It’s all relative: 02 (Singapore)

 

I was active in sport throughout my school days.

    After only two years in London, I went back for a visit, and found myself unable to go out much.  Spent a lot of my time sitting under the ceiling fan, and even then, I still couldn’t stay awake.

    So how did I manage to be an athlete and a netball player for almost a dozen years?!?

    I was a sprinter, hurdler and long jumper.  For netball, I played the Centre position which covers all three sections of the court, while all the other players only cover two out of three.  A lot of training had to be put in, not just competing on the days of the races and matches.

    Yes, most of the time, we did have to wait until the sun was less fierce before starting our training round about 4pm, but it was still tearing around the field/court in the open outdoors.

    Yet, after just two years in London, my body had adapted so well to the British climate that I couldn’t even leave the house without feeling like a blob of jelly, or “a slab of butter left out in the sun” as an English ex-colleague used to say of his time in Xiamen (/Amoy) in Fujian province, S.E.China.

(Singapore, 1960s / 1979)

It’s all relative: 01 (Taiwan)

 

I grew up in Singapore where the weather is basically:  hot, very hot, unbearably hot; wet or dry.

    When I first arrived in Taipei on 27 December 1974 to work for Conoco Taiwan, I found it very cold, but wasn’t properly equipped for it, not having had the experience of buying clothes for anything other than the Singapore heat and humidity.

    Stopping over in Hong Kong, I’d bought what I thought would be adequate, but it was only a MacIntosh, which is not even made of wool.  I didn’t even think of buying a scarf or a pair of gloves, never mind a woolly hat.

    I’d go home from work, eat a hasty meal, then jump onto the sofa in the living room, with all the layers I could find (rug, blanket, winter coat, sweater) piled on top of me, and stay there watching TV until shut down time at 11pm.

    No remote controls in those days (not in the flatshare I was in, anyway), so if I didn’t like a programme on one of the two channels, I could either brave leaving the warmth I’d built up on the sofa and switch over, or stay and put up with that channel’s offerings.  No prize for guessing which option I went for.

    At shut down time, however, I had to decamp to my bedroom, where the bed had not been heated up by my body warmth for the last five hours, so I had to start the shivering process all over again.  (No, didn’t think of hot water bottles at that time.  I’d grown up in a culture where “hot water bottle” was only a concept on paper.)

    There was a big tall building across the road from my office block which had a giant digital display on its flat rooftop, showing the temperature in Centigrade, which I had to learn from scratch as we used the Fahrenheit system in Singapore during my childhood days.  (Not that it made much difference, anyway.  I could only relate to hot, very hot, extremely hot, unbearably hot, not cold to the point of shivering.)  I soon learned that if it said 10˚C or 12˚C, it was just about bearable.

    Writing this blog, I decided to google for what zone Taiwan is officially classed under, and I find that it is subtropical for the northern and central parts, with the south being tropical and the mountain areas temperate.  So, Taipei is only one zone north of Singapore, yet its winters could get to 8˚C, while Singapore would be 25˚C at the lowest and then, only after it’s been raining heavily for a few days in succession.

    Fast forward to December 1998 when I went back for my second return visit, after 19 years in London.  I found the weather there mild enough for just a cardigan most of the time, maybe a MacIntosh, but no need for gloves or scarf or hat.  (Yes, there’s always the possibility that it is also climate warming at work there.)

(Taiwan, 1974 and 1998)

Interpreting dreams: 05 (Singapore)

 

I heard this story in my early teens.

    A widowed old man had a dream which featured his wife.

    In the dream, she kept saying to him, in their S.E.Chinese dialect of Hokkien (Fújiànhuà / 福建话; Taiwan’s equivalent is called 閩南話 Mǐnnán huà), over and over again, “chair, wipe wipe”.

    The next day, it kept re-playing in his head.

 

    He thought, “I know she’d always been a nagger, and I know that I now need to do the housework myself since she’s gone, but why come into my dream to nag me about wiping the chairs in particular?  What a strange message!”

    After playing the message for the nth time in his head, the sounds “gao yi chit chit / chair wipe wipe” soon became “gao yi chit chit / 9 1 7 7”.

    He went and put some money on 9177 at the four-digit lottery shop.  And it came up!

(Singapore, 1960s)

They don’t bark at family (France)

One of the things I noticed during an early stay on the French farm was:  the farm mistress didn’t look up at the sound of every approaching car.

    The farm is on a ridge parallel to, and north of, the Pyrénées, with a stunning view of the mountain range when the atmospheric pressure is right.  They are hidden from sight most of the time, so that you can’t even tell they are there.  If they are fully visible in their snow-topped glory, then it’ll rain the next day (or so).

