiful empty rooms of the harem in the Topkapi Palace. There is something about the small rooms, ornately decorated ceilings, the medium-sized entertainment hall with its separate enclosure for the Queen Mother and main concubines, the pair of fabulous gold 18th century mirrors and the narrow stairway that leads to the upper chambers that fills you with a sense of how oppressive a life the sultan's concubines must have led.

We read how the younger concubines brought to the harem grew up in the traditions of the palace and how the 'luckier' ones then moved on to various levels of seniority and position within the harem. We read about the eunuchs who guarded the women and can only imagine at the intrigues, malicious gossip and petty bickering and jealousies that must have been an everyday part of such a closed existence.

Curious groups of tourists walk through the bathing rooms and the privy chamber of the sultan stopping to look at the marble chamber pot and massive basins with their gold faucets. The Queen Mother's chamber has three lifesize mannequins dressed according to the tradition of the day sitting around a small table, one of the women is passing a small covered copper teacup to the figure that represents the Queen Mother. Even this little tableau conveys a sense of the perpetual battle of wits these women must have engaged in to survive life in the sultan's harem.

--------------------------

There is a nice, though pricey cafe, in the Topkapi Palace one level below the marble floored balcony that overlooks the Sea of Marmara where it meets the Bosphorous and Golden Horn. We ate lunch there: pastry with spinach, a chicken doner, fries and a creamy pistachio flavored milk pudding served in a heavy brown porcelain pudding bowl. I found Turkish beer to be sharper and less pleasing than say a Singha or Asahi.

Istanbul: the Blue Mosque and a lost blackberry

2009-08-20T04:59:00.000-07:00

The little Kariye museum is packed with tour groups on this hot Thursday morning, our second last day in Istanbul. The ancient church museum has one of the best examples of Byzantine mosaics in the region and even to the untrained eye, these mosaics are simply fantastic in detail and color.

The Kariye Church was also known as the Chora church, chora meaning 'out in the country' as the church was originally built outside the city walls (the ruins of which can still be seen today) by Constantine the Great. The building that stands today was built in the 11th century while most of the mosaics and the ceiling murals date to around 1320.

Some series of mosaics depict stories of the early years of Jesus including some of his famous miracles like turning water into wine at the Feast of Cannan.

For four centuries after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul, the Kariye was used as a mosque, hence the minarets that have been added to the original building structure. (Just as the minarets were added to the Hagiya Sophia during the rule of the Ottoman sultans). Later on account of its invaluable mosaics, the mosque was converted to the museum that exists today.

-------------------------------

In a swift drop back to reality after the magnificence of the Kariye, we lost our Blackberry in the taxi on the way back to our hotel, the Turkoman, in Sultanahmet. The hotel manager was wonderful in helping us get back the phone, and after a couple of calls, the taxi driver came back to the Turkoman with the phone and a 30 lira bill (to which if you add the 15 lira by which he overcharged us on the original trip back from the Kariye, made for quite an expensive second-last morning in Istanbul).

-----------------------------------

For me the sound of azaan is a childhood sound -- I grew up in Calcutta and a little distance from our crumbling old apartment building on Park Street is a large Muslim neighborhood and five times a day the muezzin's call to the faithful could be clearly heard from our apartment balcony. Hearing the azaan from the Blue Mosque reminds me of random childhood things: hot quiet early Sunday evenings when my father would sit at our large rectangular dining table for a cup of tea; my grandmother sitting out in her old chair in the balcony her hair perfumed with the cloying Keo Karpin hair oil that she loved to use; our fierce deaf bull-terrier mongrel, we called him Deafee and during his 15 years with us every member of my family would get at least one vicious bite from him.

The domes on the Blue Mosque (picture above) have been built in keeping with a general principal of mosque architecture, my husband tells me. They are supposed to evoke the flow of a water fountain, hence the domes descend in size from very large to very small. A large sign at the entrance of the Mosque instructs visitors in appropriate behavior as they are about to enter an active place of worship. Women must wear long skirts (no one takes this seriously), but they do dress decorously for the most part, shoes have to be removed at the entrance and can only be put on when you exit and pass through the doors, visitors can not go beyond the point assigned to the public and no loud voices are allowed inside. Also all women must cover themselves with a scarf (either head or for those with bared shoulders, the scarf must be draped over the shoulders). Considerately the mosque authorities have placed a huge bin at the entrance with plastic bags for ones shoes, while a man hands out large squares of blue cloth that the women can use as scarves.

The interior of the mosque strikes me as a severe place of worship, only because I am used to the heady bazaar like atmosphere of a Hindu temple or even the more contained but equally festive interior of a church with its statues, incense or candles, massive flower arrangements, pew arrangements, the confessional box and so on.

The mosque is a huge almost bare cavernous room heavily carpeted. The ceiling of course is beautifully decorated with intricate floral patterns; the stained glass windows are brilliantly colored but there is no central visible religious motif. There is a small women's area at the back and one large stand-like thing covered in black velevt and lace cloth which is placed to a side of the many prayer area. As the evening prayer service has only just got over, some covered women are still in the women's section with little children running about the carpeted floor playing and squealing to each other.

The Arasta Bazaar outside the Blue Mosque is almost empty with most tourists happily choosing to give its over-priced handicraft shops a miss.

------------------------------------------

We ate what could be described as a 'set Turkish lunch' at a small cafe this afternoon: lamb meatballs with potatoes in a tomato-based sauce with a small plate of rice and a large bowl of yogurt seasoned with thyme and olive oil. Followed by a tiny glass of black tea for 10 lira per person.

-----------------------------------------

The Dolmabahce Palace has a very nice little cafe just by the side of the Bosphorous. The palace interiors and exterior reflects the European ideals of architecture the last Sultan of the Ottoman empire aspired to, and while the interiors of the Topkapi are filled with Iznik tiles and Ottoman carvings, inside the Dolmabahce one can see plenty of crystal and gold (though visitors are only allowed inside with a tour guide).

We drank coffee in thick white porcelain cups at the cafe, our table was placed just alongside the white wrought iron railing by the waters edge. Fat water birds bounced along the waves, gulls screeched overhead and the huge ships went by. Now and then a small wave would crash lightly against the moss-covered stone walls of the palace. At a table nearby sat a very old, well-dressed lady accompanied by a slightly younger equally well-dressed woman. They were joined sometime later by another elederly lady neatly coiffed, perfumed and carefully jewelled. I imagined them to be sophisticated old Istanbullus out for an evening cup of coffee. They spoke in soft tones, gesticulating with pretty ringed fingers occasionally looking out at the deep blue waters and the familiar landmarks of a city that for them is the very fabric of their lives.

Istanbul: Rumelihisari

2009-08-19T04:46:00.000-07:00

We visited the Sariyer district of Istanbul yesterday. This northernmost district on the European side of the city is lushly wooded with a spectacular coastline along the Bosphorous. After the tram ride from Sultanahmet to Kabatas, a shortish taxi drive along this district brought us to the historic Rumelihisari fortress.

We drove by pretty apartment buildings with broad balconies and summer flowers in window boxes, al fresco cafes and sweet shops with tables and chairs set under charming striped awnings, little boutiques selling everything from natural soaps and dried flowers to scarves and leather bags; and other little shops and markets catering to everyday needs. As the road widened along the shoreline, the magnificent Bosphorous stretched before us -- a deep jewelled blue flecked with foaming waves.

Traffic on the Bosphorous is varied: huge ships with poetic names like Grimaldi Lines or Captain Ishmael, jet black motor boats and the many ferries crammed with tourists taking in the sites along the sea. Along the shore a few families, women and children and the ocassional pair of lovers occupied the well-spaced benches. In a grassy spot on the waterfront a little distance away, many overweight men, shirtless with hairy bellies and long swim pants got ready for their daily dip in the waters.

The Rumelihisari was built at the narrowest point of the Bosphorous by Sultan Mehmet II in just under four months in 1451, before he conquered Constantinople. The fortress was built to prevent aid reaching Constantinople during the Turkish seige of the city. We pass through the massive doors of the fortress into the ruins of its courtyard, where a few canons and stone canon balls belonging to a later period still remain. My husband who is a wonderful guide as he is something of an expert self-taught historian, tells me the gory story of how a Venetian aid ship trying to pass through the waters of the Bosphorous was bombarded from the Rumelihisari, the crew decapitated and the captain impaled inside the fortress. Today the inner chambers of the fortress are closed to visitors but we are allowed a glimpse of the dank dark interiors and the winding stone steps that lead into the depths of what must have been a sordid death chamber for hundreds of unfortunate men.

We wonder at the purpose of the little amphitheater near a small circular tower building, perhaps a place to witness executions? After a little climb we reach the ramparts. It is easy to banish all sordid thoughts as we look out from here at the poetic spread of a city perched on its jewelled blue waters.

----------------------------------

The street that runs along the Sultan Ahmet tram stop is busy with touristy shops, restaurants, hotels, pensions, cafes. We stop at the little book shop to buy Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul and another book on the history of the Ottoman Empire that had caught our eye during an earlier browse through the shop. As my husband was paying for the books, the young attendant at the cash register asked my husband where he was from, on being told that he was an Indian, the young man said he was just in the middle of reading 'the excellent writing by Ibn Battuta on India'. As anyone familiar with the works of the Moroccon berber scholar and traveller knows, Battuta was no friend of the Hindus in his writings. More aware of the nuances of modern-day politics and religion, the elderly owner of the shop quickly interrupted his young assistant to ask if my husband was Hindu or Muslim. My husband replied that he was Hindu but looking back at the young assistant he added that Battuta's writings were very engrossing.

----------------------------------------

The Gulhane Gardens are a part of the magnificent Topkapi complex. Walking through them in the early evening we see a nice slice of Turkish life: families with many young children playing around the grounds, happy couples sitting entwined under huge shady trees, elderly women gossiping somberly on park benches, families picnicking on the green and grassy slopes and of course tourists walking through and snapping pictures of everything (one Japanese lady even had a friend snap a shot of her as she clambered on to the lap of Ataturk's sculpture in one corner of the gardens).
Walk towards the waterfront exit of the Gardens to reach a terraced tea house set on several levels. It looks on to the Sea of Marmara and in the distance one can see the Bosphorous bridge connecting the Asian and European sides of the city. Fat noisy gulls fly overhead and traffic whizzes by the busy highway beneath.

Turkish tea is served in huge iron samovars set upon kettles of boiling water. I observed a heavyset man with his traditionally dressed family at the table next to us make tea. His family consisted of another younger man and four women of varying ages all dressed in long coats and headscarves. The man first poured a little of the boiling water into a tea glass on the tray. He then poured this water into the next glass and so on till the same water was poured into the last glass on the tray. After 'washing out' all the glasses with boiling water, he poured boiling tea from the kettle, filling each glass up midway. A lady near him topped up each glass with boiling water. The glasses were then passed around and each drinker added sugar according to their taste. Another lady pulled out a selection of sweet and savoury snacks from a plastic bag next to her and then the family spent the next couple of minutes sipping and crunching away contentedly.

------------------------------

Looking at one of several display cases on the ruins of Troy in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum (main building) I was fascinated to see the gold jewellery -- little hair ornaments, beautiful earrings, pendants, even tiny gold pins -- all intact and of beautiful design. The gold a dull burnished color. It is fantastic to think that these very ornaments adorned the person of real Trojan women so many thousands of years ago.

The Museum of the Ancient Orient (also within the Archaeology Museum complex) contains the historic Treaty of Kardash, the oldest recorded peace treaty between Ramses II and the Hittites engraved on a soft clay tablet.
Another astonishing exhibit is the Alexander sarcophagus in the Necropolis of Sidon with its bas-relief carvings, rightly considered one of the museum's outstanding holdings.

Some more impressions

2009-08-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

The Valens Aqueduct (or Bozdoğan Kemeri in Turkish) is in Fatih. Originally it was merely one of the terminal points of the new wide system of aqueducts and canals constructed under Constantine I when the city was rebuilt and increased in size - which eventually reached over 250 kilometers in total length, the longest such system of Antiquity - that stretched throughout the hill-country of Thrace and provided the capital with water. The exact date that construction on the aqueduct began is uncertain, but it was completed in the year 368 during the reign of Roman Emperor Valens, whose name it bears.

In modern day Istanbul the Ataturk Bulvari boulevard passes along the arches of the Valens Aqueduct. The arches of the ancient aqueduct suddenly appeared on the horizon as the taxi drove us down the wide traffic-filled streets. On one side is a large park where children played on swings and slides, the Fatih mosque is close by and behind in the tiny cobbled streets are small stone buildings and little scenes of ordinary everyday life in the city: boys playing on the streets -- one group of them runs along a large firecesome greyish dog; washing hangs on a line that has been strung up outside one of the stone buildings; the lone tourist stands in front of the aqueduct photographing the arches of the ancient structure.

------------------------------

As you walk along Sultanahmet street towards the Topkapi Sarayi, there is a small cemetery on the side of the road opposite the souvenir and sweet shops. I saw several of these small cemeteries in different parts of the city, small spaces crowded with grey tombstones and cypress and fig trees.

--------------------

While we were waiting for our dinner at the Dervish Cafe near the Haghia Sophia, I heard two soft voices right behind me. Turning around I saw two young girls just outside the cafe walls, they were shabbily dressed but very pretty and slender. With hands outstretched the little girls were saying something. I don't understand Turkish but the language of poverty is universal and as I stared into a sad pair of grey eyes, I heard the same tired plea I have heard so many times in every city from Calcutta to San Francisco.

Istanbul Notes contd

2009-08-17T04:57:00.000-07:00

Istanbul's Grand Bazaar looks better on Sundays when the old market is shut and shuttered behind its arched wooden gates. This Monday morning as we walked into the market I felt a keen disappointment -- something wasn't quite right in this the most hyped of Istanbul's 'must-see' sights for souvenir-loving tourists. Though the stalls were crammed with beautiful Turkish handicrafts, carpets, rugs, kilims, bags all of that, the shopkeepers, mostly very polite men, all seemed to have an air of heavy resignation about them and I soon realized why. Practically no one buys anything at the Grand Bazaar as even the most naive tourists have cottoned on to the fact that the market is a rip-off. The highly over-priced wares on offer have almost no local buyers and few foreign ones too.

A pretty ornamental dagger made of bone and decorated with shell and colored stones caught our eye. The shopkeeper started off at 70 lira and in seconds was shouting out that he would sell it at 20 lira and this with the combined bargaining skills of my husband and I falling way below average!

I actully found some nice shops outside one of the market gates, selling beautiful copper kitchen utensils and implements including graceful water pots, little coffee pots with filigree handles, massive copper spoons, ladles and other things.

---------------------------

I wondered about cats when I read Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, I see now why they have such an important part in the Turkish author's novel: the city teems with cats. Whenever we eat out we see them, they wander about under the tables, some even jump onto the chairs where indulgent diners feed them bits of kebap and koftesi off their plates. We see them sunning themselves in leafy shaded spots everywhere, one favorite place for the Turkoman hotel cats seems to be the fig tree next to the Oto Park just outside the hotel. For the most part these are average size tabby cats, some are more exotic looking though with big bushy tails and reddish brown coats but as I am no cat expert I have no idea what these cats are called. To me, the cats are another example of Turkey's excellent secular society. Indian Muslims traditionally dislike cats and will not tolerate them in restaurants or eating places, little boys and grown men are often seen throwing stones at mangy skinny stray Indian cats or worse still whacking them with sticks or jharoos.

------------------------------

Alongside the road outside the Blue Mosque, pretty makeshift shelters in blue and white plywood are being erected. Perhaps these will be used as places to break the fast during September's holy month of Ramzan.

Turkish men pinch little children's cheeks in much the same avuncular way that Indian men do, they also ogle their women but far, far less offensively than Indian men hanging about the streets. In India, these men are so offensive that the local press have coined a term to express this form of behavior: eve-teasing.

---------------------------------

The main building of the Istanbul University with its imposing domed ceiling was built in the 15th century. The University building is set on an elevation above a sprawling cobble-stoned square. On Sunday evening, the square was crowded with pigeons, little children accompanied by watchful mothers, men sitting at the little cafe tables nursing their tiny cups of thick Turkish coffee or glasses filled with delicately flavored apple tea and a few students and tourists.

A long quiet tree-lined road alongside the main university building houses many satellite university buildings including a brick-red library building, visiting faculty apartment blocks, laboratories and student residences.

--------------------------------

Our hotel, the Turkoman, serves a wonderful wholesome breakfast in its terraced dining room looking out on to the Sea of Marmara every morning: fresh-baked bread, cereal, scrambled eggs, honey, sour cherry preserves, homemade cookies, cheese of two types, thick yogurt (my husband's favorite!), a sharp tasting potato and herb patty and coffee. My little daughter loves the honey, milk and cereal. She also loves the harsh manic 'laughter' of the huge fat seagulls that perch along the terrace railing.

Istanbul notes

2009-08-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

A tangle of fishing lines, blaring ferries, gold-flecked clouds, spires and domes and a skyline out of the Arabian Nights ringed by the seven hills of Istanbul are some of the images as we walk across the Galata Bridge on this late summer evening. The waters of the Golden Horn are a beautiful aquamarine; the people (mostly men with the occasional head-covered woman) fishing along the bridge look happy and relaxed. Their 3000 gram yogurt tubs are filled with little silver fish; some of the men have set up small thermacol boxes on which are placed shrimp in water filled plastic cups for sale.

Over in the 'new' European quarter, the Galata Tower stands like an imposing beacon. Down in Beyoglu next to a couple of shops selling musical instruments is the little Pictures and Stories cafe. A long-haired man rolls a marijuana cigarette at one of the cafe tables as a tattooed man in black slashed jeans and t-shirt and heavy silver jewellery walks by scratching himself and talking into his cellphone.

---------------------------------------

The Hagia Sophia (pic on right) is a magnificent spectacle: Glorious mosaics of Madonna and Child, Islamic calligraphy, gilt-edged stained glass windows, intricately painted ceilings and the view of the next-door Blue Mosque from some its windows.

As the muezzin calls out to the faithful from the Blue Mosque, Sultanahmet Road is a picture of chaos in high tourist season. The tram, packed to capacity, trundles by; the road on both sides is thronged by tourists -- in groups, in pairs, or all alone. Souvenirs sellers, guide book and map sellers and mineral water sellers do brisk business. Men stand by the al fresco restaurants inviting tourists in to try the kebaps, mezze platters, koftes, coffee.

People watching is fascinating here. The local men seem mostly handsome (though some may be so in a more gigolo kind of way), ranging from fair to swarthy. The women reflect the spirit of Turkey where fundamental and secular coexist in perfect harmony. Some wear head scarves tightly wound around foreheads; these women are often dressed in tunics over jeans, sometimes the tunics are worn over tight long-sleeved polo vests. Many carry high-end accessories that match their headscarves and tunics -- Gucci bags, D&G totes, diamante encrusted sunglasses, hot pink and turquoise Manolos. Other women are more conservatively dressed in full length abaya-like coats, sometimes black sometimes denim and sometimes other colors. Their heads are covered, and some even wear heavy coats or sweaters over these coats. Then there are the women dressed in black abayas with only slits for the eyes most times these eyes are beautiful and kohl-rimmed. I have also noticed some wearing an abaya type of coat with more of the face exposed, secured tightly under the chin in a kind of point. For some reason this gives the women an almost crow-like appearance. Then of course there are some local women who dress in a completely western way with no head covering at all.

------------------

The Topkapi is truly a pleasure palace. The beautiful libraries with its exquisite blue and white tiles, the gilded dome seat from where the Sultan broke his fast overlooking the Golden Horn, the balcony promenade overlooking the Bosphorous, the beautifully laid out gardens, the Gate of the White Eunuchs, even the velvet and tiled circumcision room with its magnificently decorated ceiling all tell of the luxury and splendour that was wrapped even around the Sultan's quotidian existence.

--------------------

The two heads of Medusa guard the eerie Basilica Cistern. This must count as the most intriguing of all Istanbul's grand ruins and relics as you descend into the bowels of Sultanahmet street to encounter this huge and ancient tank dotted with koi carp that never see the light of day. The air is musty and dank, the massive vaulted chamber is cool and lit by electric light today, but the intrusion of electricity does little to break the spell of having stepped into a time long gone by. The Medusa heads (one upside down and one missing a nose) are still fearful enough. The Basilica Cistern cafe is empty. Not surprising as who would want to sip Coca Cola in that musty watery Medusa-guarded chamber?

-----------------------

The flaky layered baklava pastry comes in many different varieties -- honey, pistachio, chocolate, walnut - all equally delicious. The halva, brilliantly colored is piled high in the glass display case of the sweet shop outside the Topkapi Palace gardens.

more to come...

A foodie's delight

2009-05-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

Reams have been written about Korean food, but that does not stop me from adding my bit! We had the most amazing chigae the other night -- mine was tuna and my husband ate a beancurd soup. Mine was fiery red with just a nice hint of the tuna, some noodles and vegetables in a bowl of flavorful soup, it came accompanied by the fat grained purple-shot Korean rice, kimchi and some other pickled greens and a small dish of tofu skins. It was so incredibly delicious! The beancurd soup was less spicy but just as delicious and my two-year-old loved the mung bean pancakes we ordered for her.

More to follow on Korean food....

Seoul Free

2009-05-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

Insadong is a little collection of narrow lanes chock-full of souvenir, craft and ceramic shops; art galleries, little cafes and many little and medium-sized restaurants. I have seen similar little streets in cities across the world -- Neumarkt in Zurich, Shimokitazawa in Tokyo, SoHo in Hong Kong -- and like all of them, Insadong throbs with a nice vibrant energy and there are some real treasures to be found among the little warren of shops here.

*********************************

Looking out from our 17th floor apartment window, this section of Seoul's skyline appears simply bizzare. A jungle of concrete towers, flashing television screens on tower blocks, neon signs spelling out weird English names like Tomgi and Cutie Hotel. But not all of Seoul has such a jarring skyline, we visited the neighborhood along the Han river (south of the river is a series of upmarket apartment blocks many of which are managed by well-known Korean chaebols) and the skyline here is cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing.

**********************************

Korean people seem to love little children. Our two-year-old has never been this pampered by complete strangers before. Taxi drivers offer her candy and rice sweets, shop ladies are all indulgent smiles even when she is creating havoc in the supermarket or food courts, elderly pensioners on the roads smile at her, pinch her cheeks playfully and wave out to her. She loves it all!

The DB Village

2009-01-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

There is a fad in Discovery Bay: big faux antique Chinese furniture, mostly rosewood. People crowd their apartments with cabinets, occasional tables, coffee tables, book cases, bars, dining tables and daybeds made in this style. Much of this furniture can be bought from hole-in-the-wall shops on Hollywood Street on the Hong Kong island, Macau also has a similar furniture street and then there is always Shambala in Horizon Plaza and the very active second-hand market accessed through XpatAsia.com.

The other DB fad is to be very folksy-artsy. Big watercolors by unknown artists, Buddha figures, lots of bric a brac (much of it origin Asian circa 2000 pretending to be 4th century BC) Many apartments here are decorated in this style. The more crowded in the better. And everyone is an art connoisseur in the making. What is it about HK that encourages such pretentions?

John Updike

2009-01-30T06:52:00.000-08:00

People pass on...where do they go?

Not so happily ever after in Zurich

2009-01-29T17:19:00.000-08:00

I liked visiting the Nordsee stall in Hauptbahnof's cavernous belly. A little, because it was easy to select a salad with fish and chips in my 'accented'　English here in this nondescript shop with its steel bins of vegetables and trays of bretzels, but a lot more because the stall-owner, Mustafa, was dark-skinned with soft brown eyes. The comfort of Nordsee was odd as I wasn't making my way around Zurich fresh off the boat; I was a tourist with a good amount of Swiss Francs to spend, visiting from my temporary home in Tokyo.

But from the moment I walked into Zurich's very European airport -- where fashionable women sucked on cigarettes and handsome men in dark coats and jeans walked through the Arrivals with an air of studied boredom -- I was suddenly, and strangely made aware of my Third World skin in a First World city where roughly 12 per cent of the population is made up of African and Asian immigrants.

