Singapore Swing by John Malathronas Read Free Book Online

and administration rights. Even in 1819, the fortunes of the island and mainland Malaya had started to diverge.
    Raffles’ latitude far extended anything London or Calcutta had authorised. He knew the dangers well: that the Dutch might attack Singapore; that the Sultan of Johore might try to trounce his brother once and for all; that the company board might accuse him of subordination; and that the British government would be furious. His action was a gigantic bluff: in this victorious, post-Napoleonic climate, he simply didn’t think anyone would dare rise against Britain.
    - 5 -
    There’s English and there’s Singlish – and there are signs to remind me of the way the old imperial language has been adapted to the magical world of the East; there be dragons and there be new words: ‘leisureplex’ and ‘merlion’ hit me within two minutes of each other. A sign by a building site uses the impersonal passive: ‘Inconvenience caused is regretted’. No one here regrets anything in the active voice for that would mean losing face.
    There’s ‘Wellness’ now in front of me in this New Age Singlish. It is a large reflexology centre with a smiling Chinese woman in a doctor’s white apron touting for business. She looks at my arm and the sling and waves me in. I follow her call, admiring the wa of the ambience where innocuous pastels of beech beige and pomegranate pink predominate. The spacious chamber looks mostly empty even though there are half a dozen clients being, no, not massaged, but rejuvenated, revitalised, reinvigorated . Slow synth music soothes the subconscious: did Brian Eno ever cut a record Music for Spas ?
    My host, who introduces herself as Lillian, gives me a price menu. She is silent, because talking and haggling disturbs the Tao of Therapy. She points at my shoulder suggesting a massage, but my tendons need time to mend and fuse. I vacillate between an ear-candling session, which ‘ restores neural functions as it allows the oxygen to travel through the cleaned passageways of the ears and enter the brain ’, and a reflexology session which is really a foot massage. Reasoning that my grey cells have already been smoked to extinction by various chemicals, I opt for half an hour of the latter. Lillian finds her voice and finally speaks with only the faintest hint of disapproval: ‘We advise forty minutes.’
    I check. It’s ten dollars more. I smile and say no, trying to match her detached, polite manner. It’s easy; I know how to refuse.
    I lie on a reclining armchair and take off my sandals. I close my eyes while Lillian washes and talcums my feet in a ritual as old as submissiveness itself. When she rests them on a small cushion and starts pinching my toe tips, I enter metatarsal heaven: ‘ This little piggy went to market/this little piggy stayed home .’ She pinches every toe following its contour and pressing hard against the phalange bones. ‘ This little piggy had roast beef/this little piggy had none .’ I’m secretly afraid I might start giggling, since I’m very ticklish, but I needn’t have worried.
    â€˜ This little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home !’
    â€˜OUCH!’ I scream.
    Lillian smiles angelically. She points at my nose. ‘Sinus,’ she says, or rather I guess. And yes, I suffer from bouts of rhinitis. I tell myself that this New Age nonsense is in reality Old Age nonsense, having been part of Chinese medicine for thousands of years.
    I sneeze violently. ‘Slow on the nose bit,’ I blurt out.
    She points at the open window. ‘No nose,’ she says. ‘Dust from construction.’
    As if to underline her sentence, the merciless sound of a drill fills the room with un-Enoesque unpleasantry, and twenty Chinese collectively wince at this sudden breaking of harmony in the ether. My masseuse looks up outraged and walks to the only woman not dressed