Singapore | Two Laptops

Recently, the Gaelic Dragons dragon boat team was invited to partake in a little cross-sport fun with the Gaelic Lions, the gaelic football club of Singapore. A few weeks before this match, the Dragons had hosted some Lions on the river, inviting them to paddle with us for an afternoon. The Lions were now reciprocating, and I got my first taste of Gaelic football.

It was a hot day, but every day is a hot day in Singapore. You just suck it up an go about your fun. We all arrived at Dempsey Hill and the Singapore Cricket Club pitches where the matches would take place. Donning a rainbow of team-colored commemorative jerseys (I was green team), we headed out onto the smaller of the pitches because the SCC had double-booked with the rugby teams and we lost our full-size pitch.

The afternoon started with some warm up practice, introducing the newbies like myself to some of the skills required in Gaelic Football, including hand-passing (like a volleyball bump), soloing (toe-kicking the ball to yourself; like dribbling) and other ball-handling skills. After the warm-up, it was time to get the tourney going.

The pitches started out fresh and grassy, flashes of bright yellow, pink, orange, blue ,green and red streaking across, but in a short enough time the pitches were reduced to torn-up mud pits. Gone was the brightness of the jerseys as well, though nobody was complaining about getting a little muddy. It just made everything more fun!

Our games were not full-on gaelic football matches, due to the smaller team sizes, and smaller pitch size. We were not supposed to play with our feet, which is normally allowed, nor were we scoring against a net and uprights. Instead we scored by successfully hitting an upright mat with a legal shot.

It was a good time nonetheless. There were some friendly tackles and I made a goal… except I was out of bounds when I made my shot so it didn’t count. But man was it a sweet shot! At the end of the day, as we celebrated this successful meeting of Lions and Dragons with Magners and sandwiches, we all marveled at our spectacularly muddy presentation, and parted for the afternoon tired but most certainly having enjoyed ourselves.

Pictures from the matches are up on my Flickr, which you can find a link to at the bottom of the blog.

On a lazy Friday night, I decided to scratch an itch I’ve had since arriving in Singapore. When people ask me why I am excited to be here, I often respond with, “Well, I love history, so visiting new places and learning about them is exciting and fun to me.” Sometimes it takes a bit for people to get over the “fun to me” part, but after they do, my notion of Singapore even having history is often rebuked. “Singapore was just a fishing village,” or “It’s so young, it doesn’t HAVE a history.” I shake my head. Every place has a history.

Acting upon the advice of a random stranger-tourist I met at the zoo (smart decisions made since 1986!), I decided to take a walk, specifically with Singapore Walks, a walking-tour company that focuses on Singapore’s history: its social history, its trade history, its war history. It’s a very casual affair, and great if you just want to kill a couple hours. The tour guide, at least in my tour, was knowledgeable and friendly (and I’ve been told all the tour guides are so).

Now onto the hookers.

Prostitution in Singapore started almost as soon as Raffles laid out the groundwork for the city. From the beginnings of the trade post, it was legalized and regulated, except for a stretch of time from Queen Victoria until the end of WWII when it was forced underground. Today it is still legalized, and though it is permitted in 5 districts, the Singapore government seems to be moving it all into one district, not renewing the entertainment licenses required to run brothels.

Some fun facts about the history of Singaporean prostitution include:

Japanese women would prefer to catcall from their third-story windows, in a multitude of languages, to attract sailors to them
Chinese women would prefer to remain hidden, the men coming to them, so that they might, “unleash the hidden tiger,” (the tour guide’s words, not mine)
Homosexuality between men is illegal (to this day), but it is not illegal between women (because Queen Victoria though women would never want to do it anyways)
It is illegal for a woman to be in a brothel (in modern times) without a registration card
Since Raffles initially allowed it, one of the caveats of the prostitution regulation is that the working women must be the sole collector of their working fees. Pimps are illegal

Overall, it was a very enjoyable tour, and it certainly scratched my itch for better understanding the place I currently call home. I look forward to going on more of these tours and diving a bit more into what is a very rich and vibrant history of Singapore, once you look past all the skyscrapers and shopping malls.