Life post-Brexit (UK)

These are just my own idle thoughts, based on what I’ve heard on Radio 4 and read in the papers.

Brexit is supposed to be mainly about sovereignty, yes.  One of the main grouses is about having to jump through the hoops set by Brussels.

A farming programme yesterday said post-Brexit they have all sorts of formalities to go through that weren’t there before when Britain was “family”: forms to fill in, customs checks (previously just drive through), health/sanitation checks for food cargo, etc etc. 

This calls to mind something I’d often thought as a cyclist dodging inconsiderate drivers, sometimes in hairy close shaves: “All drivers should be made to be cyclists for a while, so that they can experience at first hand what it’s like to be at the receiving end of inconsiderate driving.”

Maybe they should’ve done a similarly spirited dry run for Brexit before they voted: go through all the hoops in their interactions with the EU — as private individuals (tourists, employees in EU-based companies), as commercial entities. 

They might’ve thought twice about voting for Brexit if they had been made to queue up for ages as non-family (instead of just walking straight through), go through checks (visas, work permits, papers) as non-family. Oh and of course the hassle of having to apply for visas and other permits beforehand — even applying online would still take time.

(UK, 2020)

What’s happened to all those ecological inventions?

 

Listening to the donations appeal for MAG (Mines Advisory Group) on radio reminds me of something I’d read at least two decades ago about someone coming up with a creeper (by tweaking its genes) whose leaves will turn colour (purple?) if it detects the presence of a landmine below the surface.  This would mean human beings won’t need to be involved to look for and remove landmines.  I don’t seem to have heard anymore about that creeper.

Another invention was for clearing up oil slicks at sea.  A farmer had come up with the idea of wrapping hay with a fish net, then rolling it up into a tube.  Take this long tube out to sea where there’s an oil spillage, then pay out the tube like a trawler boat releasing its net.  The hay will absorb the oil, thus mopping up the surface of the water. 

The third one is related to water, a favourite environmental subject of mine, having been brought up in Singapore.  This was back in the 1980s, I think.  Someone out in Mexico had discovered that the roots of water hyacinth will clean water to 98% or 99% purity, even water from sewers.  Just grow water hyacinth over sewage ponds.  The resulting water can be drunk straight out of the pond, illustrated in that TV report I’d seen.  Maybe it’s because water hyacinth doesn’t grow in cold climates (it’s a tropical/sub-tropical plant) that this natural water-purification project hasn’t taken off here.

Christmas dinner disasters: 01 (UK)

 

At one Xmas dinner party, the hostess pulled the turkey tray out of the oven to check if it was done, but was a bit too rough.  The tray slipped out of her grasp, and landed on the kitchen floor, spilling the contents: turkey and turkey fat.  

Catching a whiff of the turkey, one of the guests’ dog ran into the kitchen and started to slither about on the turkey fat.  

It was pandemonium in the kitchen as people rushed around trying to contain the situation.  Some tried to grab the dog before it got to the turkey, some tried to scoop up the turkey.  All were skidding around on the greasy floor.

Christmas dinner disasters: 02 (UK)

At another Xmas dinner party, the hostess pulled the turkey out of the oven to sprinkle some salt on the turkey skin. 

As she was talking to her guests, she wasn't looking properly, and ended up grabbing the washing up liquid bottle instead of the table salt bottle.  The turkey started to froth.  She had to rinse the turkey under the tap for quite a while before the bubbles subsided and she could put it back into the oven.

Riding in a sports car (Singapore)

Neighbour’s younger son, Robert, had a sports car.  

He’s three years older, so I’d be at least 15 when he invited me and my schoolfriend Mary Liew to go for a ride in his convertible.  We sat on the boot, and let our hair fly in the wind as the car sped along in the night air.

The car had two horns, I soon discovered.

Singaporeans in those days used their car horns a lot, mostly out of impatience: urging a dawdling pedestrian crossing the road to hurry up and get out of the way.

When Robert caught sight of an old man crossing the road in his doddery way, he tooted the car horn that went like a fog horn: a low, growly, frog-croak sound.  

