Singapore One

With a nod and a swaying of his head (as only an Indian can do and interpret) Waiter Number 136 acknowledges my order of Roti Prata and Teh Tarik.

I sit back in the plastic chair at the cheap laminex table, savoring the moistness of the tropical evening as Singapore traffic rushes by oblivious of the ritual through which they drive like the possessed.

Roti prata is the Singaporean evolution of the Pakistani and Indian paratha, a pancake bread made of dough composed of fat, egg, flour and water. Roti means bread in Hindi, Urdu, most other North Indian languages and Malay, while Prata means flat. It is traditionally served with curry or, more rarely, with sugar or condensed milk. In addition, although consumed at any time of the day by some locals, the vast majority tend to consume it as a late night or early morning dish, particularly at 24-hour outlets.

There are two main types of the dish - the smaller but crispy version (made famous by the Jalan Kayu chains) and the flatter and more fluffy version common elsewhere. Both versions are prepared in similar fashion - by flipping the dough into a large thin layer before heating it on a hot plate.

Teh tarik (literally pulled tea or 拉茶 in Mandarin) is a hot tea beverage which can be commonly found in restaurants, outdoor stalls and kopi tiams in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Its name is derived from the pouring process of "pulling" the drink during preparation. It is made from black tea and condensed milk.

The mixture is poured back and forth repeatedly between two vessels over a height, giving it a thick frothy top. This process is said to cool the tea to drinking temperatures, and helps mix the tea with the condensed milk more thoroughly.

Thanks Wikipedia.

Now back to the show.

The Prata cook and the Tarek maker seem to be in a competition as to who can perform the most flourishes per step all the while acknowledging each others simple magic with a wobbling motion of the head. Quite amazing to watch the geometry of this as nothing is spilt or misplaced during the dance.

Up swirls the Prata in the air before landing perfectly square on the large flat cooking surface the cook dives on it with a large spatula turning and prodding it into its fluffy end product, the Teh spirals back and forth between the large metal jug and the cup, a continual cascade seeming to flow with no end between both vessels.

Its pure India where dramatics and inferred magic may make the difference between a sale or no sale/no eat, although the affluence surrounding the demo (modern day Singapore) belies its rural roots. The transportation to the old markets of Delhi nearly works.

In its simplest form, exposed by the preparation of food, thousands of years of culture and migration lay bare. All for $2.20.

Within minutes I have old India served on a plate with a watery lamb curry, the teh (tea) is frothy and sweet. The smell can only be described as sensuous. The taste? Ahh Singapore, forget your expensive nightlife, this is truly part of you.

And Waiter Number 136 gives me a wide smile and an appreciative nod to acknowledge that this Ang Moh recognised the show.

Ah Beng Lah

Aperture

London grows on you. The more you poke your lens into its numerous crannies the more its uniqueness reveals itself.

Of special mention here is the Aperture Photgraphers Cafe on Museum Street.



In addition to serving Lavazza espresso (of course its my favourite, isnt it yours?) They have an amazing array of very hard to get cameras, all second hand, but in great working order. The ambience is interesting with a mix of amateurs and working pro's either midway or just back from some of the most interesting places.



The camaraderie is brilliant and the sales staff very interactive. The shop looks like a rubbish dump though, be warned, although most working photographers seem to have an appetite for things boheme. The place just reeks of funk.



Also worthy of special mention is Classic Cameras in Pied Bull Lane, just round the corner. Its the best Leica Shop I have ever been to and the staff are great. Its nice to buy things from people who truly believe in what they sell, no hype, just honest input.

For a more thorough look at Londons nooks try here http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikefrancisphoto/

I am starting to really like this town.

Jesus Saves

I am in San Diego.

The phone shatters the darkness (thank whatever god invented black out curtains).

I roll over in no fit state to deal with whoever is inflicting this pain and notice its 8 AM.

I have a vague recollection of having to do something at 8 AM. Answering the phone, my comrade tells me he is waiting downstairs for our big Sunday trip to Mexico. Politely I decline begging off due to my poor state of health (and confusion) on a bad dose of something I ate. Or was it something I drank until 5 AM?

Its amazing how you can lie when pressed.

I try to go back to sleep but the throbbing behind my temples is reminding me that I should never again drink vodka in such large quantities.

I decide to try and stay awake and here I make the second mistake of the morning (waking up was a bad enough move). I switch on the TV.

No matter which channel I surf to I am assailed by the jesus channels. As in every channel I flick to has a god botherer in action.