At the Arrivals lobby, my husband and I went to the cell phone rental counter. As he worked out the arrangement for our Nokia, I looked around. A dark-skinned man stood a distance away, picking his nose absent-mindedly. I quickly turned away from the sight -- perhaps he, the nose-picker -- was whom I would soon be clubbed with by these disdainful beautiful people.
Zurich, in the half-light of an early winter evening, is overwhelming.　Nothing in Asia can prepare you for the charm of a European city and I sat glued to the window of the orange train that chugged out of Hauptbahnof towards Uetliberg and the Uto Kulm hotel-- our destination for the week.

That first dinner at the Uto Kulm restaurant was funny -- thinking back that is -- from the comfort of my apartment thousands of miles away, sipping oolong tea from a favorite teacup. At the time it was nerve-racking. We didn't notice the spectacular views right then, it would have been hard to have done so, Uetliberg was wrapped in a thick mist. The restaurant was wooden-floored and we were led out to the terrace with its candlelit tables, snow-white linens and jacketed waiters (is it ok to think of them as waiters or do they go by a grander title in Zurich? I wondered nervously) as my husband got us a table.

We hadn't wanted a dinner like this. We were just off a 13-hour flight, ravenously hungry and incapable of dealing with all the different knives and forks, 12-inch menu cards offering perfect servings of rabbit and deer meat, fashionable 'waiters', and a wine list that was as incomprehensible as the menu. We were also not ready for the open stares of curiosity we invited as we walked -- the only colored couple -- toward our table dressed Abercrombie & Fitch casual, not Swiss investment banker casual.

We had wanted hot soup, a thick club sandwich and a bottle of red wine in our room. But Uto Kulm with its chic white and dark wood rooms and ice maiden concierge, did not do room service. The only meal we could get at that hour was at the restaurant. So there we were.
The waiter couldn't understand our English so a woman, probably the person who dealt with foreigners, was sent to us. She was all businesslike and clever. We don't eat deer, rabbit, fugu, shark and other kinds of 'non-regular' meat and fish.　'Regular' meat for us is chicken, pork, lamb, beef and duck at a pinch.　'Regular' fish is everyday fish like trout and red snapper. So we ordered the salmon. She looked surprised. Here we were at the Uto Kulm restaurant, where Swiss bankers brought their dates for elaborate lingering many-course meals eaten properly with the right knives and forks and wines, and with our salmon orders we had jumped right into the main course in a frighteningly barbaric way.

She cleared away the huge array of knives and forks and spoons, leaving only the salmon knives for us. I was grateful she did that or I would have used the wrong knife, no doubt much to the amusement of the other diners, who were still staring at us over their hushed conversation and tinkling glasses. We ordered a white wine which didn't send the sommelier reeling, so it must have been the right thing. When the food came I ate without dropping my salmon knife and fork. I was pleased. I hadn't expected to drop my knife or fork, but I was worried that all the stares might have led to an attack of performance anxiety. After all, where I come from, most people usually eat with just the five fingers of the right hand. And even though it has been years since I've done that, I suddenly felt -- like I had at the airport -- that here under the penetrating stares of these blonde-haired, fair skinned people I was a little circus animal that had come out for a stroll.

Sometimes that feeling almost disappeared, leaving me in a pleasant holiday state of mind. Sitting at an open air cafe opposite the Limmat river eating butter bretzels and drinking unexceptional coffee brought on that holiday mood, as did shopping in Neumarkt's quaint boutiques or walking down Bahnhofstrasse clutching a fist full of carry bags.

The rabbit-mustached giant-like owner of the Hirschen Hotel in Niederdorfstrasse, our home for the second leg of our stay in Zurich, did not put me in that pleasant holiday mood. He looked at us faintly amused as we confirmed our telephone reservations and collected our room keys. The
little circus animals out for a stroll in his sophisticated city. I instantly took to his Chinese woman assistant who was friendly and warm -- like Mustafa at Nordsee.

Niederdorfstrasse was the kind of place I had only seen in the photographs of expensive coffee-table books about Europe. Cobbled streets, shops of every kind, restaurants, cafes and those sex places, the kind that in Shinjuku have photographs of young women dressed as schoolgirls outside. Here they had photographs of very adult-looking naked women on display.
Different country, different sexual tastes. From our tiny, clean hotel room we had a street view (the Chinese assistant asked us to choose between "street view" and "quiet side", we chose the former).

That Friday night, the bit of Niederdorfstrasse our windows looked on to, came to life in a way that was madly exciting. Young people, very blonde, very tall and very well-dressed in casual winter wear -- lot of fleece and fur -- converged on that small square. There was an impromptu band, lots of beer, cannabis and stronger stuff, much open-air sex. Then there was the African street gang. Tough, very rasta, dressed more colorfully and all male. As the night wore on, two fire-eaters did their thing shirtless and tattooed, some of the men got rough -- little brawls broke out and the chill grey air, as night was beginning to give way to morning, was rent with the sounds of smashing wine and beer bottles.

Before the brawls broke out, I had wanted to go out and join the party in Niederdorfstrasse.
But something held me back, I am not a shy person but the young people down there didn't look particularly friendly. They reminded me of the shop floor clerk in the Manor store on Bahnhofstrasse. A rude woman who ignored a Korean tourist's question on the price of an Italian dinner set and fawned, as best as her Swiss-German reserve would allow her to, over a local hausfrau who was buying some table linen.

An elderly man I met on the train to Hauptbahnof one morning as I left Uetliberg, was kind and in the mood for a chat. He invited me to the front of the train -- as empty as the rest of the train at that early hour. He was lean and silver-haired. He told me, in a combination of gestures and German, that he was returning from his morning walk.　His home was in Tremli, a couple of stops away, and he was the father of three grown-up children all of whom now lived outside Switzerland.　He asked how old I was and then said I was very pretty and looked younger than my 32 years. Happily I told him in my awkward French that I was going shopping to Bahnofstrasse. He was, along with the owner of the cafe near the Opera House, one of the nicest Swiss people I met during my stay in Zurich. It's not that the other people were unpleasant. It is just that they were a little hostile, a little on edge where we were concerned -- a little, I sometimes thought -- worried that we would overstay our visas and add to the alarmingly growing immigrant crowd threatening to take over their ordered idyllic world.

Once at a Burger King where I had stopped for a lunch break in between some serious shoe shopping, I met Valerie. She was a large African woman, dressed in a kind of grey felt fabric, boots, a multitude of beads strung around her neck and a head full of rust-brown dreadlocks. Valerie was helping fellow African immigrants settle into life in their new country. I didn't 'meet' her, in the usual sense of the word -- I was, more accurately, an eavesdropper at her orientation lunch. Because this Burger King was so crowded, I was standing eating at the same counter as Valerie and another young, pretty African woman and her daughter who had arrived in Zurich seven days before.

Valerie spoke in loud, unselfconscious African English. She told the new arrivals where to shop for food and daily groceries, how to manage their money without opening a bank account, where to apply for easy jobs, stressing all the while the importance of learning to speak German as quickly as possible. The young mother spoke some German, the daughter didn't speak any. For some reason the session reminded me of a non-profit organization in my home country that helps poor under-educated villagers integrate into big city life. This could have been because the conversation was carried out in English -- Colonial Leftover English -- that at its purest is incomprehensible to the untrained Western ear.

Opposite this Burger King, was a bus depot of some sort. Four or five long distance buses were starting to fill up. A woman, who I guessed was from Sri Lanka because of her thick oily black hair, pierced ears, body language and face structure, boarded one of the buses.　She looked bone-weary. I wondered once again, as Valerie's voice broke through my thoughts, how much must an economic immigrant need to go through before deciding to leave one's home, one's roots and choose to live forever in an alien hostile world.

There is one thing though, and I became absolutely convinced of it as my African neighbor drummed on in loud authoritative tones: These people, these economic immigrants do not have this silly overly-sensitive skin that I have.　This skin that reacts to traces of the mildest contempt radiating from the native inhabitants of this beautiful city, this skin that demands complete, absolute and immediate equality with all the other skins around me in any place that I visit from Shanghai to Quebec.

If these immigrants, these Valeries and Mustafas and Sri Lankan women and Chinese women, if these people had this sensitivity they could not have succeeded in their new home and their new lives. Because success here necessitates a sloughing off of all such hyper-sensitive baggage in a determined way at the very outset of the journey.

A day earlier, while drinking good strong coffee near the infamous Needle Park, I had met an Afghan student. He told me he was a student, but chose not to elaborate on his course of study or university. This student, tall, dressed in jeans a musty green coat, a scarf that looked like it needed a wash and a stubble that had crossed the seven o'clock shadow a couple of hours ago, was friendly like the elderly man on the Uetliberg train. He opened the conversation with a bit of cannabis. Not slyly like a hustler would do in say Paharaganj or the dodgier bits of Brick Lane, but as a gesture of friendship. He had been pasting colorful posters on to one of the boards near where I was sitting. I looked on with just that bit of nosiness, that desire to know who he was and how he had ended up sticking wall posters so far away from home.

When he did notice me, he smiled, an open inviting smile. He came up to me and we exchanged 'hellos', not 'gruezlis'　but differently　accented hellos that we understood easily enough. Then he offered me the cannabis, a slim nicely rolled joint. I said no, even as a delicious thrill flickered somewhere along the base of my neck. He put away the joint and lit up a cigarette, and started talking.

He was from Kabul, he had been in Zurich six years now, studying. He didn't like to elaborate on what. I asked him about his life in Kabul. He didn't want to discuss that either. He said he missed the food, the narenj pilaf, the sweet tea. I asked him what the posters were about. They were advertising some club event, it seems he was helping out a friend by putting up as many of them as he could before noon.

So when would he return to Kabul? He said thoughtfully: "No, no...I will not return. I think..." His tone was more definite. What about his family? They lived in Kabul, one day they could join him in Zurich maybe, he said with a little shrug. Why wouldn't he ever return to Kabul I asked again. "Life is very, very difficult in Kabul. Here, in Zurich, it is ok." There it was then, the tradeoff:　Your ok life for my sensitive skin.

Lars has a winter vacation job as a tour guide. He is blonde, blue-eyed, lean and always smiling. He has so much enthusiasm for his job that he says he would like to do it full-time when he graduates. We are sitting at a bar in Lucerne. Outside the chilly rain makes a cold evening colder.

Lucerne is Princess and the Pea country, but now with all the cold and constant rain the fairytale town feels wearisome. This bar is loud, warm, noisy.　Lars and I are waiting for the rest of the tour group to meet us here from where we will head back to Zurich.

Lars is too young and full of life to be bogged down by skin color issues. He isn't in the business of condescending smiles and faint contemptuous stares. He wants to travel -- experience adventure, get out of Zurich. "It is closed in, too small.　I want to see the rest　of the world," he tells me. Like many young Swiss, born into the charmed life he wants out.　He is restless with the good life, the sweet creamy milk, the rolling hills grazed over by contented cows, the picture-book cottages, the fresh brown bread, the quiet comfort of money when you need it. He wants to see the other side. He tells me he wants to visit Africa. The seething, hot, troubled, dirt-poor countries from where Valerie and millions like her escape humiliatingly in droves, or dream of escape from the day they understand what they have been born into.

We order more beer. Lars says he would also like to spend time in Vietnam and Singapore. He asks me about Japan and then my own country.　Yes he would like to visit there too. What about Bangladesh then? I ask, would he like to visit there as well? Lars looks a little embarrassed. "I don't know about this country," he says. "Where is it?" I sketch a rough Subcontinental map on a napkin and show him Bangladesh. He is doubtful. Maybe he will visit it someday. For the moment though, it is Africa and then Vietnam. He is laughing again, lighting up a cigarette, dreaming up the ultimate Earth Trekker's fantasy, punctuated by imperfect smoke rings.

Here more than in any other city I have ever visited I saw two worlds:　Mustafa's world and
Lars's world. I have seen Lars's world before, they come from there to my home country to work out some of the guilt of having it all, through diarrhoea and the non profits. I have glimpsed Mustafa's world before -- in the glamour of London and the bizarreness of Tokyo.　Though I have never experienced it the way I have here in Zurich; with these numbers of dark-skinned immigrants thronging the streets from Hauptbahnof to Rehalp; with all this rawness and all this hostility.

It was a beautiful afternoon, our last in Zurich. The sky was a clean blue. We sat at a bus stop and shared a reflective cigarette. This is the prettiest city I have ever been to. I want to come back again, maybe next winter. But I have to do something about myself before that -- I have to stop that burning heat spreading across my face the second someone gives me a faintly
unpleasant look; or drops a briefcase on my toe and refuses to apologize; or asks me what the f*** I'm doing when I forget to hand in my entrance ticket before boarding the little launch that is to take me from Vitznau to Lucerne.　Before I come back again I must realize that 'immigrant' isn't just a dirty word here, it is also unfairly all-enveloping: Colored skin=Immigrant or prospective immigrant.

So either I understand all this and toughen up, or the next time round I simply wear a button saying: "Only visiting -- not another immigrant!"

Diversity and all that in Discovery Bay

2008-11-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

Discovery Bay is a great community here in Hong Kong -- very child-friendly, very green, far less pollution and no traffic at all. It should be paradise but then there are its human inhabitants and like it is with us humans everywhere, we just know how to ruin paradise.

DB likes to call itself 'diverse' 'cosmopolitan' 'international' etc. With all the different nationalities living here you'd think the place would be very UN-ish. It is, to the extent that you do see people from all over the world here; but look closer and you will also see a tremendous tendency to ghetto-ize. As one Canadian mother told me: "If we wanted to stick to our own people, why would we have left Canada in the first place?"

At a playground near our apartment building this ghettoization color codes us all. Caucasian mothers cluster into a little group; the Filipina helpers chat and laugh together in Tagalog; the few Chinese moms smile and nod at each other and the Indian mothers have formed their own little contingent around the sand pit in the park. The children are still young and sensible enough to play with each other irrespective of who is what color.

But the implications are disturbing. Color is an acceptable part of a description among young kids, for example: "The new girl in my class is brown' or "That white boy is naughty". The word 'expat' is frequently a euphemism for Caucasian. Menus outside DB restaurants have a Chinese version and an 'expat' version in English. Wherever you see the term 'expat' you understand the shop owners have a definite Caucasian customer in mind.

Far from behaving expatriate-like, people in DB end up behaving disappointingly provincial.

Discovery Bay

2008-08-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's been ages since I have posted here! We are now in Discovery Bay -- which is completely unlike the main Hong Kong island. Meaning no crowds, no street noise, hardly any pollution and very very child-friendly.

More on DB soon!

TV story

2008-05-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

We have been buying electrical appliances for the new apartment and have just experienced how difficult it is to get a TV here in HK! First, those older boxy TVs don't seem to be sold here any longer, the shop staff at Fortress told us that is because those TVs are now more expensive than the LCD TV because LCD technology has become so commonplace that it costs less to manufacture them on a mass scale now.

Ok so we weren't hung up on the boxy old type TV, but we didn't want a massive home theater system or even a very large screen LCD thing, all we wanted was a 24 inch screen and a cheaper model. That took two days, 3 shop visits and many irritating hours to achieve.

Fortress is about the most reliable place for electronics in HK, though even in these stores staff often look clueless when asked simple questions like if the TV works outside HK (most cheaper models don't seem to). When we didn't find anything suitable in Fortress, we tried this awful place called Citicall. The whole deal there seemed a bit shady. Every time we pointed out a cheaper range TV (Philips, Sony, BenQ) the sales guy would spend some 15 minutes in Cantonese conversation with the other sales guy (who spoke English) then we were told either the TV was an old model and had been discontinued, this despite it being on prominent display; or that it was out of stock and no one seemed to know when new supply was expected. And each time the sales guy would push another more expensive TV at us.

Finally we went back to Fortress. There of course none of the cheaper brands seemed to be in stock. One TV that was a bit higher than our intial price range was offered to us with a free DVD player, when we agreed to take it we were told it would be delivered a month later as demand for it was high as it was a special promotion!

Eventually tired out, sick of the screeching Cantonese pop blaring from the many display TVs, an exhausted baby in tow rapidly reaching the end of her limit with Central store noise pollution, we found something within our price range. Naturally it was some local brand, single system thing that would work only in HK.
Not that either of us even remotely cared about the damn TV any more.

HK notes

2008-05-21T05:11:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a very large number of Pinoy women working here as domestic helpers, I just read that Philipinas are the largest immigrant community in HK. This evening I took my little girl to the HK Botanic gardens (too built up and nowhere near as charmingly laid out as the Singapore gardens) and there were many 'helpers' there around the fountain area with their little charges, many were Western kids and the helpers of these kids looked happier than the helpers who tagged along with Chinese families or walked along with elderly Chinese women.

I don't know how domestic helpers are treated in HK, but while looking for an apartment I was horrified to see what passes off as the 'maid's room' in most apartments. A tiny airless cubbyhole and sometimes there will be a small slit of a space at the back or side with the tiniest shower set up imaginable -- that is the helper's bathroom. I am not sure why when space is at such a premium and most apartments seriously aren't big enough to accommodate a regular sized family of 3 or 4 people comfortably, what the need is to have a live-in maid stuffed into that inhuman space. Unless the maid is needed to hang out those clothes from the insanely high windows of HK's highrise apartment dwellings.

On Sundays (helper's day off in HK) the escalator that leads to Central from Mid-Levels is packed with Philipina women. The place resembles the platform of an Indian train station. They sit on the floor in groups, chatting, eating , pulling out lice (maybe nits?) from each other's hair and in one instance a woman was cutting the hair of another. Basically a kind of community meeting place for these numbers of women living here in HK without their families.

*************************************

The local noodle shop I visited today had a variety of egg noodles stored in cardboard cartons for sale. There were also cooked egg noodles ready to be used in soups and the crispier kind to be fried. The noodle seller also showed me fresh thick white rice noodles, vermicelli of different varieties and his home-made pasta shells and macaroni. Like everything in the fresh market these noodles are very reasonably priced too.

Crab heaven

2008-05-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

Just a short post because even a million words will not do justice to this amazing crab in chilli paste that we ate for lunch on Saturday at a Vietnamese-Thai place on d'aguilar street. It was the most delicious crab I have eaten in a long while. We also ate some excellent Vietnamese spring rolls and another soft shell crab dish with spicy salt (though I liked the chilli paste crab better!) Go try it if you live here, otherwise be sure to stop at the d'aguilar street eateries the next time you visit Hong Kong!

Crowd blues

2008-05-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

I think I am suffering from a bit of crowd fatigue. This is not the first Asian city I've lived in, but Hong Kong's crowds are exhaustingly dense and noisy, a bit like outside Shibuya station in Tokyo. The difference being there is more space for the crowd to disperse outside Shibuya station, but in places like Times Square or Central in HK the streets are so narrow that the crowd just keeps on moving along in a slightly claustrophobic way. (Claustrophobic is definitely going to be a recurring word when writing about HK's main island)

The other thing about the crowded shopping streets is the smoking, billowing smoke rings into crowds does not help the general sense of wellbeing. Ever since I became a mother, I have begun to notice public smokers more. I have nothing against a cigarette or people smoking one, the thing is if you must smoke do so in a place where the smoke won't become a genuine irritant to others. And as I carry my little one in a sling here, I have to protect her from a sudden inadvertent jab from a cigarette butt as an adult hand carrying a lit cigarette would be about the same level as my daughter's exposed arm in the sling. And with smokers pressing all over you in a crowded street this is a real issue.

Overcoming smokers and crowds though I discovered this little ascending lane off Central (just after the H&M store) which is lined with little stalls selling all manner of hair ties, bands, bandanas, grips, clips everything! Also lots of wigs, dyed feather and faux furs along with costume jewellery (some very pretty too!). Truly amazing. There is another lane on the other side of Central (I think these lanes are called Li Yuen street, east and west but I haven't had the time to look up a guidebook as yet) selling Chinese suits for kids, bags, cheap watches and other typical China Town kind of things. Though some of the bags are real bargains and there is also a shop selling very cute kids shoes including crocs at very reasonable prices. (fake crocs of course but that doesn't matter to a one-year-old!)

So many fuck!

2008-05-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

So here we are still trying to get our bearings in Hong Kong's Midlevels area. I am just about figuring out how easy it is to walk from our apartment in Arbuthnot Road to Central via d'aguilar street (spelling maybe wrong!)

Before I realized Central was such a short walk away I took a cab the other evening carrying my little toddler in her sling as attempting to use a baby stroller anywhere in central Hong Kong is a joke. That was a mistake. It was about 4:30 and the streets were choked with cars, little Arbuthnot Road had three lanes of cars -- which needs to be seen to be believed as the street is so very narrow.

The fat middle-aged cabbie with his Hong Kong gangsta thick gold chain wasn't happy that we were going to Central as the fare probably wasn't worth the hassle of getting there. He muttered in Cantonese and then as he got really stuck in a jam he said: "So many fuck" I am assuming all Hong Kong cabbies aren't this averse to getting stuck in traffic jams, given that they must be spending a good part of their day sitting in noisy jams.

Andy Lau days and nights

2008-05-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

The first impressions of Hong Kong, as you drive in from the airport, crowd your mind somewhat claustrophobically. Much like the dense mass of skyscrapers and industrial looking apartment buildings with their scores of tiny windows with the washing hanging out, crowd the cityscape that unfolds before you.

Even before you arrive, HK is a city that has its own image baggage. All the usual cliches run through your mind: edgy, vibrant, happening, alive, New York of Asia, East Coast to Singapore's West Coast and other such cliched rubbish. What you see though once your cab pulls up on Arbuthnot Road (the tiniest lane ever and not much of a road at all) in front of a tall apartment block in that typical Central HK style, dirty tile facade, tiny windows, air conditioning units sticking out all over the building like so many warts on an old wrinkled neck, is just another Asian city where space is at a premium.

Our serviced apartment -- we had been assured it was furnished with the latest American and European fittings and appliances, not that we asked but in HK like in many south east Asian [see note] cities Western approval is the highest bar of success -- was tiny. It wasn't the 640 square feet we thought it would be because in Asia the square feet of an apartment includes all built-up area and not just the carpet or floor area and hence tends to be smaller. It was an Ikea apartment, everything from the light fittings to the chunky vases that held plant and marble arrangements were Ikea products.

Once you stop looking to fit the cliches to the city, you will begin to understand HK better. SoHo, the area around Arbuthnot Street is chock full of art galleries and if you needed evidence that Chinese art is hot in the international art world you need look no further. Some of the galleries have spectacular works on display; all of them are staffed by classy looking gallerinas or hip long-haired men and well-coiffed women speaking in many different accents.

Cheap little hole-in-the-wall shops are stuffed with imitation antiques and soapstone attempting to pass off as ivory. Mao imagery abounds (you see the same sort of thing in Taipei's flea markets) on everything from army berets to satchels, plates, ashtrays and coasters. Little Red Book imitations are everywhere as are old prints of China in the pre-Cultural Revolution days. SoHo tries hard to be every bit as bohemian as guidebooks have made it out to be. Spas, a Fringe Club, bars with trendy names, chic eateries and galleries share space with the junk shops and food carts. What is genuinely nice though is the fresh market that occupies one of the steep little streets just off Hollywood Road. A wrinkled old man sells mangoes and fresh juices at the head of the lane and the vegetable and fruit sellers have stalls all the way down. The meat shop is unappetizingly open and the live poultry place has live hens crammed into tiny cages, sights unhappy enough to make you give up meat and chicken for a while. Though this kind of thing is common to all Asian fresh markets.

More on HK coming up...

note: Though HK isn't geographically south east Asia, in the matter of seeking Western approval it follows the general south east Asian trend.

El Camino Real

2008-04-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here for a long time. We've spent the last few months living in Sunnyvale, California and I cannot leave without a post on El Camino Real.

***************************************

For those who don't know it, the El Camino is a long long road chock full with strip malls connecting San Francisco to all its suburbs -- it runs from San Francisco to San Jose and if you don't mind the street lights slowing you down every couple of minutes, you can avoid the highways and use this road to get to SF.

