42

Maybe it's just me but in the last couple of days, mathematicians have been able to solve one of life's most intractable mathematical problems and uncover the meaning of life as defined by Douglas Adams' wonderful book Life, The Universe and Everything (here is Wikipedia's note).

I feel kind of sorry that this has happened for this is a mystery of life that has been solved... by a math geek, using 100 connected PC's. This was the issue:

The original problem, set in 1954 by University of Cambridge researchers, looked for solutions of the Diophantine equation x3 + y3 + z3 = k, with k being all the numbers from one to 100. Beyond the easily found small solutions, the problem soon became intractable as the more interesting answers could not possibly be calculated, so vast were the numbers required. But slowly, over many years, each value of k was eventually solved for (or proved unsolvable), thanks to sophisticated techniques and modern computers — except the last two, the most difficult of all: 33 and 42 (read about it here).

It all seems .... a little flat. I'd have hoped for fanfares, maybe an angelic chorus or two and the Great Redeemer saying 'well done, now I've got a really tough one for you'. Or something like that. But all we got was a You Tube video.

I much prefer this answer.

Haze. Pea Soup.... let's just call it Pollution.

This last week has been unpleasant so far as the weather is concerned. It is the time of year that Indonesian farmers burn fields to make ready for new planting to take place in a few weeks time. The foliage has dried out so it is much easier to simply burn the scrubby bits left over from last year than manually prepare the ground. So they burn. They don't have to do this and in fact there are laws forbidding this practice, but it still happens and nobody takes action. It's not new news out here but it is in the West. This is what the BBC has to say about it.

Penang is highlighted. The wind here is negligible for the next few days so we will be suffering from this haze for a while yet

It has been going on forever and this is the time of year that it all takes place. For Penang, the areas that most affect us are in Sumatra and with the South West monsoon season here until Christmas, the SW winds that prevail are simply pushing this ghastly messy.... haze all over us. It wasn't anywhere like this last year from memory; apparently it is really bad this year.  Even Bloomberg is paying attention.

I remember growing up the fogs or rather pea soupers in the towns in England. Dense fogs that would hang around for days. For those of you that do not know about these, here is Wikipedia's comment. These fogs were brought about by the coal burning that everyone did in those days (and people wonder why coal has become bit by bit an untouchable fossil fuel) and it wasn't until the 1950's that policy action actually did anything about it. I remember our shirt collars being coated in grime and coughing continuously and the phlegm. Yuk, it was black. Respiratory diseases were prevalent everywhere. I had whooping cough when I was really young and coughs and colds all the time later on.  Pneumonia, TB were everywhere. Mind you every adult still smoked like chimneys.

The tipping point was the pea souper of 1952 which is shown here at Piccadilly Circus. You wouldn't know it was but you can see Eros to the left.

The important takeaway from the above is that regrettably it took 'policy action' to do anything about the pea soupers in England.... aka government intervention by law. I recently read an interview with a very prominent engineer who ran BP for many years (here is the full interview transcript) whose view on the world was from a very engineering viewpoint, of course, but the context was that companies would not do anything until policy makers make them. The technology to fix things is all there but it is not being used because companies don't have to.  Here's an edited excerpt:

JOHN BROWNE: Well ...oil or wood or cutting down forests, but also giving people a very different modern way. So... we’ve created a problem and I’ve been on this point for almost a quarter century now saying... it’s the oil and gas industries that’s created this problem and we need to fix it. And the way to fix it is not to stop engineering, is to apply more engineering to solving the problem...And actually, in this area, I would say that we have already all the engineering processes to stop pumping ... CO2 into the atmosphere and actually even to clean up some of the CO2. The problem is that the ...engineered products are too expensive until they are all rolled out in massive scale because …This is where policy comes in. So in other words, policy has to push these …new engineered products to the point where they become more economical. You don’t have to invent, we need to apply and this is where engineering is very good because as you apply more and more, so the unit cost comes down. We know that for sure. So you need a policy lever... the biggest policy lever you need is a price on carbon. Carbon taxes...have got to be priced high enough so that people can and will actually do something to get it out of the system.

