Fire and Snow

Jan. 5

I had been walking after breakfast on Temple or Pagoda Street on New Year’s Day, when I suddenly realized: Hey, today is January first. That means tomorrow is the second, and I have an interview lined up somewhere.

The interview was with Dr. Low Teck Seng, head of a Singaporean government agency called the National Research Foundation. It is based in a sprawling structure on the campus of the National University of Singapore that houses the agency and a new endeavor known as CREATE, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise. It’s a collaboration of Singapore’s universities working with, so far, 10 others from around the world, including MIT, Technical University of Munich, and Cambridge University. Much of the space in the CREATE buildings is devoted to laboratories.

It’s part of a bigger picture in which Singapore is working to establish itself as the technological research hub in Southeast Asia. The country is looking at R&D as an industry in itself. I find the idea fascinating.

I cabbed over and back and met Joanna at the Dragon Court. All I had eaten at the kopitiam Thursday morning was toast. They didn’t have any eggs. It’s a good thing for me that the NRF staff provided tea during the interview. Each time my stomach started to growl, I took a sip to keep it quiet.

When I got back to the hotel, Joanna had already had lunch with the monks at the vegetarian restaurant in the Buddha Tooth temple.

I was famished and headed for the closest place, one of the Szechuan clones on the block. The restaurant had fried frog in chili sauce, but for some reason, I couldn’t order it for one. So I had minced pork with noodles instead. It was very tasty, but also very hot. I had to keep wiping my lips to keep them from burning. It made the Tiger taste great.

We strolled around the neighborhood and then checked out of the Dragon Court to consolidate everything in the cubby hole at the Porcelain. The room at the Porcelain is in the middle of the building with no direct communication to the outside. When we left there was a strange smell in the corridor as we came near the elevator.

It wasn’t until we were outside that we discovered the fire engine and the smoke coming out of the roof across the street. The fire was apparently in a restaurant across the way. We had heard nothing, not even sirens, from inside the room.

We went to hear more opera, but the teahouse was closed. There are no posted hours outside. We were just lucky to have dropped in when we did.

The group had a special performance with dinner planned for Friday night, but Friday was a rough one for us. I had a 4:30 interview with representatives of Rolls-Royce and Nanyang Technological University. After that, we had to move to the hotel at the airport because our flight leaves at 5:45 Saturday morning.

We were in the touristy section of Chinatown, and it seems most of the eateries are Szechuan or serve bar food. Joanna was craving some rice and green vegetables. That combination was surprisingly hard to find.

We eventually came across a Cantonese place where we had some of the toughest squid I ever tried the chew and a leafy green vegetable that Joanna says is gai lan. It was in a mild tasty sauce that was much better tan the squid.

It was after dark but I wasn’t ready to quit because walking had gotten a lot easier, so this was the first day that I wasn‘t worn out by seven or eight. We sat at a table outside a new restaurant, Fatty Weng’s, on a corner in the street market where I ordered a couple of Tigers on draft. Joanna had a Thai baby cocoanut.

This was comparable to having a beer on the Wildwood boardwalk. All ages, appearances, sizes, shapes, and personalities of people walk by. Some are decked out as if they are headed for clubs. Most are tourists. Some look like locals. Hawkers try to get everyone’s attention.

A bicycle rickshaw parade formed up in the middle of the intersection. The rickshaws in Singapore have a complete bicycle where the driver sits next to the car, rather than centered in front of it. Think bike with a sidecar. They used to serve as a regular taxi service, but like the bicycle rickshaws in New York, they are only used for short novelty tours now.

That was it for Thursday.

Friday we checked out of the Porcelain, but they held our bags for us. We went to Buddha Tooth temple because Joanna had learned the day before that monks would be there chanting during the day. We went to hear them.

 Four or five monks knelt near the altar with the image of a bodhisattva, not Buddha. Another sat at a microphone in the middle of the space. There were a couple of dozen people with prayer books following along.

