The World Cup: through the eyes of a sports hater

A while ago, in a taxi heading downtown, the taxi driver asked where we were from. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed excitedly, ‘Holland! What do you think about their chances in the World Cup?’

I sat back in the cool leather, passing that one to my husband, who duly responded that he did not give them much of a chance. The taxi driver scratched his head. He was not amused. He had put a significant amount of money on the Dutch team. The odds against them had been good, and last tournament he had made some good cash supporting the orange lion.

A heated debate between the two men followed, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the team, leaving me silent, and surprised that this Singaporean taxi driver could not only name several players of the Dutch team, but was perfectly equipped to debate their capabilities on the field as well. I, by contrast, would struggle to name a single player. I am sure Gullit retired some years ago?

Which football team to support is an important matter for a young (or slightly older) boy. My son struggles at school, being one of the few to support PSV in a group full of Ajax fans. Admirably, she stands by his daddy, even though he has never set foot in Eindhoven, PSV’s hometown, in his young live. It never ceases to amaze me that where you are from has little to do with the choice who to support. 

Singaporeans are great football lovers (although they call it soccer), and favourite clubs include FC Milan, Manchester United, Barcelona and Arsenal. Man U has the biggest fan base outside the UK in Singapore, and makes tons on merchandise alone. When the club decided to get listed on the stock exchange, they seriously considered the Singaporean Stock Exchange, before finally opting for the US. Not a strange consideration, if you know that Man U has a fan base of roughly 190 million people in Asia. That is about 3 times the total population of the whole UK (or 380 times that of the city of Manchester, if you are counting…) 

World Cup matches are screened widely here, but since Singapore is not competing, the locals have not gone mental. Unlike others. Personally, I find watching the crazy crowds far more entertaining than the game. 

Dutch fans are some of the worst. To the annoyance of serious fans like my husband, who claims that the more people dress up, the less they really care about the game. Amongst Dutch fans try to spot ‘carrot man’, who wears a helmet with dangling bunches of carrots over his ears, the ‘badmutsman’ (or ‘bathing cap man’, I am not joking) or ‘the Indian’ between the legion of milkmaids (all male), lions, cowboys and other ludicrous loony’s. 

Football has long stopped being about football. And with that, for me, has become much more interesting. The circus has just begun, with Oranje kicking off with an impressive 5-1 win to reigning Wold Champion Spain and my husband googling tickets to Brazil if, just if, they will make the finals. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassures me. ‘They won’t.’

Read the full story in Hollandse Club's The Magazine's new issue soon. In the meanwhile, check out this site for more crazy fans..

The business of making money

I have been very busy lately, and have not had much time to blog. Therefore, this week, I will treat you to the work of one of the students of my writing class at the shelter of HOME, the charity I work for. Jessel is a domestic worker from the Philippines, and she shares with us her story of her agent, who when she complained about having been deceived with a false contract, send Jessel a text message stating ‘I told you before my business is making money’.

‘Getting married at an early age is quite difficult. At 19, I gave birth to my eldest daughter, and the following year to my second. Life was hard with my husband having no permanent work. So I decided to apply for work abroad, in Singapore. Applying to work in another country takes time, money and patience. My first attempt failed and I had no choice but to stay with my family. I gave birth to my third and fourth child.

At that point, life got even harder. When my youngest son turned two I decided to apply again to work in Singapore. I had to pay six months of salary to the agent, but my employer let me pay small deductions every month. I was lucky, my employers were good people. I felt at home with them, even if I did not have any days off and they did not allow me a handphone. The first three months were hard. I missed my children. I cried a lot. But I got through that, as my family in Singapore was treating me well. After two years, my contract finished, and I had to find another employer. I did not go home to take a vacation because I wanted to earn money. To transfer I had to pay two months of salary to the agent again.

My second employers were good people too. They treated me as family. When my mam gave birth, I felt like I was having a baby too. After a year and a half, I made a mistake that I regret badly. I decided to go back home. My mam wanted me to stay, and I am now very sorry she agreed to send me home.

Life back home was difficult, as I did not have any income and could not provide for my four kids. I felt so down. I applied for a job in Singapore again. Processing went very fast and after only one month I was back in Singapore. I was very shocked when the agent told me seven months of my salary were going to be deducted as an agent fee. I did not get to see my contract until I had been working for the new employer for three weeks already. By that time I had little choice but to sign it. I felt that I had been fooled. Why had they not told me this when I was still in my own country? They had said that because I had worked in Singapore before, I would be a direct hire and would only get four months of salary deductions, spread out over a longer period. I had trusted them to tell the truth. Another mistake.