Then Robert spotted two young ladies walking down the road ahead of him.  He tooted the other horn: a shrill, wolf-whistle sound.

Whenever I think of a sports car, that evening ride in Robert’s sports car would come to mind, complete with the sound effects.

(Singapore, 1960s)

Deportment classes: 01 (Singapore)

 

An article in the Metro of 07 December 2020 features an East London school bringing in an etiquette expert from outside to teach their pupils “how to improve their appearance, etiquette and communication skills” for “making sure they are as confident as they can be during interviews, and, if successful, at their new schools”.  The lessons covered “everything from…sitting position…to table settings, greetings and posture”.

This reminds me of my Deportment classes at secretarial school back in 1973–1974 in Singapore.

The Deportment class teacher was an ex-model from London, Miss Cleo Manning.  She appeared for the first lesson dressed in hot pants (remember those?) and a page boy hairdo cropped quite short, à la Twiggy.  She could’ve stepped straight out of London’s Hippy Sixties.

Lesson One was for Miss Manning to assess each one of us: point out our weaknesses for us to make improvements on in subsequent weeks.  We’d be graded, the same as for the other skills (shorthand, typing, Business English, etc.).

A few months before this, I’d decided to perm my hair, to give it more body, as I have proportionately wide shoulders and a proportionately small head.  This proved to be a right pain.  Every time I washed my shoulder-length hair, it’d lose its curls a bit, which meant spending ages putting it in curlers, waiting for the hair to dry out, then removing the curlers.  Easily half an hour, if not longer.  At twice a week, this amounts to a lot of time spent on just maintaining the perm.  If I was going out on a date, I’d have to blow-dry the hair to speed up the process, which meant adding to my mother’s electricity bill.  After a few months of this hassle, I decided to let the perm die out.  (No, I don’t think we had hair straighteners in those days.  Or I hadn’t heard of them.)

It was at this stage that my Deportment classes began.

Miss Manning took one look at me, with this neither-curly-nor-straight hair on my head, and told me my hair was “shaggy”.  I was instantly reminded of the shaggy dog (breed: Old English Sheepdog) featured in the adverts at the time for a well-known brand of paint:  all fur, even covering the eyes.

She also said that, without eye shadow or lipstick, my face didn’t stand out — she could hardly see my eyes or my mouth.  

(My consolation was:  most of my classmates were given a low grade for this as well.  Lots of Singapore girls in those days — maybe still today — didn’t wear make-up at all, never mind heavy make-up.)

(Singapore,1974)

Deportment classes: 02 (Singapore)

 

Miss Manning’s Deportment classes were the last period of the school day (3:30–4:30pm).

There’d be a mad rush to the ladies’ loo, to apply as much eye shadow and lipstick as possible.  Not just the amount, but the shade as well:  striking blue eye shadow, scarlet lipstick.

We’d look at each other and say, “Uggh, you look horrible!  But you’ll get a good grade from Miss Manning!”

And we certainly did.  She was very pleased with the results: “That’s better!  Now I can see your eyes and your mouth!”  The stronger the colour of the eye shadow and the lipstick, the higher the mark.

Because the class finished at 4:30pm, we didn’t have time to go to the ladies’ loo to clean up our faces, as it was too close to 5pm when office workers generally knocked off work, so we’d rush out to the bus stop looking like performers straight out of a Chinese opera.  Putting up with stares — some in shock, some in disapproval — was nothing if we could just manage to get on the bus home.

The only person in our class to escape the eye-shadow-and-lipstick requirement was Somyot — a young man from Thailand.  (Not sure why he’d chosen to do a secretarial course in 1970s Singapore when gender roles were certainly very clearly defined.)

(Singapore,1974)

Deportment classes: 03 (Singapore)

 

We went through the usual routine of walking around with a book balanced on our heads.  This meant head held up, chin up, shoulders squared, so that we wouldn’t slouch.  It also made us walk more elegantly, not stomp around like tomboys (or worse, fish wives!).

We were also taught how to sit, especially in a low sofa or armchair, without showing our knickers.  (This being Singapore, we were still in mini skirts/dresses, as it usually took a decade for us in the East to catch up with trends in the West.)

