Thaipusam Singapore - 2012 - Blood, Sweat and Tears

Well, would you believe it's a year since the last time this was happening on the streets of Singapore? Yet another blue skied, hot, sunny day.
Perfect for the viewing public and photographers but alas, I fear, less so for those devotees demonstrating their faith in such an extraordinary way. Dehydration must be extreme (I drank in excess of 1.5 litres just trailing these guys around), especially for those with their tongues pierced making consuming water almost impossible without choking. Indeed, this year the devotees seemed to be suffering somewhat more than last year with a couple I saw passing out. They were up on their feet (with help), in no time but it just shows the extent they go to to demonstrate their faith. I feel I spent more time taking the spectacle in this year as opposed to last year when I took photos like it was going out of fashion. I also felt much more at home on the streets of Little India and Tank Road as the year in between has served to teach me more about the people here and become more in tune with the way they live. I felt much comfortable and less intrusive whilst taking photos and generally chatting to people about the experience that is Thaipusam.
It's amazing that such a large festival (around 36 hours and thousands of devotees walking the streets. Not to mention the friends and family, helpers, hangers-on, volunteers handing out water and cooking food and of course the massive numbers of those coming to view the spectacle), barely spills outside the confines of the temporary fencing put up to contain it. Indeed, a street or two back from Serangoon Road (the main road through Little India), you wouldn't know it was going on and the locals are sitting back having a kopi and cigarette just like any other day. The usual infusion of incense, flower garlands and spices emanating from the shopfronts gives the place it's usual, comfortable feel. Inside the temples the Hindu worshippers enter into a much more personal, yet no less meaningful, form of adulation. Prayers are said, some silent, some not so silent. Candles, made at dazzling speed on site, are lit and the Gods are idolised in among the men, women and families clammering to pay their respects. Each person clothed in their finest attire lest they be accused of falling short of the level of reverence expected of such occasion. The atmosphere in the temples felt truly a family affair, very relaxed with a lot of smiling faces. Yet, in the background, an underlying tempo being struck up by the drumming followers of the devotees leads you back into the throng. As you negotiate your way to the front of the crowds you start to see the real meaning of blood, sweat and tears. The immense amount of apparent physical effort being put suddenly in doubt as the kadavi-barers break into a dance and twist and twirl down the street, their kadavis suddenly coming to life and bending and bowing under their owner's efforts. The followers continuing to keep up the tempo to encourage the trance-like state that these men and women get in to to complete the challenge.
This year as well as treading the streets during the heat of the day I also ventured out in the evening after dark. It feels and looks different at that time. Many more people spilling out of their work places to line the streets, part in support and part in wonder and awe. Some watching family and friends come past, some in it (myself included) for the photo opportunities. Some of the kadavis are lit and some appear to tower over the offerings seen earlier in the day. Maybe it was the lighting or maybe they really were bigger, but to carry them looked almost unfeasible. The cool breeze of the night was definitely a help to those walking and the streets were packed, much more so than during the day. It was also evident that the general population of Little India (and Indians in general) were out to pay homage in the evening meaning the kadavi carriers were even more obstructed from walking than during the day. Indeed, I felt having to wait at each set of traffic lights (and trust me, there are a lot of them in Singapore), was a little harsh. But if that what it takes, then these guys are up for the challenge.

For a view on what I saw and felt last year about Thaipusam have a look here.

Bali - Part 3 - School and mountains

Tuesday and back to Bukti today to visit the school in Putu's home village. The schools in Bali are private and parents must pay for their kids to get educated. Having spoken to the Villa gardener it's not that cheap but  most parents (as parents do), will find the money somehow as they realise how important it is. As we have littl'uns we went to the primary part of the school where the kids are aged between four and six years old. As soon as you arrive (for those of us with families) you get a very familiar feel to the place. Toys in the playground, bright colours and cartoons adorning the walls and cheeky kids everywhere. Well, not everywhere. The school was slightly emptier than usual owing to the fact that the village was celebrating Black Moon Day where the majority of the village stops to make flower offerings and gather in the temples to pay devotions to nature's energies. Those children that were in school were dressed in their traditional robes topped off with the 'peci' or hat. Also in evidence was the traditional Batik design (which is actually named after the technique used to make it), so famous in Indonesia.

