...wee, wee, wee, wee,...all the way home

I watched a CNN segment on traffic in Jakarta on Monday night. In the report it took a reporter 45 minutes to go 200 yards in a taxi. I remember it was monumental when I was there fifteen years ago, and I cannot imagine what it is like now. Paulus told Tony that no one stays at the Sari Pacific any more (that was the mega star hotel in downtown Jakarta) because it just takes too long to get there from the airport, and then too long to get from there to any place else. The CNN report said if traffic and traffic jams keep growing apace for the next five years, Jakarta will just stop.

Bangkok, too, has some dandy traffic jams. I expect Lynne and I will see that when we're there at Thanksgiving. Anyway, when Tony and I were in Thailand in the mid 1990s we read news accounts about drivers who "lived" in their vehicles because they spent up to 6 hours a day commuting in and around the city--unless there was a bad accident or rain, when it might be eight hours. So Bangkok commuters at that time set up shop in their cars--a cellular phone (the big clunky ones), the earliest lap top computers in the passenger seat next to them (so big they would take an entire seat), and insulated drink cups were all standard issue for intrepid road warriors. There were plenty of roadside vendors in case a driver needed a meal when in a multi-hour traffic jam. However, recognizing that what goes in must come out, one of the most essential pieces of Thai commuter equipment was a plastic urinal that could be used without getting out of the driver's seat if nature called. There were several different models, all advertising their superior drip and spill proof properties. I do not recall seeing any female models, only items appropriate for men. But that was long ago and far away.

Closer to home, I took a taxi from SIM after classes today, monsoon season has started. Buses are okay most of the time, but not during downpours, and not at the end of a VERY long day, when traffic and the stops every hundred yards or so can make the journey take up to an hour and a half. I hopped in the taxi and settled back for the 40 minutes or so it would take (in evening rush hour traffic) to get from SIM HQ back to the flat in Serangoon.

I may have closed my eyes. That was when I heard the unmistakeable sound of someone peeing into a plastic container. I know the sound, nothing else like it, I've been around plenty of kids in potty training. My innocuous little taxi driver needed to whiz...so he did. I didn't know what protocol was under the circumstances, so pretended to be totally unaware. However, I did redouble my effort to listen, just in case there might be some other plausible explanation for that distinctive noise emanating from the vicinity of Mr. Choo's lap.

Nope. It really IS an unmistakeable sound.

Taxi driving is a very competitive business in Singapore; no fares, no income, simple as that. Mr. Choo was the oldest taxi driver I've had so far, probably in his seventies at least, maybe older. Prostate? When we stopped at the next traffic light, Mr. Choo opened his door, spat, and emptied his plastic urinal onto the road where the rain carried both vital bodily fluids (for some reason, I've been thinking of Doctor Strangelove recently) off into the storm drain.

So that's how I ended up in the taxi with a driver who went wee, wee, wee, wee...all the way home.

Beware! Be very ware!

I spent the weekend in Kuala Lumpur (KL), a place I’ve referred to as a “one day” city, for a third and fourth day. The motivation was to meet Tony (enroute back to SIN from a dive trip in Sipidan), who was in KL to meet his buddy Paulus (from Jakarta). Paulus travelled from Indonesia for a conference on palm oil, and a meeting in KL was their only chance for a reunion during Tony’s sojourn in Asia. Plus, for me, the KL Renaissance is a comfortable hotel, (relatively) inexpensive, and a change of scenery from my flat in Singapore.

KL is certainly grittier than Singapore, literally and figuratively. As for the latter, KL has a reputation as a party city despite dire warnings of death penalties for importing drugs (announced during approach to KL's airport), with lots of bars and nightclubs downtown. Plenty of backpackers and Singaporeans spend weekends there for cheaper booze, flops, and shopping. But there's also a wary tension in KL, a palpable one, since Malaysia is in the throes of (not so) creeping Islamization. Malaysia's population is just over half ethnic Malay (presumed by the Constitution to be monolithically Muslim) and just under half are other ethnic groups (mostly ethnic Chinese and Indian, hence dominantly Buddhist and Hindu). Although the current, highly publicized 1Malaysia PR campaign might lead outsiders to assume aspirations to unite disparate ethnic groups, in fact, the ethnic Malay (read Muslim) fraction benefits from sweeping benefits under "positive discrimination" that range from tax breaks to affirmative action and housing discounts (and the application of Shariah law). Malaysia's other ethnic groups are subject to civil laws that offer formal equal rights under the Constitution (but no equal benefits). However, religious law is more and more often applied, superseding civil rights. Malaysian policy is definitely an example of Mad Magazine's famous maxim "some are more equal than others."