We live right on the El and I don't think I've ever lived on a more depressing road ever. To get from any point to any point usually means a drive down the El Camino, so we seem to spend most of our time here driving up and down past the hideous boxy 60s/70s buildings that are the architecture of these strip malls with their standard chains: Jiffy Lube, In and Out, Michaels, Ross (Dress for Less), all the Chaat houses, all the tofu and sushi places, Toys r Us, PetSmart, Payless, dollar stores, dd's discounts, Burger King...

And then because I don't drive I spend my weekday evenings walking about our little stretch of El Camino doing my errands. My toddler daughter is learning to identify the blades of grass and pansies along the stretch of the El Camino that we faithfully walk each evening. I use the walk to study the typography of shop front names . Ocean Blue Sushi in the India Cash & Carry block and Midori the Japanese restaurant are my favorite typeface. Seema salon in the block before Han Kook the Korean supermarket is about the worst. On the opposite side the Henderson market has some pretty bad typography too. The Sporty Bikini Bar is just as seedy looking as the bar near the Bangla market.

The motels on our stretch of El Camino are awful. There is an all blue one called Domain that looks like it has walked off the sets of some sci-fi movie. The Santa Clara Inn must win the prize for First World's Seediest Motel. And then there are the car places...these massive block buildings with shiny used cars packed in rows out front with yellow stickers saying 'BEST BUY' and 'SALE' and 'SPECIAL PRICE' on it and the white and blue balloons bouncing about the entrance (my daughter loves those).

And as much as I curse my little stretch of El Camino Real, I know I wouldn't have survived this stint here without it! Imagine not being able to pop over to India Cash & Carry to buy Pavel's Russian yogurt and besan laddoos; or checking out Han Kook for little Japanese treasures like Zero Tube (a clever device that squeezes out every bit of whatever from any tube!) and 'New Born' liquid eyeliner (a very rich dark black liner). Or better still not being able to chat with the lady from Saigon cleaners or the hairdresser-cum-manicurist at Pros. Cut on Sunwest Plaza.
Yes, I do know this part of the El like the back of my hand...

The other Singapore

2007-01-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

The other day we had some work at the Kim Seng Community Center. The Center located on Havelock Road took us into a part of what is often referred to as Singapore's 'heartland' area. It isn't an area we visit often and is quite different from the Singapore one sees around Orchard and Bukit Timah.

We were a little lost once we reached the intersection of Havelock Road and Zion Road, so we walked down to a small sort of 'gathering area' in front of a towering HDB block and a cluster of food stalls, not quite a hawker center but just a few eating places in a row. A few plastic tables and chairs filled up the gathering area, around one of which sat a group of four men all dressed in shorts and undershirts. They were smoking and drinking what looked like the delicious condensed milk coffee so popular at most hawker center tea shops. One of the men helpfully directed us to Kim Seng Center in a thick Singaporean accent almost impossible to understand, and then went back to his cronies (all of whom were engaged in an animated discussion).

The Kim Seng Community Center was down a quiet road surrounded by HDB blocks. The office was a neat little room with a very kind and conscientious man on duty. As he helped my husband with his work,I took a look around the office. A massive whiteboard dominated one wall. The wall was filled with neat rows of columns listing various activities at the Center, the timings and teachers associated with each. There were plenty of things to choose from: yoga and pilates, line dancing, akido, flower arrangement and even cooking lessons. On the main counter stood a large collection of plastic covered flip posters announcing more classes and their timings (Japanese language, boxing, Mandarin, candle making). There was another big wall poster advertising a campaign for a network that goes by the name of Passions. It seemed like a racial harmony and community building advocacy group.

There was a covered courtyard outside the office, surrounded by more buildings. This courtyard had a table and some chairs, next to which stood a fairly full magazine and newspaper rack. Round the table sat two or three men reading the day's papers.

Once we finished our work at the Kim Seng Center we stepped out into the still-not-unpleasant early afternoon January sunshine. Opposite the Center was a small cluster of eateries, a little grocery shop (amazingly well-stocked and very reasonably priced). The eateries sold basic wholesome Singapore fare: one offered fried noodles with different toppings, another was called 'vegetables and rice' but it was one of those buffet like places were there is a big rice cooker to a side and then a series of dishes under a glass cover and you point out what you want as accompaniments to your rice. There was a good selection -- curried chicken, crisp fried fish, tofu cooked with crab, two steamed vegetables, fried eggs, hard boiled eggs, and some pickles. We chose the crisp fried fish, tofu and crab, steamed vegetable and a fried egg each. The whole rather delicious but simple lunch cost us 6 singapore dollars for two people! Amazing value for money.

So this was the other Singapore: down to earth, hard working and at the same time pleasantly laid back.

Year-end musings

2006-12-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

One big personal event has totally changed this year for us but because this isnt a 'personal' blog, I'm leaving that out for now. Here are some other thoughts on this year in no particular order.

Getting used to Singapore:
Singapore has turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise. We've been enjoying our time here and a large part of that has been because of the beautiful walks we've discovered in the Bukit Timah area where we live. (our most recent 'discovery' is Dalvey Estate with its tree-lined quiet central road flanked by what has got to be some of Singapore's most impressive homes). University Avenue is another pleasing stretch of road to walk down.
The other thing I really like about the place is the food and the wet markets where kind of fresh fish, seafood and other kinds of produce are so easily available making cooking here a real pleasure.
At the moment, Singapore is experiencing its monsoon season and while the rains here are not accompanied by either the typhoons of Taipei or the earthquakes and tremors of Tokyo, they can still be a pretty formidable experience especially when the rains come down in thick sudden sheets and the night sky is rocked by ominous thunder claps and flashes of lightning.
Another nice discovery has been the National Library branch at Orchard (in the Takashimaya building). This branch of the library stocks a very good collection of fiction and non-fiction, with the fiction being rather more varied than what the other library branches seem to have.

Movies and Music (with a little TV thrown in):
I have slipped behind in movie watching this year and have hardly seen any of the year's 'big' films Hollywood or otherwise! The last couple of months have been more TV-centric and i've recently started subscribing to the BBC Entertainment channel here. While I cannot say the comedies do it for me (except of course that amazing show, The Office) I have come to enjoy the various murder and detective programs especially the televised P.D.James' dramas, though I'm not sure I quite agree with the screen version of Adam Dalgliesh -- shouldn't the actor have been handsome in a craggier brooding sort of way?

I've gone back to my probasi Bangali nostagia with my music this year being all about Anjan and Mohiner Ghoraguli! Seriously, I love the Mohiner albums.

Holidays and other breaks:
Phuket was pretty much this year's vacation winner, we are looking forward to returning over the New Year's!

The Year's Biggest Disappointment...
...just had to be Sunnyvale, California. I expected so much more and was so disappointed with all the dullness I encountered. Everywhere from the drab strip malls to the characterless homes to the uninspiring motels and dreary food.

What I did enjoy though was San Francisco and what will not be forgotten any time soon is the crazy drive through Lombard street, the awesome view from Golden Gate Bridge, rooting about Ferry Building's enchanting shops and stalls and finally a very nice pizza dinner in charming Sausalito.

That's it for now... more musings when the Muse returns :)

Another eatery on Race Course Road

2006-11-05T18:03:00.000-08:00

Last night we had dinner at the Spice Junction, a new restaurant we've discovered just beside Muthu's Curry on Race Course Road. The food was mainly Kerala style, though oddly enough the menu featured some north Indian dishes and the stray 'vegetable Manchurian' preparation. We stuck to the Kerala dishes, though there were suprisingly few authentic Kerala vegetable preparations which is such a pity because in southern India vegetables are cooked in such an interesting way with a gentle mix of flavors and fiery spices, that I always wonder why restaurants claiming to specialize in food from the region, avoid serving these home-style delicious preparations.

Spice Junction is a nice roomy restaurant, being new it wasn't as busy as Apollo Banana Leaf or Muthu's, but it was nice to sit in the outdoor dining section which is an enclosed space outside the restaurant but not right out on the sidewalk like Banana Leaf. It seemed a little under-staffed, but the staff were friendly, helpful and polite so we didn't really mind the slight wait.

My husband ordered the mini spice meal, which is a small thali meal (vegetarian) with smallish portions of dhals, vegetable curries, dry vegetables and rice. Everything was lightly spiced (in almost authentic Kerala style) and quite delicious. The only trouble is the portions were unfortunately on the tiny side.

My fried prawns were spicy and crunchy but I think they could have been a little more pepper fiery to taste closer to the real thing. I ordered Kerala Ishtew (Kerala stew) as my main dish. kerala stew is a typical mutton based dish that is served in a mild coconut curry, with potatoes and flavored with ginger, curry leaves, black pepper and chillies. This Istew was milder, the mutton was flavorful enough (but in really tiny pieces) and the miniscule bits of carrots and potatoes in the coconut gravy could certainly have been substituted for something heartier-sized. Despite the disappointing quantity, the stew was quite tasty and went exceptionally well with the fresh spongy iddiappams (steamed string hopper cakes) I ordered. The fresh lime juice was what it was supposed to be: fresh lime juice, water and ice with a dash of salt and pepper and no soda, while my husband's salted lassi was refreshingly cool and light.

All in all quite a good meal at a decent price, though the portions can definitely do with a serious upgrade!

Intelligence, Fox style

2006-11-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

I'm watching the coverage by Fox News on Saddam's 'guilty' verdict. The anchorwoman, a Rebecca something or the other, with the usual 'thinking-hard-before-asking-intelligent-questions' anchor look, asked the Fox correspondent in Baghdad: Was it deliberate then, that the court chose to declare this verdict on a Sunday when few people would be around and streets would be emptier? The correspondent, trying not to look too amused replied: In Iraq and around the Muslim world, Sunday is an ordinary working day. The holiday is Friday and Saturday, so it wasn't an attempt to deliver the verdict on a day when most people are on holiday.

Shouldn't every self-respecting journalist (are anchor people journalists or just news emcees or something?) know that Friday is the holiday in the Muslim world? Isn't that what's called being somewhat generally aware of what happens in the world outside of the United States?

Shame on Buddhadeb's Bengal

2006-10-29T17:16:00.000-08:00

And just when the newspapers are choc full with reports of fancy new malls, condominums, American food chains and multiplexes threatening to take over the very fabric of life in Red-ruled Kolkata, we read this (story follows below). A reminder I guess that behind all the nouveau glitter and gloss, CPM goondas are still doing what they've always been best known for. Which simply means all change in Bengal remains merely cosmetic.

Protect wife and get punched
A STAFF REPORTER
From The Telegraph, Calcutta, Sunday October 29

Calcutta, Oct. 28: Prasenjit Ghosh’s first mistake was to protest his wife’s harassment by a man he knew to be a CPM supporter.

The second was ignoring a summons from the party, which wanted to act judge in the matter.

The 35-year-old engineer was kicked and punched in full public glare for about 15 minutes — till he dropped bleeding and unconscious on G.T. Road — yards from his home in Bally on Thursday night.

His family said the attackers were a gang of about 15 — all of them CPM supporters.

Prasenjit, who owns a consultancy firm, was chatting to friends around 9.30 pm when the men came for him.

“They asked me to accompany them to the CPM’s Palpara office. We had walked just a few yards when they suddenly pounced on me,” the victim said from his bed in a city clinic.

The Ghosh family said none of those named in the FIR — Sudeb Guha, Rabi Bose, Sankar Maitra, Kishu Bhaduri and Rana Ganguly —had been arrested, courtesy their CPM connection.

“It was an incident over eve-teasing. We are inquiring into the matter. So far, no arrests have been made,” Howrah police chief Niraj Singh said.

The Ghoshes said the man at the bottom of it all was a CPM supporter, Krishnendu Halder, who had been harassing Prasenjit’s wife Sharmistha for over a month. Halder is a tenant at a multi-storey building next door to the Ghoshes’ G.T. Road home.

“We had seen him trying to take photographs of my wife from his balcony. He had sent lewd SMSes to my wife and was constantly harassing her. I told him to behave himself earlier this week,” Prasenjit said.

Halder lodged a complaint with Bally police station alleging Prasenjit had slapped him.

Around 6.30 on Thursday evening, a group of CPM supporters arrived at the Ghoshes’ home and told Prasenjit’s mother to send him to the Palpara party office by 9. He didn’t go.

“So they came to teach me a lesson. They attacked me without any provocation and did not even let me tell my side of the story,” Prasenjit said.

For 10 minutes he lay bleeding and senseless on the roadside, none daring to come to his aid, till brother Chandrajit reached the spot. Prasenjit was taken to a local nursing home which referred him to another clinic.

“They (the CPM supporters) followed us even to the nursing home. Two of them threatened me, asking me to leave the nursing home. They tried to scare us in every possible way,” Chandrajit said.

The Howrah CPM leadership wouldn’t admit the involvement of party workers. Sridip Bhattacharjee, district committee secretary, said: “We can’t comment or take action without getting all the details.”

The Ghoshes live in fear of fresh attacks by those named in the FIR. Few in the neighbourhood would even talk about Thursday’s incident, which occurred on a thoroughfare with a fairly large crowd watching.
Top

The trouble with the voice from the outside

2006-10-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've often felt that it is easy for foreign correspondents (or basically reporters reporting on stories in a foreign country)to get things wrong or at least not a hundred per cent right. Reading an article in yesterday's IHT by the Herald Tribune's India correspondent, Amelia Gentleman, gave me that feeling again. Being a reporter writing in foreign countries I have often made these same mistakes myself. In yesterday's piece, Gentleman was writing about dowry harrassment in India -- a widespread troubling complex issue. The trouble with her article was that it oversimplified the issue. True, she is writing a newspaper article and not a thesis on dowry, but being familiar with the background of the issue she was writing on would have anchored even her newspaper article.

The custom of giving and taking dowry in India isn't just about materialistic men and their families wanting money and other goods from the bride's side. It goes deeper than that, it also has to do with the whole male-female equation in India and how despite much globalization and economic change, that equation has not altered fundamentally. It is an uequal equation, one in which a woman will always be at a disadvantage simple because she is a woman. It explains why the 'bride's side' during a traditional Indian wedding usually goes through hell (and this is true at all levels of society).

Then, the other thing is Gentleman's article was more or less focused on lower middle class Northern India with one reference to a well-known figure being involved in a dowry case; dowry taking occurs across northern and eastern India, interestingly it is absent in the south Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. While mentioning the well-known figure (a former cricketer) Gentleman would have done well to mention how dowry harrasment is also commonly misued in divorce and alimony cases especially among richer families -- but perhaps she was unaware of this. Also, there are far more powerful and experienced activists that she could have spoken with for her piece. All of these are small flaws that occur when the writer is not really familiar with the world she is writing about.Individually these flaws don't matter much, collectively they make the article shallow and meaningless to people reading it in that country.

I know, I have made similar mistakes when I've written pieces from Japan or Taiwan or even Singapore. It isn't possible to write knowledgably about the customs, manners or people of a place when you are still very much an outsider in that place.

Singapore jottings

2006-10-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about Singapore is the sheer variety its mixed race population offers. And one of the best places to see this is on the Asian Food Channel (AFC) where there are programs in Chinese, Malay, English, Japanese -- obviously all on food! A nice Malaysian program is Called 'Sedap...' I am not sure what it means but a very matronly Malay lady cooks up the most fabulous Malaysian dishes on the show and the best thing about her recipes is that they are all really simple to follow. Today's show was an Id special so she made some marble cake and a prawn sambal. Looked really heavenly!!!

Starhub's new Family Plus package offer is rather good -- we are now getting 11 new channels including AFC (which has to be one of my favorites!) and Fox Crime -- i only wish Fox Crime would show the old Colombo series. I love Peter Falk!!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

This afternoon I visited Little India's Diwali bazaar. It really felt good to be able to do Diwali shopping outside of India! The bazaar is set up in the Little India Arcade and has many small makeshift stalls selling everything needed for Diwali pooja at home, including very prettily decorated (and reasonably priced) pooja thalis, prodips (lamps) made of clay, some of which have been decorated and filled with wax or combustible jelly; flowers; tumeric smeared coconut, incense sticks. Everything! Komala Vilas had 1 kg pre-packed sweet boxes on sale and of course you can create your own sweet boxes by buying freshly made sweets from any of the regular shops in the area.

A similar street bazaar is up on Arab Street for Hari Raya (Id ul Fitr). I haven't been able to visit it as yet but did pass by on my way to Beach Road on Saturday evening. It was nicely lit up and looked inviting.

We were travelling during the Autumn Moon Festival so I missed out on local celebrations for that. Last year we were living in Taipei and the Autumn Moon festival was a big event, with even coffee shops like Starbucks offering special coffee flavored mooncakes during the period.

::::::::::::::::::::::::

Recently I went with a good friend who was visiting us briefly to the Goodwood Park Hotel's English Afternoon Tea. It looks like the hotel is undergoing some kind of renovation and we were a little disappointed at the very modern looking and characterless lounge that turned out to be L'Espresso (the restaurant serving the English tea). Still the tea buffet was enjoyable with a variety of finger sandwiches (particularly delicious was a teeny ham and fried onion one) open sandwiches, mini croissants stuffed with cheese and bits of fresh fruit, mini sausage rolls, tiny little meat sauce pies, fried lychees and creme brulee. And then there were the sweets and desserts, scones, cheesecakes and of course a variety of teas to choose from (or even fresh fruit juices). Another restaurant in the hotel (the Lounge) serves a local high tea with Nonya delicacies on offer. I've saved that for another afternoon!

Liberal writing -- NYT style

2006-10-11T18:00:00.000-07:00

Of late NYT columnist Maureen Dowd's columns have become plain infantile. It's one thing to want to write Bush-bashing pieces, but it is all together something else when the pieces lose all trace of logical and coherent thought and become silly high-schoolish badly written essays in idiocy. For a good example of Dowd's latest insufferably bad writing, check this out. (You need to be a subscriber to the Times Select service to read the article though)

I just found this really clever article:
The Immutable Laws of Maureen Dowd
A guide to reading the New York Times columnist.
by Josh Chafetz
You can read it here.

Tom Friedman (another NYT columnist) has been writing rubbish too of late. He basically hammers on and on and on about his world is flat theory in every single column sometimes so simplistically that it is almost comical. And then there is Nicholas Kristoff who thinks organizing competitions among US high-school kids and 'exposing' them to Africa is going to solve that continent's problems (on which of course Kristoff is the Last Word). It is sad that even in a newspaper like the New York Times the self-styled liberal columnists are such a miserable bunch of bad writers.

Lunch with a difference

2006-10-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

This afternoon we went for lunch to Annalakshmi's. This vegetarian Indian restaurant is a rather different experience. Located in the history-filled and charming Amoy Street, Annalakshmi's doesn't have the typical kitschy Indian restaurant interior, instead its wooden and glass tables are decorated with clear glass tabletop panels filled with star anise while the place mats are made of bamboo; the wooden chairs are upholstered with maroon fabric and the walls are decorated with handicrafts all of which are for sale.

The philosophy behind Annalakshmi (with restaurants in India, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia) is interesting. The restaurant serves wholesome vegetarian food, snacks and light meals during the day and a buffet during lunch hours, at whatever price you choose to pay for the meal. You can eat as much as you like and then pay whatever you feel is fair for the meal. The idea behind this is the traditional Indian concept of "the Guest is God". Annalakshmi is run entirely by volunteers, the food is also prepared by regular men and women (not trained chefs) which accounts for the really authentic home food-like experience with all the unevenness of food cooked at home by experienced but unsophisticated cooks. Annalakshmi does have a business side to it -- the arts and crafts sold in the restaurants and the Indian cultural events organized by the volunteers. Profits earned both at the restaurants and through the sale of handicrafts are used for various charitable works carried out by Annalakshmi including a volunteer medical service and literacy programs.

This afternoon's buffet had a selection of dhals including a delicious chola and tomato preparation, a thick masoor dhal made with drumsticks and a channa dhal with white pumpkin, two or three types of rice including a south Indian style pulao and plain steamed rice, two or three vegetable dishes including a spinach kurma and a nice fried cauliflower dish. Then there were the usual accompaniments: beaten curds, pickles, crispy aaplams (papads), parottas, buttermilk and light battered onion bajjis. There was only one sweet dish -- a payasam -- on offer, and this was really well-made too.

Like I said earlier, it was the sort of meal one would eat at home, very basic and yet delicious. True comfort food in a very pleasant atmosphere and with a refreshingly different philosphy behind it.

Freedom to choose or plain silly?

2006-10-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

Whenever I visit California I encounter, or at least read about, one or two incidents that invariably make me feel the whole issue of invidual liberty has been carried just too far in the United States. I felt this way again when browsing through last Sunday's New York Times magazine I came across an article on 'intersex' (to readers like me who are encountering the word for the first time it is the 'upgraded' more politically correct term for hermaphrodite currently in use). Here is the story if you'd like to read it.

If you read the piece, you will learn that as an intersex adult, Chase, has after years of activism managed to get a group of doctors to agree on a new consensus, published in the journal Pediatrics. The consensus titled “Consensus Statement on the Management of Intersex Disorders” 'promotes the traditional idea that every child should be assigned a gender as soon as possible after birth, and that this should be done by doctors examining the baby’s genes, hormones, genitalia, internal organs (via ultrasound), electrolytes, gonads and urine. These doctors then make their best guess as to whether that child will want to live his or her adult life as a man or a woman. Where the consensus departs from tradition is that it also instructs doctors to discourage families from rushing into surgery. The paper is a bit vague on this point; it doesn’t directly tell doctors not to operate but does state that no good scientific studies prove infant cosmetic genital surgery improves quality of life.'

According to the NYT piece, 'Chase says she believes that every child should be assigned a gender at birth but that the assignment should not be “surgically reinforced” and that parents and doctors should remain open to the idea that they may have assigned the wrong sex. She contends that the most important thing is for a child to feel loved by her parents, despite her difference. An operation, she says, should not be done to assuage parental embarrassment or anxiety; it should be chosen, if it is chosen at all, by an intersex individual who is old enough to make her own decision and give proper consent.'

I think this really is incredible. Will a young child spend his or her most crucial formative years going about feeling like a total freak and oddball with mixed-up male and female genitals while its parents go on saying how much they love their little sexless baby boy/ girl??? And then will this totally confused, wretched kid become 18 years old and then decide he/she should now finally become a definitive he or she? It's absurd and unfair to the child and its parents. Why shouldn't the intersex baby's parents make a sensible informed decision so that their baby can then enjoy a normal life? Just the very fact that Ms Chase can spend years being this kind of an intersex activist, visiting bust doctors and pediatricians, organizing groups with parents etc; just the fact that someone can do all of this and then can even get her consensus published in a pediatricians' journal really makes me feel the whole issue of individual liberty has gone badly awry here in the US. It has become almost farcical. If at one end of the scale you have countries where absolutely no one is ever allowed to express a single individual opinion, at the other end you have countries where people like Ms Chase become career activists over the most intensely personal and individual of issues.

The good thing is the NYT article does say that chances of Chase making further progress from this point on are extremely low and that one doctor quoted in the article put her chances for persuading parents not to make their intersex babies undergo surgery at 'honestly zero.'

Harry's story

2006-09-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

I have always had the greatest admiration for first generation immigrants in western countries. It cannot be at all easy to start life anew in a foreign land where people speak, eat, dress and live differently from you. Added to which it is in these totally alien countries that these immigrants (most of whom are equipped only with the most basic education) begin to do jobs that bring them into daily contact with people who are in every way so foreign to them -- jobs like driving taxis, running cornershops or groceries, running drycleaning stores or then doing things like janitorial or construction work (but at least in these last two jobs interaction with local people is more restricted and the worker then works in a team under a supervisior or something).

This afternoon a Punjabi immigrant taxi driver drove me to downtown Sunnyvale. He was in his mid-forties and had westernized his Indian first name Harinder, into the easy to pronounce Harry. Harinder drives a taxi in his friend's taxi company and he says in his almost two decades in the US he still feels like going home everyday. Nostalgically he began talking about life back home in his Punjab town: "It isn't like this...there are so many people and cycles and three-wheelers on the street...and when people want to go somewhere all they do is stand on the road and shout out to the three-wheeler driver 'Hey'..." He laughs remembering another lifetime.

