Greener pastures

My relationship with moving house is mixed. I love it, I hate it. The hassle, the packing, the changing of your address, again, with all those organisations, it costs so much time. Even with my experience. In the last seven years alone we moved five times, through three countries. Every child was born in another house. After the last, intercontinental move I lamented we would stay in this place for years, at least. I was fed up. It is nine months later and can you guess?
We are moving. It is my own fault. I am a nomad that always thinks grass is greener on the other side.

A lot greener. The first time I saw one I fell in love: Black and White’s. A Singaporean phenomenon. In this city of high-rise buildings you can find a few scattered oases, where black and white houses are hidden in lush greenery. With large, luxuriant gardens. When it was still British the government built these colonial houses. Old-fashioned, white buildings with black accents, you can picture the memsahibs sitting on the veranda’s, in long white dresses, fanning themselves in the un-air-conditioned heat.

Not only is the grass greener in those gardens, at least there is grass. Our roof terrace has only tiles. I want one. The Black and White houses are now owned by the Singaporean government, who rents them out, by auction. There aren’t many, and to get one you need to bid high, go way out of town, or get lucky. I had been checking the website with it’s meagre offering for a while. And when a cute bungalow, slightly out of town yet inside the school bus area, and reasonably commutable to Roel’s work came up, I saw an opportunity. It did not even take too much effort to convince Roel to let me put the sealed envelop with our bid in the appointed drop-box.

Next week we’ll go. This week I booked movers, but more work is waiting. In contrast to most apartments in Singapore, these houses are let completely stripped bare. It needs a cooker, hood and fridge. Air-conditioning. Curtains and blinds. The garden is a jungle. Paperwork needs signing, our old house needs a new tenant, cleaning, painting and steaming.

Every time I visit the new house I see and hear why we are doing this. No traffic noise, no building noise, only the twittering of birds and the piercing sound of cicadas. This will be the vegetable plot, that the football field. Behind the house, my herbs. The new dining table will go outside, on the veranda. It feels like living in the jungle, and that is no illusion either. Our garden borders McRitchie reservoir, one of Singapore’s largest nature reserves. As nature knows no borders both greenery and wildlife spill over the fence. Birds, monkeys, snakes, and god knows what else.

Our new house is not just a house. It is an adventure. We will stay there for years, at least. Really!

Singapore Girl

‘Jasmijn, do you want a sandwich?’ 
‘No,’ she shakes firmly, ‘chickice’ 
Chickice? What does she want now? 
Angrily she shouts it again, and again. 
Luckily Indah gets it. Jasmijn wants chicken rice. 

Our Jasmijn is turning into a real Singapore Girl. Chicken rice might well be the most popular dish in Singapore, and is loved by all our children. Whenever we eat in hawker centres, where mama and papa gorge on exotic goodies, this is one of their favourite choices, alongside Malay sateh and Indian thosai.

Chicken rice has all those properties that make it attractive to young children. It is white. Mild flavoured. All components are easily identifiable. And it does not contain any vegetables apart from some pieces of cucumber.

For precisely those reasons I used to think chicken rice boring. But, the more I eat it, the more I start to appreciate it. The soft, yet fragrant flavours. The creamy, crumbly rice. The spicy, fresh chilli sauce with ginger and lemon. It was about time to try this at home.

Boiling chicken is not something we traditionally do in Europe, unless we make soup. But when you think about it, it has many advantages. The chicken will turn out juicy and plump every time, you cannot cook it too long, no risk of dryness. And there is a lovely chicken soup the next day.

As with all famous dishes there are as many recipes as cooks. Google showed particularly helpful, and after some surfing the dish started to unravel its secrets. So I had a plan, a chicken, and a sick Jasmijn in need of some broth.

Unfortunately that same, sick, Jasmijn decided to be stuck to me like glue, so handling of boiling liquids proofed possible. Again, Indah saved the day. It turned out she had cooked the dish many, many times before, after her former Chinese employer thought her the family recipe. Indah could cook chicken rice with her eyes closed. And so she did, while I hovered around, clutched by a moaning toddler, making notes and pictures.