This time, I had left for Singapore together with a friend, through the same agency. My friend’s contract stated she would pay four months of salary deductions, and that they were going to be spread out over ten months, just like we were promised. Me, I would not have any money to send home to my family for seven months.

I asked my agent, who had turned out to be my mam’s sister, why my loan was so much higher than my friends. The agent said my friend was different, but when I asked why, she would not answer me. Neither did she answer me when I asked to go home. When I told the agent I was very disappointed in her, she texted me back, saying: ‘I told you before my business is making money.’

I thought I was very strong. I thought I had patience. But now, I started to feel unhappy with my work. Every time my mam raised her voice to her kids, every time I even saw her, I felt nervous. I could not fight the thoughts anymore about my own kids, now I could not send them any money. If I can’t send any money to my kids, they will starve. I was worrying so much I could not work properly. I felt depressed. I wanted to go home. That is why I ran away .’

HOME has managed to negotiate a reduction of Jessel’s agency fee, and she is hoping to find a new employer soon. 

For more stories from HOME, please check out the new blog at www.home-blog.org

Our very own safari lodge

When we just moved into our new jungle house, the first thing the kids did, was organise an expedition. Armed with hats, backpacks, water bottles and a self drawn map, they safari'd through the garden. When they returned I asked what they had seen, and the answer was a very disappointed: 'Just a squirrel. Oh, and some birds.' 

Not much later I heard screaming from the kitchen, and I still regret I did not have a camera ready to snap the grinning macaque that sat in the middle of the kitchen table, dextrously peeling the skin of a banana he just pilfered from the fruitbowl I had naively placed in front of an open window.

The macaques were only the beginning. One day Indah came running, pointing excitedly at what she described as 'a tree-hugging rabbit'.  I immediately knew what she meant: this must be one of the flying lemurs that our area is known for. Flying lemurs have large skin flaps between neck, arms and legs, allowing them to glide through the air like a flying cloth, sailing from tree to tree. Once we were lucky enough to spot a whole family, and on the picture below a trained eye might spot he baby in the top left skin fold of the upper lemur. 

Some animals, like our lemurs, are highly cuddly, others are just plain beautiful. Like this white throated kingfisher that got stuck in our living room, and tried to seek refuge on a matching turquoise painting.  

Or the fluffy caterpillar that we don't mind offering our palm leaves to. 

 

Some visitors we have come to regard as good friends, like this tree frog, that we have affectionately named Kermit, who likes to live in our beanbag.

  

The most illustrious of our guests must have been the pangolin mother and child we found napping in our drain one morning. This friendly, scaly anteater is an endangered species, and not a sight we will easily forget. 

For convenience's sake we name all our amphibians Kermit, and this guy lives under the outdoor sofa, and the slightly grumpy face below was due to the fact that he was disturbed from his slumber by Indah, who moved the roof of his house for mopping the floor. 

Less popular is our Jungle Fowl rooster, a rather pretty cocky fellow with colourful feathers, who likes to wake us up very early in the morning with his cheery cock-a-doodle-doo. Roel has threatened to turn him into cock-au-vin more than once, only to be stopped by the knowledge that, although increasingly easily seen in Singapore, this wild ancestor of our domesticated chicken is in fact a protected species. 

This, for Singapore modest sized, monitor lizard of around a meter long frequents our garden increasingly. It's sneaky silent crawl allows it to sneak in unobserved, until his presence is found out by the Myna birds, who will try to scare it away with loud squealing twittering. 

Often we are enchanted by the lovely song of the bulbul, so we were excited when a pair of them started to build a nest in our lipstick palm. For days we followed them packing leaves, sticks, and a strip of discarded snake skin into a small bowl. Not much later we saw the hardworking bird fly back and forth with food, filling the mouths of his demanding offspring. Then, this morning, disaster stroke. I saw the macaque strolling close to the tree, but it was not until he leapt up in one big jump that my heart stopped: the babies! I ran towards him, shooing, but it was too late. The rascal swiftly climbed to the top of the tree, a fistful of grey fluff in his fist. Nature at it's cruelest, and the incident left me with a bad taste in my mouth all morning. 

This picture, although not technically taken in our garden but just down the road, is remarkably deceptive. The fern in the middle is in fact well over a meter wide, making this python roughly four meters long and as thick as my thigh. Since I was within inches of stepping on it, I still check under my bed, every night. Just in case. 

And, of course, there are all the animals I did not get a picture of. It was way too dark, that one time that Indah was afraid there was a burglar in the bushes, and she was very relieved when our flashlight proved it in fact to be 'just' a large wild boar. 