Though Harinder lives in Sunnyvale with his wife and children he would love to take his family and move back home someday. I ask him why and he replies (in Hindi) "Your country is after all your own country". He talks about the growing rate of crime in California. He feels there are too many people from all over the world now living in the state. "They come from everywhere they are more interested in their own countries, their families back home (I only feel nostalgic but many of these people are much more involved with their local problems) so they don't have any love for America and that's why they end up doing bad things here." He is worried when passengers call for his cab at night. "If they've been drinking it's always a problem and then at other times I worry if they are armed. We pray every morning before we start our day...it really is all up to God."

Harinder is proud of what Indians in white collar jobs have achieved in the US. "They work hard, they live in big houses in nice areas and drive new expensive cars and wear good clothes. They have done well for themselves and we are proud of them." His friend's cab company isn't doing to badly either and Harinder says he doesn't really have much to complain about. He does miss Punjab (and perhaps in his memories he has over-romanticized his hometown with its mustard fields, affluent villages and happy well-fed people) and his old parents; he talks about the massive time difference between India and the West Coast but still he says, "At least I am able to provide well for my family."

This is every immigrant's story. You leave the familiar to do better for yourself and your family in an unfamiliar strange land. I wonder though, is the deliberate estrangement ever really worth it?

Notes from Sunnyvale, CA

2006-09-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Here we are back in California for a couple of weeks. The weather here is wonderful and all of California's strict environmental laws to seem to be paying off, for despite all the cars the air is still crisp and very clean feeling. This time I feel better equipped (mentally) to life in the US having come prepared for the adjustment of scale (read my earlier California posts to get some idea of the disorientation I experienced the last time round) I have also discovered the downtown area of Moutainview on both sides of Castro Street -- which is charming with nice little boutiques and shops, al fresco restaurants and cafes, a library and even an old-fashioned lock museum. You don't get any of the surburban disorientation that one feels in the empty spaces of say Sunnyvale or any of those places with their huge campus-style tech offices, and you also don't get that hemmed in small town feel of say Fremont, where all the restaurants and shops are clustered in little centers and houses and apartment blocks are piled close to each other on either side of the Mission.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I am the sort of person who enjoys spending a good deal of time by myself, and strangely enough I often tremendously enjoy just pottering around my hotel room in silly bedroom slippers and old pajamas doing very little. I have spent this entire morning doing just that, sipping tea now and then, reading Patricia Highsmith's delightfully entertaining Ripley omnibus and doing absolutely nothing more highbrow than writing this post.

We are staying at one of those extended stay places that you'll find all over surburban America, kind of motels I suppose. But 'motels' has such a sleazy connotation to it that it sounds better to say 'extended stay places'! This one is surrounded by quite a nice yard kind of thing (maybe it could be a compound?) with really pretty bottlebrush trees and a nice view of the hills, it's actually a very family sort of place and not sleazy at all. We need to prepare all our meals from scratch here and as we are a devoted 'hot meal' family the sort that cannot stand pizza dinners more than once a year, we've stocked up pretty well on groceries and food supplies thanks to the Mountainview supermarket and the wonderful farmers' market held there on Sundays. The farmers' market was one of the best I have been to here, exceptionally good fresh produce, delicious goats cheese (and gouda, though we only bought the goat's cheese) very nice pesto and flatbreads from an Afghan stall and some of the most juicy and sweet nectarines and peaches I've eaten in a long while.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Television here is still chock full of all those supplement and otc pharamceutical product ads, in between there'll be plenty of commercials on how to get the very best deal in everything from bank loans to car insurance! Seriously, the Americans seem to be very focused on getting the best deals on everything and even a two dollar rebate is something to be proud of. For a poor bargainer like me, it's a philosophy that holds little attraction.

The Thinking Indian Journalist

2006-09-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

It is common among Indian journalists working in the country's English language media houses to aspire to join the 'foreign junket brigade'. This basically means getting on to the media scholarships (or prizes) gravy train. While the scholarships or prizes are usually not cash rich they do offer the winners, or even selected participants, the opportunity to visit foreign countries on all expenses-paid trips for extended periods of time. For many, though certainly not all, Indian journalists this can be the equivalent of nirvana.

I know of a photographer, or photo-journalist as they like to call themselves these days, who started out rather humbly in Bombay. He worked for an English language daily but like most Indian press photographers came from an ordinary middle-class family; not very well-to-do and certainly not Westernized in any sense of the word. This photographer later met and married a young woman, wealthier, better educated and socially a million worlds away from this man. Around the time of this odd couple's whirlwind romance, the photographer began his cautious entry into the world of the 'foreign junket'. The beginning was obvious enough: get a hold of a subject that sells easily in the Western World. The best subject in a third world country like India is obviously poverty-related. The clincher would be to combine poverty, children and exploitation is some awful cold-blooded way -- perhaps through portraits of street children with matted hair and mucusy noses, torn clothes, bleeding sores and hanging about south Bombay's traffic lights, outstretched hands cupped in a perpetual gesture of begging. Such photos shot in black and white (in the correct light) would naturally sell well to Western buyers. They would also be sure winners at numerous photography competitions held in European countries and would eventually lead the way to a nice six or nine month Fellowship at some American media university. What more could an ordinary Bombay boy ask for?

It has been five or six years since this young man began his carefully orchestrated move into the world of foreign junkets. He has photographed Bombay's beggar children, submitted entries to (and won) various photography competitions -- some European, as that is where the prestige lies -- and he continues in his quest of the Holy Grail, which in this case would be that long stint at some US university (European universities won't really do as he can barely manage English as a foreign language, leave alone tackle German or French).

In the meantime his wife is busy doing her bit: churning out hundreds of stories on typically heart-rending subjects: the exploitation of poor women, AIDS in India, various UN project reports and all sorts of related tear-jerker subjects that are obvious entries to various South Asia journalism competitions. Victory at such regional competitions will make the next step easy: Entry and hopefully a win at some Western competition, for after all in urban India success very often merely translates as recognition (in whatever scant form) from the West.

An unpleasant little story, but a common enough one in the world of India's English language media.

Singapore walks

2006-09-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about living on Adam Road is the amazing number of accessible and beautiful walks we can choose from every single evening (my husband and I love walking and usually do an hour's walk each evening). Some of our regular walks are down Arcadia, that very green and shaded avenue sort of road just opposite the Japan Association; a bus or cab ride to MacRitchie Reservoir where we do the HSBC Treetop walk; an interesting walk that takes us to the back of our condominium to Sheldon Road -- home to that tree with its family of spectacular sulfur-crested cockatoos; a walk down Duke's Road; any combination of walks through the Botanic Garden (from the Cluny Road gate) or sometimes even outside the gardens, down Cluny Road to Gallop Park; or through the Gardens from the Cluny Road gate and out from the Tanglin gate, or along the Red Brick Walk and out of the Nassim Road gate -- then we walk down Dalvey Road till it meets Stevens Road and then turn back. This is the walk we did this evening. I love some of the houses along Dalvey Road! And reading up about the road's history, I found this bit of interesting background excerpted from The Singapore House 1819-1942 by Lee Kip Lin:

By 1835, Europeans were planting nutmeg and other spices on a commercial scale north and west of the town. Much of the forest, particularly in Tanglin, had already been cleared by Chinese squatter gambier and pepper planters who felled the trees surrounding their plots for firewood to boil the gambier leaves in order to extract its commercial product. When the soil was exhausted, they moved to virgin land and this process of continual shifting led to the clearing of large areas of forest. J T Thompson, government surveyor, 1841-1853, observed that "The district of Tanglin in the beginning of 1843 consisted of barren looking hills covered with short brushwood and lallang".

One of the first Europeans to move into the country was Dr Thomas Oxley, the colony surgeon. In about 1837 he acquired 173 acres and formed Killiney estate, described in the 1840s as "the finest nutmeg garden". About the same time, William Cuppage, an officer in the postal service, occupied Emerald Hill, and Charles Carnie, a businessman, built the first house in Cairnhill in 1840. Soon other Europeans were moving to "country situations" in the nearby districts of Claymore and Tanglin.

By about 1860, the nutmeg trees succumbed to a blight caused by a species of beetle. The estates, which by now stretched from Pasir Panjang to Adam Road, through Tanglin, Claymore and Bukit Timah Road, gradually failed. Some owners retained their holdings and erected houses for rental. Cuppage, for example, built Fern Cottage circa 1850 as his residence and rented out the first house he had built, Erin Lodge, on Emerald Hill. His son-in-law, Edwin Koek, added Claregrove on purchasing the entire estate after his father-in-law’s death in 1872. When George Garden Nichol offered his 150 acre Sri Menanti estate for sale in 1859 there was already a house on the estate. Other owners sold their estates which were then parcelled out in building lots and resold by their new proprietors. The process was continual, and the land was subsequently further sub-divided into even smaller lots. By the 1870s, nearly all of the nutmeg plantations had been transformed into large, pleasant and exclusive residential suburbs.

The houses that stood on the wooded and undulating hills of Tanglin and Claymore between 1850 and 1880 were named after the estates of their European owners and many of the names survive to this day as road and place names - Tyersall, Chatsworth, Ardmore, Dalvey, Irwell Bank, Orange Grove and Cairnhill. A network of roads was formed along the original plantation carriageways or along the boundaries. Grange Road, Dalvey Road, Emerald Hill Road, Scotts Road, Duxton Hill, Oxley Road, Princep Street and Spottiswoode Park Road, to name a few, were roads which originated in this way.

Thomas Oxley’s nutmeg estate provides a good example of what transpired after the failure. The land lay within an area bounded by Orchard Road, Grange Road, Leonie Hill Road, River Valley Road and Tank Road. In 1850, Oxley began to dispose of his land in lots. By 1862, there were 38 houses within the estate, mostly along St Thomas Walk and the area between Killiney and Oxley Roads. By 1880, a network of roads was completed - the present Somerset Road, Devonshire Road, Exeter Road, St Thomas Walk, Eber Road Dublin Road, Lloyd Road and Oxley Road. Oxley Drive was a private driveway that led up Oxley’s Hill where there were five houses: Pavilion, Bargany House, Bargany Lodge, Killiney Bungalow and Killiney House, Oxley’s own residence.

Whose art is it?

2006-08-31T16:19:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article from this morning's International Herald Tribune. It does make you think about a tricky sort of problem.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

By Steve Friess The New York Times

Published: August 30, 2006

FELTON, California At 83, Dina Gottliebova Babbitt still recalls the rickety easel where in 1944, under orders from the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, she painted watercolors of the haggard faces of Gypsy prisoners.

But her memories of the Auschwitz concentration camp, vivid though they are, aren't enough. Seven of the 11 portraits that saved Babbitt and her mother remain not far from where she created them, on display at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland.

"They are definitely my own paintings; they belong to me, my soul is in them, and without these paintings I wouldn't be alive, my children and grandchildren wouldn't be alive," Babbitt said with a Czech accent as she served schnitzel in her cottage here in the hills outside Santa Cruz. "I created them. Who else's could they be?"

Her three-decade effort to retrieve the paintings is drawing renewed interest this summer: a heart problem that is threatening Babbitt's health has reinvigorated her supporters' efforts to resolve the dispute.

Shelley Berkley, a Democrat and congresswoman from Nevada, where Babbitt's daughter lives, testified about the case in July at a House hearing into the recovery of art stolen during World War II. And more recently a letter to the Auschwitz museum was signed by 13 artists, art dealers and museum curators, including a former executive director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

"Reuniting Mrs. Babbitt with her paintings would be a sign of the museum's dedication not only to history but also to humanity," read the letter.

The Auschwitz museum, which considers the watercolors to be its property, has argued that they are rare artifacts and important evidence of the Nazi genocide, part of the cultural heritage of the world. Teresa Swiebocka, the museum's deputy director, wrote by e-mail that the portraits "serve important documentary and educational functions as a part of the permanent exhibition" about the camp's thousands of Gypsy, or Roma, victims.

She added that "we do not regard these as personal artistic creations but as documentary work done under direct orders from Dr. Mengele and carried out by the artist to ensure her survival."

In a statement issued in 2001, she noted, the memorial's international council asserted that six of the original watercolors had been purchased by the museum in 1963 from an Auschwitz survivor, and that the seventh was acquired in 1977.

Babbitt's case is unusual among the property disputes to emerge from the Holocaust because it involves artwork created under the duress, not property confiscated by the Nazis.

"You have the natural dilemma between something that is clearly significant historical documentation of events and the claim of someone, which can't be dismissed outright, that this was her creative work," said Rabbi Andrew Baker, a member of the International Auschwitz Council, which advises the museum. "I don't know of a case quite like it."

Dina Gottliebova was a 19-year-old art student in Prague in 1942 when she first went to a concentration camp. In September 1943 she and her mother, Johanna, were moved to Auschwitz, where she tried to cheer the children by painting a mural of a Swiss mountainside and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

The work drew the attention of Mengele, whose experiments sought scientific evidence to support Nazi racial theories. Frustrated that photographs did not accurately depict Gypsy skin tones, Babbitt said, he wanted her to paint them.

Mengele singled her out, Babbitt recalled, in March 1944, on a day when thousands of other prisoners were being taken to be exterminated.

She said that she demanded of Mengele that he also spare her mother or she would commit suicide by touching an electrified fence. She and her mother were among the 27 Czechoslovak Jews to survive from their group of more than 5,000.

Her first subject was a Gypsy named Celine, who had recently lost her newborn to starvation. Celine is shown with a scarf covering her shaved head and one ear protruding, Babbitt said, because Mengele linked the shape of Gypsy ears to inferiority.

After two months of painting - she believes that she did 11 portraits - all of the camp's Gypsies were killed. She was then forced to paint medical procedures for Mengele.

Babbitt and her mother survived internment in two more camps before liberation in May 1945.

After the war she pursued work as an animator in Paris and was hired by the American who would become her husband, Art Babbitt. They married, moved to California and had two daughters. The Babbitts divorced in 1962, and Dina Babbitt returned to animation, working on characters like Tweety Bird and Wile E. Coyote.

In 1973 the Auschwitz museum told her that the watercolors had survived. She borrowed money to fly to Poland to authenticate the work, carrying a briefcase that she planned to use to take the watercolors home. When museum officials refused to give them to her, the long-running dispute began.

Negotiations seemed promising in the late 1990s when Baker and others tried to arrange compromises. Babbitt rejected a suggestion that the museum lend the art to her for the remainder of her life; she said she wanted ownership and the right to hang the works in an American museum.

"She wanted all or nothing," said Stuart Eizenstat, a former State Department official who mediated the talks. "I understood that, but in these kinds of claims, where you don't have clarity in terms of legal doctrine, you have to work out these kinds of compromises."

Berkley, one of Babbitt's strongest advocates, helped get a resolution through the U.S. House in 2002 that directed the State Department to work toward securing the paintings for Babbitt.

"The Auschwitz museum has a lofty goal not to dismantle the museum," she said. "I can relate to that. The Roma people have a stake in it because it's their images. But to Dina, this is her life."

(Al Horne contributed reporting for this article from Paris.)

Rainy Singapore and jabbering cabbies

2006-08-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

Taxi drivers in Singapore can be exceedingly irritating with their endless questions. I have learnt to sort of get around this by immediately plugging in my music player to my ears the minute I get into a cab, or better still plugging in the player plus opening a book to read. That works pretty well. Unfortunately, this afternoon (on my way back from Holland Village) I had no music player or book having forgotten both in the process of remembering to take an umbrella along -- we've been having quite a bit of rain here over the last two days. Very pleasant change from Singapore's usual hot days.

Anyway, so as I got in, our man the jolly taxi driver with a motor mouth began with the usual irritating opener:

"Where are you from?"
Me (reluctantly): "India" [At this point most taxi drivers will go on to say I dont look like an Indian, or will make some dumbass comment about Bollywood. One even told me he heard 'the Bollywood accent in my voice'!]
Cabbie: "Ah India..which part?"
Me: "Calcutta."
Cabbie: "Calcutta -- the East -- very dirty city yes? very very dirty yes?
Me: no answer (all my loyalty for Calcutta often forbids me from answering this question in the affirmative, to say no of course would be a laughable lie).
Cabbie: (undeterred by silence. He is the sort of man who would have probably kept up his side of the conversation even if I had dropped dead in the back seat): "Calcutta is close to Darjeeling, yes?"
Me: "yes"
Cabbie: "How can I get from Calcutta to Darjeeling?"
Me: "Best way would be to take a train from Calcutta."
Cabbie: "Not stop in Calcutta I think...everyone says must never stop there. Very dirty, too many people. You have many robberies there?"
Me: "No."
Cabbie: "Ok no robberies...just too many people, over-populated. Will the train take me direct to Darjeeling?"
Me: "No you need to stop at Siliguri and from there hire a car or jeep to gte to Darjeeling."
At this point we have thankfully almost reached my destination but this man has many more questions:
"How close to Bhutan?"
Me: "I'm not sure...Sikkim is closer"
Cabbie: "Sikkim? Lovely place isnt it? Many people say this" (From the cabbie's familiarity with the region -- and ease with the pronounciations of places like Siliguri and Darjeeling -- I figured he was of either Nepali or Burmese descent.)
By this time I had paid my fare and finally felt ending the conversation at this point could not be considered too rude.
Oh how I wish I could be one of those firm, borderline aggresive, no-nonsense women who know how to shut talkative cabbies up with a simple lift of the eyebrow or the briefest downward twitch of a stern mouth!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

A single tree on Sheldon Road is home to a small family of the most regal looking sulfur-crested cockatoos I have ever seen.

The Long Bar

2006-08-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a couple of days, though I have been planning to write on our recent visit to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel. Drinking a Singapore Sling at the Raffles is such a Singapore thing to do that we put it off for a couple of months, and finally ended up at the hotel on Saturday evening.

The hotel is a charming colonial building -- the only thing that sort of spoils that look is the escalator in one corner, I'm not sure why they put that in as the rustic wooden stairs are perfect. The Long Bar is on the second floor and like everyone knows was once the favorite watering hole of writers like Joseph Conrad and Maugham. To keep alive that atmosphere the bar staff wear long sarongs and loose white coolie-like kurtas; there are automated rattan ceiling fans that move slowly in an effort to capture the old time punkhas. The wooden floors are scattered with peanut shells (the bar's patrons are invited to eat the peanuts placed in a deep wooden bowl on each table and then scatter the shells on the floor in an old Long Bar tradition). The old light fixtures have obviously been replaced but even the new fixtures are all burnished and old-fashioned looking. Simply framed black-and-white photographs of the bar's famous clientele hang discreetly on the walls while the rattan chiars and sofas are comfortably upholstered in cotton and linen.

Few of the Long Bar's patrons (mostly Westerners and tourists) on Saturday night chose to sit out in the verandah that runs parallel to the bar on both levels, obviously because it made sense to escape the mugginess of the night and sit in the airconditioned comfort inside. Almost everyone -- at least all the tourists -- were drinking the pre-mixed bright pink Singapore Sling. I have to say though I enjoyed the Long Bar, I couldn't quite picture Conrad nursing a drink at that polished bar counter. Probably that's because while the building itself is a wonderful example of its colonial architectural traditions, the Raffles Hotel with its expensive boutiques and fine dining has become such a part of Singapore's high-end glamour quotient that the old beer-soaked gloom of Conrad's Long Bar with its expressionless coolies and slow-moving punkahs fanning the still heavy evening air of a very different Singapore almost three hundred years ago, has been irretrievably lost.

Beggars: fake or real

2006-08-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

I have been reading about CNN-IBN's report on the 'beggar industry' in India (beggars who deliberately get themselves maimed and mutilated to become objects of pity, being controlled by a mafia) and this morning the IHT's correspondent in India wrote a piece referring to that TV report. I liked Amelia Gentleman's article (the IHT writer) because she went further on the beggar theme and reported -- what is not new to most Indians -- that not every single armless or legless beggar you see on Indian streets had done that to him or herself solely to earn money. Oftentimes these beggars are real victims of unfortunate accidents or because of poor medical treatment end up with gangrenous arms or leg stumps. Actually, even the beggar mafia story is old news in India where the theme has often been touched upon in Bollywood movies (or at least used to be touched upon in the older movies, now all Hindi cinema seems to be about non-resident Indians and their lives in Bangkok, Geneva or New York).

I remember when I was a young student in Calcutta, I would sometimes help out at an NGO my mom volunteered with. The NGO workers would teach street children on Sealdah station's sordid platforms. I remember the little boys and girls who would run about the platforms begging for money from passengers as they rushed by; these same kids would attend the 'vocational school' held in a small shed on one of the platforms. There they'd sit with their torn clothes, bruised and scabbed arms and legs, mucusy noses and dull eyes. And always their hair would be a lightish brown, so discolored with dust, dirt and the grime of the station. There was nothing deliberate or staged about these kids. They were horribly poor, had parents who produced more children than they knew what to do with, lived with no dreams or ambitions or hope and simply waited for one dark night to end and the next bright day to dawn. One little boy used to say he didnt like the night because then the coolies would take him 'for masti'. A chillingly childlike way of saying the coolies -- or railway porters -- would come and sexually abuse him.

The NGO didn't do much for those kids, sometimes I thought we actually made things worse for them, because we would show them a little window into another kind of life they would never have, with our clean clothes -- different ones everyday -- washed hair, clean fingernails and leather shoes.

After a few months I stopped going to Sealdah station, I had to prepare for my mid-term school exams. My life was carrying on. Those kids must be all grown up now (the ones that survived into adulthood that is) and they must be doing to their children what their parents did to them. That is how it is for the poor in India. That is how it is for the poor in any Third World country and globalization and IT revolutions and great economic booms be damned.

The War in Lebanon

2006-08-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report 'Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon" wrote this piece in this morning's IHT Editorial Page.

(International Herald Tribune, Friday August 4th, 2006)

The voice of Mohammed Shalhoub, 61, a farmer from Qana, still quivers with shock and exhaustion. He was in a basement shelter with more than 60 relatives when two Israeli bombs hit, killing at least 28, including 16 children. As I interview him in hospital, relatives arrive with more news of the victims. A woman starts screaming as she looks at the pictures of the dead and Mohammed's eyes well up with tears.

But his voice turns cold with impotent fury when I ask if there were Hezbollah fighters near the home when the bombs fell. "If the Israelis really saw the rocket launcher, where did it go?" he asks. "We showed Israel our dead; why don't the Israelis show us the rocket launchers?"

The world doesn't seem to put much credence in the testimonies of Lebanese civilians, preferring to buy generic Israeli statements about Hezbollah using civilians as human shields, "precision strikes" at terrorist targets, and a "proportionate" bombing campaign. But after days of contradictory statements about Qana, the Israeli military was reported as saying it had no indication of rocket fire or Hezbollah presence in Qana on the day of the strike, and had bombed the area in retaliation for rockets launched days earlier.

Israel's claims about pin-point strikes and proportionate responses are pure fantasy. As a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I've documented civilian deaths from bombing campaigns in Kosovo and Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. But these usually occur when there is some indication of military targeting: high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's regime present in a house just before it is hit, for example, or an attack against militants that causes the collateral deaths of many civilians.

In Lebanon, it's a different scene. Time after time, Israel has hit civilian homes and cars in the southern border zone, killing dozens of people with no evidence of any military objective.

My notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths. On July 15, Israeli fire killed 21 people fleeing from Marhawin, including 13 children; no weapons, no Hezbollah nearby. On July 16, an Israeli bomb killed 11 civilians in Aitaroun, including seven members of a Canadian-Lebanese family on vacation; again, no Hezbollah, no weapons. On July 19, at least 26 civilians were killed in Srifa when Israeli bombs flattened an entire neighborhood; no evidence of military targets. On July 23, at least seven civilians were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed dozens of cars trying to flee the south after receiving Israeli instructions to evacuate immediately; no indication of weapons convoys in the vicinity. The list goes on, with about 500 civilians killed so far.

Israel says the fault for the massive civilian death toll lies with Hezbollah, claiming its fighters are hiding weapons inside civilian homes and firing them from civilian areas. But even if the Israeli forces could show evidence of Hezbollah activity in some civilian areas, it could not justify the extensive use of indiscriminate force that has cost so many lives.