I generally like Malaysian people I've met, I enjoy Malaysian cuisine, but KL is a city of both annoyance and contradiction, made starker by comparison to Singapore. Both are upstart cities, in that their post-colonial histories are not very long, both are multicultural (in their distinctive ways), each aspires to be the "go-to" city of the Malay peninsula. As a country, Malaysia dwarfs Singapore, whether population, square miles, natural resources, etc. But Singapore has it hands down over KL in terms of being a livable and efficient city, with a modern (and for the most part) uncorrupt government. If only the same could be said for KL.

On Saturday, the 2009 Budget of Malaysia was announced in the New Straits Times (the KL English language newspaper which featured the pictured headline, not to be confused with the Straits Times of Singapore), laying out strategies for Malaysia to become a UN-defined "high income country." Simultaneously, Islamists push for all education (including math and science) to be in the Bahasa Malaysian language.

It is no accident that Singapore is a world city. The risky political choice at its birth to use English as the language of commerce and administration established a lingua franca for all Singaporeans, costing every ethnic group something, but without any of the city-state's ethnic groups winning the language battles by imposing their own on others. Smart choice. Singapore leveraged that facility in English and hard work into its move from a third world to a first world city in just a few decades. Maybe life shouldn't be this way, but with globalization the major impetus to Malaysia's struggles to get closer to the top of the heap, how does mandating Bahasa position Malaysians and the industries they run to either cut the edge of technological innovation or to command the heights of the global economy? It makes sense only if the purpose of mandating Bahasa is to ensure continued Islamic dominance of Malaysian politics and policy. I wonder how the tension between 21st century Malaysia and its desire to be a player on the world stage and conservative forces eventually plays out. From what I see and read, I'm not optimistic that forces of modernization are poised to win.

Anyway, serious thoughts about politics aside, there’s more than a bit of sibling rivalry between these two large cities. They squabble about whether CHICKEN RICE is rightfully claimed as Singaporean or Malaysian cuisine. Singaporeans accuse Malaysians of being corrupt and lazy, Malaysians accuse Singaporeans of being authoritarian copycats using stereotypes that obfuscate more than they illuminate. However, the cross-town rivalry certainly spawns interesting T-shirts. Singapore is labeled SINGLEBORE, testament to its tamer, more tightly-wound and uptight image, chewing gum (which is illegal to import) apparently inspires sex. The incongruity of slamming Singapore where unmarried couples risk being jailed by the religious police squads if they sit too close together in a public place is considerable. KLers also poke fun at censorship in Singapore, where criticizing the government is frowned upon and seldom occurs. But irony is surely not a cultural strong suit in southeast Asia. Where else could merchants in one place accuse another of censorship, while living with the reality that even a whisper of criticism of Islamization in KL brings risk of political persecution and death threats from the more militant types?

Despite having (too) many unmet deadlines, I procrastinated creatively in KL by wandering around the Central Market for an hour, searching for gifts to bring home. Since Singapore's retail scene is dominated by western goods, there's little unique here—I’d be just as likely to find the same stuff (cheaper) at the Boulevard Mall! So looking for handcrafted items in KL seemed like a better choice for distinctive items. I exchanged Singapore dollars for Malaysian ringgit, thinking I'd buy some pewter or batik at the market.