The argument that fixes cost money simply don't wash. This was the argument the car industry used in the 1960's but the lead pollution laws were passed and the issue went away. The car industry is now running pell mell to be the first to produce mass market electric cars.

So all of this is both avoidable and fixable. Granted the developing nations don't want to hear developed nations who polluted away years ago sanctimoniously tell them what to do. But the alternative is pretty desolate.

This week versus normal times

The Summer Game

I have been addicted to cricket probably since I was 5 or 6. My mum introduced me to the game by bowling to me in the back garden (my dad was Polish so thought we were all mad). My forward defensive stroke is all down to her. Not a bad one either, even if I have to say so myself.

The thing that really did it for me though was the TV coverage by the BBC. Back then (we are talking 1959-60), this was the era of Peter May, Colin Cowdrey, Ted Dexter, Fred Trueman, Brian Statham and others. Glorious to watch but they did always seem to lose when they played Ashes test matches. Actually, it has pretty much always been a battle against the Aussies in Ashes tests and in my memory with only relatively few high spots; virtually never away from England.

Earliest cricket memories include the batting card on TV. These days all computer driven and presented. Certainly more efficient, faster in production and informative but what a loss! In those days it was hand written by someone who had beautiful copper plate writing. I can't remember who the opposition was but my first first TV memory was Ted Dexter getting out for 180 and the batting card disappeared and then reappeared with the full details.

I started formally playing when I went to Eton House School at the age of 8; no chance of that when I was at the catholic convent Lindisfarne as the school was run by Belgian nuns. I'd had great success playing in our driveway against other boys and girls (yes, even then) but discovered after being no balled for 3 successive deliveries in my first over at Eton House that that was most likely due to the fact that I had been throwing the ball all the time. This meant a total reworking of my action and is most likely a key reason that I never quite made it to play for England at Lords. My pace dropped sharply!

I did make it finally to Eton House 1st XI a few years later. Back row, 2nd from right

Fortunately, and this is where I tip my hat yet again to my mum, my forward defensive stroke proved a formidable barrier and surprised everyone at a time when nobody owned one. The typical 8 year old stroke was a wild swish or a curious type of prod of the type you'd use if you had a hoe in your hand and you'd come across a snake in the grass. Many years later I'd endlessly train/torture both Indy and Dee Dee in the back garden on the use of the forward defensive with tennis ball or cricket ball as they got older. They didn't make as much use of it as I did but when we all played together it was noticeably still there, somewhere.

Our last game all together at Shelly Bay, Bermuda

I mention this as the wonderful cricket season has just about come to an end in England. My county Essex is challenging for the county championship with Somerset but it is a tight thing as the final game is against Somerset so will be a sort of winner take all affair. I shall be on tenterhooks!  However the Ashes test matches against Australia have just finished with an England victory in the 5th test making the series 2-2 with one match drawn, even though sadly the Aussies retained the Ashes as England didn't win the series.

If you are cricket followers you will know that the matches themselves were pretty low standard affairs. Neither set of batsmen could cope with the quality of the bowlers and on balance the Aussie bowlers were the better lot... except for a couple of the guys. One Aussie, one Brit. The Aussie simply ground away for hours on end and scored a gazillion runs in the series evoking memories of Don Bradman, the greatest of them all. His name is Steve Smith and do look for articles about him or rather his performances. Here's one to start with. The Brit is a totally different kettle of fish and is a fine stroke maker but in this series with England only one ball away from collapse on every delivery, he was forced to adjust his style to grind away too. It is strange to watch someone who clearly isn't that good at something but puts so much effort into doing it anyway because that is what the team needs and really has to happen, but that is what watching Ben Stokes bat like that was all about. Where Smith knew what he was doing and could go about things calmly, Stokes had to force it with the result that for much of the time he was stroke less and run less. This whilst all about him collapse and panic reined (this is England's batting) until there came a point that there was only him and the last man and another 73 runs to win. Total mindset change.