Not only has Israel failed to distinguish between military and civilian targets; its own officials suggest that they have decided any civilian still in the south is fair game. Last week, Justice Minister Haim Ramon reportedly said, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

So if you are too frightened to flee southern Lebanon, or are sick, injured or too poor to pay the more than $1,000 it now costs to get out, you are a "terrorist" and eligible for attack. As for those who heeded the Israeli warnings to flee, the roads are littered with bombed civilian cars, many with white flags still attached to their windows. After all, the Israelis tell us, they could have been transporting arms. Israel is prefabricating excuses to justify killing civilians.

Tragedies happen in the fog of war, but Israel's strikes on civilians can't all be excused as accidents or mistakes. The unacceptably high death toll is the natural result of Israel's failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets, and Israel is responsible for the deaths.

Israel must target its fight on Hezbollah, not Lebanese civilians. To do otherwise is not only wrong, but may very well be criminal, and Israel's leaders, and its friends elsewhere in the world, must face up to this harsh reality.

((

Shopping junkie's updates...

2006-07-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows Singapore's Orchard Road is a great place to shop, but the other afternoon I felt a real shopping junkie's thrill when I discovered the absolute warren of shops in Lucky Plaza! There were all the jewellery places, discount clothing shops and even those bargain basement stalls selling pashminas, table runners, cushion covers and silk pajamas at literally throwaway prices; then I discovered (on the 2nd floor) a rather exciting clothes shop that had racks of crushed cotton skirts at deliciously reasonable prices!!

If you keeping walking towards Plaza Singapura (or the Dhoby Ghaut MRT) from Lucky Plaza, you'll find a food court sort of place that has a well-stocked Cold Storage -- and a useful DBS machine -- quite close to the entrance. At the entrance to the Cold Storage is a stall selling the most delicious hot rice dumplings (almost as good as the shop at the end of Mosque Street in China Town) I tried two: spicy shrimp and char siew. The spicy shrimp won hands down -- though both were very very nice! A couple of minutes before you hit this food court keep an eye out for a great perfume shop where u can pick up any of your favorite perfumes (I found Cool Water and lots of Tommy plus my favorite Wish!) at really unbelievable prices.

Carrefour in Plaza Singapura is a great place to do grocery and other general shopping. Great prices on all kinds of food/ fruit/ fish/ cheese/ wines and even a good selection of fresh nuts. Of course my favorite place to shop for 'Indian' vegetables is Mustafa in Little India. You can get everything there from tinda and chichinda to karela and potol!!

I'm not sure if I've written about Lim's in Holland Village before but the place has a wonderful selection of home wares, ceramics, decorative items in lacquer and wood and handmade soaps from across south east Asia. I bought a prettily glazed celadon spa set, four lidded jars on a ceramic tray for around S$ 39. You can get lots of blue-and-white pottery including tea cannisters, salt and pepper shakers and nut bowls for between S$5-15. Worth a visit!

Calcutta Jottings

2006-07-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't visited Calcutta during the monsoons for almost five years. The sky turns from mildly overcast to angry black in minutes before the rain comes down in sheets. The streets get waterlogged after about half an hour of this kind of torrential rain. And then everything and everyone gets pretty much marooned. One evening after heavy rains, Short Street was waterlogged with waist-high water in sections; taxis refused to take passengers, private cars stalled as water got into their low-lying engines and harried office workers were rolling up their trousers, removing their shoes, hitching up their sarees or salwars and preparing to wade through the filthy flood waters.

::::::::::::::::::::::::

The monsoons mean ilish maach and I was lucky enough to eat a real ilish feast at a close friend's home on Friday afternoon.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The prices of everyday items in Calcutta seem to have shot up tenfold in the last couple of years. Regular milk powder (whitener) costs Rs 77 for a 500 gm pack; a 1 litre carton of fruit juice costs Rs 66; a pack of cheese Rs 50 +; formal shirts range between Rs 700-4000. Yet a domestic worker will sweep/wipe and dust a 5-6 room apartment for Rs 600 a month.

:::::::::::::::::::::

Dunlop House on Free School Street is a shell. Literally. Well into the final stages of its demolition, this once rather imposing colonial-style building has been hacked and chipped at from roof downwards and now stands shapeless forlorn and battered. Rumor has it that the bidi factory owner who bought the property will build a mall where the former tyre company headoffice once stood.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::

One of the best things about returning to Singapore is Changi Airport. Truly one of the most sensibly laid-out airports in the world, we cleared immigration luggage collection and customs in under 25 minutes!
My Singapore Airlines flight from Calcutta had a good in-flight movie selection. Though I didn't even need to take a look at any of the 42 films, the minute I discovered Channel 12 was showing Saturday Night Fever! I watched it twice over, slept for an hour and heard the captain announcing our arrival at Changi.

Siem Reap: Street scenes

2006-07-05T06:23:00.000-07:00

A roadside food vendor sat beside a small pile of the thick flattish green cactus leaves that are so common in Mexican produce markets. Next to the cactus leaves was a large round platter piled high with crispy deep-fried crickets. A perfect evening snack rooted in the country's tragic past. During the years of the Khmer Rouge, starving Cambodians discovered cheap nutrition could be found in insects, abundantly available in their hot humid country. The taste was acquired and tarantulas and crickets are a favorite snack (and health food) to this day. They are still very cheap and are often served sprinkled with salt and chillie powder.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Discarded syringes, some bloodied, lie buried in the muddy sidewalk some 15 minutes in the opposite direction to the Grand Hotel d'Angkor. Intravenous drug use is common in Cambodia and a lot of Cambodia's NGO activity is centered around drug rehabilitation and the rehabilitation of male and female sex workers. Information posters on TB, HIV and dengue fever are pasted prominently outside the childern's hospital and the large hospital near Raffles, Siem Reap.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The smallest cutest monkeys I have ever seen sit along the forested roadway leading to Angkor Wat and the Bayon ruins. The monkeys are eternally busy delousing their babies, scratching themselves, eating rambuttans, yawning or simply staring at us.

Elephant ride platforms and little signs announcing elephant rides from Angkor Wat to the Bayon ruins are available for the more adventurous tourist.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I noticed a Cambodian movie poster outside a cinema theater. The poster had all the lurid color and detail of Bollywood posters: theatrically made-up women and men, a flowing river and a golden palace in the background.

Notes from Siem Reap -- I

2006-07-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

As we began our gradual descent down to Siem Reap's international airport set in the middle of green rice fields, our Jet Star Asia aircraft flew low over the Ton le Sap lake -- the world's largest freshwater lake and an UNESCO-protected site as we were to soon find out. A couple of hours later that day, after we had checked into our truly wonderful hotel, La Residence d'Angkor (part of the Pansea & Orient Express hotels group), we had a small experience with the Ton le Sap lake.

We had decided to go down and see the lake towards early evening and if we were lucky we'd catch a picturesque sunset. Our hotel fixed a tuk tuk for us -- the Cambodian tuk tuk is a little different from the Thai one, in that the bike taxi is more comfortable and private. Two people can easily sit on a nice padded seat (and if you are in a bigger group two more can sit across -- though that seat isnt padded and is really the top of the driver's store box). Also as the tuk tuk motors through Siem Reap's dusty streets, a delightful breeze whips through quite a relief from the humid mid-afternoon heat! Anyway, so there we were on our tuk tuk motoring away towards the lake.

We passed the cavernous hall of Center Market full of stalls and little shops selling all kinds of beautiful Cambodian handicrafts: Khmer silk items, silverware, cloth bags with beads, sequins and shells woven into them, basketware including pretty little keepsake boxes woven from dried and painted frangipani leaves; pretty opium jars, soapstone statues and dishes, wood and stone Buddha statutes and figures of Hindu deities, assorted woodcraft and beautiful little things made of handmade paper. In Siem Reap (very much a tourist town, in the sense that tourism is the economy) every single little shop or stall or even streetside vendor accepts the US $ and everything is priced in US$ too -- and can therefore be astoundingly bargained down.

Leaving the Center Market behind, we passed a crocodile farm, a Khmer craft and Fair Trade bistro and a small boutique selling handmade beeswax soaps. The dusty narrow one-lane street we went down had crudely made shacks (many on stilts) on one side, these were the dwelling places of most locals. Cambodia is one of south east Asia's poorer countries, it is also a country with one of the region's most tragic and violent histories. During the years of the Khmer Rouge, millions were killed, either put to death by the regime or died of starvation. Even today though the Angkor Wat ruins (another World Heritage site) have made tourism the mainstay of the Cambodian economy, the people here continue to live difficult, and in a large part, impoverished lives. As one little girl, grubby-faced and dull-eyed told me, the five wooden bracelets she would sell me for a dollar would get her to school. The little girl was looking after a cold drink and water stall outside the Bayon ruins.

We were some two kilometres from the lake when our tuk tuk stopped outside some sort of tourist office where it turned out we had to buy tickets to take us the rest of the way by boat for 30 USD for two of us. It wasn't what we were prepared for, as we had discussed things with our hotel staff and had worked out on not taking the boat trip (as we arent the seafaring sort plus the scheme seemed a bit of a rip-off as no one had told us the only way to see the lake was by boat!) Two other tourists inside the office found themselves in the same predicament as us. Anyway much arguing and haggling later (we tried to get the tourist office people to agree to allow four of us to share the boat for 20 USD) we all decided to go back to our respective hotels.
At this point our tuk tuk driver intervened and said he would take the two of us to the lake (a while ago he had been saying he would be fined by the tourist police if he took us any further without a boat ticket!)

By this time a bank of angry black clouds were bunched ominously together in the horizon, but our tuk tuk driver went on rather determinedly. We soon drove off the tarred narrow street onto a dirt track covered with red mud, the kind of track that in the villages of Bengal is called 'kaacha rasta' or unfinished road. On either side were little shacks -- this area was quite impoverished -- and the makeshift shacks were built of plywood, spread out on either side of the track like a small shantytown. Scrawny hens and roosters scuttled off the track, scared away by our honking tuk tuk; thin mongrels and pinkish white not too fat pigs scavenged for food or just made their way among the half-dressed children and women with careworn faces dressed in sarongs or loose pajamas and faded t-shirts going about the business of their lives that evening. I noticed even the poorest looking dwellings had hammocks made of blue nylon strung up -- sometimes men lazed in these, sometimes children. By this time the rain was a proper downpour, huge fat drops with gusty winds that churned up a funnel of red dust around everything. And all of us made the wise decision to turn back and head to the hotel.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

We had decided to stay at a 'nice' hotel during our visit to Siem Reap. Though my husband has a rather clever little way of finding pretty good places to stay at when we vacation, we ecstatically agreed that La Residence d'Angkor was his best discovery yet! The 50-room hotel (think more resort and less standard hotel) is spread out over a small cluster of charming Balinese style terracotta roofed buildings, with wooden balconies and awnings, a lovely pool, a small lotus pond a wooden floored terrace lounge looking onto a lovely little untamed garden filled with palms, banana, bamboo and frangipani trees, a fish pond (with its orchestra of frogs once the sun set) and serene Buddha statues carved out of soapstone.

The suites were luxuriously appointed in an understated way making liberal use of locally produced crafts. Everything was primarily made of a stained teak wood -- the ceiling rafters, airconditioner vents, the floors and all the room accents. The rooms were furnished in white or eggshell linens (the blinds were a lovely eggshell linen fabric, all the bed linen was white and a wooden diwan upholstered in eggshell colored linen had four Khmer silk cushions in brilliant shades of emerald, ruby, violet and blazing orange. I loved the mosquito net artfully wound into itself and suspended from a narrow wooden bracket above the bed.

The bathroom was truly luxurious: a large oval stone tub surrounded on one side by a neat wooden counter, with sunken stone basin and vanity space running along another wooden counter. The bathroom was separated from the bedroom by charming sliding doors made of cane and wood.

An American or European-style buffet breakfast was served between 5-10 am in a large dining room on the main floor. The dining room had a narrow open verandah running along one side of it (and overlooking the frog pond and a bit of the garden) it made for nice outdoor seating at breakfast time but at dinner time the large crickets, many mosquitoes, noisy frogs and manic lizards (hundreds of them!) made eating indoors a cleverer choice!

The terrace lounge was a wonderful place to relax in with its comfortable rattan basket chairs, low tables, muted lighting (in the evnings) and interesting choice of softly played music. The bar served a good mix of cocktails, beer and a variety of fresh fruit juices. And throughout the hotel the staff were uniformly friendly, polite and really helpful.

Notes from Siem Reap -- II

2006-07-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

The Angkor Wat ruins are magnificent and eerie. Wandering about these disintegrating mountains of carved stone rising out of a jungle, that must have once been home to more than the monkeys and elephants we can see today, dedicated to Buddhist deities and built by the ancient Khmer kings is a powerfully humbling experience. The old stone facades; the erotic apsara friezes, the walls of ancient Khmer script (interspersed with an odd line or two of Pali) tell whispered stories of a time long past and a people who have seen and suffered much. (During the brutal Pol Pot regime mutilated bodies of victims who had been put to death were tossed into the river flowing alongside Angkor Wat).

What surprised us was the undeniably hostile look carved into the faces of some of the massive statues that still survive. For instance, the three-headed deity guarding the Angkor Thom gate (and that must surely have been carved in the likeness of a ruling monarch as was the practice) looks decidedly cruel.

At Pra Thom we saw some ancient trees (some had only the trunks left and some with the thick roots grown out bizzarely over centuries and now clinging all knotted and gnarled to sections of the stone facade closest to them. At Pra Thom a sad reminder of another aspect of Cambodia's latter day tragic history took the form of a small group of young men dressed in slacks and bright yellow t-shirts, sitting on the side of the walk leading to the temple ruins. All these men are either missing a leg or have a stump in place of an arm: they are all landmine victims offering their services as guides to visiting tourists.

Not my kind of mango tree!

2006-06-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last evening we went to the East Coast Park, built on reclaimed formerly barren land, this is one of the largest parks in Singapore. It was very crowded, being a Saturday evening I guess as it is the sort of place Singaporeans like to hang out at -- there were many people on rollerblades and bikes (even places where you could rent these); some people had set up little tents along the landscaped beach while many others had rented out the barbeque pits and the air was quite heavy with the smell of roasting meat and corn-on-the-cob.

We had planned to have dinner at the Seafood Center, something of an institution here in Singapore, but we were sidetracked (as usual) by a small restaurant with rather pretty decor called The Mango Tree, the place offered coastal Indian food and as that is one of my favorite regions in India we decided to give the place a try.

While the decor was charming, warm lights, soothing old Malayalee songs, brass flatware and interesting old beaten brass jugs and glasses; the food left much to be desired. All the standard Kerala and Karnataka favorites were on the menu (two of southern India's four coastal states), and we ordered the Koliwada prawns as a starter. These when well-made are truly delicious: the prawns are coated in a red-hot spicy batter and crisply fried sometimes on a satay-like bamboo skewer. The ones we ate last night, lacked that spicy bite and the batter could have been crisper.

The drinks were good: a sweet mango lassi (buttermilk based drink) for me, and the salty, mildly flavored lassi for my husband. The appams -- rice pancakes-- were also good as was the maachi naan, or seafood stuffed naan bread. That was where the good things pretty much stopped. My husband's main course, a green mango curry was depressingly bland -- how one could go wrong with such a tangy, delicious basic ingredient was a bit of a surprise actually -- the curry had an overwhelming ghee-like taste and seemed to be a mish-mash of lentils, lots of tumeric and overcooked mushy mango!

My main dish, a curry crab once again lacked that bite of flavor. The crab seemed to be dressed in a sweetish sauce that did little justice to it. The spicy dry Kerala mutton (another standard dish) was ok, but still had that strong meat after-smell to it which could have been well-disguised with a little more frying and cooking. Considering the dinner cost us a S $100, it was more than a little disappointing. Added to which is the fact that Indian coastal food, when cooked the way it should be, is actually pretty delicious.

Those who can't, teach.

2006-06-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

A long time ago I wrote a post about expat forums -- I like surfing them going back to the days when we lived in Tokyo. The pit stop then was Gaijinpot (note to keen grammarian reader: I haven't seen the phrase 'pit stop' being used in relation to cyber space but I guess on a blog, the blogger makes the grammar rules!) In Taipei, I'd visit the Taiwan Ho! and Forumosa sites, both quite informative; here in Singapore the expat forums are pretty sanitized and seem painfully self-censored and very politically correct, which is why I suppose I find myself straying back to Japan's gaijinpot.

A recent post there on Gaba caught my attention. Gaba is one of Japan's many English schools/ factories. Even though I taught at Gaba, I'd be the first to say the school is probably right down there at the bottom of the barrel: a salary that was almost rubbish, even for those unfortunate teachers who had more or less signed a Faustian contract with Gaba teaching 12-18 hours a day, 6 or in some desperate cases even 7 days a week (more correctly nights a week, as all the money is made on the evening/ night classes when exhausted salarymen attend English classes paid for by their companies). Anyway this post indulged in some mandatory Gaba-bashing (the school is frequently bashed by gaijinpot-ters most of whom teach privately or in some of the better schools), but the thing is while Gaba doesn't hire the best teachers the truth is the majority of foreigners -- native-speakers or even non-native speaking EFL qualified teachers -- teaching English in Japan are woefully unskilled.

Even though teaching English in Asian countries is no longer as lucrative as it used to be, say 10 years ago -- a consultant friend of ours recalled how he earned 10,000 yen a lesson during the bubble years in Japan -- it still is one of the easiest ways for unskilled or semi-skilled foreigners (especially native English speakers) to get by, earn above average wages and generally settle down for years on end in Asian countries. In Taipei, I met a young man who was taking time off from his studies in the US, quite a lot of time it would seem as he had been living in Taipei for the past four years, he was teaching at a buxiban (Taiwan's equivalent of the eikawa). He said his students were "mostly uninterested in learning English and he was teaching primarily for the money and for the opportunity to travel around east Asia." At least this guy was frank, most other 'English teachers' I've met would make humbug seem like a good thing to be.

Mid-week notes

2006-06-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of sad story from Calcutta that is made sadder still by the fact that it is buried in the Metro pages of one of the leading city's newspapers. We grew up in a large roomy flat in the building right opposite Dunlop House, and when all the clocks in the house were invariably showing us a time that was too fast or too slow, the Dunlop clock could always be counted on for an absolutely correct reading.

The trouble with Calcutta, is that like many old historic cities, restoration and so-called modernization is bringing with it a sort of razing of everything that ever had a past. As long as characterless coffee shops and lounge bars are proliferating, the city's keepers rest easy. And that is sad.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Last Sunday evening we visited Little India. I have often read (in guidebooks and on travel websites) and been warned (by helpful cab drivers) that Little India on Sunday evenings is 'very crowded' with 'foreign workers gathered everywhere talking, talking'. [The 'foreign workers refer to the migrant labor population, mainly construction workers and men employed in the sanitation industry here]. What I saw on Sunday certainly proved that the warnings were not exagerrated. The streets of Little India, particularly the big open space opposite Mustafa Center adjacent to the mosque and the area around Bellilos (?) Lane was densely packed with men speaking a mix of dialects from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia (with the large majority being from Bangladesh). These men just sat about talking and laughing to each other forming little human knots all over the place, basically enjoying their off-time. Not far from the entrance to the mosque was a line of buses with their destination names written in Bangla, from what I could make out it seems that these buses were going to ferry the men back to their construction sites at the end of the Sunday holiday.

We were trying to get to Sarvanna Bhavan, a south Indian eatery that serves delicious south Indian meals and sweets. We did find Sarvanna Bhavan -- in Bellilos Lane -- but to get to it we literally had to walk through a sea of men, squatting, standing and lounging all over the little bylane and its sidewalks. Inside, Sarvanna Bhavan was almost empty, quiet enough for us to make out the almost imperceptible hum of its airconditioning. As we sat eating our dinner, it was a little surreal to look out of the eatery's glass windows and stare at that sea of buzzing restless humanity.

A wu lu wind chime

2006-06-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a 'precious gourd' Chinese wind chime. This is what I found out about the precious gourd, or 'wu lu' from a Feng Shui web page:

'The Precious Gourd is an ancient Chinese symbol of Longevity, Protection from negative energy and is used to turn bad health into good health. The Precious Gourd is also the emblem for the figure 8, which holds a lot of power in Feng Shui and Chinese Symbolism. The Precious Gourd is linked closely to the Eight Immortals of Chinese history, specifically Li T`ieh-kuai, who has the appearance of a beggar, and was a master magician. The Precious Gourd is a wonderful talisman to take with you on a journey for protection. The best place to hang the Precious Gourd is from your door entrance, windows, at the side of your bed, or inside a vehicle.'

My wind chime is hanging from the window, and the thing is in this apartment the windows are so wide and because there is nothing outside to obstruct the wind -- or the view for that matter -- the wind chime works beautifully and most of the day the little cylinders (that form the lower part of the chime) knock together enchantingly creating a very light, very musical tinkling sound.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

As we live in an older apartment building, we don't have a system of 24-hour security the way many of those massive condominium blocks around Singapore have. What we have is a guard who sits in a small guardhouse by the gate from 7 am - 7 pm. He comes in to work every single day of the week, including Saturdays and Sundays and even on the weekends stays in the guardbox till 7 pm. The building cleaner, a thin slightly bent man, works six days a week I think because I've never seen him around on a Sunday. But sometimes -- after 2-3 months -- the guard is replaced by another guard who does the 7 day a week routine for a few months at a stretch. Similarly, after a few weeks the slightly bent cleaner is replaced by a sturdier looking man who does the cleaning for the next few weeks.
So it seems to be a rather unusual kind of shift system.

Foreign worker woes

2006-06-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

Singapore seems to be divided in its outlook on migrant labor, or as they are referred to here the 'foreign workers'. On the one side, the Ministry of Manpower has for the first time fined employers who 'house their foreign workers in sub-standard quarters' between S$200 and S$2000 (S$200 per worker), according to the Straits Times on Thursday. The unacceptable quarters consisted of makeshift sheds and metal containers with poor bathroom facilities and water stored in battered drums. The National Environment Agency, the Straits Times goes on to report, has stipulated various guidelines for these foreign worker dormitories including this one that states "each worker living in a dorm should have room space of at least 3 sq m with a separate space for cupboards, or 4 sq m if there is no separate space." Not a palace by any means, but at least a standard of some sort that is being fairly strictly maintained.

On the other hand, ordinary Singaporeans don't seem to take too kindly to foreign workers co-existing with them in their HDB apartment blocks. A fed-up resident of one such HDB block wrote a long letter to the Straits Times complaining about "the increase in the number of foreign workers living in my block, as well as surrounding blocks."

True the complainant makes a strong case. His foreign worker neighbors (mostly male and living in groups) seem rather unsavory: nosiy, drunk, half-dressed etc according to the letter. But what struck me was a paragraph in the letter that said:
"Is it not possible to designate whole HDB blocks for the housing of foreign workers, rather than have them live beside families in the same block?"
In my book that sort of solution would be a form of racial segregation...

No pests in Singapore

2006-06-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

We had a visit from the Pest Control people this morning, to check if the apartment is clear of termites (white ants). two men in blue Pest Control uniforms came at around 11; their equipment was a flashlight and a wooden hammer like thing. One man went around with the flashlight, while the other knocked gently on all wooden surfaces in the apartment with the hammer like thing -- I guess to check whether termites had hollowed-out the surfaces. After about 15 minutes the inspection was over and we were declared 'termite free'. What a relief!!!

Peter Pest is one of Singapore's many pest control companies doing all sorts of important things like spraying stagnant pools of water and gardens regularly to ensure no mosquitoes are breeding; checking to see field rats are staying in their holes in the fields and not destroying private property; killing bugs, cockroaches and all other undesirable creepy crawlies. In fact the Singapore government also carries prominent billboard hoardings about reminding all residents to carry out the 10-Minute Mozzie drive, that includes getting rid of stagnant water around the house, keeping surfaces clean etc. As a result of all this constant vigilence, Singapore is probably one of the most insect-free places I have ever lived in and given the fact that this is a hot, humid tropical city the near absence of mosquitoes is almost bizzare. Just one more way I guess that Singapore shows exactly how self-made a place it is.

