Bombs Away

My god, would somebody please tell me want it is about Singaporeans and leaf blowers?! I hate those machines and they have become the bane of my life. Our living room and kitchen look out over some historic properties, three large “black and white” colonial houses set in large private gardens. The view is lovely and green and private, and actually one of the main reasons we chose this apartment. The downside to living anywhere near a piece of grass on this island however is that some guy gets paid to haul out a noisy leaf blower and blast every…single…leaf off said grassy patch every single bloody day. Take it from me, it takes a long time and the noise they make is enough to drive you crazy. If labour is that cheap, for goodness sake employ two guys with rakes and give us all some peace!
On Saturday I was in Labrador Park with the kids and again, I would swear I was being stalked by leaf blowers. Maybe I should invent a name for them, Blawkers. It’s probably because we are always at the parks early – Holger works until about 1.30 on Saturdays and I like to jump in a taxi with the kids by 9am and go and explore a new park each weekend, then return home before it gets seriously hot. We don’t have a playground or a lawn for the kids to run around on so during the week they make do with the school facilities and the swimming pools, and on Saturday we go exploring.
Incidentally Labrador Park is fascinating for any of you who are interested in seeing some historical artifacts while over here. I found it in the book which has become my official Bible, titled ‘Fun Singapore’ a brilliant little work purporting to contain info on 245 places and wrapped in a shamelessly hot pink cover. Anything that useful in such frivolous packaging gets my vote.
Anyway Labrador Park has bunkers, a fort and tunnels dating from World War 2 set in a jungle-like nature reserve and bordered by the sea. From the top of the hill you look out over the water to what looks like a huge car park for ships, but is actually the Straits of Singapore and hence the world’s busiest shipping lane.
The all-time highlight for the boys which is now at the top of their list of things to do in Singapore (thanks guys, forget the S$245 we spent on a family ticket to the Zoo) was a gun/cannon measuring about five meters long which fired six-inch diameter shells that they could climb all over, turn wheels and knobs for, and generally pretend to be blowing those ships out of the water with. There were even statues of soldiers cleverly crafted to look like they were about to put live shells into the gun. Niels and Carl were in seventh heaven, yelling and making explosion noises and pretending to be shoving those shells into the barrel and screaming “FIRE!!” at the tops of their voices.
Niels just loved spinning the wheels that used to change the elevation of the gun barrel and soon had an entire storyline going about an imaginary battle. Now that he's five and a half he can get really involved in his own imaginary scenarios, and acts them out very convincingly. After a while Carl got bored with taking orders from his big brother and decided to explore the base of the gun which is a huge circular platform (this sucker used to rotate 360 degrees and weighs over five tonnes). Small metal doors concealed alcoves for the ammo to be stored in and he wandered along trying to open them while I continued my usual monologue for when we are in the bush: “don’t stand on the ant trail, don’t pick up that pile of rotting leaves and discover a millipede nest, don’t walk into the spider web because their might be a 10- kilo tarantula in there…” etc etc. All the time I’ve go my fixed, slightly crazed smile on my face that basically means “yes aren’t we all having fun you go ahead and be adventurous little boys” while I do my best not to make my kids paranoid and just let them enjoy themselves. After all, the chances of seeing a snake here are probably fairly small. You never see any warnings about them and given the regulated nature of society over here I’m sure I would have seen a sign about them or at least a warning of a stiff fine for disturbing them if there were snakes.
Carl finally found a door which would open, just when I was happily convinced that they were all locked. With an exultant “ah-ha!” he flung to door open and in a blur of scuttling slithery panic I saw what I was convinced was an eight foot diamond headed cobra shooting towards my baby’s head!!! I hadn’t realized until that moment that it is actually possible to scream without making any noise. Thankfully it doesn’t slow your reflexes one bit and I scooped him up so fast it’s amazing his shoes were still attached to his feet.
As all the blood drained from my face and I felt my heart beat what surely was it’s last desperate thump Carl looked down calmly, pointed a chubby finger and said “chi-chak”. Indeed, it was only a lizard. To be fair it was a fairly large one (o.k. about 15 cm), and completely utterly harmless. It sat there blinking in the sudden light with that look in its eyes that said “what does a lizard have to do to get some sleep around here” and then padded off vertically up the wall to curl up in a crack.
Sorry mummy chi-chak, I know how you feel.