Walking from the hotel to the subway in KL provided another stark reminder of how different the two cities are. "You can't get there from here" should be the motto for KL, versus "You can get everywhere from here" for Singapore. In KL, nothing is quite finished. The distance between the curb and road at a pedestrian crosswalk can mean a step down (or up) of nearly two feet, not wonderful for the sore of knee! Drains run under the sidewalks--and grates don't always bridge the drainage holes. Tile pavers are missing from sidewalks, potholed asphalt substitutes for concrete in some areas. Trees interrupt sidewalks, leaving no room to circumvent them without stepping into the street. The walk from a five star hotel in a neighborhood of five star hotels, covering the two blocks between a monorail station, multiple busstops, and the subway, is the equivalent of a trash-strewn obstacle course. There's simply no way to stroll in KL. Cannot be done. Pedestrianism is NOT for the faint of heart--carefully observing the next foothold, and placing feet on concrete rather than other squishy substances, is the only way to stay upright. Walking is a contact sport! Subway and monorail lines do not link at interchanges, sidewalks deadend at expressways that are impossible to cross. You can't get there from here. Again, irony escapes the KLers.

The subway ride to the Central Market was only two stops, from Dang Wangi station by the hotel to Pasar Seni and cost about 40 cents each way (just 1.3 ringgits). There were lots of touristy items, including some beautiful saris, sarongs, silver and pottery. But I wasn't in the mood to barter, I just looked. I marvelled at the Cute Fish Spa, a teeming fish tank surrounded by wooden benches, where for a few ringgits one could sit and let fish nibble dead skin off of feet for ten minutes. "No teeth" the spa guy assures me. I wonder "do they suck the skin off?" Definitely not for me, a nibbly pedicure in a public place. I prefer fish I see through a scuba mask, or better yet, surrounded by french fries and cole slaw.

So I looked at batiks until they all started to look alike, took some snap shots of t-shirts, and had a kopi at the Old Time Coffee shop. And sometime, in that saunter around the market, I had my pocket picked. Beware. Be very ware.
A very helpful man at the subway stop put his hand on my purse and told me to be careful when I stepped on the street, that guys riding by on motorcycles were often thieves who would try to snatch my bag. A couple of kids swarmed me when I was taking pictures of t-shirts, saying "take me, take me". I was jostled when I paid for my coffee, the market was crowded. But for the life of me, I don't know when the money disappeared. Good thing I wasn't in a shopping frame of mind, since at some point I had nothing to shop with! I also realize that although it was hard to lose 150 ringgits (around $50) with nothing to show for them, I was REALLY lucky that the booty did not include my passport, Singapore ID card, ATM or credit cards.

KL was bad enough, but not horrible. Unlucky but lucky. Ambivalent...that's how I feel about KL. Truly, I'm happy enough to be back "home" in Singlebore, with only 47 days left until I go back to Buffalo. But who's counting?

Ladies Room

I've never travelled anywhere without wondering about the quality of toilet facilties that may await. Encountering strange food and changes in water, mean that little things like comfortable restrooms with abundant tissue can matter, a lot. I remember being trapped once in a tiny toilet cubicle at a Florence market. I had entered under emergency conditions before I spotted the urinal right outside the cubicle door, or noticed the lack of tissue. It took the better part of 15 minutes before men finally stopped peeing and I felt I could exit somewhat gracefully, trying to telegraph confidence that, of course I'd entered that particular toilet by careful choice, not by accident. So my first restroom foray at the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) where I teach made me wonder whether I might be having deja vu all over again...entering through the same door that a man was simultaneously trying to exit. I remember thinking "...oh dear, this could be embarrassing, I sure hope he's not one of my students..."

But it wasn't really interesting at all.

At SIM, restrooms are arrayed off of subsidiary hallways, much like our offices in the Department of Sociology at UB. There is a smaller hallway off of the main one, and separate restrooms for men, women, and a unisex handicapped toilet radiate off of its small foyer (if foyer is the right term for an anteroom for a toilet). Aside from that spatial similarity of main hallway, sub hallway and rooms off it that, there is nothing similar about restrooms on North Campus and restrooms at SIM. That's because the restrooms at SIM are ALWAYS clean, they ALWAYS have toilet tissue and paper towels. They always have soap. Not once this semester have I had to tape a sign to the mirror that says "Please scrub this sink before we all die" "Please may we have some toilet tissue" or "Please clean this restroom before I have to call your supervisor".
Singapore cleaners really clean, they don't just empty the odd trash bin and swab gray dingy water that smells like damp stinky socks around the center of the floor. They mop in the corners. They wipe off the counters and faucets. Not only do the SIM restrooms look clean, they SMELL clean, an accomplishment in a large, well-used public building. I suppose this high standard of restroom hygiene isn't surprising, though, given Singapore's penchant for tidy orderliness.