    The nearest neighbours are:  a couple 1km away down by the A21, the main road leading to the Pyrénées; and also 1km away but in the other direction, the village idiot [as he’s called by the locals] and his brother and sister-in-law further inland.  Only the postman would drive up to the house.  Or the neighbours, or friends and relatives, maybe a customer to buy wood from the little sawmill on the farm.

    For a farm that is out on a limb, they get quite a few visitors, being so popular and hospitable.  This means more cars driving up to the house than its secluded location would otherwise attract.

    The dogs only bark at outsiders.  So, if one can hear a car driving up to the house and the dogs (there were nine of them at one point) don’t bark, it is someone known to the family.  How they manage to remember which car sound is a new one (to them), I shall never know.

    Even though I only went once a year, during the long summer school holidays, staying only three weeks each time, the dogs remembered me every subsequent visit.

    On my very first visit during the Easter break in 1996, I’d arrived at midnight, having taken the Eurostar to Paris, then the TGV all the way to Agen, and then an hour-long bus journey to Auch, 6 kms from the farm, being met there by the farm mistress.

    As I stepped out of the car, I found myself surrounded by six dogs who emerged suddenly out of the dark, even at that late hour.

 

    One of them, Pastou* (pronounced “pa-tu”), stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on my shoulders.  I stepped back to try and make him drop his paws, but he simply walked forwards with me as I stepped back.  That was my first reception.

    After that day, I got to know the rest of the canine members of the family:  Patoche (meaning “paw”), Fleurie….  All hunting dogs.  All brown and short-haired.  And short-legged.

    On my visit in 2012, I was invited out by a British girl who’d married a local man down the road.  We went into town: to the market, to the little museum, then for a coffee.  After that, we went back to her place for dinner and a chat, before she drove me back to the farm around 11 pm.

    The farm owners go to bed around 9 pm, so I asked her to drop me off at the bottom of the last stretch of the drive up, so that the dogs’ barking wouldn’t disturb the sleeping human occupants.  I had a wind-up torch on me, but I didn’t need it as there was a full moon.

    It wasn’t until I reached the front door of the farm house that I realised the dogs had not barked at all throughout the 100-metre walk up the drive.  

    It was dark, they only saw me once a year, yet they somehow knew it was me.  They presumably had a mental record of my footsteps (from the daytime) over the three weeks of my stay, rather than the sound of a car engine.  Amazing.

    I felt so honoured — to have been accepted by the dogs as family!

(Gers, S.W. France, 1990s)

* Pastou, ironical name for a hunting dog!  From googling: The term “pastou” [pronounced pa-tu] is derived from the word “pastre”, meaning shepherd in old French and designates a shepherd’s dog as it was understood in times past.  Unlike a herd dog, the role of the guard dog is not to drive the sheep but rather to protect them from wild animals or feral dogs.

**This blog supplements the blog "Chinese sayings:  35 (吠非其主)" 

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/01/chinese-sayings-35_27.html

Chinese sayings: 35 (吠非其主)

 

吠非其主

fèi fēi qí zhǔ

“bark not-at its owner”

From:  戰國策 / 战国策 / zhàn guó cè 

Strategems of the Warring States, compiled by 劉向 

(Warring States, 5th–3rd BC.

Strategems of the Warring States are a compilation of anecdotes of political manipulation and warfare.)

狗朝著外人亂叫，舊比喻各為其主。 出自《戰國策·齊策六》。

This expression is more profound than just observing that dogs only bark at people who’re not their owners.  It’s meant to be saying that people are only loyal towards their own masters / the people they serve.

    My blogs being intended to be mostly a light-hearted take on life, to bring a smile, if not a chuckle, to the reader, I’m going to apply it to the dogs on the French farm I used to visit.

    One of the stories in my first collection for self publication (A Collection of Animal Stories) is entitled “They don’t bark at family”, which matches this expression in spirit.  As it’s a bit long, I shall reproduce it in another blog.

Works wonders every single time… (London)

 

… saying “thank you” to people in their mother tongue.

    Rang my bank last night for some figures (bank interest for filing tax return — the annual phone call costs more than the interest I get...), and to get a replacement debit card.

    The debit card replacement lady had a strong accent, so I asked her at the end what her mother tongue was, thinking maybe Eastern European.

    Turned out to be Spanish, so I threw in a “muchas gracias”.  Instant delighted hoots from the other end of the line (and lots of Spanish thrown back at me after the “de nada”).

    Such a small effort, yet it produces so much joy in the recipient — every single time.

    She couldn’t even see that I’m Oriental looking, which would’ve reaped even greater results.

 

    I’ve seen it happen in person when they can see me and I say “thank you” in Bulgarian or Portuguese or Albanian.  An old Polish lady even asked me if I was from Poland!!