I really like Batik, but I don't think it's something I could get away with wearing. It just doesn't suit me. I've seen many westerners that have tried it and not many pull it off!
A little reserved at first, it didn't take the kids long to come out of themselves. The girls gathering round D (how does he always do that?), while he ignored them coz he had scissors.
You'll notice that in my pictures on Flickr they are mainly of the boys being cheeky. I thought the girls were being reserved through some sort of cultural reason but the teacher told me that their 'gang' wasn't together today whereas the boys 'gang' was which gave them the confidence to show off. Same the world over, eh? The children sang some songs. A lot of which were exactly the same as songs they sing in the UK and Singapore (only with Indonesian words of course!). D even recognised some of them and thought about joining in. But not quite. He decided afterwards that he'd like to go to school, on his own. Which was nice, because he will be soon (nursery is on the agenda and then proper school in September)!
Back in the car and off to see a waterfall in the mountains. Was pleasantly surprised by the great quality of the roads a we ventured up the narrow tacks into the hills. One village was particularly large. It turned out that these were the well off guys in the area as the nature of the weather allowed them to harvest different types of fruit the whole year round. Just enough rain and just enough sun to grow most fruit, vegetables, spices and cocoa throughout the year. Parking up at a friend of Putu's house, we embark on the long, hot and humid walk to the 'falls. Putu immediately takes control of the buggy with Z in it and ploughs on up the hills with the aroma of the many clove trees hanging in the dense, humid air. The steep track through beautiful padi fields lead us up to the 'spice-man'.

This guy is about 1000m up the side of the mountain selling, amongst other things, refreshments for the weary tourist. And a very good trade he does too. As well as the refreshments he sells spices, lots of spices. And coffee beans. Notably the mongoose coffee bean. I won't go into detail but sufficed to say, Mongoose love to eat the coffee beans. They'll only eat the really good ones and they don't get digested so off course they come out the other end. This apparently starts of the fermentation process and gives it a 'particular' flavour. I'm sure it does, but not quite my cup of, er, tea. But it does sell very well and for quite a lot of money (surprisingly there aren't too many people practising mongoose poo coffee making), so he can't be wrong. What I wanted to know was who had discovered this process in the first place? He seemed unable to answer that question. D was quite fascinated by the mongoose though. Of course, we bought some spices, quite a lot of them. I think I probably paid over the odds, but hey, I'm gonna pay a whole lot more in Singapore and they aren't going to be freshly harvested from a Balinese mountainside! And then on to the waterfall itself. Spectacular certainly, and very tall. But on account of us not being able to get too close because of the kids and heat we didn't really see too much of it. As they say, sometimes it's the journey not the arrival and to be honest, really the revelation was the 'Poo Coffee'. I like finding things like that.

On the way back down I start to become aware of the amount of people who do actually live and work up here. The smell of fermenting cocoa beans and spices out in the sun greets us at almost every homestead we pass. The aroma is terrific and a world away from the busy land of Singapore. D is doing very well with walking up and down these tracks until half-way back he trips and sprawls over the track, bangs his knees and ends up on dad's shoulders. Can't say I blame him. It is very warm by now and the water is being drunk by the bottle. I have to say though that it would have been much more of a struggle without having been acclimatised first in Singapore. We met some Dutch tourists on the way looking very red and hot and needing a long sit down at the Spice Hut. Think they were slightly amazed at the way Z and D were going at it. Even with D on my shoulders we couldn't catch Putu who by now was off like a startled rabbit with Z in buggy. Great fun, with the most beautiful scenery and great weather. Not to mention seeing the biggest spider since our arrival. A good six inches across. What's not to like?

See more photos of our Bali trip on Flickr.