The quantities in the recipe are not precise, feel free to adapt them to your personal taste or the size of your chicken. Not all the stock is needed for boiling the rice, the remainder can be used for chicken soup. To make it stronger you can add the bones after you have cut up the chicken and boil it a little while longer.

Chicken rice 

Step 1: the chicken
1 chicken (preferably free-range, if you can get one)
5 cm ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 stalk lemongrass

Wash the chicken and rub it with salt. Boil a large pot of water, enough to just cover the chicken, not more.

Peel the garlic, lemongrass and ginger and pound them to release the flavour. Stuff half in the chest cavity of the chicken. When the water boils, put the chicken and the remainder of the spices in the water, put the lid on, and bring back to the boil.

Turn off the heat and leave for about 45 minutes. If you want to you can turn the chicken halfway, and bring the water back to the boil. You can check the chicken by sticking in a chopstick, if the juices run clear it is cooked. Take it out of the stock and leave to cool.

Step 2: the rice
2 cloves of garlic
2 leaves of pandan (leave if hard to get)
3 cm ginger
2 cups of rice
4 cups of chicken stock (see step 1)

Heat some oil in a wok and fry the finely chopped garlic. Add the dry, uncooked rice and fry till it is coated with garlicky oil. Transfer to a rice cooker or casserole together with the stock, ginger and pandan.

Boil until all the stock is absorbed and the rice cooked.

Step 3: the chilli sauce 

3-6 chilli’s of choice
3 cm ginger
2 cloves garlic
a few spoons of lime juice
a few spoons of chicken stock/ fat

For the sauce you can use a mixture of large, milder chilli’s that give a nice colour, and the hotter chilli padi, depending on how hot you like it. I like to use 3 each

Puree, chop or pound all the ingredients to a smooth sauce. Add a few spoons of the top layer of the chicken stock, trying to scoop as much floating fat as possible. You can adjust quantities of each ingredient according to taste.

To serve you rub a mixture of one tablespoon of sesame oil and one of light soy sauce over the chicken. Then chop it into small pieces. Sprinkle some fried onions on the rice, and serve with pieces of cucumber.

Turtle race

Part of the beach is fenced off with red and white tape. People have collected on either side, leaving a wedge-shaped strip of sand. In the middle stands an Indonesian man with a microphone and two big blue buckets.

He tells us about sea turtles. About how they lay eggs on these shores, but are threatened, how a nest of eggs has been dug up by villagers and hatched in a nearby hatchery, for protection. Today, the day-old baby turtles will be released. He needs volunteers. Tijms looks up at me, eager. I nudge him, raise your hand. Tijm’s hand shoots up, the man’s eyes rest on him but then move on.

Five kids get handed a baby turtle and release it on the beach to crawl to the big blue sea. They don’t waste time looking around. Unperturbed by the cheering crowd they plough away at the sand with their tiny flippers. Not before long applause sounds as the first one hits the surf. The brave creatures plod on, flapping their flippers, up and down on the gentle waves.

Back at the beach, the man with the microphone is looking for new volunteers. Who knows what type of turtle this is, he asks. A ten-year-old Australian girl knows the answer: hawksbill, and gets to cross the rope. The question what poses the biggest threat to turtles hears many answers. Foxes? Seagulls? Sharks? A Singaporean girl gets it right: humans. And the development of large beach resorts, like this one, I think, but not out loud. That would be hypocrite. We are staying here too.

One last volunteer, the man calls, and I point at Tijm, but an American mother next to us shoves her toddler over the rope before questions can be asked.
The toddler drops his turtle from a height, and the crowd gasps, until after a minute the motionless creature, slowly, hesitantly, stretches his limbs.

We follow the turtles down to the sea. The crowd has spilled over the ropes, following the turtles into the sea, closing off the wedge so the turtles have to swim between feet, dodging camera’s and groping children’s hands.

Normally, only one in a thousand of these tiny creatures will grow to adult size, and life a live that may last over a hundred years. Will these ones have a better chance, having been protected from predators by the crowd on their first, dangerous trek? Or will they start their lives stressed, disoriented, by the noise? Conservation is great, and this whole batch reaches the water safely. Still, it makes me feel uncomfortable, turning what should be a natural, quiet occasion into a circus.