And as if clean isn't good enough, Singapore restrooms can also entertain.

Several years ago Singapore was the epicenter of the SARS epidemic. In the aftermath, the government plans carefully how to "guard the spread"--to stave off as many threats of communicable disease as possible. Standard restroom equipment is a poster showing the seven steps of how to wash hands to properly to minimize the risk of spreading H1N1 (although I'm intrigued by the posters, I'm actually much more worrried about dengue fever than the flu) and how to properly afix one's face mask (many people wear them here).

Other signs remind people not to rudely drip water on the floor after washing hands. I noticed there were even posters instructing women how to use the toilet. Singapore may have a reputation as bossy and rules oriented, but that seemed a bit over the top even to me.

That is, until the day of the SIM commencement ceremony last week, when the building (and the restrooms) were unusually busy. I'd never been in a ladies room with more than another person or two, but that day, the restroom was standing room only! In fact, the only available stall was deep in the bowels (I could not resist that cliche) at the far end of the restroom. I nudged the door open and was stopped in my tracks. I had encountered a toiletless, paperless toilet facility with a hose instead for post use cleaning. Hence the poster. If someone attempted to use a stall with a toilet in the same way you'd have to use a stall without one, there really could be BIG trouble.

And vice versa, I'm sure, though I decided to forgo that particular adventure in experiential learning. I just crossed my legs, and waited for a seat.

Some days I hate my job.

But most days I love it. I realize I might have one of the best jobs in the world. Sure, every job has its downsides: in mine there are the realities of professional (professorial?) pettiness and never-ending deadlines and the humdrum of work-related administrivia to take in stride...but mostly, colleagues are supportive and stimulating and students a regular source of interest and enjoyment.

Take yesterday, for example. Despite its groundhog day-esque quality (I'm not sure how exactly to explain that feeling, but there's a certain relentless repetitiveness about Singapore that makes me think of the movie Groundhog Day) it was a good day. Parts were very predictable. I took the 156 and 74 buses to SIM (Singapore Institute of Management) on Clementi Road, where I teach. Tony was away for a couple of days diving in Menado, so his absence meant even more routine repetition about the day. To break it up, I had lunch with Kevin and Sean at next-door Ngee Ann Polytechnic (28,000 students at a campus smaller than North Campus).

After classes ended, Bob and I had dinner in the Little India neighborhood--during the height of the Deepavali festival (there really does seem to be a festival here pretty much every week). Dinner was absolutely delicious. Seeing the lights and promenading people dressed in colorful finery, celebrating the triumph of good over evil was interesting. Little India was brilliantly lit and densely packed (increasingly as time passed) with a kind of collective nervous energy in the crowds. Beyond the many Indian families celebrating Deepavali, especially noticeable were the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of south Asian men converging on Little India as we ate, and even more so as I headed home. These guest workers are in Singapore on temporary work permits, doing the physically demanding jobs eschewed by Singaporeans, like construction and menial work. The festival and public holiday provides rare time off work. By the time we left Little India around 8:30, the throngs of south Asian men were becoming oppressively large. It was a tad intimidating as I travelled alone. I didn't feel threatened at all, but it was overwhelming to be so tightly packed together and it felt quite singular to be "me" in the almost entirely gender and ethnic invariant sea of humanity. I stuck out like a sore thumb, very conscious of looking and feeling "different." But just four minutes and two MRT stops away from Little India, and presto--back into my version of "Singapore normal" state. The exotic and familiar are in close proximity in Singapore, for sure.

Familiar yesterday included emails from friends in Buffalo and elsewhere. I'm at the midpoint of my Singapore stint, with more days behind me than I have left. And just about the time I think I feel a bit homesick, friends help me over the hump. I wish I had some Rocky Mountain cookies, though. Kathleen Clouden sent a care package of her signature cookies via Tony...ahhhhh....yum yum yum yum yum yum yum. The cookies were baked for me, so I felt no compunction to share (Tony is just starting to get over that). I wish they were a familiar part of my day yesterday, but they're long gone. I've eaten many delicious foods here in Singapore, but so far, hands down, Kathleen's cookies were the best!