Cocoa beans fermenting in the sun

Hillside homstead

Chinese New Year, Weddings and Work

Yes, work. It used to be a four-letter word to me but now my time is up and I have been recruited in to the massed ranks of city workers in Singapore. It all happened very quickly (although I am still awaiting the contract, but I'm sure that will be sorted soon). One day I'm browsing LinkedIn, next thing I'm being offered a job (a week ago today in fact) that, in principal at least, is exceeding all my expectations. I say in principal because I don't officially start until Monday week. But I have already attended a (phone conference) tender meeting and held my first interview for staff. So you could say things are proceeding at speed. I'll blog more about it when I start but sufficed to say I'm excited, a little apprehensive, excited and quite excited!

The reason I'm starting next Monday (amongst other things) is that Thursday sees the celebration of Chinese (Lunar) New Year. Quite the biggest event on a calendar that is already pretty crowded with big events. Chinese New Year (CNY), this year is being celebrated on 3 and 4 February and will go on until about 15 February (the like to make it big!). I must admit I'm not sure what to expect as unlike with Western celebrations, CNY is also about reflection and spending time with friends and relatives. Indeed, I have already seen the grandparents and possibly even great-grandparents being shipped into our condo to come and spend time with their kids and grand-kids. I am also aware that the majority of shops (most being Chinese owned) will close over the period. With this in mind, T and I set off to Cold Storage to get the essentials in before this happens. It's amazing how many essentials one needs when confronted by possible closure of the shops for two whole days! Not to mention the fact that Mary will be off for three out of four days this week (what are we going to do without her?!). So we bought everything we need I(and mostly don't need), and trotted home.  Tomorrow night we'll see in CNY with some brand spanking new friends from Perth (Australia, not Scotland), who have been kind enough to invite us over for dinner (Chinese of course), and a few drinks. I'm not expecting too much noise, firecrackers etc, but I'm sure their will be some at some point. Just need to find out when and where. And definitely have to find some Dragon Dancing. One thing we are going to do, hopefully, is get the kids down to Marina Bay to see the River Hongbao and watch the firework display to see in The Year of the Rabbit.

 If the Chinese can't put on a good display then who can, huh? The kids will be getting their hong bao (little red envelopes with token money inside for good luck and prosperity), but don't tell them, it's a surprise. Even 'Uncle' who they've befriended will be getting a card. It's a big ol' celebration here.
Saturday sees us off to a wedding in Little India. We were kindly invited by web-presence guru Prakash who owns Yolk (he's gotta get a plug after the invite). The ceremony is to be held at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Singapore and should be great fun. Interestingly, it was the starting point of the Thaipusam festival from two weeks ago. The temple is spectacular from the outside but I didn't go in which I was disappointed about on the day. This should more than make up for it. It will be (unsurprisingly), my first Hindu wedding and frankly I'm pretty excited. Definitely expect some big photos from that one!

Anyway, until next time,

Gong Xi Fa Cai - Happy New Year! - 新年快樂

Bali - Part 1 of many!