It’s uncanny. As Larry pointed out the other night, you don’t hear them stop for breath.

We came toward the end of one of three periods of chanting for the day. It ended with a very melodic hymn, which many of the people in the congregation joined in singing.

We bought a package of incense as an offering, and bought an oil lamp in a glass vase to set beside others already burning. It comes with a red tag printed with a prayer for blessings. Joanna signed it with our names in Han characters.

We wandered down a couple of new streets after that, and came across a park. That’s where we made the find of the day. Certain old trees in Singapore are designated Heritage Trees.

There were two in this park. The first one we encountered was a Bodhi tree. Legend has it that when Siddhartha Gautama became weary of wandering in search of wisdom, he decided to sit under a tree until enlightenment came to him, After a long time, the Truth came to him, and the tree blossomed. The tree became known as the bodhi tree. “Bodhi” means “truth.”

The only other specimen of a Bodhi tree that we had seen was in the amusement park near the giant Buddha on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. And that one was artificial.

The trunk of the real thing looks like an assembly of smaller trunks and the upper limbs reach out a dozen yards or more. It could provide shade and shelter from a drizzle.

The other heritage tree looked like a banyan, which I have seen in Florida. They have air roots that become like auxiliary trunks.

This one, though, was an Indian rubber tree. They were brought in by colonists for rubber plantations. I don’t know if this one was the last of an orchard, or an escapee. But it had been there a long time.

We found a food court with some fairly good roast duck (served a little too cold for my taste) and char siew (slightly sweet roast pork).

No beer with it. I had an interview at 4:30.

The interview went well, considering there were half a dozen people sitting in. Rolls-Royce has opened a dedicated research facility at Nanyang Technological University. It is partly funded by the company, by the university, and by the government of Singapore through the National Research Federation.

The idea is to develop ideas and carry them as far as a lab demonstration. The most promising would then move to other Rolls-Royce centers for possible commercial development. Rolls-Royce is involved in various lines of business, but is primarily known for advanced jet engines and gas turbines.

The one thing it no longer makes is automobiles. Rolls-Royce cars are made today by BMW.

After my trip out to the university, I met Joanna back at the Porcelain. She had gotten us bottles of the 24-herb and the kwai leng tea. We tried some of that to make me healthier and then headed for the Crowne Plaza at Changi Airport.

On the way to the room, the elevator stopped at the second floor, and a long-haired guy, wobbling a bit and holding onto a glass, got on along with his significant other. The light won’t light for his floor. The bellman tells him, he has to tap his room card against a sensor before he can select his floor. “I don’t have it on me,” the guy mutters.

The bellman did it for him. How they will get into their room doesn’t seem to occur to anybody. Maybe there’s somebody waiting there. The woman, who was standing in the back of the elevator, was looking enigmatic. I don’t know if she was pissed like him or pissed at him.

When it was our turn to land on the second floor, we tried some Southern Hemisphere wines with dinner. Joanna had a Chilean merlot, and I had an Australian mix of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon.

Joanna had chicken rice, which she said was better than the version served at the hawker center. I was dying for some comfort food. I had a burger. I told them to hold the bacon, egg, and cheese. There were other things that had egg on them, too. A pizza, maybe, and also the beef tenderloin.

I like egg, but enough cholesterol is enough.

We went to the bar where the best I could get was more Tiger on draft. I had a shot of Jameson to beef it up.

We had a two a.m. wake-up call, so we packed it in around 9. Nothing like a good night’s cat nap.

We left Singapore a little earlier than expected. I don’t think they left anyone behind. We made the transfer without incident at Hong Kong and landed in Newark about on time.  Depressing snow everywhere, and I was dreading the lugging of my bags over six inches of white stuff. But when the cab passed my house, I saw the walks were shoveled by some Good Samaritan. We pulled up in front of Joanna’s house and the way there was clear too.

So far, so good. Damn good.