(London, 2025)

Chinese sayings: 35 (詳星拜斗 / 详星拜斗)

 

詳星拜斗 / 详星拜斗

xiáng xīng bài dǒu

to pay homage to the stars [to cast out the demons to try to cure someone’s illness]

This expression is from the famous Qing dynasty (18th century) novel 紅樓夢 / 红楼梦 / Hóng lóu mèng / Dream of the Red Chamber (aka The Story of the Stone), by 曹雪芹 Cáo Xuěqín.

祭拜星斗，以此驅妖療疾。出自清·曹雪芹《紅樓夢》第102 回。

「過了些時，果然賈珍患病。竟不請醫調治，輕則到園化紙許願，重則詳星拜斗。」

    It refers to one of the characters in the novel being ill, and instead of bringing in a doctor, a Daoist exorcism was conducted.

    This saying has triggered my blog Interpreting dreams:  04 (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/01/interpreting-dreams-04-singapore-london.html).  So, the tradition of appealing to the deities for help was alive and kicking in 20th century Singapore.

    It is something I’ve noticed, and remarked upon to friends and in my teaching:  overseas Chinese communities have preserved and observed the traditions that their ancestors had upheld, for much longer than the Chinese in mainland China.  This is probably mainly due to the massive change in thinking in post-imperial China, where a lot of things were thrown out for being superstitions and feudalistic.

    Overseas Chinese, however, have been frozen in time, although that is changing a lot now as well, especially with Western influence.

    I was already noticing, growing up in the 50s and 60s, that my peers did not do the Buddhist/Daoist temple thing that much — they went along because their grandparents or parents made them, like in the case of my grandma digging us out of bed on Sundays to go for the Buddhist temple equivalent of Sunday School.  They turned out to be useful sessions for a knowledge nerd, learning about Prince Gautama and his teachings.

Interpreting dreams: 04 (Singapore / London)

 

Summer of 1978:  I’d just completed my ‘A’ level exams in London in preparation for applying for university.

    The IRA were active at the time, and there were fairly common bomb scares.  My family would’ve heard or read about them in the news.

    The aunt with the interesting dreams told the family one day that she’d had a dream about me.

    She and I were walking towards each other, going in opposite directions.

    I was carrying a ladder on my head, which was odd behaviour, so she asked me where I was going with it.  I told her that I was going to heaven (上天 shàng tiān / “ascend-to sky” / go up to the sky). 

 

    (天 tiān in the Chinese context is “sky”, the space above earth, or in a bigger way, “heaven” the governing authority over us humans, not necessarily “heaven” in the Christian perspective [i.e., vs hell or purgatory]).

    The family’s analysis was that “ascending-to sky” meant dying, as only dead people go up there [from earth].  One of the many Chinese euphemisms for dying is 歸天 / 归天 / guī tiān / “return-to sky”.

    With the frequent IRA bomb scares in London, they felt that my aunt’s dream was me using it to let the family know I’d died.  The Chinese term for it is 托夢 / 托梦 / tuō mèng / “entrust dream”:  entrust the dreamer with a message for somebody; the dreamer could be the medium, or the recipient of the message.

    I later heard this in a letter from one of my sisters:  the family went into a panic, and started to try and find out what might’ve happened to me.

    They went to a number of fortune tellers — no joy, nothing specific confirming I had indeed died.

    They went to various Buddhist temples to seek an answer from the deities.  (This is a process called 求籤 / 求签 / qiú qiān / “seek oracle-stick”, a form of divination.  See blog Asking the deities for more details: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2025/01/asking-deities-qiu-qian-drawing-oracle.html)  Inconclusive as well.

    They then suddenly remembered the telephone.

    So why didn’t they just pick up the telephone?  Yes, there is a time difference of 7–8 hours.  Yes, back in 1978, long distance calls were payable by distance, and by the minute — even going just one second over into the next minute would be being counted as the new 60 seconds.  But, given the suspense of not knowing for sure if I was still alive or not, surely paying for the phone call, however expensive, would’ve saved them the worry over days and days, never mind running around Singapore consulting fortune tellers (whom they would’ve had to pay) and deities in Buddhist temples (a donation would be the right etiquette).  It only needed a few seconds of exchange, “Ah, you’ve picked up the phone, so you’re still alive.  Bye.”

    It was towards the end of this frantic consultation of the fortunes and the deities that a letter arrived from London, telling them I’d passed my ‘A’ level exams with two distinctions.

    Back to the drawing board for analysing the dream:  the ladder and going up to the sky = promotion, climbing higher, which was what my ‘A’ level exam results meant, i.e., I was going to get into university, up one step from ‘A’ levels, hence the ladder, hence 上天 shàng tiān / “ascend-to sky”.

    Like I’d said to the family over the years since my teenagehood, many times and about many things: “I just don’t understand the way your brains work.”

(London / Singapore, 1978)