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!

Milestone splash

She jumps in, and splashes away. Sometimes a real stroke can be spotted in her movements; sometimes it’s a doggie paddle. The teacher encourages her, smiling, and she plods on, swimming the whole half lap she is supposed to. It is Jasmijn’s first swimming lesson in the ‘big kids lane’, where no parents have to go in to support their offspring. I stand on the edge of the pool, my guts clenched with mixed feelings.

Pride, off course, for my daughter who just turned three, and now swims her half lane independently, without flinching. Elation as well, as I have been looking forward to this moment for years. The moment that the last of my kids would be able to swim, and I no longer had to join them in the pool for their classes. This moment signals the end of an era. The era of parent and child classes, where we have to sing ‘wheels on the bus’ and ‘sleeping bunnies’, while our kids splatter and splosh, learning to be confident under water and to do simple strokes with pancake-, and crocodile arms. 

My thoughts go back to those first classes with Tijm, in a sweaty English public pool smelling of chlorine, where the baby pool was cold enough for Tijm to turn blue at the end of the lesson, before we bundled him off to the hot and sweaty changing cubicles which were always too pokey to move with our small crowd. 

From there to the sunny outside pools of Singapore with their icily air-conditioned changing rooms was a big improvement. I remember Linde’s first lesson, who, being too old for parent and child classes, was encouraged to ‘jump right in’ and swim to the teacher in the middle of the pool. Before I could shout ‘no, she cannot swim!’ Linde was in the water and had, I am still not sure how, reached the teacher.

From Jasmijn’s classes I mostly remember the cloudy afternoons, where the kids and I managed to feel chilly even in thirty degrees, and the sparkly blue pool just did not look inviting enough. Thirty odd years after my own frustrating experiences, I still don’t like swimming lessons.

So here I stand, my toes dipping in the cool water, together with my friend whose daughter trudges next to mine. We speak, jokingly, of afternoons of leisure, of poolside gin and tonics, of the books and magazines we could bring next week. And I know I am happy, deeply happy, with this new milestone. But somehow I can not ignore this nagging feeling deep down, that makes me just the tiniest bit sad. The feeling that it all goes too fast, that it will never come back again. That I will miss my little monkey jumping off the edge to swim to me, her little arms grabbing my neck and hugging my wet body tight. That I might even, one day, miss 'the wheels on the bus.' 

Gin and tonic, anyone?

Rainless rainforest

Singapore is in the tropics. It is hot and wet. Even in the dryer season it rains almost every day. In the wet season it just rains a bit longer, and a bit harder. With the kind of hammering showers that will soak you to your underwear whilst running the twenty meters it takes to reach your car. Luckily, it never lasts long, and the heat dries you almost as fast. That is Singapore. Hot. And wet. 

It is still hot, but now, Singapore is dry, it has been for months. Fifty-five days, to be precise. And I can be precise, because the last drop of rain in our garden fell on January 11th. We were annoyed, because it rained on Jasmijn’s birthday party. We had no idea how much we were going to miss the rain.

Our garden, that is normally a muddy mess, is dry and barren. The earth is red and cracked, making us feel like we live in Africa. The lawn is bald and arid. Despite daily spraying, green leaves droop down withered and brown. The jungle has lost its lustre. The normally lush and impenetrable vegetation seems scant and dusty. The first bush fire in McRitchie Nature Reserve has been spotted, less than a mile from our house. A bushfire! In a tropical rainforest! 

Most Singaporeans seem unperturbed by this longest dry spell on record. Inside their high rise flats they turn up the air-conditioning a notch. The news is slowly, slowly picking up the story. Talking about the weather? It’s just not done, in this city where lives are lived inside, apart from those crazy expats in their forest bungalow, which makes taxi drivers wince when they turn into our road. 

Singapore has enough water, for now. The large central reservoirs are emptier, not empty yet. Desalination plants run overtime. Neighbour Malaysia has not yet closed the water taps, despite problems with their own, same drought. The other neighbour, Indonesia, is still struggling with the aftermath of the flooding of its capital, just a few islands away.

The first rain is predicted for the end of the month. We wait. We spray the plants, and our heated kids. Tomorrow twenty people will visit us for a barbecue. It must surely rain?

photo by my friend Andrea Galkova