We rush back up the beach where the last batch is being released. Tijm pushes forward and receives the very last, tiny hatchling to be released today. With a big happy smile he sets it on the sand, gently, and we follow it racing down to the sea, overtaking his siblings. Tijm, Linde and Jasmijn cheer, ours is winning! 

Bravely it conquers the surf, paddling legs and Linde's hands. It swims on and on. On the horizon we can still see it’s tiny head bobbing, like a marble floating in the setting sun, on and on it peddles, towards an uncertain and dangerous future.

We wave, and we hope it will be a real winner, and survive the predators, the fisherman, we hope we have not freaked it out too much, and that it will grow old so it can return here, to the beach of Bintan, and lays eggs once more in the golden sand.

Celebrations

I have not been feeling well. I really wanted to tell you earlier about all the important things that happened the last few weeks. That we have a new King. That Linde turned four and started primary school. That we, the Dutch expat community in Singapore, celebrated for days, clad in orange, showing the locals just how crazy we can be. That we watched the coronation in a champagne bar downtown, that served free hutspot (potato and carrot stew) as a barsnack. That the kids emptied their piggy bank to raid the kids free market at the Hollandse Club. That our new tv communicates with the computer, and showed the coronation again, on Sunday morning, on the big screen, and together with the kids we again admired beautiful Queen Maxima, in royal blue, with the three little princesses. Real princesses, with blond tresses, but miles away from the plastic Disney variety, with plump cheeks, yawns, and so much more real and perfect in all their imperfections.

So much festivity yet I, since I was not feeling well, could not really join in, not as much as I would have liked. Off course, feeling off is never an excuse for the mother of a little girl that turns four and needs a party. Nor for that of a five year old who has been promised that his mama will help out at the school with the old fashioned Dutch games. Nor the two year old who wants it all.

So I organised the party, where the children made their own crowns, decorated cupcakes, dressed up as little princes and princesses, played, played and played, sang Happy Birthday in two languages, and ate home baked strawberry cake. We went to shop for Linde’s present, her new bicycle without stabilisers, and there were tears because, mean, mean mummy did not want to buy the Disney princess one. It was just one princess too far.

At the new school there was a party too, where queen Linde sat in the circle on her blue throne, demure and a little shy, the red paper crown with the big cardboard 4 perched on her blonde hair. Treats were handed round, the same popcorn bags we made for the farewell party at the preschool the week before, and no, I was not allowed to pick her up. Her majesty would take the bus home. When asked how it was, this second day at school, she answered it was fun. Pressed for details she shouted, I told you it was fun, and ran up the stairs to fetch her new princess dress.

When I saw my consultant, at the private Singaporean hospital that looks more like an expensive hotel, and told him the recovery after my surgery took so much longer than expected, he was not surprised. Rest, he recommended. So now I am resting, that is, lying on my bed resting all of my body but the tips of my fingers tapping away. The parties are over. The princess is back at school. The queen will take her beauty sleep now.

Running the Wall

Today I share with you a story that is not my own, but that of my friend Joyce. With a group of friends she will brave one of the great challenges of Asia: the Great Wall of China Marathon. And she asks for your help. Because they do not only run for themselves, they run for charity. They 'Run for Rett'

Please read Joyce's story below and help, if you can, her niece Chelsea and girls like her who suffer from Rett Syndrome, a rare disease affecting little girls all over the world.

Great Wall Charity Challenge: ‘Run for Rett’

On May 18th 2013, Nienke, Jetteke, Anneloes, Jolanda, Judith, Saskia, Peronne and Joyce, all Dutch expats in Singapore, will be running the full, half and quarter marathon on the Great Wall of China. A physical challenge for all of us. 

We started training together in August last year, just for fun, because we wanted to enter the Run for Hope (3,5 or 10 km) in November. Some of us had never ran before, most of us had a little or more experience.

During training we discovered not only that running was good exercise, it also was 'gezellig' (that weird Dutch word for ‘fun’) to train together. To give us goal to run for, we decided to go to Beijing for the Great Wall marathon. We did not exactly know what we were getting ourselves into. The Great Wall Run does not only mean running a long distance, it also means climbing approximately 2600 steps. For Anneloes, the only one who is doing the full marathon, it means climbing almost 5200 steps!