Another one from the archives

2006-06-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

SMALL towns say a lot through their railway stations. Narai, more of a village than a small town, nestled deep in the Kiso Valley region some three hours away from Tokyo, is no exception. The snow-covered platform is empty, we are the only passengers to get off the Nagatsugawa-bound train at Narai. The station master has closed his little ticket window — at just a little after five in the evening, it is time for Narai to shut down for the day. Narai, the last habitable stop before the difficult Torii Pass, is almost a one-street town.

Once ruled by the Edo shogunate, the town — situated exactly between Tokyo and Kyoto — was declared a Cultural Asset in 1978 largely because of the Edo period houses, with their distinctive "overhanging" second floor, that line its main street. At the moment though, we've missed the period houses and the wooden signboard declaring Narai a "cultural asset"; instead we're tramping down the snow-lined street looking for a minshuku or inn named Iseya.

Our battered Lonely Planet Guide to Japan says Iseya is a "short walk from the station". Much walking and some helpful guidance later, we "find" Iseya — which by daylight really is only a very short walk away from the station. Minshukus are a window to the traditional Japanese way of living — which explains why first-time gaijin (foreign) visitors to them are nervous. We reached Iseya armed with our Lonely Planet Japanese Phrase Book and plenty of "helpful tips on living in a minshuku".

What we weren't prepared for was the picture-postcard beauty of Iseya.
Built over 200 years ago, this minshuku is a step back in time with its polished wooden floors, decorative stone lanterns and rice paper screens. The original rooms are to the front, though the newer annexe at the back is a faithful replication of the old rooms. A Japanese garden complete with stunted trees and rock sculpture — now covered over thickly by the pure white snow — connects the new annexe to the old house.

We are given a quick tour of the minshuku, including the o-furo, or communal bathroom with its long wooden tub filled with steaming hot water and the common dining room where we will meet the other guests shortly at dinner. Our room is in the newer annexe. The sliding doors are made of rice paper and we are separated from the next room by a cork-board sort of
wall — obviously not quite the place to discuss state secrets in. The floor is covered in tatami (reed) mats, which explains why we were asked to take off our shoes at the entrance hallway, with a puzzling pile-up of zabuton (cushions) in the centre topped with a large lacquer tray. The tray has a teapot, two little bowls and two saucers with pretty looking beancurd sweets in them.

The inn-keeper's wife tells us that everything at Iseya is "self-service". Meaning we make up our own futons at night and roll them away neatly in the morning. Meaning also that we figure out how to put on our yukatas (a dressing gown sort of robe with a matching obe or belt) and use the o-furo before it closes for the night at 10. Even as the inn-keeper's wife leaves us to get ready for dinner, we're worried about what wasn't there in the "helpful tips on living in a minshuku". Things like where exactly do the pile of cushions go when we put out
the futons at night? Or, do we dress in the yukata for dinner? (That is a decidedly silly idea my husband seems particularly keen on); Or is going down for dinner exactly at six a sign of extreme punctuality or extreme greed? (In my case, it's actually extreme greed as we haven't eaten since breakfast).

Finally we reach a compromise and go down for dinner at 6:05; without the yukatas. Dinner is served in one of the two dining rooms, the other less formal room will be used for breakfast. We sit Japanese style on large cushions at a low wooden table with our legs folded neatly under us. The dining room has a charming old wooden ceiling, the beams of which are quite warped with age.

Dinner also happens to be my first encounter with real nihon riyori, or Japanese food. Many small beautifully lacquered bowls and dishes (lacquer and woodwork are Narai's two most important crafts) are placed in front of us. The menu is varied — every four diners share a large wooden bowl of steamed Japanese sticky rice and then there are the individual dishes: miso soup; a sausage wrapped in a cabbage leaf and then steamed in
a light sauce; cold soba or buckwheat noodles topped with soya sauce and vegetables; fish steamed in butter with mushrooms; crabmeat cooked with a potato-corn mash; cold tofu squares with seaweed; and finally green tea and sake to round off the meal. The real test for us gaijin is getting it all down with a pair of hashi (chopsticks). Nihon ryori, I firmly decide tastes quite heavenly. Even though the portions are somewhat bite-sized.

We decide to stop worrying about where we should shove the pile of cushions for the night, and instead squeeze our futon into one of the corners of our room. Somehow that doesn't seem quite right but more important things come first, like slipping the rice paper sliding door (which my husband has incredibly just managed to lift off) back into its groove, quietly. According to a minshuku's unwritten rules, guests musn't be noisy and disturb each other.

We finally manage to get the door back in its groove, silently. Outside the snow has begun to fall thickly, and most of Narai's little wells — leftover from the days when the town was a popular resting place for weary travellers about to make their way across the Torii Pass — have frozen over. Inside Iseya, the snow blanket has transformed the inn's courtyard into a magical winter wonderland.

After an early breakfast, another assortment of tofu, miso soup, egg-pancakes, rice, fish and hard-boiled beans, we check out Narai's main street. The period houses have been carefully preserved, right down to the stone lanterns that stand welcomingly outside the little wooden homes. A tiny coffee shop, almost as quaintly time-warped as Iseya, serves apple pie and piping hot cocoa in bright lacquerware. The friendly owner tells us about the wooden combmakers of Narai, who once fashioned intricate little combs for the geishas of Kyoto. The combs now
make interesting souvenirs. As we are leaving her coffee shop she shows us the single "Indian page" in her comment book, then bids us farewell with the Indian greeting she still remembers: "Namaste".

Before we leave Narai we stop at a little shrine located at the north end of the town. Roughly hewn, snow-covered stone steps lead up to the temple and its tranquil-faced deity. From the time-warped Iseya to this calming shrine, all of tiny Narai seems to tell a singular tale of peace.

(written by me and first published in The Hindu, April 2003)

Thoughts...

2006-06-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

Now that EU regulators have cleared Body Shop's sale to L'Oreal, this article from The Herald (UK) throws up a couple of interesting points.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I've been watching some of the soaps that are telecast through the week on the Sony (Indian) channel. Back when I lived in India, I never watched these soaps, but I did know they were pretty regressive and stupid. Now that I live away from home, I like a watching a bit of Indian TV now and then, so that's how I got around to watching these soaps on the only Indian channel we subscribe to.

Soaps churned out by the Balaji factory and by another production company called UTV, soaps centering around urban Indian women at their most ridiculous and retrograde. Soaps describing conservative western Indian jain business families; soaps caricaturizing middle-class India's social and moral values; soaps where the actors and actresses emote terribly, where the actresses must be fair-complexioned -- or else draw constant attention to their dark skin; soaps where the sole purpose of women is to get married, produce babies and promise a life time of devotion to husbands and in-laws and soaps that despite all of this continue to draw unbelievably high prime time ratings across the country.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The Great Singapore sale has begun -- I guess this is just another massive retail festival -- but I've heard that stores across the city offer massive discounts and various other incentives to shoppers. If my recent experience at Lim's the homeware store with a branch at Holland Village, is anything to go by these discounts really are pretty good!

Another old piece of writing

2006-06-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

IT is easy to find Mohhamad Hassani outside a crowded subway exit in central Tokyo — he is about the only person around wearing a cobalt blue embroidered pathaan suit.
Hassani, now in his late thirties, has been living in Japan for the last 11 years but his introduction to the country was in another avatar: "I came here in 1992 to serve as an attache in the Afghan Embassy," says Hassani who belongs to the minority Hazara tribe in Afghanistan and speaks the Dari dialect.

Hassani, who also speaks Japanese fluently and knows only a smattering of English and Urdu, has led a chequered life. He was imprisoned for four years in Afghanistan for activities against the pro-Soviet regime then in power. It was only in 1992 when a new regime came to power that Hassani was sent from his war-torn country to work at the Afghan Embassy in Japan.
But just about four years later, when the Taliban seized power in Kabul, he quit his post to show his contempt for the new government. He stayed on in Japan, despite initial discrimination and hardship, and has now been granted a special residence status — a prerequisite for pursuing permanent residency in the country. Sitting Japanese style on the tatami-covered floor of his small three-month-old restaurant — the first Afghan eatery in the country — Hassani looks back on those difficult early days in Japan. "I knew no Japanese, so that was the first thing I learned," he smiles. In those days a very poor Hassani lived in a tiny, sparsely furnished apartment in a distant suburb of Tokyo. He worked as a translator, helping Japanese lawyers who worked with Afghan refugees in the country. Unlike the language, which he learnt easily, Hassani could not adjust to Japanese food, "I cannot ever get used to this food," he says ruefully.
This motivated him to make his dream of starting an Afghan restuarant a reality. "Actually `Kanda Kabul' (`Kanda' is the name of the area where the restaurant is located) is many things to me," he says. "It is an expression of my longing for Kabul — not what it has become today — but what it can be if it ever gets to know peace for a long enough time."

`Kanda Kabul', tucked into the basement of a two-storey squat typical Tokyo building, shares its street space with Starbucks, several large sporting goods stores and a few small ramen restaurants. `Kanda Kabul' is small — it seats about 30 people at a pinch — and warmly furnished in black and white and polished dark wood. A tapestry map of Afghanistan and some Afghani artifacts including ornate vases, samovars and statues complete the look of this little window to Kabul. Across one wall is an eye-catching painting by Japanese artist Koji Suzuki. It depicts a ship cutting through waves under a starlit sky carrying animals and a Buddha-like figure reminiscent of the Bamiyan statues destroyed by the Taliban not so long ago.

"I started `Kanda Kabul' with the help of a small group of my friends. I am very grateful to them," says Hassani whose restaurant serves delicious authentic Afghani food prepared by his wife Roya, cooked with traditional spices ... "and my tandoor is from India," he adds, laughing.
As he talks, Ohnoki Kensuke, foreign rights attorney, and Hassani's close friend, walks in.

Ohnoki along with two other friends, the writer Kayoko Ikeda and Japanese journalist Isazaki, was instrumental in helping Hassani establish `Kanda Kabul'. More than just an eatery, Hassani wants to use the restaurant to introduce Afghanistan to the people of Japan. "After September 11, 2001, it has become more important than ever, to tell people here that Afghanistan isn't a country filled with terrorists and killers," says Hassani. "The Americans did not help us, just as they have not helped the Iraqis by overthrowing Saddam Hussein ... Saddam is a bad man but it was a personal Iraqi problem, there was no need for America to go to war against them."

Hassani and Roya's family live in Kabul. "Ever since this new government took over, nothing has changed for the people — there used to be a Taliban before the American attack insisting on beards and long veils, now there is another kind of Taliban in Kabul. Nothing has changed." Hassani's brother works in the Agricultural Ministry in Afghanistan. "He has not received his salary for six months now," says Hassani who visited Kabul this year in January.

Far away from the political turmoil, violence and poverty of his country, Hassani wants `Kanda Kabul' to succeed for the sake of his people. When he first conceptualised it, he wanted to create a sort of window to Afghanistan. But the practical problems of setting up a full-scale cultural centre were too formidable. Also, it would have been difficult to get the necessary funding only for a cultural centre. "We didn't have the resources for it, so it wasn't a practical idea," he says.
What was practical, and workable, was to establish a restaurant given that Tokyo is a gourmet's paradise with cuisine from all over the world available here. "But there wasn't anything from Afghanistan, which is what made `Kanda Kabul' an attractive business proposition as well," says Hassani.

"I decided to use the restaurant as a stepping stone to the cultural centre, so in that way I can introduce Afghanistan to the people here in a gradual way," he explains. The centre, which will focus on Afghan music, art and craft, will encourage debate on cultural and literary issues. For the moment though, `Kanda Kabul' has begun only with Afghani music sessions on select evenings. Hassani's friends invite interested people; they also help initiate the discussions, not unlike Kolkata's intellectual addas, over many cups of hot sweet Afghani tea. Also, on the first Saturday of each month, the restaurant holds a gathering where Ohnoki speaks on refugees and resettlement issues.

At 4 p.m. on Friday, `Kanda Kabul' is a hub of activity, as Roya and another young Afghani woman helper are preparing the evening's set menus. Along with the standard beef, chicken and vegetable curries, other Afghan specialities like narenj pulao (orange pulao) and eggplant cooked with tomato and yogurt feature on the menu. Hassani is busy brewing pots of black Afghan tea, as he prepares for another long evening of hard work. "But all this work is worth it, if I can make the people of Japan get to know us as we really are," says this determined Afghani ambassador of peace.

(originally written by me and published in The Hindu, 2003)

An old piece of writing

2006-06-03T10:28:00.000-07:00

It is a little after 8 pm as I make my way with a group of friends through a crowded Shibuya — Tokyo’s hippest shopping and entertainment district — marked by towering skyscraper malls and giant video screens advertising everything from a Tower Records sale to the new Tupac Shakur docufilm.

Our destination is a cavernous basement izakaya, or Japanese pub. Izakayas are about the only public place where the sedate Japanese really let their hair down as they unwind after a hard day’s work over two-hour long nomikais, or drinking parties.

Like most izakayas, this one, trickily concealed in the basement of a 10-storey building housing restaurants, clubs, massage parlours and bowling alleys, has the traditional akachochin or red lantern hanging just outside its entrance. Inside, the place is dimly lit, smoke-filled and noisy. We are instantly enveloped by the strong welcoming smell of beer, sake and shochu (a distilled local wine). This izakaya is bigger than most and is divided into several little seating arrangements, most of which are in groups of fours. A smiling waiter leads us to our area — a longish alcove with seating for 10.

We take off our shoes and sit Japanese style on small rectangular cushions placed on a tatami floor, all around a low sunken table. We follow general izakaya etiquette and order a first round of drinks from a selection of beer, wines and cocktails — the Japanese mix just about any fruit with any alcohol.

Because I am a gaijin, or foreigner, unable to speak more than a few words of grammatically mangled Japanese, my friends helpfully translate the menu for me. Ordering the right food to go with the drinks seems to be important, which at first took some getting used to, since back home most of my drinking was done with cornflour-covered chilly chicken, peanuts or chanachur. I guess, correctly, that the food here is going to be an excitingly long way off from my chanachur days as ceramic plates start appearing laden with sticks of yakitori (grilled chicken coated in soya sauce), delicate gyozas (dumplings) bamboo shoots with bits of meat, grilled tofu squares and daintily wrapped crisp spring rolls. We pick up our chopsticks, lift our glasses and with loud “kampais” (the Japanese equivalent of “cheers”) begin the first round of the evening.

Like in all pubs, after a while everyone begins sharing closely-guarded life secrets with everyone else. Typical Japanese reserve begins to wear off at the edges, as my friends start talking more frankly, less guardedly. “I want to say something to you all,” says one friend getting up a little unsteadily. He has been drinking a brilliantly coloured cocktail that tastes a bit like strawberries and oranges blended with a generous amount of vodka, interspersed with shots of warm sake (Japanese mix drinks as a matter of course and tankards of draft beer are punctuated with sake shots through the night).

He stands up and folds his palms together, dressed in a batik T-shirt, baggy trousers with more than one bead necklace around his neck, this young man has recently returned from the United States. A little earlier he had solemnly confessed to me that he was “not certain about his life”. Before he can make his little speech though, the appearance of food causes a mild distraction.
Food served, we turn back to our sombre friend. “I am a homosexual... and I think you [here he points a wavy finger at the only sober person at our table, a brooding early thirtyish, very shy colleague] are my type.” A few seconds of confusion greets this announcement, everybody is trying hard to be polite which means no questions will be asked. However, given the lateness of the hour and the number of draft beers that have gone around this table, some lapses are excusable.

A friend sitting across the table hollers at me in what she thinks is a whisper: “Did he say homosexual?! Why is he still standing? Does he like someone at the table? Why didn’t he simply speak in Japanese? It would have been easier to understand... Why did he have to tell us now?!”
On second thoughts, an izakaya was probably the best place to make an announcement like this. With coming out of the closet publicly still pretty much the exception in Japan, a crowded smoke-filled izakaya provides the sort of atmosphere that makes such disclosures a lot easier.
Within minutes of the announcement, everyone’s involved in the more immediate matter of ordering another round of drinks. Seemingly, endless rounds of drinks and food don’t end up costing the earth at izakayas because of the popular Japanese system of splitting the bill equally between everyone. So the more people invited to a nomikai, the less each person pays.
Once introduced, however clumsily, the topic of sexual orientation sticks to our sunken table which is now beginning to resemble the Maidan after the Calcutta Book Fair. Overflowing ashtrays, odd bits of paper, ballpoint pens, cigarettes stubbed out in empty soya sauce dishes, paper napkins, half-filled cocktail glasses and empty sake cups litter the polished lacquer tabletop. The conversation revolves around same-sex relationships — maybe everyone’s trying to make our young just-out friend more comfortable. Or maybe it’s simply more fun to talk about sexuality after alcohol takes care of our inhibitions.

With noise levels in the izakaya rising in direct proportion to the lateness of the hour, we’ve now been yelling out at each other for the last hour and a half. During a momentary lull at our table I happily realise that everybody’s yelling out at everyone all over the place. Ribald jokes accompanied by much laughter comes from a table of salarymen nearby; an impromptu karaoke session is breaking out at another table of young office-goers. Things at our table, in the meantime, have become more chaotic than ever with my young homosexual friend singing the Japanese version of My Grandfather’s Clock to no one in particular. Calling it a night just about now seems to be the right thing to do.

We leave the izakaya and step out into the crazy neon-washed world of Shibuya at midnight. As we walk by crowded pachinko parlours, exotic massage clubs and 24-hour coffee shops, we’re already working out the details of our next nomikai.

(originally written by me and published in The Telegraph, 2002)

Wrapping it up in Phuket

2006-05-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

On our last day in Phuket we went down to Phuket town. The drive through Changterley and down to Phuket town was indesribably quaint. We passed little street side shops selling daily groceries, a supermarket, green rice fields and small little homes and two story squattish buildings. We passed a little circle that had two black stone statues commerating a heroic Thai brother and sister who fought against the Burmese. Our taxi driver recounted their story with pride in his voice.

My husband stopped off at the quiet Royal Spa for a traditional Thai massage, while I went on to do some serious shopping in the town's center. The main market place around the Center in Tha Rasada had a series of small shops selling Thai cotton and silk fabrics, crafts and also a medium-sized mall with the local pharmacy, icecream and coffee shops and all of that. The crafts shops sold tradtional Thai wood carvings, silk cloth, basketware and silver at really good prices. There were also some pretty silk tubes fashioned into pyramid-shaped cushions and really nice handmade paper notebooks, photo albums and card-holders.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Lunch was another feast at a place called the Phuket Bay Garden. We chose our seafood from little stone tanks to one side of the open-air restaurant by the Bay, and then went and sat at a table and ordered fresh green coconut juice (that came in the coconut) and a banana icecream milkshake (my husband!). Lunch was our chosen mixed seafood -- crabs, lobster, prawns and a fish -- cooked in many ways: a spicy crab curry, pepper fried prawns, batter-fried shrimp, steamed lobster topped with a ,mound of slivered garlic and chillies. All this accompanied by white rice (my husband) egg fried rice (me) and a hot chicken curry cooked with clusters of white pepper, Thai aubergine and mushroom. We made our way determinedly through all this delicious food over the next hour and a half. The only little problem was the swarms of flies that seemed to have fallen in love with the lobster! We dealt with that by polishing off the lobster first and sending away the shell. The meal ended with slices of cold fresh watermelon and pineapple and a chilled watermelon juice. This was an expensive meal costing around 2,600 baht for two of us.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Driving to the Phuket International airport very early the next morning we passed through early morning scenes: the local wet market doing brisk business selling freshly caught fish along with fruit and vegetables; little breakfast stalls: one of them had a young woman working on a big mound of oily-looking dough laid out one her small steel cart. She was cutting strips of this dough into little thick rectangles which would then be deepfried in a hot wok of oil smoking on a burner nearby; close by on another steel cart, steaming rice and broth was being kept warm in large steel tureens. Placed around the carts were some plastic tables and chairs where people stopped by after their morning marketing for a relaxed hot and hearty breakfast.

A few tuktuks passed us by along the road as did some colorful van taxis with a row of red lights flashing on them. Everywhere the people of Phuket were well into a brand new day looking happy, still a little sleepy and not in too much of a hurry.

Done for the day

2006-05-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sunset at Bangthao Beach, Phuket

2006-05-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

Another heavenly meal in Phuket

2006-05-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

So this afternoon, once again, we were at Baan Nana for lunch. The sky is a little overcast today and the sun a couple of degrees less scorching than yesterday. A delicious heavy sea breeze had the anchored wooden single-motor fish boats bobbing about like little toy boats. We were greeted at Baan Nana like the old familiars we've become over these past two days. Once again we had the place to ourselves. This afternoon we decided to give the Changs a miss and concentrate entirely on the delicious food.

We ordered a tall glass of fresh pineapple juice (me) and a banana milkshake (my husband) then got down to picking out dishes from the menu. First off, we chose the spring rolls. It was a good choice -- Thai spring rolls are lighter and crisper than Chinese ones -- and these freshly made rolls were stuffed with glass noodles, chillies and little strands of chicken, served with a few leaves of lettuce and some thick tomato rings and yesterday's sweet sauce.

Next we ordered the steamed fish with ginger. This when it came, was literally heaven on a plate! The whole fish was steamed in a delicious light flavorful broth, topped with generous amounts of sliced ginger and red chillies. The fish was so perfectly steamed it just melted off the bone. This dish was accompanied by a small covered clay bowl of white rice.

My husband ordered the spicy chicken with crunchy long beans, carrots, chillies and spring onions in a piquant gravy that had a slight hint of crushed peanuts and fish sauce. We also ordered a portion of the mixed vegetable black pepper soup -- blanched bits of corn, carrot, mushroom and steamed prawns in a delectable light seafood peppery broth. As a side dish (on an already over-laden table!!) we had the most delightful spicy mango salad. I've eaten this dish before but it has never ever tasted as perfectly balanced as this. Thin strips of green mango, carrots, spring onion and white onion were tossed with crisp lightly battered prawns and fried cashew nuts, seasoned with a tangy blend of lemon juice, chillies and fish sauce. Absolute heaven! We finally (some two hours later) rounded off the meal with more pineapple juice and a hot tea.

Notes from Phuket

2006-05-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

Friends of ours who have made Phuket their home invited us over to get a taste of non-touristy, everyday life in this little Thai island. Their temporary home is at Baan Chai Nam -- the apartment looks out on to a dense 'wall' of abundant green foliage: palms, banana trees, bamboos are the trees I can identify, there are many other species beautiful, very fragrant and a deep rain-washed green. A small canal runs right by this side of the property, three or four long-tailed wooden Thai boats are tied up here, covered in plastic sheets. A few local boys sit on the low cement wall that runs by the canal.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Driving from the airport through Phuket town to Amphur Thalang where Baan Chai Nam is located, we passed scenes that looked us to like a montage of images from small town south India, rural Bengal and at times particularly when we passed tiled, squat single-story houses with plaster railings, old Muslim residences in north Calcutta. What made the scenes seem all the more familiar were the roadside signs in Thai script -- derived from Sanskrit and Pali among other languages -- the script shares the same cursive, rounded lettering as Kannada and Tamil. Then there was the foliage: those leafy banana trees, the palms, rattans and bamboos, all so reminiscent of lush southern Indian landscapes.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The little bakery is just a stone's throw from Baan Chai Nam. We went down there to pick up our breakfast. The blue hand-painted sign outside the rustic little shop said: 'Danish, croissants, soft rolls' and then there followed a few lines of Thai lettering. The young women inside the shop were friendly, like all the local people we met in Phuket, they packed our danish and baguette into plastic bags, all the while giggling and smiling shyly.