Yesterday was a teaching day. SOC 293, Research Methods has 40 students and SOC 101, Intro to Sociology, over a hundred. We're covering survey research in Methods, which I think students find the most "fun" part of an otherwise boring course. Of course, I'm not them, so I don't know any of that for sure. SOC 293 students are planning group projects for Sociology Day (November 24th, in the Atrium at SIM) where they will present findings from surveys they conduct soon.

In Intro, we're just getting started on social stratification. We had fun with a class exercise that involved kueh lapis (a local, VERY multilayered cake) as a graphic example for the concept of social stratification. Maybe you had to be here. But students connected with the idea that within any social stratum there are still myriad other ways to make even more distinctions about how people are ranked (like the layers within layers of the cake). Students easily ranked Queen, bank director, pop star, football player, gambler (precondition was identical levels of wealth/income) pretty consensually from highest to lowest. The discussion about labeling and assumptions about the value of certain activities was great: Gambling matters for success for both the bank director and gambler, though not usually called gambling when a bank director does it. Talent and hard work for the bank director, pop star and football player, but neither is enough. Queens might be talented and hard working, but needn't be. Gamblers might be talented and hard working--but luck mattered most. Structural advantages determined the likelihood that a person ended up a bank director or queen, but royalty truly was just an accident of birth. Adding a king bumped the queen almost unanimously to the number two spot. The exercise seemed to help students move from the tangible example of the multiple layers of a yummy Singapore dessert to the abstraction of the ways our assumptions about prestige and power layer people and roles into ranks we "admire", or not.

Best of all, because kueh lapis had been a matter of curiosity I mentioned in an earlier class, several students brought kueh lapis for me to sample. As the focal point of culture here, gifts of food are incredibly meaningful, and I'm lucky that students' feel inspired to feed me things they want me to try. It has made me entertain the idea of "dining with Debi" days which, if I implement, I'll be sure to blog about.

Anyway, Intro students are in the midst of a series of exercises about how societies distribute resources and structure life chances and lifestyles of the rich and famous versus the poor and insignificant. Singapore is a wealthy place, UB students are mainly from well-to-do families (UB's is the most expensive BA program on the island). A local tuism is that all Singaporeans strive for the five C's (or 6, depending on who makes the list): career, cash, credit cards, condo, car, country club. So groups of students used classifieds and items from the Straits Times or the New paper to create hypothetical families of four, with two working parents and a household income and budget for all the accoutrement to maintain their expected lifestyle. No surprise that most created families with two high prestige careers and big salaries, kids in private schools, a family that took annual overseas vacations, drove expensive cars, and lived in expensive condos (Singapore has a VERY expensive housing market). All families included maids (unprompted) in their household budgets. (Maids are ubiquitous, even among modest income Singapore families, costing around $400/month). These families also spent quite lavishly on imagined entertainment and gifts, needing an average income estimated at around $26,000 Singapore dollars a month. You've gotta love youthful optimism.

Next was a reality check, limiting hypothetical household income to the Singapore average (~$7000/month). Students had to figure out what to give up to live "on average" and their priorities were telling. Mostly, they surrendered luxury. They decided to trade down from Mercedes to more prosaic cars, to live in HDB flats (like I do, like 80-85 percent of Singaporeans) rather than condos, opted for public over private schools and vacations in nearby Malaysia or Indonesia rather than expensive overseas destinations. Sensible. What they did NOT surrender was their maids, an interesting signal of what is considered an essential part of "average" or middle class life in Singapore.