None of this was new to me.

What I didn’t know before was how to unbutton your coat.  Singapore being in the tropics (1 degree north of the Equator, actually), we don’t wear coats, not even jackets, so we never have to cross that bridge.

It was quite an interesting lesson in visual elegance/tidiness.

The usually-instinctive unbuttoning of one’s coat is from the top downwards.  This, however, would leave the top flopping open as you move on to the next button down, which is visually not tidy.  Unbuttoning from the bottom up would not create this visual untidiness.  Little details like that which we girls born and brought up in the tropics didn’t really pay attention to.

(Singapore,1974)

Deportment classes: 05 (Singapore)

 

How to get in and out of a sports car without showing your knickers?

I was the only one in the class who was able to answer this question.

Don’t forget, we were still in mini skirt phase in Singapore at the time.  (Actually, writing this has just made me realise that they’d picked the right person in Miss C|eo Manning: her hot pants and page boy haircut were as frozen in the Sixties as our mini skirts!)

Sports cars usually sit quite low, which is already problematic enough for getting in and out of.  Add to that the fact that to get into one, it usually means that it’s parked by the kerb.  This adds four inches (nearly 2 cm) to the distance between your feet on the pavement and the floor of the car, making it even more difficult to step elegantly into the car without opening out your legs wider.  In a mini skirt, it’ll be well nigh impossible.  At best, clumsy and inelegant.  At worst, hitching up your already short skirt to stride into the low floor of the sports car.  And of course, exposing your knickers the moment you sit down — probably not “sit down” but “flop down with a heavy thump” as it’s so low.

Miss Manning posed this question to the class:  Does anyone know how to get in and out of a sports car with elegance and without showing your knickers?

No one knew the answer.

I was the only one who did.  

There’s more than one way of doing it, depending on the length of your skirt (how manoeuvrable your legs are), and on what the distance is between where your feet are (on the pavement or on the ground) and the floor of the sports car.

One way is to hold on to anything you can, and ease/swing your bottom onto the low seat while holding on to these supports and keeping your legs/knees together.  Then swing your legs into the car, still keeping your knees/legs together.  This will ensure non-exposure of your knickers.  

The supports would normally be the top of the open door for one hand, the roof of the car or the top of the seat back for the other.  It does require a bit of muscular strength and dexterous balancing.  A small price if you want to be in the sports-car clique.

Even if one’s skirt allows it, one should try to avoid stepping into the car one leg first, sitting down, then moving the other leg in.  It’s all to do with visual inelegance, as it means opening out one’s legs.

Miss Manning was most impressed, and gave me the top mark for this.

(How did I know about getting into and out of sports cars?  Read my blog on this — to come.)

(Singapore,1974)

Deportment classes: 04 (Singapore)

 

Two other interesting things we were taught by Miss Manning were:

(1) How to shut the door of the interview room after you’ve got in.  This was another visual tidiness exercise.  One would usually enter the room, and turn round to shut the door.  This would mean showing your back to the interviewer(s) in the room.  Miss Manning said that it wasn’t just not nice for them to see your back.  More importantly, you want to present them with your smiling Chinese-opera-performer face (complete with strong eye shadow and bright red lipstick), to make a strong first impression.  Yes, very logical, very strategic.

So, you enter the room, facing the interviewer(s), reach out for the door behind you, and shut it, still facing the interviewer(s).  And smiling your Chinese-opera-performer face, complete with strong eye shadow and bright red lipstick.

(2) How to extricate your hand after the handshake.  This was a lesson in diplomacy should the interviewer turn out to be a DOM (dirty old man).  Whether it’s the first handshake, or the parting one, if the DOM grips your hand tightly and won’t let go (while he’s leering at your blue eye shadow and scarlet lipstick), you say with a smile and a sweet voice, most politely, “Can I have my hand back, please?”

As an ex-model, Miss Manning presumably had a lot of experience from a lot of exposure to DOMs.  