Stokes knew he could not rely on the last man, after all he was a bowler not a batter even though he was one of those salt of the earth, get knocked down but get up again, kind of guys. Totally gawky but very, very brave. Where others ducked and bobbed and weaved as the ball whizzed past their heads... and then got out to very poor efforts, the 11th man, Jack Leach, stood tall, swayed in and out, kept his eye on the ball and bat away from it so it could not inadvertently take an edge and be caught. He 100% looked the part and immediately became a legend, rather like Eddie the Eagle in ski-jumping. Not very good but very brave and very determined.

And totally against the odds at the other end Stokes simply did what he does best and smashed the formerly formidable attack to all parts. Sixes and fours everywhere off everyone. Until the score reached single figures left to win when Stokes grew nervous. First he went for a wild thrash and missed it and the ball hit him on the leg right in front of the wicket. The Aussies appealed for LBW (leg before wicket, one of the ways in which a batsman can get out. If the ball hits the leg and would have gone on to hit the wicket, that could be out LBW). Not out said the umpire.... the TV announcers were howling at this point. They knew that was wrong. The ball WAS going to hit the wicket but the Aussies were not able to review this decision as they had already reviewed two others incorrectly in the innings and were consequently all out of challenges. The TV showed the review and it was absolutely out. Stokes would have been out, should have been out and the Aussies should have won the test match but the umpire got it wrong! The crowd were going crazy. Next ball another frenetic thrash and both Stokes and Leach made a total hash of running with Leach running towards the bowler's end where the ball was being returned and he knew he would be yards short... when the bowler blinked and missed the ball and as he fumbled Leach was able to scramble home. Again, Leach should have been run out, England should have lost, and the Aussies should have won the match and the Ashes, but this time it was the bowler who made a hash of the whole thing.

Next ball Stokes thrashed it into the crowd again (in all he hit 8 sixes in this final dramatic run assault/chase) and that was 2 to win. But it was also the end of the over and now Leach had to face all 6 balls of the currently finest fast bowler in test cricket. He casually flicked a single, his only run in the entire process, which brought the teams level and next ball Stokes thrashed the winning boundary and the celebrations began.

I was screaming too at this point. I recorded it and have watched the last amazing hour 3 or 4 times. Every time I still don't believe England did it. They really shouldn't have.

**

I'd thought that the World Cup final some 6 weeks ago now was the most dramatic, exciting, unlikely day of cricket I had ever seen... In that game between England and New Zealand played over 50 overs per side, the Kiwis scored some 245 runs, way below what an acceptable score should be. These days teams knock off 300+ with regularity so all of a sudden England was firm favourite. This changed within 5 overs as the English batters realised to their alarm (and doom) that although the English bowling had been mean, tight and penetrating and did a great job restricting the Kiwis to such a small score, the Kiwi attack was every bit as good and that in fact the pitch was extremely awkward and did not allow for a side to simply smash a decent bowling side all over the place. It took one batsman, again Stokes, to steady the ship after a clatter of wickets and amidst an ongoing debacle at the other end and approach the final over with the not inconsiderable amount of 15 required to win.

The first two balls he did not score. Then the third he hit for 6!! Then on the fourth he wanted to run 2 and hit it to the boundary where he tried to run 2 but it looked very much like he would end up short and be run out .... when the ball thrown in from the boundary hit him as he was running and ran off to the boundary for 4 overthrows, making this shot a .... 6!! Or maybe something else. Did Stokes mean to do this or was it an accident? If accidental, then overthrows. If deliberate, then out. The crowd was going crazy. The umpires hadn't a clue what to signal for that 4 overthrows ball but after deliberations it was obvious that Stokes hadn't a clue what was going on either and that the ball had simply hit him and run away. So after multiple TV replays, they came up with 6 scored and 3 left to win. Two balls to do it. The bowler bowled and I'm afraid like Dirty Harry in the first movie, in all the excitement I kinda forget what exactly happened, but they did run one and the number 10 batsman was run out going for the second. And then on the final ball, the exact same thing happened again. He tried to run 2 but only managed 1 with the new batsman run out well short of making his ground. So a tie!!