Just next door to the bakery is the kind of small roadside shack-shop that you see so often in small town India. The kind where thick glass jars are crammed with home-made flour and sugar flaky biscuits; steel racks are lined with a few packs of instant noodles, Lays and other assorted snacks; while a shelf inside the store has another limited selection of basic things like matches, soap, detergent, bread-spread, ketchup and chillie sauce. Outside the shop strung out on some string hang little bunches of small yellow plaintains.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

On our first day in Phuket, we had lunch at Baan Nana -- a really relaxed sea-facing small restaurant with rattan chairs and plain wooden tables. As we're visiting Phuket during the off-season, Baan Nana like almost every other place in Phuket that caters to tourists was empty. The owner, a very friendly muscular, bare-chested young man named Aub Khundee invited us to use the place like home: "eat, drink, smoke, stay as long as you like" he said charmingly; he also offered to drive us around Phuket for any sightseeing we may have for a very reasonable fare. His wife cooked the most amazingly delicious Thai meal I have ever eaten: black pepper crab seasoned with lots of fried crunchy garlic, shrimp cakes, a delicate chicken curry, one fiery dipping sauce and another sweet one and everything served with two little plates of steamed white rice and washed down by ice cold Chang beers.

Sitting by the placid Andaman sea, sipping our beers and crunching on that exquisite crab, it is difficult to imagine the same sea angry, roiling and destructive the way it must have been on December 26th, 2004. Aub Kundee pointed to two single 'headless' coconut trees just by the side of the restaurant: "the Tsunami killed my coconut trees...everything gone, all washed off" he said describing the five metre high monster waves that swept across Phuket that fateful day, by gesturing over his head. Later he showed us the newly rebuilt small houses along the little road that leads up to Baan Nana. We saw a small sign outside one of the homes saying: 'This home was rebuilt with Australian donations'.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Random images of streetside shops in off-season Phuket:
Little, empty very basic plastered single room shops like the ADSL shop that now has two young girls sitting in front of the only two old looking desk top computers the shop has; the many young women all made-up sitting around the tables in the little bar with its twinkling neons and single pool table where a young foreign man is playing pool as a Thai woman in jeans and lycra top looks on; the strains of Karma Chameleon blast out of Nok-Jo's a 'Thai, western, bar-b-q' place just a five-minute walk from Baan Chai Nam.

::::::::::::::::::::::

When you live in a big city you often forget the night sky has stars. Last night we saw the black night sky glittering with huge bright stars. So many, so big and so bright that you almost felt if you held out your palm long enough one glittering diamond would drop down.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Last evening we saw the sun set at Bangthao beach. A magnificent, prayerful, humbling display as a spread of brilliant bleeding pinks, turquoise and crimson led to the gradual descent of the huge golden mass slipping gently into the sea for the long night ahead. It is difficult to describe the magic of blue in so many bewildering tones and shades that took over the landscape as the sun set, and blue sea and blue sky all meltingly became one at some distant far out place.

Sitting barefoot in that white warm sand looking out at the steadily rising waves, the fish boats coming in, the crazy thread-like spidery crabs scuttling about the sand and the cloud-scuffed aquamarine sky spread across everything -- I suddenly realized that all of this is simply everyday real life here in Phuket.

Almost like home

2006-05-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

Food shopping in Little India is always fun. I've discovered many small south Indian grocery stores -- like the one quite close to the Little India market -- where all kinds of south Indian ingredients are sold, almost like the small modi shops in Hyderabad or Madras. This shop I went to had a small selection of Indian vegetables in boxes outside (though these weren't very fresh) and then it had some mangoes, pomegranates and grapes on display too. Inside were all kinds of dhals, especially the south Indian favorite toor dhal; there was a selection of rice flour, upma mix, semolina and murruku flour. All kinds of ginger, chillie, lime and mango pickles; spices like a fiery chillie powder, black mustard seeds and tamarind. On another shelf was a small selection of pooja items including camphor, clay lamps, red and yellow cotton threads and tumeric powder.

A five-minute walk from this store is the Komala Vilas shop, run by the restuarant people, selling coffee powder, south Indian sweets like jhangri, rawa ladoo and mysore pak and murukku. I prefer shopping in these smaller stores rather than making my way through Mustafa's confusing levels. The area around Mustafa specializes in Bangladesh food stuff including traditional Bangla sweets and savories.

Backward Forever

2006-05-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

We Indians struggle with a real problem of pulling each other down. When I was in California earlier this month, I noted something I had already seen before on a smaller scale in Japan (smaller scale because the number of Indians in Japan is far less than in the US). What I noted was a tendency among the Indians settled in the US to disparage other Indians and India as often as possible. The well-educated, affluent more recent Indian settlers in the US had not so nice things to say about the earlier immigrants -- the ones who came as blue collar workers and did the sorts of immigrant service jobs lesser numbers of immigrant Indians do these days. Meanwhile, the older generation of immigrants (many of whom have settled into comfortable middle class lives now) were vicious in their anti-India 'jokes' that poked fun at everything from Indian drivers to Indian TV habits . However, all the while, these older immigrants continue to carefully live in very Indian Californian neighborhoods and continue to subscribe to Indian newspapers and Indian television channels.

Then the university Indians (by which I mean the people who work or study in US universities) had much to say about the tech Indians -- the men and women who people Silicon Valley, are usually very affluent and in many cases unabashedly conservative. So there were all these groups constantly pulling down each other and it was all rather strange. Other immigrant groups, notably the Chinese (with whom we are always compared anyway though I'm not sure why as Indians and Chinese really have nothing in common) do not behave like this. The Chinese immigrants -- from PRC or Taiwan or even Singapore and Hong Kong -- have a united face, they are not constantly going at each other and most importantly they do not have the really serious caste and regional differences Indians are plagued with.

As yet another stupid caste-based quota war is erupting in India, these caste-based differences have re-surfaced. I agree with Narayan Murthy about the idiocy of reserving quotas in the IIMs and IITs for OBCs and Scheduled Castes and tribes. It is silly especially because if half a century after Independence, these castes are still backward then I guess they never will become 'forward' will they? I know for a fact that reservations in premier educational institutes do not give backward castes a better future. In Calcutta, my dad teaches at one of the state's best colleges. His college (now an autonomous university) has always had a quota for scheduled castes and other minority communities. Students coming in on the OBC quota invariably were just so behind educationally that they could not cope with the regular standards in their class.

They would be so behind -- from the very beginning of the academic term -- that special classes were held to tutor them just to bring them up to a standard where they could follow what was being taught in the class. Needless to say these students, when they graduated just went back to whatever it was their family was doing before their college education. If they came from wealthy business backgrounds (like many of them are from) they just joined the family business and the college education made little difference to their lives. What it did do of course was just block a more deserving middle class non-OBC student from getting that education (just because he or she wasn't lucky enough to be born into a community that has access to some of the best education in the state).

The truth is Indians politicians thrive on exploiting the caste and religion issue at every election. All that has really been achieved is to create successive generations of Indians that believe they have a birthright to special priveleges. Really serious caste atrocities in rural India (which have nothing to do with economic quotas and other political sops) need to be dealt with but stupid resrvations which do nothing but kill opportunities for more deserving hardworking Indians have no place in a modern society. Just think of it, why should an OBC or SC/ ST man or woman get into an IIT or IIM if he/ she is unable to clear the CAT or JEE? why should this person get in while someone else who is a Kayastha or Brahmin or something else be refused admission just because a greater quota means more limited seats available to non-OBC students.

And this caste thing really does connect to my earlier statement about Indians constantly pulling each other down, because what else will more reservations in education mean to India if not a great big pull down? The other thing is you can see the disparaging Indian thing in play once again in this debate with all the outcry Narayan Murthy's comments have generated. One would have thought that when Murthy, whose Infosys has created millions of jobs and almost singlehandedly given India a new economic self-respect, speaks on a divisive issue it would carry some weight. Instead Indians are screaming about how Narayan Murthy the Brahmin is against the poor downtrodden backward castes.

Just rambling

2006-05-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

The good thing about blogging, and the reason it really exists I suspect, is that you can really let yourself go. And if you are a blogger like me -- absolutely sworn to annonymity, exactly four people in the whole world know that this is my blog -- a committed diarist, with a strange need to keep some amount of your writing private then a blog is the way to go.

Ok that was silly.
So, I'm wondering who's going to win American Idol -- for my money it's probably Ms McPhee or Taylor Hicks, the reason I like Taylor so much is that he doesn't look like a singer, he has that boyish-old face that is also really so much the-guy-next-door kind of look and at the same time he is a fabulous singer. I will soon have watched two Idol spinoffs: Indian Idol is already very popular in India and starting Sunday, a local channel will telecast a new season of Singapore Idol, now that should be something to watch!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The taxi driver who took me to the Newton post office yesterday was full of stories about how the weather in Singapore has changed so completely over the years. I'm not quite sure how we got to my life from the weather in Singapore, but he was soon quizzing me about my time in Taiwan (which means I must have told him I lived there for a while). He agreed that Taiwan seemed like a nice enough place from what he had seen of it on TV, but then added (like all Singaporean Chinese) that it was too dirty and crowded! I always stick up for any city I've lived in, and so did my bit for Taipei insisting that it wasn't quite so bad and assuring him that people could walk about the streets of Taipei quite happily without worrying about getting choked to death by the pollution.

He then went on to speak about Singaporean food (cab drivers here can talk interminably on a range of disconnected subjects, demanding nothing more from the listener than an occasional 'I see' or 'Oh really?') and told me Singapore's 'chilly crabs' were the best. "Really crazy lah, just crazy" (I think he used 'crazy' in the sense of 'amazing').

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Even though you wouldn't guess it from my posts, I have a caffeine-induced headache today. It's the sort of dull heavy ache that starts right in the center of my forehead and, by the end of the day, stretches in a tight band across my head. I get it when I've drunk too much tea and coffee (three mugs of tea and two of coffee). This sort of headache also makes me feel very thirsty and a little melancholic -- I don't think people really feel melancholic these days instead they just feel plain depressed, to me the feeling is a cross between nostalgia and mopish-ness, tinged with a slight bit of doom and foreboding (very 19th century I'd say).

Shoddy; and then some coffee stories

2006-05-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

I discovered the DNA newspaper website a little while ago. The paper was launched in Bombay some time last year and for a while seemed to be the only thing Indian journalists could talk about. This seems surprising, for if the website is an accurate reflection of the paper, then it has to be one of the shoddiest publications ever in terms of content, writing style and layout.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

My most favorite part of any south Indian meal is the coffee that comes at the end. In south Indian homes this rich, flavorful coffee (ground fresh from beans without chicory and typically filtered in a small stainless steel coffee filter) is usually served in the morning and early evening. In south Indian restaurants across India -- and some outside India as well -- the delicious coffee can be had to round off a lunch or dinner. As a journalist in Delhi, one of my favorite early evening breaks was at the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg Udipi restaurant with a few journalist friends: We'd walk down to the noisy, brightly lit eatery and order cups of hot filter coffee and a plateful of rich, golden mysore paks.

For two really good strong mugs of filter coffee, filter at least 5 teaspoons of coffee powder twice over with boiling water in the little stainless steel filter. Add hot, full fat milk and sugar to the coffee 'decoction' (this is what the filtered liquid coffee is called in south India) if you aren't counting calories; if you are use skimmed milk and give the sugar a miss, but be warned it won't taste quite the same.
In south Indian homes, this kind of coffee is usually served in stainless steel tumblers placed in little round steel bowls, instead of the regular mugs or even cups and saucers.
In some South East Asian countries, a similar coffee is made but the full fat milk and sugar is replaced by sweetened condensed milk. In Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore the prepared coffee is poured from one tumbler to another in a rapid motion, creating the famous 'pulled coffee' popularized by guidebooks and travel shows (in Udipi restaurants in India a similar pulled motion gives the filtered coffee a frothy head).

Random thoughts when reading Dunne

2006-05-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

I am reading Dominic Dunne's Another City, Not My Own. The book is such a wonderful read because first, I simply love the way Dunne writes and second, I think I am as fascinated as he is by celebrity-justice -- of course Dunne had a terrible tragedy in his life that lead to this fascination, mine is simply vulgar curioisty.

When the O.J Simpson trial actually happened back in 1994, I was in my final year at college. The trial almost completely passed me by at the time -- the only vague memories I have of it is some CNN International reports on that great car chase and the other memory is that for the first time I realized orange juice was popularly referred to as oj in the States! Those were early days of globalization in India and even convent school-educated urban Indian youngsters weren't as much in the loop about all things American as they are now. We would have poached eggs and butter-and-sugar sandwiches with milk and home-squeezed mousumbi juice for breakfast (no one called it orange juice back then, which very accurately mousumbi juice isn't). These days of course hip young Indians and their nuclear families eat Kelloggs and oj for breakfast.

The first Dunne novel I read was An Inconvenient Woman, I remember coming across the book at Tokyo's Hibiya library and that reminds me of another thing: When I first visited Hibiya park, I got a little lost and couldn't make out which building was the library. There were all these huge brownish buildings and then the massive park with the cherry blossom trees (not in flower at that time of the year naturally). So I asked a man walking towards the park if he knew where the Hibiya Library was. Of course he looked politely blank. Those were my early days in Tokyo and later I learnt when looking for a public building in Japan it pays to know the Japanese word for the building even if you don't know a single other word of Japanese, if I had asked the man where Hibiya 'toshokan' was he would have directed me to the right building, the word 'library' stumped him. Later when I got to know Tokyo better, I would take the Yamanote line to Shimbashi station and walk from there to Hibiya park. It always used to be a nice walk and I used to love the area around the Hibiya exit of Shimbashi station.

The other thing that came to mind as I was reading Another City... is that when Johnnie Cochran died last year I remember thinking that he must have been a nice man because I had been reading all those obits about him praising his work for the African-American community. Obviosuly he wasn't that nice... I had once browsed through Faye Resnick's book on Nicole Brown Simpson, she (that's Nicole Brown) seemed to have been quite the insecure slut, but still she didn't deserve to have her throat slit for that. She sort of reminded me of Natasha Singh -- Natwar Singh's daughter-in-law who was found dead thrown from a balcony of a posh Delhi hotel. Many people thought Natwar Singh's son was behind that murder (which was played out and mostly swallowed by the spineless Indian press as a suicide). Just weeks after Natasha Singh's broken body was found, Natwar Singh's own daughter Ritu committed suicide in her well-appointed south Delhi bedroom by hanging herself from a ceiling fan. The Delhi grapevine said Ritu Singh (suffering from depression) could not live with the knowledge that her brother had killed his former wife.

An old book -- and a lot of rain

2006-05-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

I am re-reading Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August and loving it as usual. This is for me, the best book written in English by an Indian writer, ever. As a journalist back in Delhi, I met Upamanya at Shastri Bhavan once -- just after he had published the sequel to English, August (nowhere near as brilliant as the original book). Chatterjee was great fun to interview. Deadpan, seemingly nothing like Agastya, but with a half-smile and blank look that hinted at an inner-self at least twice as much fun as Agastya. I think Chatterjee liked my piece, I left for a trip to London just before it was published but when I telephoned him many months later about an upcoming literary event, he remembered me and a line from the article where I had described his spoken Bengali as 'an out-of-Bengal Bengali' (not unlike mine!). Oh the vanity of bread-and-butter journalists :)

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Back in Singapore where it is raining for hours everyday in some strange pre-monsoon cycle. Last night we drank Indian toddy (made from coconut milk) at a friend's place. It is supposed to be a favorite with migrant Sri Lankan workers here in Singapore. I doubt that very much, the drink tasted like lychee juice and was about as potent.

Just another day in surburbia

2006-05-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

I went to San Jose this afternoon -- I've been there before but this was the first time by
the VTA (light rail system). The train seemed unusually crowded and got more crowded, with
people standing in the aisles, as we got closer to San Jose. I noticed mostly everyone got
off at a stop called Component that housed a large county house kind of place.

The Japantown/ Ayer stop was not what I had imagined it would be (this seems to be becoming
a pattern for me in Calfornia) I imagined a nice lively street with lots of Japanese shops
and restaurants and good coffee places, anyway that's what the guidebook said too. I got off
at Jackson Street -- it borders Japantown on the north -- the street was typical lower-end
surburbia. But instead of cute Japanese shops selling ceramic ware and little gifts, I saw
housefronts with cheerful red and blue neon signs marked: 'Bail bonds -- day or night;'
'Bail bonds for Bad Boys' and 'Bail Bonds - whenever!'

As I turned down the street two burly men with beefy tatooed arms stood exchanging fuck-talk
(that's basically lots of loud talk with many obscenities thrown in), just outside a bail
bond place. The door of this place was partly open and a strong smell of ganja wafted out.
The sidewalk was almost deserted but a couple of yards ahead I saw some Chinese characters
marking a building facade, the only indication that I was anywhere near Japantown. Actually
the other indication that this was Japantown were the posters hanging from lamposts marked
'Nikkei Matsuri 2006'.

I came across a few really desultory restaurants selling Korean, Chinese and Japanese food
(I've realized that here the term 'Japanese' or 'Chinese' is usually generic and lumps all
of east and south-east asia together. I have seen some Chinese restaurants with Korean, Thai
and Chinese dishes sharing menu space), there was a San Jose Tofu Shop that looked
particularly unfriendly, an empty salon with some Sheisido products and another empty shop
selling Kanebo stuff, bags and keychains. Most places were deserted and the restaurants
looked like they had seen better days. I guessed I was at the wrong end of Japantown and
headed back to the train station.

Actually 'train station' is a misleading way to describe these places. What they really are
is small stops -- usually in the middle of nowhere -- with a single platform and two tracks.
Usually a VTA bus stop will be somewhere close to the station. The buses operate on a really
low frequency (every 40 minutes to an hour) the trains come by every 17, 20 or 10 minutes on
weekdays depending on the stop. I think this frequency must be far lower on weekends.

Going back to Mountain View the train was rather crowded again with big men and women. One woman really loud, very dyke and dressed in sweatpants and sneakers was holding a loud
conversation with another large blonde woman eight seats away. They were discussing their
probation, parole regulations ("you know we need to let them know our change of address blah
blah...") and then they moved on to more wholesome topics in those same booming voices.

You know who I met?
Who?
Christine...
Oh yeah?
Yeah...she's got herself a man (loud crack of laughter)
(louder crack)
A man -- I fuckin hate that you know? I hate that...
I know like trying everything around..."
yeah (another crack)

A man with arms like a tree trunk was doing little bounces and things at one end of the car.
He was also staring rudely at a young Korean woman getting off the train at the stop just
outside the ebay office. His bare arms were laced with black and green dragon head tatooes.

We reached Component and mercifully the polite people got off.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The top stories on Bay Area News at 5 this evening included a piece on a Hispanic woman who
threw a two year old child on the floor, she was babysitting the kid and that was her way of
disciplining the child. She is now in the San Mateo lockup awaiting trial with her bail set
at 1 million.
There was another report on a 10 year old girl who was found dead at the bottom of a
swimming pool in San Jose. The police don't suspect foulplay for the moment but still need
to explain how she got to be at the bottom of the pool (not dressed for a swim) at eight in
the evening. Her parents said the little girl did not know how to swim.
Another report updated us on the fate of a mentally disturbed woman in her 30s who had
disappeared two days ago. It seems she called up the police from Fresno and said she was safe and with some men she met at a parking lot.
Finally there was a report on a possible bird flu vaccine being developed in the Bay Area.

Not so bad really

2006-05-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

To a visitor, the reasoning behind today's protests across the US seems a little confused at best and, bizzare at worst.As much as I can understand, hundreds of thousands of immigrants called for a nationwide boycott today of businesses and schools to demonstrate their combined economic strength in this country. The thing is, this boycott and this day of protest was not called by immigrants -- though almost all of America's mainstream media has used this term misleadingly while covering today's events-- a fact pointed out by CNN's Lou Dobbs. The protest has been called by illegal immigrants, or undocumented workers as NGOs and activists here are now referring to them. Basically people who have entered the US without any paperwork. So today's boycott isn't a 'Day Without Immigrants' it is more accurately a Day Without Illegal Immigrants.

These illegal immigrants, or undocumented workers (numbering some 12 million according to media estimates, though this isn't a very accurate figure as it includes workers and their dependants) are basically calling for some sort of an amnesty from the US government. What is confusing is that during today's protests these people held up signs and placards demanding rights and saying they would be unchained. I think given the terrible conditions illegal immigrants (or illegal aliens as many countries refer to them) usually live under in other developed countries with tough anti-immigration legislation, these Hispanic and Latino workers really have it quite easy. For example, the US government announced last evening that no arrests would be made during today's demonstrations (unless of course things got violent, which they didn't or at least havent so far) so what we saw here today was masses of illegal (undocumented, paperless) people throng streets from San Francisco to Chicago without a single person getting picked up, arrested or detained by legal forces. Imagine illegal workers doing this kind of thing in any other first world country! That's why I say the illegal immigrants here in the US have it pretty easy actually. Let me also say here that the illegal workers in the US are the among the most prosperous looking, well-fed illegal immigrants I have ever seen in any first world country. And that is how it should be,which is why I am saying that undocumented workers in the US really have a lot to be thankful for already.

The other thing is these Hispanic/ Latino workers get into the United States illegally so that they can give themselves and their families a better life, they are not fleeing political or social repression, torture or persecution. I think as such (and excuse my bizzare logic here, but really it is an odd sort of situation in the first place) they really hold a position of responsibility in the greater world of illegal immigrants, so to speak. They need to not make 'illegal immigrants' across the first world a dirtier word than it already is (because remember, today's boycott and protests have been given mass media and internet coverage and is being talked about all over the world) because there are people out there -- other undocumented workers -- who desperately need to flee their country of origin, not to make some more money or live better, but simply to be able to live freely without political and social oppression.

Living on sunshine... and KFC

2006-05-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

California is a beautiful state. The sky is clear and brilliant, the sunshine truly heady, the days long and nights short. There are long roads bordered by rolling green hills and pine and olive trees. There are pretty colored flowers like tulips and birds of paradise, charming black and red woodpeckers, hummingbirds and wild geese. There are salt marshes and hiking trails and quiet picturesque back streets that you can walk through for miles on end.
It really is a beautiful place.

You would think that the people who live in such a land surrounded by walnut, lemon and olive trees would have the best cuisine in the world -- or at least one of the very best cuisines. Unfortunately the food in California, and I am not talking international food here, so no Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, French etc food, I mean the local native food is terribly unhealthy and unappetizing. Like across most of the US the everyday ordinary food in this state is usually of the fast grilled or fried drive-in, takeout variety, the usual burgers, pizzas, wraps, bagels, subs, burritos etc in outsize portions (restaurants in the US usually serve food on an 11 inch plate). The trouble with this kind of fast processed food is that it depends heavily on enriched flours, saturated fats, excessive sugar, salt and artifical flavors.

Bad eating habits have now become a serious concern in the US. With roughly sixty per cent of the population overweight (and the largest proprtion of people in the world who suffer from the painful effects of obesity), it's easy to see why a growing number of nutritionists, doctors and writers have made books on weight loss and healthy eating one of the most successful non-fiction categories in the book business in this country.

Browsing through the 'cookery' section at the Borders located on University Avenue, Palo Alto, yesterday evening I came across an interesting book called 'The Lost Recipes'. This is a charmingly printed hardbound collection of delicious old-fashioned traditional western recipes that have been modified to suit today's tastes. The book also includes little words of wisdom on family meals and slow cooking and thought-provoking extracts from books like 'Fast Food Nation'.

Before I visited the US, it was easy to think that all Californians were sunkissed, toned and tanned gods and goddesses. Actually the toned and tanned gods and goddesses do exist but these are mostly the younger people. The older Californians get the more sloppy and overweight they seem to become.

Many, many families live on takeout and the more affordable KFC and McDonalds eating options. It's not unusual for people to have daily breakfasts consisting of bagels and cream cheese or buttered croissants and danish pastries at local delis and coffeeshops; followed up by burger or pizza lunches and dinners all washed down by cans of soda or coke. This evening Oprah Winfrey had an informative show on bad eating habits on ABC 5. Her guest (Dr Mehmet Oz) demonstrated how eating highly processed foods and foods cooked in lard on a regular basis clogs arteries. He also explained how butter substitutes are oftentimes more harmful than actual butter.

Like I said at the start of this post, it's sad that a place as beautiful as California should have as natives these massively overweight men and women with their horrendously ballooned-out bodies. Sadder still is to see some Asian immigrants to California gradually getting to be as ballooned out as the native folk, presumably as part of the assimilation process of the Great American Way of Life.