Many hung around afterwards to talk about the exercise. Instructors remain in the classroom for an hour of "consultation" at the end of each class, the Singapore equivalent of office hours in Buffalo. Every day--even Fridays, with its consultation hour from 5-6 pm--students seem to want to linger (unlike North Campus students who flee the instant class ends, if they wait that long). While students drifting into class late is a chronic annoyance here, leaving early is not. Wednesday, I lectured 10 minutes over in a 1.5 hour class--only realized when the clock caught my eye--not because students were noisily packing up to bolt. Sometimes students have specific questions about a class topic, sometimes they want guidance on assignments and homework. But mostly students seem to want to hang out and chat. Maybe students like reversing the roles, teaching me about Singapore, and enjoy that as much as I enjoy teaching them about sociology. It is very different from office hours back at UB. I wonder, would students in Buffalo want to stay if we had an hour available in the same room right after class? Would we be more connected and inspiring to our students, and they to us? Or is this just context specific? Maybe I enjoy the novelty of it in Singapore, but would chafe under the expectation in Buffalo.

Anyway, Intro students for next week have two assignments. First, they have to reach consensus on what principles they will use to distribute scarce resources (ten slips of paper worth 3 points of extra credit each, for a class of 100+ students). Will they choose to distribute based on principles of need, want, earnings (merit), or power (the capacity to take all the resources)? That should be interesting.

And they have to make even more choices for their hypothetical Singapore families, whose incomes are now set at the high end of the local poverty rate (income around half of the median ($4820) Singapore monthly income). Students' hypothetical family will have seen its disposable income plummet and its lavish lifestyle disappear (just as it has for many in the economic downturn). Their monthly income now drops to less than one tenth their high income expectations ($26,000/month), to just $2,410 per month to make ends meet. To live "on average" they've already given up expensive housing and cars, re-thought leisure activities, and picked public education. Choices get a lot harder now as expectations of attaining the five or six C's that Singaporeans value so evaporate at low incomes.

It will be ideal if the exercises helps students become aware of differences between what people want and what people need...and how luck and the way societies are structured and not just hard work and talent, determine so many of life's chances. There's a strong Singapore variant of the US myth that all it takes to succeed is hard work. Upward social mobility has happened so incredibly fast over the past 4 or 5 decades that young students don't really comprehend how the good luck of wealth, the enough luck of average income or the bad luck of poverty determines life chances, or just how time and context specific the luck someone gets is. Singapore has gone from third to a first world country in less than a lifetime, from a distant British colony (whose fall to the Japanese in WWII, arguably, spelled the end of the British empire), from a short-lived backwater province of newly independent Malaysia, to city-state powerhouse Asian Tiger economy. Unlike many other places, Singapore's transformation and success has translated broadly into much, much better lives for average, ordinary people rather than just a small stratum at the top. Singapore's "birthdate" as an independent nation in 1964 reflected average income of just over $500 per Singaporean; per capita income in 2008 was $30,000. No surprise that UB's Singapore students think moving up is their birthright and that Singapore's booming economy and opportunities for upward mobility will go on indefinitely. They haven't known anything else. Anyway, understanding how social stratificaiton is structured into societies in a global economy is an important sociological insight for kids who have always uncritically accepted the myths of meritocracy and Singapore's limitless potential. There are limits.

I hope that the final parts of the exercise, that require coming up with principles for resource destribution and families descending into poverty status doesn't inspire hypothetical families to do anything too desperate, like selling one of their kids (that was mentioned--apparently a theme in a Chinese soap opera shown on local TV)...or cannibalizing their maids (not yet a soap opera theme...as far as I know).

Recycling in Singapore

“Why”, I wondered out loud to students after class one Friday, “Given all of the Westernish things and processes I see all around Singapore, like high end shopping malls, air conditioning everywhere, an incredible public transportation system…and the city is so clean…why don’t I see blue boxes everywhere, why not much evidence of recycling?”

“Ma’am, maybe that’s because you don’t know where to look.”

Truer words…

Karung guni is the local term for the occupational category “recycler.” But its roots are not so much a reflection of the modern sensibilities of environmental friendliness and avid recycling, as the time-honored tradition of wasting nothing...absolutely nothing.

My story about recycling starts, oddly enough, with bicycle horns. Almost everyone knows my quirky and VERY strong aversion to repetitive noise, accompanied by my inability to concentrate on anything else whenever it occurs. Noise doesn't bother me, even lots of it, even if it is loud and constant--as long as it is not rhythmic. Rhythmic repetitive noise that I find appealing (music) is distracting or absorbing, depending on what else I have going on—because I am transported by music, I can’t listen to music and work simultaneously.

