Who speaks three languages in Singapore but not English?

Chineasy aid to learning Chinese picure language showing coloured pictures.

Singapore flag.

US flag
Singaporeans who studied in the USA will have American accents.

UK flag
British pronounication is the norm, inherited from parents who lived int he era when Singapore was British and schools tught British English then as now. Also founding father of the nation, Lee Kuan Yew, studied in the UK, so he favoured British English.

Many people in Singapore speak Mandarin which they learn at school and at home two Chinese 'dialects', one from each parent, such as Hokkien and Teochew. They struggle with English because English has a past tense whilst Mandarin speakers simple say I go yesterday. Also they do not have 'the' and 'a' so every English sentence is difficult to create and to recognize. I discovered this when I started learning Mandarin.

Useful language learning websites
Memrise.com
Duolingo.com
chineasy.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/?multi_permalinks=2383118521906906&notif_id=1568518579063017&notif_t=group_highlights

Author
Angela Lansbury, teacher of English and other languages, author of 20 books.

What Colours You See In Singapore's Colourful Green Garden City

Flag of Singapore.

The flag of Singapore is red. the lucky colour is red. Another favourite colour is orange, orange lanterns for festivals, any time.

Singapore is a garden city, full of colourful flowers. Colours are all around you. The green palm trees have orange coconuts. There's even a lipstick palm with red.

Beautiful Bridges
As you drive from Changi airport into the city, you notice the beautiful bridges, draped with magenta boughainvillea. (The flowers are named after a French botanist and explorer).

Lee Kuan Yew, the early minister and later senior minister of Singapore, wanted the bridges to be adorned with colourful flowers. So they were, and still are.

Art on the underground in Singapore. Bras Basah MRT under the art school.

An army of invisible gardeners, like the clouds watering the plants, must pass unnoticed when you are not looking. So that later, when you do look, you see only the results of their diligence, the beautiful colourful flowers.

Beautiful Buildings
Beyond the bridges, or on either side, live the people who need the bridges. The buildings your car or bus or taxi passes are colourful. The government build HDB (housing development board) skyscrapers distinguished from each other by: tiled battlements and gables, curves of balconies around cylindrical buildings, co-ordinated stripes, random rainbows, patchwork balconies, polkadots of round windows up the stairwells, or mosaics or trees of colour.

Chinatown Colours
Divert from Downtown to Chinatown for a look at old Singapore. You will see that colour has always been here.

Tiles on seats and floors in Waterloo Centre, Waterloo Street.

Fun Food
Stop for food, and you will find colours in the delicacies and desserts.

The ubiquitous green pandan cake and green buns.

Green birthday cake.

Magenta orchids in the hotel lobbies and toilets.

No shortage of Western favourite foods. Macaroons in pink.

Gardens and parks are full of orange and pink and purple flowers.

But you don't miss out down underground on the MRT, mass rapid transit. If you come down the escalator and land in the middle of the platform, the trains seem to stretch in both directions forever.

However, glance up for a guide on the overhead screen as to where you will get a seat, and you instantly see that the MRT trains are three carriages long. The carriages fit the platforms.

The glass sliding doors' primary purpose is to hold in the air conditioning. A beautiful bonus is helping trains run on time because they control the human flow by helping to prevent accidents, falling, pushing, potential suicides and dropped keys and phones.

Red lines drawn diagonally from where the doors stop get you to the right place, and to the sides of the doors so you make way for alighting passengers.

Colours
The railway carriages are colourful. Seasonal colours. Eventful colours. Often I am like the other passengers, staring at a mobile phone. Jumping up suddenly on hearing my destination announced. But sometimes I look up and notice something new. Right and left of me are in the adjoining carriages are the latest colours. Pink. Green. Sometimes growing over the walls and ceiling like the quick-growing plants outside on the motorways far overhead, up two or three escalators. Sometimes simply on the railway carriage floor, radiating out, under the poles.

Useful Websites For Travellers
singaporeairlines.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of Toastmasters International speakers' clubs in the UK and Singapore and online.