Berryessa: A flea market made in China, mostly

2006-05-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

On Saturday afternoon I visited the Berryesa flea market in San Jose. I had expected to arrive at a quaint typical flea market with makeshift stalls selling odds and ends, collectibles, crafts and other flea marketish things. I am not sure why I expected any of this from a massive California flea market with over 2000 stalls operating from Wednesday through Sunday. So then obviously Berryesa wasn't anything like I what I thought it would be. It is instead a huge fairground like thing, with as many as 2000 stalls like I wrote a little earlier. These stalls sell everything -- just like the Berryesa flea market's website states -- from kitchenware to clothes to cars(!!) and fresh produce (throw in a couple of hundred stalls selling belts, shoes, toys, photo frames and bags) at really cheap prices.

It's easy to understand how these goods can be sold so cheap as almost ninety per cent of the stuff has been mass produced in China (not made by local village artisans as you may have assumed would be the case at a flea market). I saw stalls selling the kind of brightly painted ceramic ware that Chinese factories produce for Japan's daisos, I saw Chinese shoes and bags that are mass produced by Chinese factory workers and sold in markets from Taipei to Hong Kong. The toys were also Chinese toys (lower-end) and the t-shirts, belts and frames were also Chinese made. Most of the sellers were Chinese, Korean and Hispanic with some Indians thrown in as well.

Some stalls were selling household goods like cleaning stuff, mops and brooms, shopping strolleys, luggage. Not unlike those large halls I would see in Taipei selling similar stuff in large quantities at good rates.

The produce section, rather like a large farmers market, was interesting. All manner of local and regionally grown fruit and vegetables filled stalls on both sides of the produce aisle. Unusual vegetables including something I had never seen before, the flat broad leaves of a cactus plant! made the produce section the best part of the market. There were many types of beans, dried fruit, spiced and whole nuts, whole unshelled pecans, ripe unshelled garbonzo beans, lots of varieties of chocos (called by its Mexican name here) and many kinds of fruit from all over including sweet Phillipine mangoes, local custard apples (less warty skinned than regular custard apples), an unusual cactus apple and many kinds of bananas and plantains.

In between the stalls were the food stalls selling Mexican fast food and cool drinks. Mexican fast food can be pretty fattening, lots of cheese, beans refried in lard, meaty and like all the rest of the food here served in very large portions. Actually food in the US is a big issue, in that it is probably the most unhealthy food in the world in its regular (meaning non-ethinc) form, but more on that later.

Shopping blues

2006-04-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

If you've ever lived (or even visited) East Asia, shopping in America (ok, I'll modify that to shopping in California) is a bland uninspiring experience. Do Hong Kong's Stanley Market, Taipei's Songshan district, Tokyo's Shinjuku, Singapore's Mosque Street or Orchard and then, do a California mall.
It's like eating moussaka in Athens versus eating moussaka in Haryana.

Malls here are large but the stores are pretty much what one sees in any big city (Gap, Crabtree & Evelyn, Nautica, Old Navy, the Body Shop etc). Also practically everything in most American stores -- from the discount chains like Ross to small speciality shops like Paperwhirl) -- has been made in China, Hong Kong or Guatemala, with China being the biggest source market for everything from shoes to tops to skirts and even whimsical curios and ceramic ware. Food places in malls are restricted to burger and fries or pizza stops, with the odd salad counter thrown in and of course a Starbucks or two. I missed the food stalls of Asian markets selling takoyakis, dimsum, tofu, sticky sesame balls and icecream and bread sandwiches.

Small shopping streets and centers like the one at Stanford have higher-end stores like Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret and Bloomingdales with the same flood of Asian manufactured goods. Also most of the designs (especially in clothes, shoes and bags) were out seasons ago in Taipei's Songshan and Hong Kong's Stanley.

A better shopping experience with more character and color can be found at the farmers markets, flea markets and shopping streets like University Avenue in Palo Alto or outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, more on these in a later post.

The Hispanic Story

2006-04-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

US news channels are full of reports about the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish and Monday's boycott of businesses across the country. The May Day boycott already seems to be dividing the approximately 14 million Hispanic immigrants in the United States; the boycott calls for immigrants (presumably the illegal ones and their supporters) to stay away from work, and school on Monday and join in countrywide protests against planned legislation against undocumented or illegal immigrants. It will also be an occasion to prove that these undocumented immigrants maybe illegal in the US, but they are still very hardworking and provide invaluable services to the country, according to a department store worker who was interviewed on ABC's news at 5 this evening.
Read about this here.

The head of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in the US (Michael Barrera) said the Chamber wasn't too happy about the boycott call as the Chamber is in favor of education and an educated protest rather than encouraging students to stay away from school.

It seems large numbers (12, 14 and 16 per cent) of workers in the food preparation, cleaning and construction industries are illegal workers in the US -- and it is proposed legislation against these people that has triggered off recent mass protests. On the Hannity and Colmes show on Fox, Barrera tried (in vain) to put forward the immigrants' side of the story. He tried to say small business owners should not be penalized for bringing in illegal workers because these workers are, at the end of the day, doing the kinds of jobs Americans are not willing to do. Rich Lowry (sitting in for Sean on this evening's show) aggressively mowed down Barrera's argument -- he wanted him to answer in a single word (Yes or No) whether these small businesses were violating the country's laws by hiring illegal workers -- obviously Barrera should have answered with a resounding Yes and hung his head in shame to keep Lowry happy.

I think the saddest thing about immigrant stories (and I am talking about really hardworking, dirt poor usually illegal immigrants) from Singapore to California is that these people really do end up doing society's most wretched jobs just to be able to get into a rich country so that life for their future generations will be better than what they've known. I think it calls for some kind of heroic sacrifice not all of us are capable of making.

PS: Here in the US politically correct NGOs have begun using the term 'undocumented immigrants' as opposed to illegal immigrants based on the rationale that no human being can be illegal.

More notes from a strange place

2006-04-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

I think I am one of a handful of people using public transportation here in California. This morning I used a combination of a bus (plying the routes infrequently with a grand total of two passengers on board), the light rail (VTA) and a madly expensive taxi. The VTA wasn't too bad, actually it was pretty good with trains coming into the platform every five-seven minutes or so. Quite a few people (by local standards) seemed to use the VTA, many of them students and middleaged women and Vietnamese and Chinese couples.

Stores and supermarkets here seem to be excessively stocked -- everything in mammoth packs making it difficult to even buy a simple carton of juice that can be reasonably finished by one person in one week -- but I guess that's because people here seem to shop for months on end at a time, or else they use up things (even stuff like detergent and cleaners) in record time. Casual clothes and shoes can be had really cheap here, all of it made in China or Guatemala of course.

Eating out is definitely not much of an attraction here. Given the diversity of the Bay Area, seeing Indian and Chinese restaurants in every strip mall isn't much of a surprise. What is surprising though is how limited the menus are and how average most of the stuff tastes. On the other hand though, as grocery shopping is really fun here -- with all sorts of nice veggies, fish, meats, Asian and other ethnic ingredients -- cooking at home becomes even more of an attractive option than ever. We did, however, eat a pretty good dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in Fremont a night ago, complete with Sing Tao beer.

PS: Michael Eisner is probably the world's worst talk show host EVER. He looks bored and physically uncomfortable and doesn't know when to shut his talkative guests up.

Feels like Jim Morrison country

2006-04-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

The name of this post dates me more than the fact that I'm looking to buy the best under-eye revitalizing cream I can get my hands on. But I think it's ok -- I am writing about my first visit to San Francisco and for any self-respecting Doors fan that has to be an association.

When we got into San Francisco (we took the Caltrain from downtown Mountainview) there was this strange feeling of stepping into some kind of time warp. The area just around the Caltrain station is so beat up and sad you can almost feel the city's getting ready to give the world another Howl. We took a bus, intending to get off at Embacadero, of course we got on to the wrong bus.

We got off the wrong bus at Fulsom and wandered into a Starbucks. San Francisco, just the first impression of it, seems to be a city that is more than a little worn at the edges. I guess that's what makes it so captivating. There are those crazy hills and steep little streets, and then the shophouses on other side streets and it is the Americana of these shop fronts that I simply loved. Print shops, thrift shops, coffee shops all greyish, dull with sudden blobs and splashes of bright colors -- a splash of red or purple or something that just lifts that dull grey/ brown out for a brief second and gives it a Bay life all of its very own.

The counter girl at the Starbucks was helpful, she gave us precise friendly directions to get to Embarcardero along with our lattes and chocolate brownies. The Starbucks itself was one of the more derelict ones I have seen. It adjoined a hotel (also frayed at the edges, but still opulent) was dark inside and had beautiful music washing over its patrons. Panhandlers strolled about just outside the coffeeshop. They weren't demanding or intrusive, they were just there all vacant-eyed and sad-faced and raggedy-dressed. San Francisco is angry with much of capitalist America and it shows. Bright posters bashed Wells Fargo on many building facades: 'Wells Fargo: Looting and pollutin for ever' and then we passed the Wells Fargo offices, spanking posh and well frankly, totally indifferent to the angry poster people.

We got on to a cable car outside Starbucks to get to the Ferry Building. The cable car felt very much at home in that afternoon's time warp. We found a couple of seats and the car trundled on down the streets. Across the road a group of young people (all White) stomped by, two of the young women in the group had painted their faces ghoulishly, the men wore chains all over themselves and tried looking really fierce. I don't know what they were so angry about as the car trundled by them before I could figure it all out.

A large African American, unwashed for about half a century I'd say given the odor that followed him in, got on. He was badly dressed and really angry. He pushed a small quiet old Vietnamese man off his seat and sat himself down. All the while he rhythmically punched out a rap rhyme:
"You watch yourself/
You skanky ho/
Yeah I'm tellin' you/
You skanky ho/
You motherfucker/
You watch yourself/
Yeah I'm tellin' you"

For me it was musical and scary. The man finally shut up as the cable car filled up with tourists and locals. Later just before he got off, he was charmingly polite and excused his way nicely off the cable car.

The Embacardero is a very nice walk right by the Bay, with the Ferry Building on one side and the arts and craft stalls on the other. The Farmer's Market inside the Ferry Building was lively and doing pretty brisk business despite some steep prices (not everything was overpriced and some stuff was just so beautiful like the fresh organic fruit and the moutwatering cheeses you probably wouldnt mind paying a little more for it!) This seems to be the San Francisco paradox: lots of money in some places, angry panhandlers in other and just outside the Ferry Building was this couple, rather vile and unwashed looking with two fierce mongrels on leashes (one of the dogs had a face guard kind of thing on, you know the sort that looks like a large foghorn on the dog's face). The couple -- a tall man and broad woman -- went about opening up trash cans and taking out all sorts of assorted stuff, piling it into a wheelbarrow like contraption and carting it away with them. They did this all the way down from Ferry Building to Pier 31.

Across the road from the Ferry Building local artists had set up a few stalls from where they sold artwork, candles, Haight Ashbury t-shirts and bead jewellery.

The Bay was mildly choppy, in the distance was the famous Alcatraz Island, not too far above us fat gulls screeched and swooped down low below a porcelain blue sky. Some men stood by fishing around the Public Fishing Area. They were loud and noisy and punctuated the fishing with skateboarding, cycle racing and bawdy jokes. One guy made a silly bet and offered his wife to his mates if he lost -- the Mayor of Casterbridge right there on a San Francisco pier one beautiful Saturday evening.

Strange new world

2006-04-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

So here I am in Sunnyvale, California. This is my first visit to the US -- it has been a mixed experience. Here are my random notes for the first couple of days.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Everybody's heard the horror stories about US visas, the country's Homeland Security guys, racial profiling etc etc at US airport entry points. I wasn't expecting anything horrible of course, but it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by really friendly officials at the San Francisco International airport and get through immigration in under ten minutes in a process that was easy, quick and efficient. So there, that made for a pretty good first impression.

:::::::::::::::::::::::

We drove out into a clear, slightly nippy late Thursday afternoon -- on either side of a multi-laned freeway (highway?) were large industrial park sort of office buildings, our friend an old Valley hand, told us these buildings were all rented out now but in the months just after the dotcom bubble burst these buildings lay eerily vacant and a secondary business in selling off office supplies -- including stuff like chairs/ filing cabinets etc flourished around these ghost offices (this after all being the entrepreneurial Valley). We passed a large white building that still looked fairly deserted to me with an AMPEX signboard. This was once the office of Excite (for those who've forgotten that was a search engine), later Excite was bought by AT&T and finally it disappeared altogether. The offices lay vacant till AMPEX took them over recently. Tech companies from household names like Oracle to unknown startups with scifi-ish names dot the landscape (in fact are the landscape) as we drive through Redwood City, Palo Alto and other little towns -- they felt like towns to me though Americans seem to call them cities -- I can't remember the names of as we head towards Sunnyvale.

It doesn't take me long to figure out that California is car country. Coming from densely packed East Asian capitals with their highly developed mass rapid transit systems like Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, these vast car roads with their giant SUVs, seems almost surreal. It feels to me like there are the mountains, the sparse conifers (silver and green), the ancient redwoods and then there are these wide, wide stretches of road with their SUVs and smaller bug-like cars zooming along all day in a self-absorbed tarmac and tyre symphony.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Local television is a visitor's window into a foreign country. Television here is run by TiVo. Which in itself speaks volumes about the American way of life -- a life that seems to spend most of its time unravelling on freeway commutes between office and home. Few people watch TV the old-fashioned way, instead they control their TVs, with TiVo of course.
Television commercials are equally split between obesity and weight-control medications (the Hydroxycut commercial is particularly promising), anti-depressants, other over-the-counter medications for everything from osteoporosis to herpes, and age-defying cosmetics. And then there are the commercials for McDonalds, KFC, Olive Country and Kraft macaroni. Weight is a major concern here -- it should be. There are massive people here sitting in those SUVs (that have probably contributed to their weight). These very fat people seem to be the real Americans, not the tanned bronzed sexy men and women we see as tourists back in East Asia. Those guys are the healthy people, so they travel. The people back home are oftentimes too fat to travel so they sit at home, watch TiVo and eat macaroni and cheese, by the gallon presumably.

On a stupid episode of The View, Barbara Walters and her women friends giggled over the ten most embarrasing questions people should ask their doctors (erectile dysfunction, excessive flatulence, bad breath, burning sensations when urinating etc). And this is supposed to be an intelligent, thinking women's panel discussion!

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The Valley is full of awesome immigrant success stories. Talking with people who have been here for the past two decades or so (and have made their fortunes many times over) is like taking a guided tour through the inside of the American Dream. It's fascinating. These are ordinary people -- simple, unsophisticated, middle-income people from southern and western India -- who came here with bright ideas, insane determination and a lucky star. Today they are worth millions of dollars and live in mansions from Saratoga to San Jose, driving up real estate prices and fuelling the entrepreneurial lifeblood of the Valley.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

If you have lived in East Asia for any amount of time you probably think the typical American is the rude, smartass eikawa teacher with blue eyes and blonde hair. Actually, that's a pretty incorrect assumption (like mose assumptions based on little knowledge). The average American is friendly, upbeat, a little loud but not unpleasantly so, and with the attention span of a six-month-old. The average American is also a casual, bordering on sloppy, dresser (that's here on the West Coast). He or she also pretty much loves talking about cars, homes and sex -- in no particular order.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Like I said earlier, if you're visiting from crowded East Asia or even compact Europe, the wide-open spaces of the Bay Area cities will leave you feeling disoriented and isolated. There are no conbinis and vending machines anywhere. There are no Yoshinoyas, hawkers centers', Mos Burgers or dimsum vendors at every street corner. There are no people walking about and sometimes there aren't even any sidewalks on the wide roads. Instead there are narrow strip malls in the middle of nowhere, empty roads, massive campus-like office spaces, more empty roads, houses with cars parked in front and more empty roads. There is a brave light rail system (the VTA) which nobody uses and there is the Caltrain that can take you to San Francisco if you have two hours to spend chugging along -- as opposed to the 45 minute car ride everyone else will probably take. It is a different world, if I had Valley blood flowing through my veins I'd put a positive spin on that...

(next post: Feels like Jim Morrison country)

Hospital blues

2006-04-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

Last week we paid a sobering visit to the Singapore General Hospital. The good part is that everyone's ok in the family now. The depressing part, was our first visit to the hospital. Singapore General is a huge facility spread across many blocks and sectioned off into several clinics and departments in the manner of all large hospitals. During that first visit, we sat in the general waiting room which was unfortunately crowded on that afternoon. There is something awfully depressing about hospitals -- the clinical smells, the brochures on all kinds of diseases and illnesses helpfully placed in stands all over the waiting areas to supply I guess light reading matter while you wait your turn, the stricken looks on some faces, the resigned looks on others (I am not sure which is more difficult to take in), the wheelchairs and fluroscent lights and blue-and-white coated staff and the general sense of tension that sort of envelopes any medical facility anywhere in the world I think.

The way a general consultation at the SGH works is that you pick up a queue ticket (you do this for practically any kind of service in Singapore I think) then wait your turn -- and this could come a couple of hours after your appointment time, or if you are lucky about 40-50 minutes later. Doctors sit in five or six individual clinics, and once you get called in the checkup (at least as far as we were concerned) was fast, efficient and very reassuringly conducted.

Medicines can be bought from the pharmacy -- where once again you queue up and wait your turn -- though this wait is considerably shorter. The real killer queue is of course the wait for the taxi outside, and we sensibly decided to just call a cab rather than queue up at the taxi stand for the next couple of hours!

The Pfizer research center at the SGH regularly places ads in the Straits Times looking for candidates who are ready to participate in various drug trials. Requirements for these trials are strict -- specifying the sex of candidate, good weight and height with a suitable BMI, non-smokers, no medical history. All candidates, if selected, are promised reimbursement for time spent on the trials. I wonder who replies to these ads... possibly students or healthy young men looking for some quick cash. It wouldn't be easy money though.

Me stupid Ching Chong Chee, You big Master White

2006-04-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

Singaporeans -- especially the Chinese Singaporeans employed in any kind of service sector -- seem to be excessive Caucasian-worshippers. Take a short trip down to Holland Village to see what I mean. Everybody, from the taxi driver to the sales clerk in the Guardian store next to the Cold Storage is just about tripping over her/himself to be the better Caucasian devotee (and that is the politest way I could write this down. 'Better Caucasian asslicker' would be the least polite way to write it down). It isn't that the same store clerks etc aren't polite to other people, it is just that they seem to lose all sense of perspective when dealing with Caucasian customers.

I've noticed this fawning behavior in other places around the city too. The other day at the Coronation Center, I was taking a look at some chiffony tops on a rack just outside the NTUC market. Alongside me stood a Chinese woman, the clothes stall attendant -- a fat Chinese woman -- didn't give either of us a second look. Just then a Caucasian woman came up and started looking through a rack nearby, our fat friend almost knocked her cash register down as she jumped out of her cosy corner chair and rushed to the Caucasian woman's assistance (not that the lady had asked for any!) She then waxed eloquent in her best Singaporean pidgen on the wonders of the clothes in her stall and how all of the pieces 'fit foreign lady lah'!

While larger stores and shops don't display this idiotic fawning, or at least don't display it quite so obviously, it is at the smaller places in largely Western enclaves of the city that one can see a large amount of this ridiculous behavior. One fruit juice seller at the Adam Road hawker center smiled and laughed dementedly over his Western clients antics as the couple goofed around with their fresh coconut drinks. He was so absorbed laughing at the couple and assuring them that 'coconut fresh and sweet lah' that he forgot the rest of his four customers waiting patiently for their orders to be taken. Really stupid and certainly something you aren't going to see much of in Japan, Taiwan or south Korea (though young Japanese women love most things American, servility from taxi drivers and shop staff is something you rarely encounter).

Calling all fans of Talk of the Town

2006-04-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

Ever since we've moved to Singapore, my blog has become a sort of travelogue like thing and i've forgotten to note down other events etc. I guess that always happens in the first few months of moving to an entirely new place.
I have been reading a lovely anthology: The Fun Of It/ Stories from the Talk of the Town
To readers of the New Yorker, the Talk of the Town needs no explanation, if you aren't a New Yorker reader, take a look at this.
I borrowed that book, and three others from the Singapore National Library. The Library is pretty good with a largeish collection of writing in English, though I noticed a number of American authors some standard and some quite random, and a convenient self-check out system.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I watched a Singaporean film on TV the other evening: Chicken Rice Wars, in English/ Hokkien with subtitles in English. It was terrible.

How could I have not written about this earlier???!

2006-03-30T17:59:00.000-08:00

Little India of course! Quite the hub of the Indian community -- actually, Subcontinental because quite a few people in Little India are Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis as well -- here in Singapore.

My first visit to Little India was one evening, about a week after we had moved to Singapore. We were joining some friends there for dinner. At the time we were staying in Pasir Panjang and we decided to take the MRT to Little India (after moving to Adam Road taxis seem to be just about the most convenient way to get around the city).

The Little India MRT stop is a short walk away from the Little India arcade on Racecourse Road. At first, that evening, it felt like we had stepped into some very ordered, clean version of a combination of an evening market in Hyderabad and Bombay. Rows of shophouses on either side of a wide-ish street and then down a little way, the shophouses give way to rows of restaurants with very north or south Indian connotations. I had been warned that Little India would be awfully crowded, but for some reason the evening we were there it was almost deserted -- could be because we were there pretty late in the evening.

Later, when I had begun going about the city by myself, I saw Little India at different times of the day, and each time the area seemed to adopt a particular atmosphere as if to suit that time of the day. One afternoon I took a cab upto the Tekka mall, one of my two entry points to Little India (the other being Mustafa, but more on that in a while) and found myself going down the little street that is signposted Indian crafts or arts or something close to that. It felt more than ever like a Hyderabad or Madras street market, just at a more subdued decibel level. The shops I poked about were mostly small selling everything from Indian music tapes and CDs to cheap dhoopkathi (incense) holders, bangles and bindis and handicrafts the kind you can buy on Janpath. I also came across small grocery stores selling all kinds of south Indian ingredients from the dried sour curd chillies, to small bottles of Chettiyar ghee, to different kinds of dhal, jaggery and specific hard-to-find south Indian vegetables like drumsticks, yam, snake gourd and curry leaves. Not surprising given that the core of the Indian community here in Singapore is south Indian and large numbers of Tamilians (from India and Sri Lanka) still live in Serangoon and other areas of Little India.

I later found out that the area behind the arcade leading up to the temple, is known as Kampong Kapor and the times I have visited I have found numerous small stalls and shops here selling temple things, not unlike any temple street in India. My favorite thing to do in Little India is visit the sweets shops. I am a mishti addict and the only thing I have really longed for living away from home, has been Indian sweets. Not the roshogollas and barfis but the more textured bhaja mishtis of Bengal and the ghee sweets of south India. At the Ananda Bhawan just near the Tekka mall there is a delicious selection of mysore paks, rawa ladoos, jhangri (amritis), adhirasams, balushahis and besan pedas. The restaurant also sells well-made samosas and upma. All of which are amazingly cheap.

Now on to Mustafa's. As Little India is also the center of the community for migrant subcontinental labor in Singapore it serves an important socio-cultural function and the area has many banks, money transfer services and associations that migrant workers can use to send remittances back home and stay in touch with the home country. Mustafa is a large discount departmental store where everything is sold dirt-cheap. It also offers a money changing service and is a general meeting point for workers in the area, probably because of its sheer size and the fact that it stays opens 24/7. I have been to Mustafa twice and both times the store has been uncomfortably crowded with foreign tourists scouting for good buys, local Singaporeans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and just about anyone who is on the lookout for real value for money. If you have the patience to fight the crowds and queue endlessly, then Mustafa is a good place to shop.

Alongside the roads leading to Mustafa are the buildings that house the 'dormitories' where scores of subcontinental migrant workers live out the more sordid side of life in affluent Singapore. Somewhere around here is also the Desker Road red light district where weekend nights find the alleyways crowded with male workers and prostitutes from neighboring Indonesia and the Philippines. All in a day's work for colorful Little India I suppose.