After a very long night (and not in a good way), in an over priced hotel in Sanur we were picked up in the morning outside the hotel by a chap called Putu. Putu was to be our Villa manager, organiser, driver and tour guide for our stay in Bali. It was New Years Eve and after a sleepless night of crying kids and firecrackers (the latter causing the former), we were heading north, away from the south of the island which had been our brief, tourist haven home for the night. As we headed out of the suburbs and towards the country Bali started to come alive. Carved Hindu Gods started appearing on every street corner. Then soon enough along every road until there seemed to be little room for anything to fit, including the houses behind them. Carved from dense grey stone these physical incarnations of the Hindu Gods are one of the mainstays of the community's income and are big business with a thriving import/export business going on locally. Onwards into the mountains with our assured driver. A constant diatribe of tidbits coming from him as he amiably answers our questions (which I'm sure he has heard a thousand times before). Putu is a local, local to the villa that we'll be staying in that is, not just to the island. I am suddenly even happier with this arrangement as we start to climb into the mountains that we see shrouded in mist ahead. The potholes become more pronounced (by which I mean bigger and deeper), and more frequent. Now, I expect that we might find a kamikaze approach by the driver to be the norm, but on the contrary, Putu's speed was rarely above 40kph and he did his utmost to avoid these holes in the road. Soon we settled into happy a rhythm, trundling along the roads at a very sedate pace. Even the kids seemed to enjoy the ride. Just as well because, by the time we reached the summit of the mountain (about 3000m), the visibility was down to about five metres in places and the temperature had dropped to about 10C (from around 30C). People up here were obviously used to it wandering around in jumpers and hats. The first time I had seen that since moving to Singapore. From the top we could see the base of the nearest volcano to our villa. However, due to the inclement weather that was all we could see (much to my disappointment). And so we headed down the other side towards the north coast and our home for the next nine days. Well, the trip down was.... interesting..... no wait..... treacherous, yes that's what I meant! We at this point were in full praise of Putu's local knowledge, ability and lack of need for speed. It was steep, narrow and as you can imagine in a tropical country the roads were somewhat wet, well, river like really. This prompted a lot of shouts of "hold tight" from the kids who thought this was a great wheeze. T slightly less I suspected as she obeyed the kids' commands herself! As the rain began to ease a bit we started to come across the local people starting to celebrate New Year (it was about 4:30 at this point), massive speakers set up with a heavy baseline pumping through them and alcoholic beverages well underway. Putu pointed out that the rain had in fact probably worked in our favour as most of these guys would probably have been out driving on the mountain if the weather had been good. I watched one of the party goers trying to just stagger to his neighbours house and wondered if maybe we'd had a lucky escape. The Gods had been smiling on us after all.

Finally, after three and a half hours of travel, we arrived at the fabled villa. We are greeted by our staff members for the week (yes, I said staff members). Our cook (and as we were to find, cleaner, washer and part-time child-minder), Made pronounced Maday. Our gardener/pool cleaner Wayan and our very nice security guard Kadek. In Hindi tradition we are presented with garlands of flowers round our necks. The kids dion't want to know. They are far too interested in getting out of the car and running hell-for-leather in to their new house. And what a place! Absolutely enormous and really way too big for us but what can one do? D immediately finds a hosepipe in the garden and that's him done for the  next hour, day, week given half a chance. The rest of the family meanwhile took a turn around the grounds and then inspected the chambers. Yes, I was starting to feel like the landed gentry. Then the kids reminded me that we weren't by promptly demanding this that and the other as soon enough it was like we'd been there for ages. After grand plans for eating Beef Rendang to celebrate New Year, we were so late that it turned into Chicken and rice instead. However, due to Made's cooking this was of course delicious. About half an hour before we were going to put the kids to bed the rain started. And the thunder. And the lightning. And the Lightning! Wow, big, BIG sky filling lightning. The villa was practically on the beach and the lightning was lighting up what looked like the entire ocean between us and the next landfall, Borneo. The waves are crashing agaisnt the breakwater by this point and it is loud. Much louder than anything we'd experienced in Singapore. I love it! Unsurprisingly, the kids are a little scared but soon come round to the fact that even the minor blackouts (in the villa, not from New Year imbibing), we are experiencing are not that bad and they go to bed with no problems. Bless them. The bedroom D is staying in (along with me, the idea of him stumbling into the pool in the middle of the night is quite scary),  is partially open to the elements and yet for all the racket of weather outside he doesn't bat an eyelid. Remarkable. T and I celebrate New Year with a vodka and coke. T turns in for the night and I watch the storm outside in awe.
I think we're going to be happy here, I thought to myself, Bintang in hand.

Thaipusam in Singapore - Body and Soul

Yesterday was probably about the most dramatic day, visually and spiritually speaking, I have experienced. Not just here but almost anywhere I have been. Those who know me will know I'm not really given over to the use of superlatives and gushing about about experiences I've had. But this was both awesome (I rarely, if ever, use that word outside of sarcasm) and spectacular in the extreme.