See Beautiful Bougainvillea On Bridges in Singapore - Started by Lee Kuan Yew

Flowers over the bridges across the motorway impress me every time I come home to Singapore's Changi Airport.

So colourful. So elegant. So happy. So harmonious.

I think of the quotation, 'gardens are not made - by saying oh how beautiful and sitting in the shade'.



I was delighted to read that the idea of putting plants on the bridges came from Lee Kuan Yew.

The plant is named after a French man, an admiral of a ship, by the on board botanist.

The good news is that the plants flower almost all year in tropical regions, such as Singapore, and in the USA in Florida. They can be grown as small trees, as climbers along fences and bridges, or in pots and hanging baskets. In temperate climates instead they have a short season.

Best of all, they thrive with little water. Perfect for those of us who travel a lot.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainvillea
How to take cuttings:
https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/bougainvillea.html

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/political-leaders-share-reflections-on-mr-lee-kuan-yews-legacy
https://mothership.sg/2019/03/bougainvillea-flowers-singapore-overhead-bridge/
singaporeair.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many more pictures of Singapore and plants around the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Singlish words you need to know translated into British English

Singapore flag. 

Problem
Singlish sounds like English but the change of grammar or introduction of a new word can lead to ambiguity or total incomprehension by English speakers. Once you have mastered a few words most of it becomes clear.

Lee Kuan Yew, who was both revered and feared, was educated in the UK and an advocate of using British English to encourage the ability to speak proper, recognizable English to pass exams and  aid international communication making Singapore more accessible to trade and tourism.

However, increasingly Singlish is making a comeback.

After my family bought Kleenex boxes with Singlish words, I went to the Kleenex Facebook page and asked for translations.

You can buy books on Singlish from bookshops in Singapore and on line.

Singlish From Kleenex Boxes:
bojio -
chope - reserve a seat of table by placing on the table of chair an item such as paper tissues
lim kopi -

Singlish
b (baja?) - Singaporean educated in the UK and speaking British English at home

Singlish often shortens sentences, making it quicker and easier to speak Singlish

General Singlish Terms
borrow - borrow or lend
can? - can you / can I ?
can, can! - yes I can / yes, you can
Correct (often pronounced without the t as correck) - you are right / yes
off day - day off (in the UK an off day or bad hair day is a day when everything goes wrong)
off the light - turn off the light
off service (on buses) - out of service
out of point - speaking off the topic
lend - borrow or lend
no more already - we are out of stock
pick you at the airport - pick you up at the airport

When you read the history of education in Asia and the UK it is interesting to see how the pendulum swings. In the UK after WWII it would have been considered of little use and very difficult to find a teacher or take an exam in Chinese or Japanese. However, in 2018 increasing numbers of Asians are visiting the UK, which means translators are required for tourists as guides and in shops, and increasing numbers of pupils are learning Chinese and Japanese (which is different as a spoken language but can be read or written using both Chinese and Romanised writing).

https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-spread-of-Western-educational-practices-to-Asian-countries

(More text and pictures will be added later.)

Angela Lansbury
Author and teacher of English and other languages

England has a green belt and Singapore has a green building programme

In London we are constantly fighting to protect the Green Belt designed to  protect greenery and prevent urban sprawl.

I met a woman whose job is planning greenery on estates and now up the sides of buildings and on their rooftops in Singapore.

She showed me this tree planted by Lee Kuan Yew. The plaque, inset in a tree trunk, shows an urban building surrounded by the colour green. The text reads:

TANJONG PAGAR TOWN COUNCIL

CLEAN AND GREEN SINGAPORE

This tree

was planted by

MR LEE KUAN YEW

MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC

November 2011

The trees you see planted along streets are not chosen at random.

I was impressed by the fact that I learned to much from this little side trip, walking from the Buena Vista Community Centre (abbreviated to CC). I had forgotten that Lee Kuan Yew actually was a minister with an area constituency, not just bypassing local areas and instantly made into a high-powered minister responsible for the whole country.

My friend is a real enthusiast. In addition to taking three of us on a detour to see this tree, she pointed out assorted buildings as we passed, telling us about the walls of greenery and the trees along the avenues and the trees on rooftops.