Sudden death single over ensued. England to bat first. It would be Stokes of course and another big hitter. 6 balls. Most runs win. Only 2 wickets allowed. First ball Stokes hit the ball into the crowd!!.... which went even more crazy, and for the remaining balls the pair of them managed to amass 14 runs. A decent amount. The Kiwis turn was next and first ball was a .... no run, dot ball!!! The crowd were going wild. I was going wild.... I was watching it on my phone, I think in the car. My friend John was on a bus in France.... and he was screaming! Next ball the batsman hit it miles into the crowd! Aaagh!! 9 left and 4 balls to do it. Runs and balls ensued and left 2 runs needed on the last ball. One to tie, 2 to win. The batsman hit it to the fielder on the boundary who collected it cleanly and threw it in what was probably his greatest ever piece of fielding and the batsman was run out by a whisker. Another tie but England won it.... not because they scored more runs than the Kiwis but because they scored more boundaries in their innings.

Did I say that cricket is full of weird rules?

**

I'm a Test Match guy. I just love the fact it takes 5 days to reach a conclusion which may well be a draw... no result in fact. I know this makes no sense to some people but it is how it is. In the old days, test matches could be played to completion; so-called 'timeless tests'. That's how teams could rack up nearly 1,000 runs in an innings and still get a result... think Ashes test of 1938 at the Oval. In the 1980's it was decided to add a 6th day to one Ashes test match as an experiment. The result was one of the dullest day's play I have ever watched and with one batsman scoring the dullest century of all time (it wasn't, most like. It just felt like it). So even enthusiasts like me have their limits.

The 50-over One Day Internationals (ODI in modern parlance) are also fine. In club cricket this is effectively what everyone in the world only plays. It may not be limited to 50 overs per side but games have to be finished in a single weekend day and the practicality of it all makes it to be around 50 overs per side. Of course in club cricket, a draw is possible whilst in official ODI matches (like the World Cup final for example), there has to be a result. This is a key difference as it makes the end of any match a frenetic thrash for the team batting second whilst in club cricket the game meanders along most pleasantly.

The shorter form matches, called T20 these days... 20 overs per side, are usually played by we humble amateurs as an after work thing. Again practicality kicking in. In June/July in England you can squeeze in 25 overs but by August you are struggling to make 20 overs as the evenings start to close in. By September you are lucky to get 16 overs in. In Bermuda, we always struggled to get 20 overs in with 14 being usual by late August. Again no draw possible in these games which resemble a thrash from start to finish.

My Bermuda evening league team in 1995

15 or so years ago, cricket left terrestrial TV in England (formerly the BBC). Yes, the English Cricket Board sold its soul for money to the subscription TV services. In this year's World Cup final, by special concession, the subscription TV service Sky agreed to let terrestrial TV take the feed so people could watch free. 10 million people watched. For the final day of the most exciting test match for a generation, barely 2 million paying customers watched. Not a coincidence.

In 2020 a new limited over series called the Hundred will take place. Only 100 balls will be bowled per innings making this even faster than the already frenetic T20 competitions. The already crowded cricket schedule is being changed to accommodate this new circus and the 4-day championship and 5-day test matches are being shunted aside willy nilly. Sponsors are flooding in. Mercenary cricketers for every nation are signing up. TV companies and the ECB are rubbing their hands together thinking about all the lovely cash they'll rake in as the shorter forms of the game are highly popular with non-cricket fans .... of course for the good of cricket and not to line their own pockets, solidify their power base or ironically (or maybe not so) in any way improve the quality of test cricket played by the national team.