There are all the birds, the yellow orioles, the scarlet sunbirds, the fluttering butterflies big as my hand, the woodpeckers, the omnipresent Myna birds. The numerous ants, termites, mosquitos and, before I forget, the 30 cm long giant centipede that once scampered over my foot. I was too busy screaming to think of camera's that night. 

I also never got a shot of any of those slender squirrels and tree shrews that jump around our trees so abundantly that we hardly even notice them. Not because they are so fast and agile, although they are, but because I never tried. It makes me realise how spoiled we are, here in our very own private safari lodge.  

Mother's Day off

On Sunday morning I find myself badly hung-over, baking thirty cupcakes for a birthday, preparing a quiche and a pile of salmon cream cheese wraps for a picnic, whilst simultaneously trying, with my hip, to shoo off kids that keep pulling at my skirt for attention. ‘Get out of the kitchen; entertain yourself for a minute, will you. Mama is busy, or do you want to go to school empty handed tomorrow?’

I plod on, head throbbing, and not so silently cursing the fact that there is no time off, ever, for a mother, that we have to work 24/7, with no time to rest and no time to clear our heads from the constant screaming. And that we hardly get any appreciation for all our hard work, only on that once yearly commercial trap called Mothers Day. Downing another panadol I curse myself for staying out too late and drinking too much, and for not doing all this the day before. The day when I had an extra pair of hands around the house.

I could now write that this experience made me understand the fact that some parents do not give their domestic worker a day off on Sundays. But that would not be true. Even in my miserable sick-to-the-stomach state, I realised that it was not all about me. That there is one group of people even worse off than parents: foreign domestic workers. These brave women who travel to a different country, and leave their own kids to take care of those of someone else. They get up before their employers do, to prepare breakfast, and don’t finish until the last dinner plate is washed up and put away. Or later, if the whim of the employer wants it that way. In Singapore, domestic workers are not covered by the employment act, which means there are no laws regulating their salary, working hours, days off, sick leave, annual leave, overtime pay, or any of those things other workers have a right to. A domestic worker is totally dependent on the generosity of her employer. 

Sure, there are many employers that treat their domestic workers well. They even call her part of the family. The problem is, a family member, like a mother, has really crappy collective labour agreements. Family, like a mother, does not get paid, time off, sick leave, treated considerately, et cetera. A domestic worker would be better off protected by clear regulations. Clearer than the recent law in Singapore, claiming that domestic workers have the right to a day off, but still leaving a loophole by stating the worker can be offered extra payment in lieu if she does not get one. 

So yes, it sometimes bugs me that as a mother I never get any time off, nor the appreciation I deserve. Yet, I feel utterly blessed that six days a week, I do get that extra help that makes my live infinitely more easy. Next Sunday it will be Mother’s Day. But I know someone who deserves to be spoiled much more than I do. 

Photo by Jolovan Wham, taken at the HOME labour day celebration picnic (the one I was making the quiche and wraps for) which we had to celebrate on the Sunday after, as most domestic workers were not given Labour Day off to celebrate on the actual day.

A bittersweet orange celebration

When the Philippines Independence Day Council Singapore announced plans to organise celebrations for the Philippines Independence Day in June on Orchard Road, Singapore’s famous shopping district, it caused an uproar. Campaigners against the event started a Facebook page to share their grievances. They were mainly angered by the proposed location; the shopping street can be considered Singapore’s holiest ground, and if celebrations should take place at all, the Philippines embassy was suggested. 

The accompanying slogan ‘Our Independence, our Interdependence’ was found especially provocative. The group would not endorse any interdependence with any country. 

That Singapore, which has over one million migrant workers, constituting around a quarter of the population, relies heavily on exactly those migrant workers to keep their economy as thriving as it is, the protesters conveniently ignored. Just like they ignored the long and fruitful historic relationship between the Philippines and Singapore.

Singapore is in essence an immigrant city, where everyone was once a foreigner, yet like so many issues relating to recent migrants the debate escalated. Comments were penned heatedly, ranging from xenophobic mud-slinging to appeasing locals professing peace. Even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put in his two-cents-worth, by publicly denouncing the protesters on Facebook, and calling them ‘trolls’ that were a ‘disgrace to the country’. The Prime Minister seems to be much more aware than some of his nationals of who helps buttering Singapore’s bread. 

In the meanwhile, the Dutch community in Singapore celebrated their King’s Day in peace. No one protested against the small groups of orange clad ‘cheeseheads’ taking over a few of the bars downtown, downing Dutch beer, and munching on bitterballen and raw herring. Nor against the Dutch school, that like every year, and like every self-respecting Dutch school, celebrated the monarch’s birthday with traditional games and cake. But not after five hundred kids in orange sang Majulah Singapura and the Wilhelmus whilst raising both flags next to each other in assembly. 