I am curious to know how the greenery survives on buildings, especially those walls of greenery. How come they don't destroy the building's fascia, the way ivy destroys the brickwork of buildings in England. She says you have the greenery in front of the wall, growing on a trellis in front. Then you have to spend money on watering systems.

But how do you prevent trees on rooftops putting down roots and destroying the rooftop and growing out of control like the 'seed' planted by Jack in the beanstalk? You place the roots in a container. Like Bonsai. No, she says. I have not understood. Never mind, I am getting the idea. Like all the gardens in Singapore, a great deal of thought, planning and maintenance is required. I recall the famous quotation, that 'gardens are not made by saying,"oh how beautiful" and sitting in the shade'.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Eurasian Exhibition and WWII Exhibition in Singapore

The Eurasian centre is near Geylang. On the ground floor, up a few steps, is an exhibition on Eurasians.

I had always thought that Eurasians were mixed Europeans and Asians - Chinese - the majority face and language of Singapore. When I first came to Singapore, it was just before the air crash which killed writer Bonny Hicks and I read her books, 'Excuse Me, Are You A Model?', and 'Discuss Disgust', about the problems and prejudice she faced as a child, and as an adult.

But at this exhibition I discovered that the Eurasians at this centre and in the Toastmasters club were not Chinese but mainly mixed Indian and British.

What is the difference between Eurasian and Anglo-Indian? Eurasians and a mixture of Europeans and Asians, have a European parent, usually the father, and an Asian or to be more precise, Indian mother. Anglo-Indians have two Indian parents but are brought up in Either India or often in England, and look Indian but speak Fluent English from childhood and are completely Anglicised in their cultural customs as well as language.

The majority of them will have two Christian parents, not as I expected, Anglicans, but often Catholics. With language and religion in common, they find it easy to get along, have shared interests, and gain acceptance from both families.

Exhibition and Eurasian History
What is there to see in the exhibition? After the explanation of who are or were the earliest Eurasians, you see the history of the organisation. Not a phenomenon of fighting prejudice at the Thirties or WWII. Nor in the Liberal days post-war. But way back in the 1880s. Yes, long before Lee Kuan Yew decided that best way to prevent riots and massacres was to divide the races up so that no sub group could gather together to plan trouble. Lee Kuan Yew ensured everybody would have friendly neighbours in a mixed race community,

Raffles, by contrast, had established enclaves such as we now see in Chinatown and Little India. Similarly, the earliest settlers, gathered at clubs for groups of people speaking the same language. So the Eurasians, like many others, founded a club where they could meet, speak the same language, and eat familiar food.

Wedding Dress
The largest and most striking exhibition piece is the wedding dress in white. I also liked the letter from the groom to the parents of his bride to be. He ended by telling them that he had already approached his own parents and received their blessing.

White Bread Sandwiches
Today the club has a restaurant on the ground floor. To my surprise, when they provided sandwiches, the sandwiches where white bread with vegetables and or cheese or egg, but into large triangles. The fashion nowadays is to serve a mixture of brown bread, considered healthier, or a usually appealing mixture of brown and white, often cut into smaller sizes.

Victorian Sandwiches
Only after reflecting on the style of food, and the Victorian era origins of the club, did it occur to me that triangles of white bread with cucumber would have been the fare of the Victorian era.

WWII Exhibition
Upstairs was another exhibition about Eurasians, this time concentrating on how they fared in WWII. Like the exhibition I had seen a day previously at The Old For Factory Museum, about WWII (on the site of the surrender to the Japanese) this history of the Eurasians included maps of the region in WWII and some stories including a few harrowing ones about those who disappeared and living in fear.

On a brighter note, and of interest to those who are nervous about bringing in groups who might include a Japanese friend, a large display is about a Japanese man who saved Eurasians by sending them to a centre in Malaysia, out of the way of greater danger in Singapore.

MRT Aljunied
K a l l i n g

A map of their location is on their Facebook site.

