I am on my first sojourn out of the Middle Kingdom for quite a few years - well, not technically true, I have travelled outside the Great Firewall of China a few times, but mostly on business. This time, I have a few chill-out days where I have no business obligations, meetings or planning days so this means I am free to prowl Singapore's underground shopping mega-complexes, hang 'gibbon-like' from the railings in the public transport and find little quiet corners to sip sugar-sweet Indian Milk Chai, rediscover the delights of curry-puffs, pick lime-leaves from my teeth while gobbling bowls of Laksa, rip my way through layers of Roti Channai, chopstick-pick my way through extra juicy morsels of Roasted Chicken and Crispy Pork, negotiate Chilli Crab carapace, seek out Spicy Stingray and Banana Leaf Satay, slurp durian ice kajiang (a tower of shaved ice, mixed with the pulp of the fruit) and enjoy the cool sea breeze across the Harbour with a cup of Barley Water and a tall Kopi-O.
But in my travels and resting on railings and steps around Singapore, I’ve also rediscovered a somewhat sinister side - and that is the ubiquitous Xmas Muzak, that plays from concealed panels in every shopping mall, restaurant and interior space... dingy-dangly polystyrene ice crystals are one thing, but sleigh-bells and songs of dashing through snow in an environment of 28 degrees C and 80% humidity is quite another! I mean, I can look at the geometric patterns of snowflakes and imagine they are an Islamic pattern, or Buddhist decoration - not something too out of place in multi-cultural Singapore... but cutesy jingling music that appears for 2 months every year can only mean but one thing - Christmas is upon us.
I'm not really a Scrooge, I do like Christmas...I like the family time, the goodwill, the chance to relax for a few days - but I've spent the last 6 Christmas’ in China, away from most of the consumerism and the retail-hype and invariably working on Christmas Day.
So I now find myself walking down steamy Little India breathing in the smells of curry humming “Jinglebells” like some pseudo-Santa doing my last minute shopping for a few kids that just got added to my 'good kid this year’ shopping list. Those stupid songs have become unearthed after 6 years of suppression - it’s an inevitable compulsion, worse, an addiction - 6 years abstinence from “Good King Wensclas” and “Silent Night” destroyed and I am back to where I started... I should be cured - a XmasMusikPhobic - but I'm not!
Whoops, excuse me - just discovered another thing I like in Singapore at Christmas time - pretty young girls in tight-fitting dresses and Christmas hats and furry ruffles giving out free coffee tidbits - excuse me a second please....
Ok, I am back from that mild distraction - after following them around for a few minutes (for the coffee, not the girls) i have found myself in an avenue of painted elephants - maybe this is a local art collective response to the oversupply of images of fat men in wooly red suits - I hope that sometime soon, even if Singaporeans cannot get rid of the Christmas carols completely, they can change the words a little so they don't have to create fake snow, poly-styrene reindeer and European evergreen trees to fill their million shopping malls every year!
Australia semi-successfully did the same a few years ago - when flying in Aussie airspace, Santa wears board-shorts, the sleigh is pulled by kangaroos and he expects beer when he wanders in the unlocked backdoor of the house (not down the chimney, we don't have many of those) instead of milk and cookies!
