Kung Hei Fat Choi – Gong Xi Fa Cai

Whether you say it in Cantonese or in Manadarin, Happy Chinese New Year to all our readers. The five day break has finally given the editorial team at Mango Farmers Weekly the chance to get the Annual Review written and published. For the first time, it is now available on the Internet at …

www.LawrenceUpton.com

Yes, the website is up and running and has been regularly maintained since late summer. To put it another way it’s been updated once. And now for the Year of the Horse, it’s been given a fresh lick of paint and bucket of oats and is raring to go. Check it out. If you have any comments, send them to lawrence@LawrenceUpton.com.

All positive comments will be gratefully received. All negative comments will be hurled into the farthest reaches of damnation or completely ignored, whichever is easier.

The Traveller Comes Home

Although I enjoy travelling enormously and Singapore Airlines Raffles Class is an exceedingly comfortable way to fly, it does get a little wearing at times.

Last Easter, I woke up on Good Friday morning in the Singapore flat Pacita and I moved into six months earlier. It was a beautiful morning with the sun streaming into the living room. I slowly looked around and said. “This is a lovely apartment. I wish I lived here.”

And shortly after that, I did. After a solid eighteen months of working away from home, nine months in Jakarta flying back each weekend and nine months in Hong Kong flying back every other weekend, I finally started working in Singapore in May.

There has still been a fair bit of travelling, but usually just one or two day trips around the region, so now I get to enjoy the sights, sounds and food of Singapore. Pacita and I have even managed to see some of the tourist attractions here, including the Botanical Gardens and the Night Safari. Both are highly recommended, by the way.

No more saying to visitors, “I hear the Botanical Gardens are very nice,” or “I’m told the Night Safari is well worth a visit.” Just as well, as it is rather embarrassing to admit we’ve lived here for over five years and not seen anything.

Food, Glorious Food

The last year has seen a major refurbishment in the Takashimaya food court. Takashimaya is the major department store in Singapore, the local Selfridges, and also the location of my office. We now have over fifty different food stalls, selling everything from Teppanyaki Chicken to Spicy Ramen Noodles to Fish & Chips.

My favourite though is the Vietnamese stall: delicious crispy and fresh spring rolls, prawn on sugar cane, chicken, mango and papaya salad, and beef noodle soup.

 Mangoes on the Mango Farm

And so, thirteen years after we first bought a plot of land and seven years after our first planting, mangoes appeared on our trees. Only twenty of them on one branch on one tree but definitely a start. We are eagerly awaiting 2002 to see what sort of crop it brings.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Audience

The sun has sunk well below the yard arm, the frogs have started their raucous croaking and Kuya (elder brother, as I am known) has his first gin and tonic to hand. Marks & Spencer jumbo peanuts and Pringle crisps are ready and waiting.

Yes, it's time for a movie. Choosing from the growing selection of international cinema available on DVD in the Cambaguio Farm library, Kuya faces a difficult decision. Will it be something  Polish, perhaps Krystow Krstowski's Decalogue. Maybe a light Norwegian comedy, or a heavy Ingmar Bergman drama full of deep introspection, failing relationships and suicidal thoughts, to be shared by the audience eventually. Apparently, in Fanny and Alexander, one scene even got a laugh, but that was swiftly taken out in the Director's Cut version.

But Kuya knows what is expected of him, especially on a Saturday night, and it is most certainly not European subtitles. Even though there is no one else present, the unspoken desires hang heavy in the room. Truth to tell, Kuya is happy with the decision. There is a time for subtitles and that is much later at night when the candles are guttering lower.

His hand reaches for the DVD box, the drawer of the player slides open, the disk is inserted and the unmistakeable sounds of the latest Mission Impossible theme tune fill the room.

There were only three other possible choices: Kung Fu, James Bond (Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan, please, not that rather wooden Roger Moore) or The Muscles from Brussels, Jean Claude van Damme. Actually, anything will do as long as it has lots of flash-bang-wallop, whizzy special effects and villains being shown conclusive violence.

The opening bars of the theme tune have faded and Tom Cruise is busy hanging from his fingernails, a thousand feet up a rock, for no very good reason at all. And there it is, just a slight creak in the background, almost lost in the techno soundtrack as Cruise listens to his sunglasses.

A quick twist of the neck and Kuya confirms that one of the previously closed wooden shutters in the living room have been twisted through 90 degrees and the first members of the hidden audience have arrived. They are perched on the porch outside, peering through the shutters, three or four of them, too shy to actually sit in the room.

Cruise's sunglasses have exploded, sorry self-destructed, and he is apologising for not being easily contactable on holiday (guilty twinge from Kuya who is also not easily contactable on holiday, about the only thing he has in common with Tom Cruise). And now the crouching tigers, the bolder members of the audience, make their move.

Three or four of the older children from the neighbourhood walk boldly into the room. "Good evening, Kuya," is uttered almost as an aside and then they crouch down on the floor, ignoring the nice comfortable seats. They know they will be thrown out of these when more important people arrive. In fact, almost anyone else is more important, so they focus on a comfy spot on the floor.