This means we need two kinds of training: Running and climbing steps. On Monday nights we run in the Botanic Gardens, and on Friday mornings we practice climbing steps. We go to Kent Ridge Park, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Labrador Park, Mount Faber Park, or just go to a high building to run up the staircase.

Is that fun? Not always, it is hard work and it can be boring. But putting on some music whilst working out, doing it together with friends, and having a goal to work towards really helps. Your body needs quite a lot of training to get used to running long distances, and if you keep going and build it up carefully, you will find you can do so much more than you thought.

Next to the physical challenge, our run has a purpose attached to it: we intend to raise a vast amount of money for little girls with Rett Syndrome. Joyce's niece, Chelsea (16 years old), suffers from Rett Syndrome and is pictured below.

Rett Syndrome is a rare but devastating neurological syndrome that strikes at random in early childhood, primarily affecting girls. The symptoms of Rett are severe, including autism, cerebral palsy, Parkinson's, epilepsy and anxiety disorders... all that in one little girl. Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) funds research to find a cure for Rett.

Amazing results have been achieved already. Rett syndrome has been proven reversible in the lab. Funding research for Rett will also provide us with invaluable information about more common disorders like autism, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis, which could be helping millions of sufferers all over the world. All funds raised by us go directly to RSRT, as the running team covers it’s own expenses.

And we need your support! We are proud that Nike will sponsor our shirts, and that we have found companies that are supporting us (like Flow traders, Finder Financials, Van Oordt, and more to follow). The Chinese press is being contacted to cover this run for promotion and awareness campaigns on Rett Syndrome.

If you would like to donate to our cause, please visit our firstgiving page to make your contribution. Alternatively, you can donate the money on RSRT’s website https://secure.rsrt.org by referring to ‘China marathon’ under the heading ‘dedication’. Please note that payments can be made in US dollars only. 

For more information about Rett Syndrome and the work of RSRT, please visit www.rsrt.org

The help

Life in Singapore comes with benefits. Help. Cheap, all day, domestic help. The comfortable-off Singaporean housewife does not have to get distracted by laundry, mopping floors or getting groceries. She has time for the more important things in life. Like having coffee, with friends.

Whilst the kids relieve the small wooden shop in the corner of the living room of its wares, drive around the baby pram, or push over stacks of Duplo bricks, I pour another round of ice tea for their mothers. One of my friends wipes the sweat of her forehead. It is hot today. I hand around my homemade Dutch ‘ontbijtkoek,’ and my Australian, British and Indian friends taste and approve. We talk about baking. Cooking. And, before long, the help.

My Australian friend is looking for a new one. Her third. Why is she so unlucky? Either they cannot clean, don’t listen, or can’t control the kids. My other, Indian, friend, tells about her new helper, who worked for another Indian family for six years and promised to know all the ins and outs of complex Indian food. When my friend asked her to roll chapatti’s, the Philippina girl rolled her eyes. Where was the electric chapatti maker? The girl had no idea how to cook the vegetarian dishes my friend favoured, and she was considering a cooking course.
Cooking courses for helpers abound in Singapore, to teach Chinese, Western, Korean or Japanese food, to any employer’s fancy.

My British friend sighs. There won’t be a course in the world to help my helper, she says with a shake of her head, she managed to burn boiled eggs. We all nod, ready to carry on, share more stories, but my friend cries, no, really, literally. The girl let the eggs boil for hours, until the water was gone and the pot black with soot. 
But, my friend shrugs, she is great with the kids.

Complaining about the help. I have heard worse, far worse. These conversations can make me feel uncomfortable, but are also just so human, showing clearly the old, colonial inequalities in this otherwise so modern city. The girls, usually from poor and remote villages in the Philippines or Indonesia, don’t always have much in common with their Chinese, Indian and Western employers.

I try not to, not to complain. But I am only human too, the weather is hot and the ice tea cool. My complaint? My Indah is too good a cook. And she enjoys it too. I had resolved to do this myself, really I had. But the tropical heat makes lazy and tired. The afternoons are full of football, ballet and swimming lessons, and cooking time for dinner inconveniently coincides with bath and bedtime. So when Indah asks, with hope in her keen eyes, what she can cook tonight I let her, save in the knowledge that it will be good and tasty and requires no effort on my side. Not even the dishes after.