Volume doesn't matter much. It's rhythm. So the up and down cadence of conversation doesn't count. Laughter and chit chat don't either. TV noise to me is like white noise for other people, I can tune it out entirely, no matter how much or how loud (as long as it's not a musical peformance). But the drumming of fingers, tapping of pencils, ringing of bells...those patterned repetitive sequences of noise are different. Repetitive noise in Debiworld (a strange place, for sure) is what I call the same sound repeated over and over and over...with a rhythm that I notice. All kinds of rhythm preoccupy, overwhelming my consciousness so that I can’t really focus on anything but the repeated sound.

I have two strategies for dealing with repetitive noise. When I can, I remove myself from its source. Alternatively, I stop it at its source. Otherwise, I get anxious first, and then cranky. I trace my aversion to repetitive noise to the summer my sister Nancy repeated everything I said everything I said everything I said everything I said. So, maybe it is no surprise that non-musical repetitive noise makes me just the tiniest bit crazy and abundantly hostile to its source. The same way I felt about Nancy that summer I thought would never end.

The first time I heard the repeated bleats of a bicycle horn in the parking lot outside my building here, I obviously noticed, but didn’t investigate. Just kids playing on bikes I figured (that was before I realized that I seldom ever saw kids on bikes—too hot to zip around on bikes for fun). The noise would move away as the kids rode off. Right. It stopped, no biggie.

The next time the horn started bleating, I felt a bit cranky. A second interruption. Why were they back? Don’t these kids have homework to do or someplace else to go? Don’t they know it is rude to disturb neighbors? Someone might be trying to work. Perhaps a bit overly focused on moi, but the amount and duration of noise did make it seem very inconsiderate. Couldn't they just holler insults and dirty words at each other like regular little boys (I was sure they were little boys)? I can handle that! It was the damn horn, over and over again. Grrrr. I gritted my teeth. But by the time I got to the window to see what was going on, the kids and the horn had disappeared, so the distraction was short lived and tolerable.

But the third time in a couple of hours that the horn interrupted my train of thought, I WAS really annoyed. I felt sure the offenders were probably members of an unruly gang of eight-year-old boys obliviously tooting the horn repeatedly, while I was trying to write. Or maybe it is just one kid who can't keep his hands off his horn. Regardless, enough was enough. Time to resolve the repetitive noise problem; strategies swirl in my head.

I know. If parents won’t stop the kid on the bike with a horn, maybe I can. I’ll just step outside and glare at the culprit(s). All of them will see the icy gaze of the (just slightly) crazy ang moh who is trying to work, and understand that means the noise should stop. Now. The glare will strike fear and respect in tiny hearts. They will freeze (figuratively, this is Singapore) in their tracks and decide the best strategies are either to just quit with the noise or take their horn(s) and their damn little bicycles elsewhere. I could stop this noise pollution in a hurry with one weedy look, I figured, no challenge for me.

I headed for the door, steeling myself to deliver the glare as convincingly as I could. So imagine my surprise when I saw that single, older, weather-beaten man pacing through the parking lot, squeezing the rubber ball of his hand-held horn as if his life depended on it. He was karung guni, though I didn’t know it then. To me, he was just a guy who made so much distracting noise that I wanted him gone. With no baskets, boxes or bags, he wasn't trying to sell anything, I reasoned. He just had a noisy horn. My neighbors did not seem enraged at the din (at least, I didn’t see anyone else outside of their flats glaring balefully like me). He must be an accepted figure, even if his exact role was a mystery. Maybe he was mentally retarded or ill or otherwise unusual (given his obsession with the horn), but nonetheless graciously tolerated by my neighbors (now I was feeling just a tad ashamed at my impatience). Or maybe his presence had purpose, just not one I could discern. Hmmmm. A man wandering around parking lots, relentlessly squeezing a horn, hollering every so often. I've encountered men like that before (sans horn) and they sometimes make me nervous. No obvious social interactions, people mostly just ignored him (although somewhat less studiously than they ignored me). He seemed to be part of Boundary Ville's landscape. I tried to settle back into cultural sensitivity mode. Especially since the imagined repetitive noise problem involving a pack of bratty little boys was not the REAL problem, I lacked a strategy for dealing with it. I wasn't about to try to confiscate the horn; an attempted stare down didn't seem like the smartest move either. My best bet was a hasty retreat back into the flat and fervent hope that this was just a one day nuisance.

