Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The first time I went to Singapore, I was really surprised at how strict everything was. There were signs directing people not to spit out chewing gum; posters saying how much you would be fined if you dropped litter; placards advising the good Singaporeans always to always act respectfully – it made me very nervous that I was going to inadvertently transgress a rule just by being my untidy self. I backpacked down to Singapore through Malaysia – on my way to see my good friend, Tang. As proclaimed in the Lonely Planet book in my backpack, I was doing this on a ‘shoestring’ and had a wallet full of $2 Singapore dollar notes and not much else in the way of hard currency.
But that was ok, I was stopping with my friend Tang. I met Tang at a Jethro Tull concert in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he was studying engineering at the local university. I hadn’t met many Singaporeans in the late 70s (none) but he certainly didn’t fit the stereotype in my mind. He was very tall, had really long hair and was wearing a Uriah Heap Tshirt. We were now meeting up again after he had finished his degree and had, reluctantly moved back home to Singapore.
He lived in a flat with four other young Asian guys in their 20s who were determined to resist the parental pressure of ‘good degree, good job’. Tang had fulfilled his ambition well, by barely passing his own degree. They were all into UK/USA heavy rock and the flat was filled with loud guitar riffs emanating from the ‘music blaster’ in the corner with posters on the walls of long haired men looking like they were in the throes of an orgasm hugging they axes. In Singapore, their lack of work ethic and longer than regulation hair meant they were really were kicking against the weight of family expectation. All these men were from wealthy families but were determined to stretch out the freedom they had tasted in the west for a few more years.
I was turned on by their determination to live their own life and buck a whole culture. The ‘Tang’ I had known at Newcastle University had known very little about engineering but he had made a good living from selling bootleg Led Zeppelin albums. I thought he was so cool.
I think it’s a statue in the centre of Singapore with a plaque underneath it which exhorts young Singaporeans to honour their parents, work hard and have pride in their country. The determination of this small nation had come after the devastation of the Second World War. However, Tang and his mates had been born at a very different time, into a great deal of wealth and these values just did not resonate with them. And, like kids all around the world, they were rebelling. However, this rebellion was a lot more dangerous there.
I didn’t get to meet his parents. I gathered through Tang that because of all the money they had spent on his education, they felt ashamed of what they saw as his poor attitude – so wouldn’t have been much interested in a hippy friend from the UK. He had met mine – and what they saw was a quiet formal, polite Asian man.
I couldn’t see how the huge gulf in the attitude between him and his family would ever be reconciled. But you know what? People grow up and they often don’t keep that youthful rebelliousness all their life. The life we foresee for ourselves in our teenage years and in our early 20s doesn’t always work out as we plan it. After a few years, a lot of us falter under the weight of conformity.
It was made of glass the office that Tang had on the 35th floor of a very modern building. Or that’s how it seemed with vistas on two sides. When I visited Tang 30 years after my first visit, he was now a married man with a family and was also the CEO of his father’s very successful, engineering company. However, I could still the visage of that old ‘hipster’ as he still sported a slightly longer than acceptable hair style.
And then, I pulled out an old Singaporean $2 note, I had kept as a souvenir from my first trip. ‘Remember our times in Newcastle, Tang, going to see bands at the City Hall and the Mayfair’ and when I visited you in your squatty little flat all those years ago?” Tang laughs, pulls out his IPod and puts it on his Bose Speaker in the corner of the room. A couple of touches and ‘Living in the Past’ by Jethro Tull blasts in the room. ‘Good times, he says, good times’.