August is a wicked month. I believe Edna O’Brien once said that although my limited education and inability to access Google means I can’t confirm this. The Singaporeans certainly seem to think so. They call it the ghost month. Nobody buys a house in the seventh Chinese month or so the story goes. Although it’s clear that Capitalism occasionally sneaks in and overcomes superstition.
This is a strange country in many ways. It’s the darling of the Economist and the World Bank. They say it is the world’s most open economy, which is code for allowing the Americans to come in and steal as much of your assets as they like. You can see this open economy in the shopping palaces of Orchard Road, the Tag Heuer watch arcades in Raffles Hotel, the money lenders in their banking temples along Boat Quay and Simlin Square, where you will find the latest in Japanese electronic gadgetry. In some cases before the Japanese have even invented them.
But if Karl Marx was to take a wonder in his time travels along Singapore River, he wouldn’t be too disappointed in how this little country has turned out. Every citizen is entitled to a house, which they buy at a cheap mortgage from the government. You’re guaranteed a job so long as you do your military service and chip in with some community work. That bit isn’t obligatory but Prime Minister Lee, who along with his Pappie has ruled this country since independence in 1965, is looking down on everything. Including this blog I suspect, so I better watch what I say.
Its East Germany with Rolex watches. Stalinist Russia for the Ferrari set. Asia doesn’t fit the sort of economic model we studied in school. The De La Salle brothers hadn’t contemplated a communist country like China taking on the West in consumerism. But the brothers did teach us about all those martyred priests in the boxer revolution and the superstition behind it. Which might explain why the Chinese want to start the Olympics on 08/08/08. Eight apparently is the luckiest number. Unless the ghost month falls then one presumes.
Superstition never had a place in my life, but spirituality does. Superstition to me is about fear. Spirituality is about hope. You have to dig hard to find the bones of God here, but he pops up in the strangest places. I woke on Sunday morning to a thunderstorm. Singapore was having weather of biblical proportions. When I lived here in 2001, the sun rose every morning at 6.46 and set at 6.50, the temperature was 32c during the day and 29c at night. It would rain for 35 minutes at 2.40pm each day. And that was everyday. It was as regular as taxes and the shattered hopes of the Louth football team. It was so regular you wondered why the paper bothered to print the forecast or sunrise times. It was Groundhog Day crossed with the Weather Channel.
But now it’s different. Perhaps it’s global warming or it could be the monsoon season. Or maybe, it’s God. I turned on the TV and not surprisingly the Ads were on. Asian Ads aren’t known for their humour so I wasn’t expecting much. It opened with a cartoon man sitting on a park bench looking glum. A dog walked up to him and said, “Have you seen a talking dog around here”? Without saying anything the man just pointed in the opposite direction. The voice over said, “Not surprised by a talking dog? Maybe you’ve lost your soul”. When you’re sitting on a bed in an Asian hotel doing a passing impression of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, this comes across as fairly profound. It turned out to be an ad for the Korean Capital and I guess the agency thought it slightly ironic to use a dog in this context. At least they stopped short of having the dog say, “Please don’t eat me”.
But it spurred me into thinking that this is Sunday and I should feed my soul. I’d spotted the Catholic Cathedral the day before. From its design it was clear that the French brought the church to this part of the world, despite, I’m sure, the best efforts of English colonialists. On my way there I found the remains of a Buddhist offering in the stump of an old tree beside the road. Three sticks still simmered long after the worshipful had moved back to their toil in the real world. The oranges and flowers were there as an offering to the Gods. Somebody had knelt here and prayed beside a main road in the capitalist hub of this globilised city. I passed a Hindu temple divesting itself of it’s fantastically clothed guests and a little further on, a group of Filipino maids, dressed to the nines in their Sunday finest and enjoying the only day of freedom from their serf like existence. Like me, they were making their way to Mass.
The congregation was an ecclesiastical united nations. Chinese and Indians whose ancestors had clearly been shown the light by Irish Missionaries joined the Filipino’s. And immigrants from Cambodia and Laos who had been led here by the French. And the occasional Gowhylo like me (as we honkies are known by in this part of the world). There was a lot of singing, which I found to be a bit Protestant, but was prepared to overlook given the day that was in it. Father Ng gave a rousing sermon, which I boiled down into an understanding that all sheep are going to heaven while all goats are going to hell. That’s another thing the De La Salle brothers never taught us.
I got back to the Hotel and turned on the TV. It was back to the usual stuff, Football and stock markets. All this country cares about. Except for some of us who burned sticks, went to Temple or sang along to Chinese accented hymns. We had opened a crack in the tough shell of consumerism and let a little light in. And I felt that if nothing else, I would certainly be surprised by a talking dog.
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