Every recipe I give her she will copy, faultlessly, better than I, who can stick to no command, ever could. Even my ‘why not something with aubergine and ginger’ gets tasty results.

We are best when we work and learn together, combining her Asian experience and excellent chopping skills with my western and technical food knowledge. She chops, she suggests, I google and I mix, all the flavours of the globe. Together we create real fusion food. We are a good team, my Indonesian helper and me. 

Indah's fish in kechap

2 large white, soft fish fillets (we use Pangasius)

5 cm ginger

2 cloves garlic

1 large onion

red chilli to taste

sweet Kechap Manis (indonesian soy sauce)

Slice the onion in thin rings and chop the ginger and garlic fine. For heat you can use either the larger, milder red chilli's, which add both flavour and colour, but if you like a bit more of a punch you can also add some of the smaller, but hotter, thai chilli's. 

Heat some oil in a wok, and fry the onion, garlic, ginger and chili for a minute or so.  Then add the fish, and fry briefly. Add the soy sauce generously, around 3 to 4 table spoons should do it. Fry until the fish is tender, and add a few tablespoons of water if the dish threatens to get too dry.  

The most beautiful playground

We felt it was time to immerse our young children in a dose of Asian culture, and booked five days in Cambodia to see the famous temples of Angkor Wat. Later, not until we were packing, we leafed through our guidebook, noticing that April is known as the ’killer’ month, with temperatures easily topping the forties.

A touch of heat won’t scare us, and we take off early, having been up since five anyway, thanks to Jasmijn, our lively two year old. The early morning air is cool and sweet. Mr Ouch, our trusty tuk tuk driver awaits, to chart us around in his cart. The tuk tuk has two red benches, behind a small motorcycle. With the hot wind in our hair, red dust everywhere, we attempt to keep small hands and penguins on board all week.

Over a wide bridge we enter Angkor Wat, and its beautiful park, through impressively ornate gates. Tijm scrambles onto a pile of sandstone blocks. ‘Come on Linde, let’s climb!’
The temples, with their galleries, steps and towers are great for clambering and roaming. The most beautiful playground in the world.

We all climb higher, winding up to the towers, and around every corner it gets even more beautiful. We admire bas-reliefs and statues, carved in sandstone almost a millennium ago. Dancers with elegantly curved fingers, grimacing lions, enigmatically smiling Buddha’s. I point at at immensly steep stairs, leading to the top of this part Buddhist, part Hindu temple. So steep children are not allowed to climb, and I read aloud from the guidebook; that they are so steep, because the road to god is hard to follow. 

‘Why is the road to god so hard?’ asks Tijm.
I sigh and think. ‘Because you get to god by being good,’ I suggest, ‘and because for most people it is easier to be naughty.’
Tijm nods, and I am happy he asks no further. Not today. Not on this inspiring site.

The next day, at a side temple of the Bayon in the Angkor Thom complex, we see more stairs, equally steep but not so long. No sign or fence is to be seen, and Tijm just has to go up. Linde follows, and when she returns Jasmijn, only just two, sings ‘now me too, daddy.’
When she is safely back on solid ground a group of Korean tourists applaud her, Jasmijn posing proud for their flashing Ipads. The Koreans laugh, but don’t dare mount themselves.

Tijm and Linde have moved on, on top of a pile of rocks. 
I run, before accidents happen, to the kids or the thousand-year-old building.
‘Come on, mama,’ Tijm shouts, ‘I am at level three already.’
Not long after we all reached level thirteen and it is game over. The most beautiful game we ever played.

We see more temples, many more, every morning until the heat gets too much and Mr Ouch tuk tuks us back to our hotel with the little pool in the courtyard. There we wait out the heat of midday, until it is time for a quiet tuk tuk ride and sample Cambodian cuisine.

After much more climbing, over tree roots and stones, sauntering, dangling from lianas, it is not until the last day they sigh, please, no more temples. Enough.
Too tired to walk in the heat our tuk tuk drives us around for a final tour, round and round, until we saw it all.

Then we are back at Siem Reap airport for the flight home. We saw so much. We climbed so high. The best part of the holiday? 
The kids exclaim, unanimously: The tuk tuk, off course.




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