At the Gardens by the Bay, that state-of-the-art landmark that makes every Singaporean swell with pride, Dutchness is further celebrated by the Tulipmania exhibition, where tens of thousands bulbs were flown in to colour the Flower Dome like a fresh Lowland spring. 

You can understand some of the celebrations this year bore a bitter aftertaste for me, not unlike the sickly sweet 'oranjebitter' drink that I usually manage to avoid. I could end with a snappy comment about one foreigner not being treated like the other, a joke about the insignificance of the Dutch, or by advocating respect and peace for all. But I won’t. 

I recommend everyone to go to the Flower Dome to smell the heady hyacinth fragrance overpowering all senses. And then go for some Satay by the Bay. I recommend everyone to enjoy all the different smells and flavours of Singapore. Every day again. 

Staycation

I used to dread the school holidays. With three kids around the house all day, every day, it was such a relief when the eldest started going to school increasing amounts I would flinch whenever there was a prolonged period I’d have them all back at home.

Now, with the eldest two in full time primary, the youngest in morning pre-school and me happy in a three day –unpaid but therefore flexible- job, and on top of that the after school activities, swimming lessons and private mandarin tutoring, I sometimes hardly see them. The prospect of two weeks with the kids without us even leaving Singapore did not daunt me. At all.

It was not that I necessarily planned it that way, I did plan a weekend away at Bali for Easter. It was just that I had not realised that the Easter holidays ended a week before Easter. Or, that Easter Monday was not even a national holiday in Singapore. 

The kids were a bit confused at first. It’s a holiday! Where are we going? I could stop them just in time from packing their bags to explain we were not going anywhere. We were going to stay in Singapore for two weeks. At home.

After some initial grumbling they got the hang of it. With no school bus to run for, and daddy starting later every day as well, we would sleep in. We would breakfast together, lounge around the house, and see what we’d do. Now it’s Friday already and we haven’t even managed the Zoo yet. We were too busy doing nothing.

We played with the neighbour’s kids, hosted sleepovers, went to the playground by the Bay with friends, cycled our new bike, played some more, visited friends with a pool, and build uncountable towers of kapla. One day I rushed home early from a day at work I had not been able to avoid, to pick up the kids for a promised session at the beach I had cancelled a meeting for, only to find the house deserted. Less then an hour later the quiet was over, and I found myself hosting an impromptu art session for nine young kids in the garden. 

Today the gardener build us a vegetable pad, which we sowed with five kids and several packets of seeds, in a way we will never be able to identify what’s what when they sprout. I tidied up, and now the house is empty again, as the flock of kids has moved to another place, another house, so I can sit down for a minute and write this down. This story of the amazing vacation where we stayed at home and did nothing. We never did so much.

Be nice, lah!

Talk of the town: An Ang Moh (foreigner, literally redhead) has been negative about Singapore in the press. Again. Singaporeans would be uncompassionate and uncourteous. The attack is not coming from an arrogant British banker this time, but from a British lady. A pregnant lady. 

In a column on the BBC website, freelance writer Charlotte Ashton writes about her experiences in Singapore. She loves it, initially. Until one day, a couple of months pregnant, she feels unwell in the MRT. Nauseous and weak. Does someone offer her a seat? No. 

Charlotte describes how, for the fifteen minutes of her journey, she crouches on the floor, head in hands. It makes her very unhappy. Singapore, she writes, has let me down.

My thoughts immediately go back to myself, pregnant and sick, in the London underground. Did people offer me a seat in this country that is supposedly so polite? Often not. I too, have spent an uncomfortable journey on the wobbly floor of the tube, my piercing eyes trying to force someone of their seat.

Did I blame Great Britain? Did I feel the country had let me down? Or was I just mad at that car full of commuters too busy with their phones and e-readers to notice me?

A friend who commuted daily on the underground had a good trick, a button: Baby on Board. It did help, she said, most of the time. I was never pregnant in the Netherlands, nor in Singapore, but I think not giving up seats for fellow passengers, pregnant or not, is a universal problem. Like many expats, Charlotte Ashton sees her home country through homesick stained pink glasses.

Singaporeans fight back. Netizens throw generalist platitudes as bad as Charlottes. In online comments, they wish her back home, together with the rest of the complaining bunch. Prime minister Lee Tsien Loong comments the article is a good reminder for everyone to be more gracious and kind to others.

Yes, customs are different in every country. Everyone should value that, guests and hosts alike. I propose a button, in good Singlish: Everyone be nice, lah!