(Singapore,1974)

The Chinese for "God has eyes!" (老天有眼) (Russia)

I once taught a class this phrase: 

老天有眼 lǎo tiān yǒu yǎn / “old heaven has eyes”

In traditional Chinese thinking, it’s 天 tiān that rules over us mortals.  天 tiān = sky, but in this context, it is Heaven, the ruling authority.  The emperor was the ruler because he had been given the mandate of Heaven to rule over the rest of the population.  (See also blog entry Mandate of Heaven.)

One of the students, Peter, then went off to Russia (on holiday or for work).  He had a horrible time there, finding the service indifferent and the mannerism curt.  The last straw was on the day of his departure when the officials were, he felt, rude and arrogant.

 

After he got back to London, he told me that as he got to the top of the boarding stairs (in those days you had to walk across the tarmac and walk up the pull-away steps), he turned round to face the country as a whole, shook his fist and shouted, “老 天 有 眼!”

He said, “I know they don’t know any Chinese but it made me feel better — to be able to threaten them with the wrath of God.  It was like placing a curse on them.  I walked to my seat with a smile on my face.” 

I still laugh after all these years. 

So when you are feeling helpless (e.g., exploited but can’t fight back), leave it to God: 老天有眼 lǎo tiān yǒu yǎn!

(Russia, 1995)

A glimpse into Chinese police practices?

In 1992, the Chinese government announced they were allowing greater freedom of speech.  A flurry of articles appeared in the Legal Daily 法制日报 on the subject of Extracting Confession by applying Torture.  This got Amnesty International very excited.  I was asked to go in and translate the articles.

What caught my perverse-humour eye, however, were two articles: 

不要用手铐锁住自行车 Don't use handcuffs to lock up your bicycle

and 

警车要姓警 Police car must be surnamed police

It seemed that policemen had been using handcuffs to lock up their bikes, so that when they actually caught someone, the handcuffs were not around for them to use on the person arrested!

The other article was about police cars being used for things other than police matters: weddings, lifts to/from the airport or train station.

So cute! (London)

 

Singaporeans like to say “so cute!” of things that please or amuse them.  

The latest example is my nephew’s response to my saying that the Korean for “sweetcorn/maize” sounds like “oh su su”, which matches the Chinese for it: 玉蜀黍 yù shǔ shǔ.  

(I’d been sending him examples of Korean words that I’ve picked up from the period dramas I’ve been watching, as evidence that Korean is very similar to Chinese.  I also notice two-character compounds that are different in word order from modern Chinese, which — just a hunch, as yet to be investigated — proves that Korean is from archaic Chinese.)

My nephew saying “so cute!” to the sweetcorn example brings to mind what happened in 1992 when my third sister and her husband came over to London. She’d been hospitalised for stress, then the doctor advised taking more time off, so they grabbed an off-season deal (it was February) and came to London.

I’d invited an evening student Frazer Gleig, 12 years older than I (a fellow snake and a pubbing pal after class), along to the dinner out in Chinatown, because Frazer was great fun and would provide nice variety of company for my visitors. 

At one point, Frazer trotted out his usual description of himself: 笨老头 bèn lǎotóu / “stupid old man”.  My sister laughed: ”So cute!”  

Frazer’s face was a right picture: Western men do not get called cute at 51. He didn’t know how to respond.

(London, 1992)

Coded communication

My nephew said a Hong Kong friend of his described her husband as “fat”, which is 肥 féi in Chinese, but she texted the character 肥 as 月巴 (breaking up the two components of the one character to form two separate characters).  

This reminds me of the time when an RI (Raffles Institution) friend’s wife came to London with her then-five-year-old daughter Yen Hua, and stayed with me.  

The mother would spell out words that she didn’t want Yen Hua to know, so she’d say things like, “She said he’s such an s-h-i-t.”  Yen Hua, however, knew more words than her mother realised, so she’d shout them out, e.g., “Shit!”  

The mother had to abandon this mode of “coded talk”.

Some people's thinking behind helping other people

Talking to Francesca about paying back has brought to mind something I wrote in my journal on my film shoot in 1988 in China, analysing the Chinese way of interacting with each other.

