April 11, 2009
Eats, shoots, leaves, pees
Not even a wet stain on my shorts can put a damper on my family's attempt to sink roots in Singapore
By neil humphreys
The task was simple. Plant three tree saplings in Toa Payoh Town Park, water each of them and stop my child from eating the leaves and tipping the watering can on her head.
What could be easier?
As it turned out, just about everything else I've ever attempted.
And to think the week had begun swimmingly.
To acclimatise our baby girl for her Singapore trip last week, we fed her bowls of rice and noodles, discussed football betting odds and said 'I'll eat his half ball' a lot and, most importantly of all, changed lanes frequently in our car without ever indicating.
As a result, our nine-month-old fitted right in at the Toa Payoh Lorong 1 coffee shop. She ate everything, listened to uncles intently discussing the weekend's Premier League matches and coped with the Singapore traffic.
She nodded in agreement when I asked a taxi driver if he'd had an argument with his indicator.
He refused to go anywhere near it.
But our little one loved the people, the warm climate and the food although the spicy papadam was probably a multicultural bridge too far.
My heart was in the right place, but the papadam wasn't.
It was lodged somewhere in her throat and she turned a shade of purple so dramatic I thought she might start singing Barney songs.
Unfortunately, Singapore has turned her into an addict. No sane father wants his firstborn to become an addict and if she doesn't control the habit soon she could end up standing up in meetings and muttering: 'My name is Miss Humphreys and I am an MRT addict.
She just could not get enough of the MRT public announcer's recorded messages.
Whenever we stepped off a train and the recorded message said 'doors closing, de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de', my daughter suffered a fit of the giggles.
This was an achievement of monumental proportions. Normally she finds satisfactory entertainment hard to come by and behaves like Emperor Caligula.
Like a performing gladiator, I stand in the middle of the room wrestling with teddy bears, juggling skittles and dancing along to the Bee Gees in a desperate attempt to get her to crack a smile.
I've got more chance of cracking the credit crisis.
My bemused daughter gives me the proverbial thumbs down and I am ushered off to the office to work on my material.
Every time the MRT train doors closed, however, she cackled like a hyena with the hiccups.
So this daddy can currently be spotted walking along the streets pushing his daughter's buggy and crying, 'doors closing, de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-dede'.
It's only been a couple of days, but we're already drawing quite a crowd.
Feeling invigorated by such a communicative breakthrough between father and daughter, we bounded out of Toa Payoh's interchange last Thursday and headed across for the town garden.
In the previous column, I mentioned the National Parks Board's pioneering Plant A Tree programme, where you can do just that in a park of your choice to commemorate a loved one or simply because you fancy having a dog pee up a tree planted in your honour.
I was rather tickled by both options and had put my name down for three trees.
The NParks staff greeted us warmly and then pointed towards the saplings awaiting planting.
They were native trees and the name was Calophyllum soulattri, which I think is Greek for 'damn big sapling'.
I had imagined three little twigs. But each tree was over 2.5m tall and I was expected to dig a hole deep and wide enough to contain their roots, manoeuvre them into position and refill the hole.
When an Indian chap handed over the shovel, he eyed my perspiring frame and chuckled.
We were a couple of foreign workers standing together in the early morning Singapore sun, but only one of us believed a few hours spent in front of a laptop constituted real manual labour.
As I dug the first tree's hole, I saw my children gathered together years from now to admire their family trees.
By the third tree, I saw stars.
The watering can was redundant. Each time I bent over the hole to return another shovelful of earth, I watered the tree with my forehead.
Showing a remarkable degree of subtlety, the affable gardener said: 'I finish the last tree. You are very red.'
But it was a deeply proud moment for the Humphreys family as we toasted our achievement and convinced ourselves we were saving the planet, one tree at a time.
We gathered around our handiwork and watered the trees, posing for a symbolic photograph.
But the symbolism was distorted when our little girl knocked the watering can, leaving me with a long wet streak, running from my groin to my knee.
I wanted the photograph to say 'eco-warrior'.
Instead it says 'man who pees himself in public'.
No comments:
Post a Comment