Eurasian Association, Singapore
139 Ceylon Road, Singapore 429744.
Tel: (+65) 6447 1578
Email:membership@eurasians.org


Angela Lansbury B A Hons, CL, ACG.

WWII in Singapore - video and museum at the Old Ford Factory

All that's left of the outside old Ford Factory is the wonderful art deco exterior.

All that's left of the interior is an accurate reproduction of the surrender table, where the British surrendered to the Japanese, plus chairs from WWII, which might have been the actual chairs used.

The price is a mere Singaporean $3 and free to both Singaporeans (lots of schoolchildren visit) and permanent residents (expats who are long time residents but still hanging onto their birthplace passports, such as British passports, which prevents them from becoming Singaporean).

The museum has a small number of books and gifts on sale at the entrance. To the right is a movie theatre room where you can watch a video of about half an hour which is an overview of WWII, or one of several other films, one of which is two hours long, so it's worthwhile to make repeat visits on your own or with friends, family and tourist visitors.

The overview video explained two things to me:

1 The end of the war was foreseen by locals and the Japanese after the air Battle of Midway, which reduced Japanese air power and like the Battle of Britain was an essential step towards success on the ground for the Allies.

2 a) The Japanese had previously invaded China and because of opposition groups fighting openly or covertly again Japanese in China they regarded the Chinese in Singapore as a potential threat, which is why Chinese deemed political were massacred at the start, in worse danger than the Indian and British or European POWs and civilians.
2) b) Tan Kah Kee, who has a station named after him on the Downtown line was on the Japanese hitlist.

3 The Burma railway was important (to the Japanese) because Burma was the barrier between Thailand (to the north of Malaysia) and India. With lack of access by sea, a land bridge was essential.

On a jollier note, we see how crops were grown locally. Goats provided milk. Pigs and chickens were fed cockroaches. I always wondered what use coach roaches are!

On display is a white wedding dress. Two ladies gave accounts of their wartime weddings.

The Japanese surrender marked the end of WWII. Although food rationing continued, and the buildings had to be rebuilt, it was a chance for the restoration of peace and prosperity.

The war in Europe had already ended about 6 months earlier. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to the testimony of Singaporean residents, brought a swifter end to the war in Asia.

It was not until decades later that the mass graves of missing Chinese massacred on the beaches and elsewhere were found.

A nice end note is Lee Kuan Yew's dignified and conciliatory commend on the WWII memorial, that is not to recall old enmities but to honour lost ancestors.

Photos being added shortly.
Please share this with anybody who might be interested. I have other posts on varied subjects and videos on YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Cashew Station artwork shows clean Singapore; what about cashew trees?

If you try the new Downtown line in Singapore which opened after Xmas in late December 2015 ready for the new year, you will have the chance to see some new artwork.

Cashew station at first disappointed me because I was hoping for something bigger and more colourful. But when I had time to stop and read the caption and look closely I appreciated that it was not an old style 2D painting but a rather original artwork, more like a collage of found objects.

I would be tempted to call it multi-media, but my son insists that multi-media would be at least two different types of media, such as sound and light. So a collage of feathers and buttons is still a collage. In this artwork we have a collage of everyday cleaning materials such as toilet brushes used to convey the theme of clean, green Singapore, the vision of Singapore as a Garden City.

I would have liked more greenery. But you can see that elsewhere. The Botanic Gardens station has a tree (see later post).

For news about cashew nut trees in the area, see later post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Lee Kuan Yew: funeral, words of wisdom and books to read

Lee Kuan Yew, father of modern Singapore,  (born Harry Lee Kuan Yew, 16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015) was buried on Sunday 2015 in Singapore. It was said of him, by his son in the funeral speech broadcast to the nation, 'If you want to see my epitaph, look around you'. This was originally inscribed on the stone for Sir Christopher Wren in St Paul's Cathedral, London. R.I.P.

Lee Kuan Yew wrote his memoirs. Books to read on your travels by and about him:
The Singapore Story.
The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew.
On the Amazon website you can look inside the books.

For quotations by and about Lee Kuan Yew see Wikiquote.