Thaipusam is the Hindu Festival celebrated on the day of full moon during Thai, the Tamil month of January/February. It is celebrated in the main by Tamils and brings the whole community together. I could go on to tell you exactly what they are celebrating and why and how etc. But I am wholly unqualified and would just be copy and pasting from various websites which I believe is known as plagiarism (so I shan't be doing that). There are numerous links to find the information out there so you can find out yourselves what leads to this magnificent celebration of body and soul.
This is the official website of the two temples used to host this extraordinary event. I would say if you want a reliable source of information (especially surrounding the Singaporean festival) then this would be it. There was even an advert for it inside the Temple itself.
What I offer here is just reflection on what I saw, heard and smelt during the day. I should explain to the uninitiated (as I pretty much was), the day involves the men and women of the faith carrying 'Kavadi' over what turned out to be a pretty long walk between two temples. It is a sign of their devotion and what a sign it is. Having walked the course from start to finish it is a wonder anyone makes it, it is very long (and very hot, yesterday was sunny and easily in the 30s). But they all do. I didn't see one casualty the whole time. This is obviously down to their faith. But also a lot of help comes from the massive entourage that some of these guys have. Family and friends chanting, talking, singing and in some cases arguing with and shouting their charges to the finish. There are various forms of Kavadi and basically I think it is a case of 'more pain, more gain' (from God).
They can range from this.

To something like this.

Pulling one of these!

These guys are seriously devoted and the previous example was by no means the exception and most likely the rule. Probably the most well know image of the Thaipusam and certainly the one I had seen on various NatGeo programs was along the lines of this.

Again, by no means the exception. A truly amazing sight. Colourful, noisy, incense burning and the smell of food cooking on the side of the road through Little India and down the Serangoon Road. The ceremony was entirely public and these guys wanted everyone to see what they were doing. Possibly a little intimidating at first due to the nature of what they are doing to their bodies this turned out to be one of the friendliest festivals I've been to. I think as a Westerner with no clue about their faith my natural instinct is that anyone do this to themselves has to be working on testosterone and therefore they and there entourage should not be approached. Nothing could have been further from the truth. A very warm, friendly, family day from babies in buggies to elderly family members being wheeled down the road in their wheelchairs. The aroma of food, of course, hung in the air. Free food and water were handed out along the route to both participants and just the lazy commoners (like myself). I even felt guilty about accepting it. Very persuasive these Indians though, so it didn't last long (hey, it's food, what am I going to do??). And very nice (and needed) it was too.

The Kadavi apart from being huge, were also extremely ornate. I would imagine that either they are made by individuals (which would require some serious craftsmanship) or (more likely), someone is doing a raging business in ornaments and metal work for these creations.

Towards the end of the route you get to dividing area where in one direction you can go to the Temple and in the other you can go to a general area with (free) food and drink again being forced upon the unfortunate souls lucky enough to wander in that direction. We decided that obviously although it had been very friendly and all, that the kindly partcipants weere hardly likely to welcome us into their inner sanctum and refuge from the madness. Wrong! We proceeded to the temple following these huge Kadavis down the road along with all the dancing and singing.

The route soon became congested with all and sundry bustling to get into the temple and then all of a sudden through the drum banging, ushering and shouting we were in. And we were greeted by the extraordinary sight of one of the Kadavi bearers having finished his walk, dancing in front of everyone before being led away to be 'dismantled'!

Remarkable scenes all around of dancing, singing, clapping, praying and offering.

As is traditional many were shaven headed. Some of the children were also getting their hair shaved off (which I believe is a rites of passage) and then coated with yellow (good luck for Hindis I think). Much merriment and enjoyment being had by all but at the same time with a very sombre and deep meaningful backdrop.

And so to the 'dismantling' area where some very relieved and tired men were being 'serviced' by their entourage. Very quickly and effectively they set about removing and dismantling the Kavadis with surprisingly little blood-letting. I witnessed four men lifting off one of the contraptions and frankly struggling under the cumbersome weight. Amazing! So off come the screws, out come the pins and the metal to reveal a very ordinary tired looking man underneath. No applause or anything like that and today he's probably back at work like normal.

A very sober end to an unbelievably amazing day!

Happy Hari Raya Haji

Happy Hari Raya. A public holiday for everyone. Except T who gets to go into work and watch kids rehearse for their upcoming production of Twelfth Night!

Have a look below for more about this Muslim "Festival of Sacrifice". 

YourSingapore.com - Hari Raya Haji