Hah. Karung guni patrol HDB estates like mine every day. I don’t know if each has designated territory, or whether any place is fair game. I’ve seen a pretty regular cast of characters here. One guy has an open blue truck, another has an enclosed white panel truck, and a third fellow comes by bicycle (but still carries the offending horn in his hand!) with a big box mounted on the back. They park and walk up and down the parking lots outside the buildings, sounding their horns continuously as they hope to be beckoned flats above. Occasionally, they shout something (Mandarin or Malay, possibly in response to a face in a window) designating what particular type of stuff they're looking for (furniture, paper, electronics).

Karung guni provide door-to-door removal services, taking other people’s unwanted items (from bundled newspapers, to old furniture, electronic items [highly prized], plastic bags, worn out clothes, just about anything except wet household waste) and recycling that into other commercially useful stuff. They are the 21st century equivalent to Dickensian “rag and bones” men who patrolled the streets and lanes of historic England with their carts (most other countries too, I'm sure, but this is a nod to British colonialism here) collecting unwanted debris and giving it a useful second life. With not an iota of usefulness left in original states, rags and bones could be rendered down into paper and glue...the historical form of recycling before environmentalism became fashionable and recycling reached the status of a tangible symbol of one's green bona fides.

In Singapore, the useful second life which provides the karung guni’s living (and some are rumored to become quite wealthy) unfolds in a surprisingly 21st century way, given the more typical low tech direct approach to soliciting materials that I’ve observed. Usually, apartment owners holler down that they have stuff they want to give (or sometimes, sell)to the karung guni. But when someone moves flats, a karung guni can be summonsed, not from the parking lot, but from a website!

They trundle hand trucks up the stairs and elevators of high-rise buildings and haul (almost invariably) heavy stuff away. Sometimes karung guni buy unwanted items, but more often they provide convenient disposal of stuff with just enough eventual value to make hauling it downstairs worthwhile. Recycling by karung guni could involve selling hundreds of used plastic bags to a merchant at a flea market for pennies, auctioning something on eBay for thousands, stripping down electronics for component parts, or selling a bundle of newspapers to the paper industry.

They appear regularly, but not like clockwork. A single day may bring several visits by one guy, visits by several different guys, or maybe just one visit by a single karung guni. The predictable patterns are accompanying noise, their absence amidst the monsoon, and magical reappearance the second the rain stops. There is a supply/demand cycle, I'm sure, that I'll see once I watch over a longer period. For instance, the end of Ramadan was a peak in demand, with a veritible blitzkrieg of karung guni descending on Boundary Ville, as Muslim neighbors did annual housecleaning and replaced worn out items with new goods. It was karung guni field day, convened by a symphony of horns. The eventual cargo was an improbably amalgam of stuff, often in states so old and in such disrepair that imagining possible future value draws a blank--but the karung guni know their market, for sure.

I’ve since often watched as the karung guni load the motley assortment of booty coaxed from my HDB neighbors with their siren song of horns. They then head off to other parking lots in another housing estate, drawn magnetically towards the unknown potential of someone else’s recyclables. There they will repeat their ritual of bleating horns, faces hopefully upturned and the hard work of humping loads of other people's detrius up and down stairs and onto waiting trucks. Karung guni are one reason that Singapore is so clean

They are also the reason, as my students explained that Friday afternoon, that I failed to grasp the extent of local recycling. I expected to see some variant of high profile blue plastic recycle boxes that are ubiquitous in the U.S. and U.K. Singapore's recycling culture, of course, was there all along, I just didn’t know where to look...or how to listen. What I finally discoverd in lieu of seeing the expected blue boxes was hearing the much more exotic karung guni horns, now subsided into just another of the interestingly different parts of my everyday life in Singapore.

I hardly even notice the repetitive noise any more.