I settle on a woman with large breasts who is, in her best pitch, telling the world that jesus is the answer. “put your hand on the part that hurts” she wails. “Let jesus cure your ills”.

I am exhorted to action. How can I refuse such an offer from such a well-endowed lady who obviously has jesus's private cell number.

So here I am, standing in front of the TV in my underpants with my hand on my forehead listening to her wailing how if I truly believe, all my hurts and ills will now be gone.

With a hangover like this, trust me I believe.

Sadly, jesus has no sense of humour about vodka.

Tylenol, however has a much better sense of humour. After a handful of these, normality returned, sleep ensued and in the very late afternoon, I had Mexican for dinner.

Might start a new religion.

The Tea Dance

Manila is not the nicest place I’ve been to for many reasons. The poverty, the lack of decent food, and the overwhelmingly cloying Catholicism get to me after about 3 hours of landing.

I do however have an affinity for Philippinos. I have worked with them all over the world and some are lifelong friends. And there lies an interesting fact about the Philippines. A large proportion of its exports are people. Balikbayan is the word for the men and women who leave the sanctuary of home to head out and break the poverty cycle they face in the barrio.

For the guys, most are well trained and work hardened before they leave Manila. Those that aren’t quickly get adopted by their new working brothers and are able to cope with indescribable hardships by dint of this pseudo family structure.

The women however (outside of the nursing profession) fare not so kindly.

Let me first explain that the majority of Asia’s maids are Philipinas.



They work a 3-year contract cycle during which they will endure long working days and very limited contact with the outside world or family.

In the first contractual year, it’s generally a 7-day week. It’s not until the subsequent years that they start to get Sunday off, and some even get Saturday afternoon.

Singapore has an interesting phenomenon that occurs every Sunday. It’s known as The Tea Dance. And it is an entirely Pilipino affair.



Sunday starts with a visit to the local Catholic church for early morning mass. After this it’s a visit to the Post Office (Singapore Post opens early for them on this day) to send letters away followed by meeting anyone they know from home or just generally taking the afternoon off during which they wander local shopping malls, which in turn cater to them as a market.





This is a tradition that has continued for many years. Ever since I can remember.




Not much dancing gets done nor tea drunk. Instead, shopping malls and park benches get filled with maids on parade doing their best to get some form of social interaction or normalcy to their otherwise confined life of servitude. The whole area takes on a carnival flavour.



So on any steamy Sunday in Singapore, take a walk down the Orchard Road. Drink some Tea and enjoy the view.

No problems lah!!!!

Koh Chang - a photographic adventure

Once upon a time, in a far away place, there was a fabled island known only to locals and shaped like an elephant, referred to in hushed whispers as the paradise Koh Chang (Elephant Island).

Near vertical, tropically swathed, misty mountains surrounded by white sandy beaches with crystal waters. Palm fringed, coral reefs on the seaward side. An island that actually did look like the photograph in the brochure.

I remember this place. I slept on its beaches and conversed with the fishermen who used to pull in with their small catches to sell. An old lady and her husband would cook.

So with a week to spare between assignments, I hook up with Martin the dancing bear and we sashe (or was it tango) our way down the coast looking to capture the heart of the quaint sea villages and island charm of Thailand's eastern seaboard.

From Pattaya we head east towards Cambodia looking to stop at each little town along the way and to "grow" a life as it is here essay by camera.

Inwardly I cringe a little as I write this.

It appears that the worlds (or at the very least Thailand's) entire plastic bag stock has been dumped in every place we stop to shoot. Scenes of graceful fishing fleets nestling on the low tide sands are totally eviscerated by what in my estimate were at least a tonne of plastic. Everywhere the lens looked.

When we get to the island, it actually gets worse. My wonderful little island no longer looks the picture of paradise.

Its been plasticized. And not just with plastic bag garbage. To add insult to injury, its been overbuilt with some of the ugliest buildings ever built (no way will I use the word architecture cause that implies art which this place sadly now needs).

Water has suffered a bit as well. Its brown. Cant see my feet at knee level brown.

The entire foreshore is now overbuilt with 4 star and 5 star hotels. You cant get to the beach anymore unless you stay at one of these places. I wonder where their sewage discharges to? And with all this trampling by construction crews and the odd suckered tourist, its just a mud quagmire and its hasn't started to rain yet.

I could rave on about the greed of the Thai people who did this or the apathy of the Thai people who let this happen in a listed National Park. Instead I go home, photoless and deeply saddened.

I am not accepting plastic bags anymore. They kill islands.

Mai Pen Rai eh?

Cambodia Again.......What Have We done About It?

