Community Engagement

For someone like me involved in the community sector, it's been a real inspiration witnessing how the Western societies engage their citizens and implement everyday social policies.


Learnt yesterday in Belfast that they have a coastal rescue team comprised entirely of volunteers responding to emergency distress calls. That's a tough job, running out to sea in the middle of the freezing night if it happens so, hauling people or vessels to safety. Then during church service today, noticed an interpreter standing in front of the congregation using sign language to translate the whole sermon for some hearing-impaired attendees. Fair-trade products also dot the landscape as choices open up for the everyday consumer to choose products that give a fair return to third-world producers.

We've also been real blessed experiencing excellent hospitality during our stay with the Dormans here in Belfast. And you somehow pick up snippets of local civic consciousness from everyday conversations. Like Uncle Alan casually mentioning about "too much carbon emissions" when someone else was rattling about flying around in airplanes. And how it seems instinctive to bring out a plastic bag and pick up your dog's poo when we walk around with Dusty the lovely madcap dog. Certainly helps that there're countless bins in the parks designated for dog poo too.

Recently in Vilnius, Lithuania, came across some sturdy recycling bins designed to prevent pilferage. I've learnt it's a problem plaguing Singapore as the 'recycling aunties' tend to break the locks and dig out aluminum cans/paper from the badly-secured recycling bins put up by NEA and SembCorp, even as it's not feasible prosecuting them since it's about their economic survival.

It's thus with both admiration and humility that I realise how much more Singapore can improve in terms of community engagement, social policies, and even simple graciousness to our neighbours, as we clamour to be the top dog only in the usual measures of worldly success. It'll be lovely to imagine the day when foreigners visit our country and "world-conscious citizens" is the first impression they have of Singaporeans.

Learning About Charity

I'm different from my wife when it comes to being charitable. Knowledge and some experience of syndicated begging in India had instilled a certain prudent consideration in me before giving. If in doubt, always try to verify. And if possible, give to organisations that can better channel the funds to worthy programmes, rather than to individuals.

The people asking for money outside the Orthodox churches in Russia was my first lesson. As of most things/people in Russia, I was wary of them. But my wife's simple logic won me over - they indeed look somewhat homeless, destitute and harmless. As there's no easy way of verifying if they're bona fide, why not just give openly, trusting that they'll put the money to good use?

So when Sasha approached us in Vilnius, Lithuania, 2 days back, my second lesson commenced. In a slightly pained and hysterical manner bordering on tears, the young man from Kalinigrad, Russia, implored us for some money to get his leg fixed at the hospital. While he declined our invitation to join us for dinner, he proceeded to show us his malady - a dark-looking patch of scaly skin that hints of clogged blood vessels. Truly not something you apply lotion on and hope it'll dissipate. Especially in freezing winter.

So we prayed for him and gave him a bunch of roubles we still had, supposedly sufficient to his asking. But some questions still bugged me thereafter. What is he doing here in Lithuania and why did he run out of money? Why does he insist on visiting a particular hospital somewhere else but not here in Vilnius, even as we offered to? These questions went unanswered during our brief encounter with Sasha. Indeed we wish him well and will continue to pray for his well-being. For God knows the heart of each man including mine, and it's better to be a generous fool rather than a miserly sage. Like faith, charity can be more easily observed by acting upon it rather than musing.

Soviet Cakes

Our previous B&B host Diga, told us that there were exactly three types of cake under the soviet occupation and they were pink, green and blue in colour. The cakes had a specific recipe and required exact proportions of each ingredient. She told me that there were people checking on these bakeries and at the time of each check the cakes were made to the exact specifications. Somehow everyone knew when the checks would be. In between bakery check days, the cakes tended to be devoid of a one or more of the ingredients…
But no one made different cakes. No one tried a new recipe. Somehow I found this the most tragic and concise description of communism in daily life.

Zucchini

I was delighted to find a zucchini the other day in the supermarket. Not because I knew what to do with it but because it didn’t look too big for us to eat... Cut it, cooked it, and had Willy try it:

S: “How did you like the zucchini?”
~long pause~
W: “It tastes alien”
S: “So I take it you don’t like it?”
W: “No, no.. I need some time to get used to it”

So the next day, we bought zucchini again. It was still the only vegetable around the right size. Well, there were two other vegetables that were smallish enough, and I didn’t even know what these ones were called, so got them as well.

We cooked them into a sort of stew which I thought was great.
W: “It still tastes foreign… but its growing on me”

There’s probably a moral of this story!
Willy says he is storing up KFC credits.

The folly of newlywed husbands to be slightly too enthusiastic about their wives’ cooking.

Neighbours

Most Singaporeans, esp the guys, should be familiar with the flashing green man on TV, accompanied by mobilization code words that sound as cryptic as Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream flavors. Your heart leaps a bit whenever you don’t recognize any of them. And thank God my generation has never fought a war. I hear it’s dirty business.

Good riddance though if you’re a Latvian soldier in the late 20th century. Latvia (like the other 2 Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania) has an unenviable geography of being sandwiched like a pawn between Nazi Germany and Soviet USSR. So the Latvian solder gets sucked into fighting losing battles against their aggressors, and incorporated into the victors’ armies engaged in charmless wars embroiled in pathetic excuses for invasion.

