| Nov 15, '06 4:51 AM for everyone |
A lot of people seem to like this *glee* won 1st prize in a non-fiction writing comp in 2000. Enjoy!
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Snake King of Singapore Street
A legion of gods and snakes accompany Lai-Seng to work every night.
Stepping into the Singapore cab, you feel like you are entering a twilight chamber charged with the powers of oriental myth and magic. With Lai-Seng, black eyes flashing under intense eyebrows, as your host.
At 45, he cuts a wiry figure in a neon green Polo shirt and black pants. His underbite and trim goatee frame a toothy grin as he turns to greet me from the driver’s wheel.
“Wah … what’s this?” Momentarily overwhelmed, I could not offer anything more profound.
“Just some decoration,” he smiles matter-of-factly.
Some decorations! Like a hundred tenacious barnacles gripping a rock, figurines of Taoists gods, snakes and crystal balls secure their haughty turf on the dashboard, leaving no spot unclaimed. A large coil of red dragon twirls its gold-trimmed body from the rearview mirror; the Monkey God strikes a fearless pose from the former radio compartment. Juxtaposed against this miniature oriental showcase, Barbie in funky fuchsia waves at you from Lai-Seng’s knee, dirty blond tresses tousled by a distant wind.
Overhead spreads a canopy of midnight blue alive with a galaxy of luminous starts. Created, too, by Lai-Seng. Seven years ago.
“Under company ruling, I change my cab every seven years; this is my third one. I take half a day to decorate each time. Some things, like this dragon, have been with me since 1985.”
That’s certainly enough time for accumulating such a trove of collectibles. I peered closely at Guan Yin the Goddess of Mercy, Fu Lu Shou (the gods of Fortune, Achievement and Longevity), laughing Buddhas, and Guan Di.
What does Guan Di do? “Aaahh, he protects me on the roads,” says Lai-Seng. He also believes the other gods bless and protect him.
With a confiding look through the rearview mirror, he adds, “I used to be in ‘black society’, you know. Black society members worship Guan Di. Suddenly I notice a faded tattoo peeping out from under his left sleeve. I feel a fleeting urge to jump out.
I twist and turn, looking at all parts of this mobile museum of curiosities. From behind, three live-size cobras, hoods, flaring, dart at me as we went over the bump on the extreme left lane of Thomson Road.
Lai-Seng likes snakes: they are proudly displayed on his steering wheel, on the giant metal ring on his finger, and crawling among the figurines on the dashboard.
“I was born in the Year of the Snake[1],” he says. “Pager also got snake.” An elegant specimen carved in metal sits atop the neon green casing of his Motorola pager. Just then, his Nokia mobile phone rings. A short conversation in Hokkien (a common Chinese dialect) ensues.
“That’s my customer. Pick up at Amara Hotel, 11.30pm,” Lai-Seng switches back to Mandarin. Unlike half of the 11,000 Comfort cabs, he does not have a satellite-booking unit installed.”
“I prefer radio, because I cannot read English,” he admitted. “Can keep my eyes on the road when a booking comes in.” Also, the rental for a radio unit is one third that of a GPS[2] unit.
Lai-Seng’s handphone and pager seems to be part of his personal cab booking system. Doesn’t he think he will get more customers with GPS? He laughs.
“Well, I already have many regular customers. Some have taken my cab for over 10 years.” Who are they? “Oh, mostly people working in nightclubs or bars.”
That explains driving on the night shift. Taking advantage of our chatty rapport, I ventured to ask him how much he makes per month.
“About $2,000. Enough for me and my family.” Another quiet smile. His wife looks after three children aged 11, 10, and 4. Feeling a tinge of embarrassment that I can’t even make my higher salary stretch satisfactorily for one, I gaze vacantly at the jade statuettes above the glove compartment. Does he decorate his home like his cab?
“No, home is for family. See?” To my surprise, he whips out a 3R-size album filled with family photographs. Grinning faces pose in the living room, bedroom, and kitchen of his 3-room flat in Clementi New Town[3].
Scenic wallpaper has transformed his living room into a sun-kissed beach with fine white sand, complete with fleecy clouds in a blue sky. A 34-inch Toshiba TV takes pride of place in a corner. The kaypoh[4] Chinese part of my brain mentally calculates that as a 2-month salary equivalent.
Is $2,000 really enough for a family of five? It was recently estimated in a local paper that it takes $100,000 to bring up just one child to the age of 18.
“We just have to live within our means. Hokkien people say: ‘jikicao, jidiamhor’,” he philosophises. Literally, ‘a blade of grass, a drop of rain’.
“W take things one day at a time.”
An image of passive progress I recently read about comes to mind: when water encounters an obstacle, it pauses long enough to gather strength … then it flows right over the obstacle. A riveting symbol of progressing without strife.
Is such effortless progress relevant in ultra-competitive Singapore?
Lai-Seng thinks so, and lives so. As a doting family man, and as the driver of a curio-palace-on-wheels that occasionally sounds out rhythmic tinkles when he’s really in the flow on the expressway.
Now, the pace slackens.
Turning into Kalidasa Avenue, Lai-Seng brings his cab smoothly to a stop at my front gate. He is generous with his time[5], offering the best angles of his treasures to my eager camera. Then he slides back into the driver’s seat, and seeks the next passenger to enthrall. May his legion of gods and snakes protect him as he drives his charmed cab through the streets of Singapore.
As the diesel engine chugged slowly away and the cab turned the corner, I could have sworn I saw it slither.
[1] The Snake in the Chinese zodiac is characterized as a hardworking deep thinker. He is calm during crisis situations. Though communication with others is not his best skill, he does have a good sense of humour.
[2] Global Positioning System
[3] Somewhat of a misnomer, a ‘flat’ is lingua franca for a government-built apartment, usually built in 10-storey slab blocks. Clementi New Town is a public housing estate in the west part of Singapore. A 3-room flat has two bedrooms and one living room(thus ‘3-room’), a dining area and kitchen, and small toilet and shower cubicles with aluminium sheet doors. The author used to live in one in the 1970s.
[4] Colloquail Singlish (Singapore English) expression, meaning ‘busybody’.
[5] Many cab drivers I encounter talk about their daily race against time. Time is money, they say, the faster they can complete one trip, the faster they can start on the next.
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