These are my own impressions/analysis, based on my own first-hand experience and what I’ve heard from other people.  (My friend Valerio will be sure to protest that not all Chinese think like that.  Yes, yes, Valerio.)

The Chinese traditionally think of doing good in terms of:

1. paying back, even to the point of doing something good (first), based on “I might need him/her at a later point.”  I don’t like this self-centred approach. Why only help someone because you might benefit later?  (A Libyan woman said to me, “I helped because that person might well be my mother, so I’d want someone else to be nice to my mother.”  But why can’t kindness be dished out just for its own sake? If I’m an orphan with no family or friends, I’d still help for the sake of helping.)

2. same approach as before but this time it’s “I will go to Heaven / be reborn into a better life next incarnation”.  Again, self-centred.

3. I don’t know the person seeking help but we have a mutual friend, so I’m doing it for that mutual friend.  Again, more often than not, it’s because I don’t want that mutual friend to think ill of me — cf. having no qualms about not helping a stranger with no mutual friend between us. So, it’s still self-centred.

Paying back / Paying forward

Have been helping Francesca with her job application.  She keeps expressing gratitude, saying she owes me lots. 

My reply to her:

The half-full way of looking at it is:  you’ve made an old lady feel useful.

I used to come back from my travels with little presents for my landlord Fred and landlady Nora: caviar from Sweden, chocolate from Switzerland, etc. 

One day, she came back from Portugal (where they had a time-share place), and gave me a small bottle of wine, the type we get on flights, so I knew it was free.  Still, it’s the thought that counts, not the cost.  In my Chinese-upbringing way, I immediately said, “Oh no, keep it for yourself!”

She said, “You are always giving people things.  You should let people have a chance to give you something back.”

I will always remember that.  By accepting something (a gift or help), we are giving the giver the joy of giving.

So, by letting me help you, you are making me feel useful.  I owe you too!

A phrase that’s started to pop up in the last decade (or two?) is, “I’ll pay it forward.” We usually try to “pay it back”, but it’s not always possible (can’t find the giver, e.g.).  What’s good about this approach is that passing the kindness onwards spreads it out more, rather than just between the two parties, so more people benefit. 

Thinking outside the box: 01 (London)

I worked as a part-time telex operator at British Monomarks throughout my first degree at SOAS. 

Small companies didn’t have enough business to justify installing their own telex machine (too expensive if they only needed to send the occasional telex), so they’d open an account with British Monomarks for a small subscription fee. Then they’d pay for however many telexes they sent/received — could be once/year (just exaggerating to illustrate the point). 

Customers would phone in and dictate their messages.

One day, I took a call from a customer who had been trying to get the other party (in Taiwan, as it happened) to settle a debt, with no success — the debtor never responded to their letters, my customer couldn’t prove that the debtor had received the letters.

Customer said he wanted to send a telex this time because our machine would show that the connection had been successful.

The procedure:  

1.  We’d dial the recipient’s number.

2.  Once we got through, their machine ident would automatically come up — this is called the answer back.

3.  At the end of the transmission, we always asked for the ident again (just in case the line had got disconnected during the transmission, which did happen every now and then). There’s a key on the telex machine for getting the answer back.

So we’d have their machine ident at the start of the message printout, then again at the end — double confirmation that the transmission had gone through successfully.

Customer said he wasn’t sure if it’d work as the debtor could still claim it never arrived. So how to proceed, he asked, he couldn’t think of anything else.

I suggested we send a telex to them via the Taiwan GPO [General Post Office] instead, for the GPO to deliver by hand — like the old-fashioned telegram/cable, whereby the postman would hand over the telegram/cable and the recipient would have to sign receipt for it.  One has to sign receipt for a post office delivery first without getting a chance to read the contents.  Also, my customer had a neutral third-party witness (their GPO) if he had to take them to court. 

A few weeks later, the manager John Haste read out, and pinned up on the notice board, a letter from the customer saying my plan had worked and the debtor had settled, thanking me (by name) for solving the conundrum which had been plaguing him for quite a while.

(I was 25 at the time.)

(London, 1979)