Sounds like a lot of sports, governments, quangos, corporations.... tail wagging dog.

I hope the 2 million or so that have subscription TV enjoy the circus. I'll stay with the live feed I've found of Essex playing county championship cricket.

Sorry. I have to write about Brexit

I really didn't want to do this much but for the past 3 years Brexit has been an ever present for Brits everywhere. It started off with the shock of the referendum, the resignation of the PM that introduced it and then lost an election over it, and was followed seemingly by an endless and tortuous series of probably well meaning meetings which have resulted in ... chaos.

The country has a new PM that from reading the papers and the online media nobody apparently really likes, trusts or believes. He's lost 6 votes in a row in Parliament, a record, and is facing the possibility of jail time if he doesn't follow Parliament's most recent instruction. He cannot call an election as the opposition is happy to watch him squirm. His view is that he wants to be out of the EU on 31st October 2019 (the next final drop dead deadline day... until the next one) come hell or high water and that he'd prefer to being dead in a ditch to going back and ask for another extension.

Today he prorogued Parliament. This apparently is a big thing even though it happens every year as it is the means by which Parliament is formally closed for the sitting MPs' summer holidays. Parallels have been drawn with Charles I and the English Civil War of 1640-1649 but with the new PM cast in the role of villain as opposed to the monarch.

How it ends from this point is regrettably anybody's guess and far beyond me.

This has all happened at a turbulent time in global affairs for no sooner had the referendum taken place that Donald Trump was elected President of the USA. Elections have taken place across the EU with several changes of government leaders in this time too. Global financial markets have done reasonably well but President Trump's use of Twitter has roiled the world on every topic that you could possibly shake a stick at. How does he sleep? It is evident to most that economically things aren't as strong and that recession is nearer than it was.

But we have all forgotten I think that the UK has always been skeptical about being part of Europe, both when it was formerly the EEC and now that is called the EU. This isn't a new thing. I returned to YouTube for clarity and found it in an old Yes Minister episode that explains why the UK is in the EU very well.

And another in which Yes Minister perfectly sums up why Brexit.

Both are from 1980. It doesn't help much but it is very amusing to hear it put like this. Plus ca change....

Lost in Translation...maybe

Spending time in Penang has been a wonder and a great enjoyment, although at times it has been a little puzzling. The local "can" is a trip for example but it's not just here that has them. I did wonder how many people speak English or a variant globally and from my pretty basic Google search, it looks to be around 1.5 billion or 20% of the world's population (see here and here). Of these probably a quarter are native speakers, the remainder speak English either as a second language or an official language of the country (where for example many dialects exist so English becomes the lingua franca). Obviously many of these latter countries are ex-colonies but it certainly has spread the language far and wide.

As I mentioned before, there are local varietals. Take 'can' for example, this is what Merriam Webster's dictionary says:

'intransitive verb. archaic : to have knowledge or skill. auxiliary verb. 1a : know how to She canread. b : be physically or mentally able to He can lift 200 pounds.'


Manglish on the other hand is a little different but essentially similar so whilst you think you get what the other person is saying, somehow it doesn't quite go all the way. There's a neat book called 'Honk If You're Malaysian' that tries to explain. 

It cannot because the English spoken here is a dynamic evolving language not the one written in the OED for example. Here is an example of the use of 'can':

'English: Would you be so good as to turn on the tap, please? Of course!
Manglish: Can on the tap-ah? Can!' 

Hope this helps.

History is a bit difficult to follow too. Winston Churchill once said 'history is written by the victors', as did the first Indian leader Nehru but these quotes simply followed Bonaparte's dismissive put down: 'what is history but a set of lies agreed upon'. So those history books that you read at school were pretty likely wrong or at the very best put forward only the history of one side, ignoring and maybe even demonising the other. Having visited Rome many times and taking in the majesty of Trajan's Column at the end of the Forum, you do wonder if you know some of the story behind it, just why Trajan chose to destroy and entirely eradicate the Dacians (modern day Romania) with the only reference to it remaining being the hieroglyphics on the side of the column. 