By the time Tom Cruise is snuggling up to the delicious Thandie Newton, the audience has grown to 35 people, inside and outside the room. and everyone has settled down to watch and enjoy.

So how did this audience know when it was time to crouch and hide. Well, there are several reasons. First, Kuya starts watching movies at this time every night. Secondly, it's only during the week that he begins with some incomprehensible British comedy like BlackAdder or Fawlty Towers or Only Fools and Horses.

Thirdly and most importantly, being in remote farmhouse, 9 hours roundtrip from the nearest bank, Kuya plays the movies bloody loud. The Mission Impossible theme tune booms around the hills, valleys, rainforest, rice paddies and coconut plantations for miles around and this is the only place to watch imported movies within 45 minutes walk.

A Streetlight named Untaga

For many years, the view from our farmhouse at night across the valley was untroubled by evidence of  electricity, except for a surprisingly irregular lighthouse in the far distance, near the port of Ubay.

But in the last two years, changes have come about. The white glow of neon has started to spot the road leading from the local town, Alicia, to the interior. Now even the occasional nipa hut within reach of the road has its own light. The lights even grew bright enough to make out the white roof of the lottery winners, who had built a house right on the road itself, in the heart of the village of Untaga.

And suddenly last year there was dramatic progress. A sodium streetlight appeared, its orange glow a common sight elsewhere in the developed world, but an absolute rarity here in the northeast corner of one of the Philippines lesser islands. Of course, not lesser to the million or so people who live here, but certainly compared to the main island of Luzon or to Cebu, centre of the Visayan region.

But how had this streetlight got to Untaga. The usual way these things come to pass is that some grand scheme costing tens of millions of pesos is proposed by the local mayor, facing imminent re-election. "Let's make Untaga the first village on the island of Bohol to be fully lit by sodium streetlights."

The request travels up the local government hierarchy to end up on the desk of the Provincial Governor. He sees how much of his personally controllable budget, or pork barrel, is available and scales back the project to what will give him maximum credit for minimum outlay and allow for allocation of contracts to “related parties.”

 Now the plan is only for a million pesos and is for one street only to be lit. The decision and the cash filter back down through the hierarchy, leaking heavily all the way. This all takes time of course and the original election has been and gone. In fact, it's election time again.

So, the hundred thousand pesos in actual cash gets spent and one single streetlight gets erected. Together with a large notice.

"This streetlight was erected through the efforts of the Mayor of Untaga and the Governor of Bohol."

Nothing, you will notice about the poor taxpayers who had to fund the full million, which was spent or leaked.

Whether the citizens were impressed or not and re-elected the mayor, I did not manage to find out, but next year, there was a second smaller Streetlight in Untaga, right next to the first.

When I explained the story of the streetlights to Pacita, she said, "Don't be silly. They're not streetlights. They are for the basketball plaza and they both went up together last year."

Oh well, so much for my understanding of the political realities in the Philippines.

Wedding Bells on Christmas Day

"We're going to a wedding tomorrow," says Pacita. "But isn't that a little unusual," I reply. "A wedding on Christmas Day?" "Not at all, this the Church of Jesus Christ."

For a country full of Roman Catholics, there sure are a lot of other religions around.

Anyway, the wedding started at 10am, Philippine time, so when we arrived at 10:30, we were sure nothing would have happened yet. But, in fact, the minister was well into his sermon, so they must have kicked off pretty much on time.

One of Pacita's ex-maids, Marilyn was marrying Jim, a local boy in La Hacienda, the next village along from Untaga.

The minister was certainly going at his sermon hammer and tongs. I have rarely heard such passion for what must be pretty regular occurrence. At least he had foresworn the sunglasses favoured by our previous  local minister, so he did not look too much like a gangster.

Pausing occasionally to wipe away a tear, he entreated them as to the solemn and binding course they were embarking upon, And with no divorce in the Philippines, it was certainly binding.

The bride was blushing in her white gown, rented for the day, and the groom was dashing in his suit, also rented. Once again, however, the real stars of the show were the bridesmaids, wearing as seemed so common at Filipino weddings, rather sexy outfits. Their purple dresses were pretty much backless and deeply slit up the sides. I have to say they featured heavily in the wedding video being shot by yours truly.

I did of course manage to get the affirmation of vows, the exchange of rings and the kiss, so the bride and groom made slightly more than a token appearance.

After the ceremony we adjourned to the reception, or at least we tried to. The guests took a minibus along the main road, then a small tractor-trailer took them up into the hills for twenty minutes. We followed on a motorcycle. Eventually we were dropped off at the public square of a small hamlet and told about the twenty minute walk through rice paddies, rather muddy rice paddies in fact since it had been raining for seven days continuously. Fortunately, the rain had stopped just before the wedding started and it had turned into a glorious sunny day.

Pacita and I looked at each other, decided duty had been done and it was Christmas morning after all, so we beat a retreat, passing yet another tractor full of guests as we headed back to the farmhouse to view the progress on construction of the new extension.