The Great Moscow Circus

Can you recall it? The dimming of the lights, an electric air? The hush, then the roar of applause? The excitement at the entrance of the ringmaster, theatre resplendent. Lit by a big spot of crisp white light?

Hundreds of thousands of children world over, clutching crisps/popcorn/grass derived snack, entertained by an exotic mix of animals, garishly painted sets, daring do feats and simple slapstick comedy by some of the worlds most talented athletes all under one roof. A Big Top no less.

The Great Moscow Circus.

From the USSR it sprang forth to entertain generations. Itself an icon of perfection in the circus industry. Who can ever forget its most famous assets Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulinor or Oleg Konstantinovich Popov.

Perhaps better remembered as Nikulin and Popov the clowns.

Definers of the clowning medium on the world stage and both Heroes of the Soviet Union.

On the Metro between Mendeleyevskaya and Chekhovskaya lies Tsvetnoy Bulvar, the station from which I have just exited to stand in the warm twilight of a lovely Moscow evening.

I cant find words to describe just how purple the sky is.

My destination is………yes you guessed it, the Great Moscow Circus.

I wander along the boulevard, past facades of Italian drawn houses with cute boutiques on the ground floor to arrive at a rather unimposing and artless building with a faded and part broken sign and…

Its closed.

All this way from Sheremetyevo, via the Bolshoi Ballet, Lenin’s Library, The Arborium, St Basils cathedral, GUM department store on Red Square, Comrade Lenin’s mausoleum, the Kremlin with the changing of the guards at the eternal flame (women old and young weeping while the guards march to a mechanical doll precision goose step), the Arbats Old and New, Gorky’s house, the Lubyanka and Gastronom Number One with its amazing ceilings.

And damn. It’s closed.

Might as well have stayed home.

I amble over to a guy dressed in rather old fashioned and badly tailored military garb sitting in a small guardhouse and casually enquire as to when it will be open.

His English is great, he tells me to “piss off”.

Maybe he was a also a Hero of the Soviet Union and is offended at the fact that I failed to recognise such a high status.

My mistake, Russians are not generally so offensive but they do have a certain officiousness about them given a uniform. However they also have an inbuilt rebelliousness to authority.

Its hard to imagine how those two traits combine, but once you’ve got it, there my friend, is Russia. No wonder hardly anyone smiles. Its as though the world owes them a favour, and life is an unfolding drama ever increasing in hardship.

The sorrow. Makes for great literature over the centuries.

And yet, the world can rightly thank them for some great contribution to Art and Science and of course the Circus.

A circus is commonly a traveling company of performers that may include acrobats, clowns, trained animals, trapeze acts, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists. The word also describes the performance that they give, which is usually a series of acts that are choreographed to music.

A circus is held in an oval or circular arena with tiered seating around its edge.

Moscow is built in three rings. The Sadovayer ring road surrounds the center of the arena. Its within this loop that one sees the true circus which Moscow always was and very much still is.

Anyone who is anyone lives in the inner ring. It was built by mainly Italian masons several hundred years ago and looks very very Milan like.

The heathen others live outside of the purple circle (that’s the colour of the tram signage).

And from the Purple Circle to the next ring is well…….ummm, very soviet. As in startlingly lacking any form of art in architecture and more than a little rundown/seedy looking. Except for the amazing sculptures exhorting the masses to work harder in the struggle (against what I think no one really has any firm idea).

So given 200 years, what has the inner facades of downtown Moscow witnessed?

First was the Boyer. The merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Second was the KGB. The merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Third is the Biznizmen or “new” Russians, merchants surrounding the court of the Kremlin.
Most of these Biznizmen are from old Boyer families and ex KGB.

Remarkable. A Circus by any definition.

So the act never stopped, the jugglers continued to juggle and there is no shortage of acrobats or conjurors in the new Souvenirgrad. It’s business as usual.

Except old people don’t get pensions anymore.

Capitalism was always a much better proposition for the Boyer, how many communists drove Mercedes Benz’s?

Who the hell wants to read Bulgakov or Gorky or Pushkin when Fox TV is at hand?

I sigh, and get back onto the Metro and head to Gastronom, at least it serves a decent espresso.

The original Great Moscow Circus moved to the “West” years ago, its now a franchise. Perhaps its owners read the writing on the wall. They were Heroes of the Soviet Union after all.

A crisp white light shines on the Kremlin as I goose step past heading up Tverskaya, the music is martial.

"Engineering is my lawful wife," he once said, "and photography is my mistress." And with that, Gorky rolls over.