Nobody knows all the details. Perhaps the written histories have been lost over time. This is quite likely as only fragments of Rome's long and fabulous history have survived. Sacking by the Goths, Visgoths, Vandals, Huns and probably any other barbarian tribe that happened to be passing in the late 5th and 6th centuries didn't help; but also a specific and deliberate erasure of bits of history that the next major incumbents (the Catholic Church) found distasteful or which presented the Romans in a better way than the new church wanted. OK to talk about feeding christians to the lions in the arena (Romans are bad guys) but probably not so much about all the learning and medical advances that the 'evil' empire promoted (Romans were innovative and enlightened). That may encourage people to learn more about the Romans and appreciate what they brought to the world... and maybe think twice. That wouldn't support the contemporary initiatives at all. 

This isn't unusual in a post colonial world or in a world where major change has occurred. The new incumbents recreate a recidivist form of history that makes them look better. The Soviets for example had to acknowledge the Tsars of the past but their take on things were that these Tsars were an unelected elite that just kept fighting wars against other countries' unelected elites in order to maintain control over an empire of starving serfs. Of course the irony of this point of view was totally lost on the Soviets themselves; as they were in fact doing the precise same thing.

This is all a roundabout way of talking about Singapore's 'creation'. Colonial history has it that Stamford Raffles founded the colony in 1819 taking a malarial swamp and turning it into THE entrepôt of the Far East. Subsequent history is broadly aligned as probably there is so much of it written down, however pre-history is substantially lacking as virtually nothing is written down and I can imagine those first colonial settlers thinking there's nothing here, let's do something. But there was pre-colonial history and here is Wikipedia's brief take on things. What is not stated is how many people were about at the time. Now there's 7 million but back then were far fewer.

Singapore's geography of course has always meant that it has acted as a significant entrepôt for the region. The Romans had heard of it but the Chinese, Indians and Middle Easterners were very familiar with it. Pre-steam engines, traders could only trade abroad courtesy of the seasonal prevailing winds. This meant an annual trip with a 6 month wait for the winds to turn the other way and therefore something approaching permanent settlement by non-native traders. None of this was apparent to the British when they arrived however. All they saw was swamp. Hasn't that changed? You should see Sentosa Island these days; more Las Vegas than anything else.

Whilst we were visiting we went to a museum, the name of which eludes me and which dealt in sections with the early history and pre-colonial history. One section dealt with the traders that came from overseas and what they brought to the island. The Middle Easterners brought tons of stuff. Africa brought ivory and gold; the Middle East brought frankincense, pearls, turtle shells, corals, perfumes and oils; South India and Sri Lanka brought cotton, textiles, gemstones, ivory, ebony and pepper.

The Chinese brought tons of stuff too: silk, tea, cotton, iron, porcelain/ceramics, musk, clay, sable, bronze ware and beads.

As for the Europeans, well...

Made me think of Monty Python again.

   

Tennis in Singapore

Viv and I recently visited Singapore again, ostensibly to play in a tennis tournament but really because we wanted to visit again. The tournament was slated for Saturday/Sunday and the rest of the team would arrive on the Friday however we had decided to go a couple of days earlier and leave a couple of days later.

The team

We'd booked to fly on Air Asia, a Malay airline that recently was recognised as being the biggest low cost airline in the region. Low cost it was but it was also very efficient. New planes. Pleasant staff. And if you wanted, you could get chicken rice on board for an extra 12 ringgit. Beat that EasyJet.

All this has come at a time when climate change is front and centre on almost every consciousness... in the West maybe, but not in the East. Planes and in particular private jets are getting a slating for their contribution to climate change but the reality in the East is that India is building more than 100 new airports, China is busily creating dozens of new airport hubs in China to assist in the massive increase in new tourists from the region. Same in Korea, Japan, you name it. Everyone now wants to travel and travel by air. Hence Air Asia's amazing growth trajectory.

As for Singapore, it is pretty amazing what this city state has done in pretty much only one generation. It used to be a swamp in the main but today 25% of the landmass is reclaimed and swamp is nowhere to be seen. It always was an entrepôt of great importance due to its geographic location, and today it is the same. Last time we visited, we went for a cocktail at the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel to look at the downtown concrete jungle on the one side and then the thousands (really) of ships at anchor waiting to come into the harbour. All lined up.

As with shipping, ditto airport. Changi Airport has 5 terminals and is building a 6th to accommodate all the regional air traffic. Singapore Airlines of course is HQ'd here but it again is a major hub to everywhere. Direct flight to New York is only 18 hours!

In addition to the new 6th terminal is a new facility/building/structure that just opened called The Jewel. It is a shopping mall and restaurant complex with a huge waterfall in the middle (man made of course) that seems to be something to do when you have a layover at the airport. It was jammed with people when we went. Impressive for sure but I couldn't really figure out the point of it all. But Singapore has succeeded because it plans, takes big steps and then makes them work.

In The Jewel

What Singapore does it seems to me is to build massive Fields of Dreams and then successfully manages them. The Marina Bay Sands complex for example includes the Gardens on the Bay with the triffid like metal trees and high level walkways that have become a major tourist attraction in their own right. We went and I couldn't figure why I'd want to come here rather than walk out into a real jungle then realised that much of it was air conditioned, there were few bugs and other deadly critters, no chance of getting mud on your shoes, and within a short stroll in any direction was any amount of food and drink that a heart could desire. So jungle light then.

The weird trees at Gardens on the Bay

Then there's Sentosa Island. Again this used to be a scrubby, swampy little island. Now its like Hilton Head in South Carolina or Marco Island in Florida. Or Las Vegas. Shopping malls, fantastic public transport (OK everywhere has fantastic public transport in Singapore), theme parks, casinos, shuttle buses, beaches, dozens of resorts, marinas and condos that foreigners can buy (so they are eye wateringly expensive). Everything planned down to the last detail. Beach is not great but I guess all that can be done, with the view out to sea being over the shipping parking lot I mentioned earlier.

The container ship parking lot in the background

Singapore is no longer just an entrepôt, it has become a destination in its own right. It has worked too as there were tons of tourists... mostly westerners. Working against regional tourism is the fact that Singapore is relatively very expensive, but not for westerners. So Singapore really is.... Asia light. It is a destination for westerners looking for an Asian experience. But not too much of one. Rather like Hong Kong.

That is the helicopter view though for one of our tennis buddies had contacted a Singapore tennis friend to hook us up with some tennis and entertainment around the tournament. In addition to it being very kind and fun, it was informative too enabling us to peek under the hood so to speak to see how Singaporeans actually lived.

They do very well indeed!

One guy that we met turned out to be an airline pilot and had rearranged his long haul flight to play in the tournament. He was a very strong player. As it turned out on one of the days we were waiting for our friend to pick us up and we could hear this low rumbling roar sound (we were in a car park) and this beautiful, low slung, gleaming sports car approached with me thinking 'Wow' when it stopped, the window rolled down and there was the airline pilot who asked if we needed a lift. He pulled away with a very jaunty vroom.

Beyond that though are of course very many similarities with the rest of Malaysia. Great local food, but not as great as the mainland. Western food is better though. Because of the shortage of land, clubs go up not out. The tournament was played at a swimming club which had 3 tennis courts on the 6th storey roof. The clubs really are home from home for the members though as they are packed all day. This club had 4 pools including a 50 metre lap pool in its main facility and another in the annexe across the road.

At least I wasn't foot faulting

I felt that we had just peeked a little into the real workings of Singapore not just the superficial aspects of the city state.

Every day we learn a little more.