After decades of Soviet oppression, it’s small wonder that Latvians hate Russia openly and intensely after their independence in 1991, though apparently not Germany these days since Latvia’s now part of EU and NATO. For example, the mother of our B&B host Diga hates Russia to the core for reasons too many to list, and not just because the Soviets got her husband Siberia-bound to shiver there for a few years. He came back a changed and broken man, a contributing factor to a dysfunctional family.


Freedom Monument in Riga, capital of Latvia

So, who your neighbours are matter, especially if they’re aspiring empire builders. I’m glad Singapore’s neighbours are generally friendly – the kind that occasionally rambles about cutting off water-supply, or sends us a yearly dose of haze from over-smoking. If that flashing green man on TV really mobilizes me, I know it’s usually not to fight a real war against marauding neighbours. And if the whole world really listens to Jesus about loving his neighbour as himself (Mark 12:31), the Ministers for Defence all over will need to start buying presents instead of missiles this Christmas.

That Thing About Hospitality (2)

Can’t say this enough – we’ve lots to learn about hospitality from Uncle Alex & Aunty Dina. As our ‘Singaporean-ised” church friends who just shifted back to Russia, they basically opened up their house and their lives to us and we’re truly grateful.

Honestly, the furthest I can foresee as a host is having overseas friends sleep in my house’s guestroom (if there’s one) or on the couch if they don’t mind. To have them sleep in a common (bed)room with me and my wife….that’s a bit too much. But that’s what Alex and Dina did! It was mind-blowing.

We didn’t expect them to:
- Pick us up at the train station
- Bring us back to their house for the night after they deemed the hostel we booked undesirable.
- Cook healthy and hearty Russian breakfasts, lunches and dinners for us
- Spend a whole morning scanning websites and maps for decent hotels, then calling a whole bunch of them
- Give us a local mobile phone so that we can call them for any emergencies and update them on our whereabouts
- Give us each a stored-value Metro card so that we can zip around the magnificent Moscow subway

In fact, we weren’t so sure how to take all these in. That’s when we started learning some lessons on how to receive. Now Alex and Dina did many more things for us than that, and whenever we thanked them, they reminded us to thank the Lord instead. Aptly so! Indeed, the only way we can repay them and all our other blessings from God is to pay it forward.

That Thing About Hospitality (1)

It’s not that I (Willy) abhor Russia. And it’s not that Latvia is the friendliest country in the world. But Russia’s now a memorable country for having generally inhospitable and unfriendly people. Indeed not all Russians look like sour lemons though. We were real blessed to have Uncle Alex & Uncle Dina, friends from our church, looking out for and taking care of us like their kids for the past week in Moscow. Thank you both!! :)

The telling contrast between Russia and Latvia was revealed during our train ride from Moscow to Riga. The train timetables were listed in English! (The end of trying to decipher Russian Cyrillic) Then the Latvian carriage attendants stunned us with a hot cup of tea each without expectations of payment. We were so thrilled everytime we saw another smile or display in English.

While the Russian immigration officers later collected passports in a wooden tray and disappeared to probably shred them, the Latvian ones came by with a mini-laptop, chops and a smile. OK, the latter also disappeared with our passports, but that’s likely to check the authenticity of our Blaring Red Book since few Singaporeans cross this land border.


Alright I shall cease to be a sour lemon here. Russia’s still a fascinating place to visit, but just don’t expect to be treated like a king unless you stay at Hilton everyday. To be fair, we’re probably a spoilt bunch of Singaporeans expecting service standards if we’re paying customers. The Russians apparently don’t know how to deliver this standard simply because they have not experienced it themselves (read this somewhere). Frankly, I feel for them. So if you plan to visit this rugged country steeped in history and unsustainable industrialization, come with a smile and keep it on your face till your Russian counterpart gives up and decide to help you.

Part 2 on Russians (Sharon)

This excerpt from Lonely Planet guidebook (LP) seems very true and made me rethink my impressions: “On a personal level, Russians have a reputation of being dour, depressed and unfriendly. In fact, most Russians are anything but, yet find constant smiling indicative of idiocy, and ridicule pointless displays of happiness commonly seen in western culture. Even though Russians can be unfriendly and downright rude when you first meet them (especially those working behind glass windows of any kind), their warmth as soon as the ice is broken can be astounding. Just keep working at it.”

We met people on the second leg of the train (Irkutsk to Moscow) who were completely friendly, generous and inquisitive – and patient enough to keep working on mutual comprehension in spite of a tremendous language ignorance on both sides. Never come to Russia without a dictionary or a phrasebook!! Our LP’s sad 4 pages covering numbers, food and train vocabulary ran old really fast. Met a lovely young lady (Mariana, 22) with whom we managed to get past the boring superficialities and had some sort of conversation about babies (that we should be getting to work on it), whether or not our parents are important government officials (don’t know how they got that idea!), how to eat a crayfish, potato, and mayonnaise (in separate sessions) and a host of other fascinating subjects. I should add that she really couldn’t speak much English, but our conversations rode on her animated gestures and persistence.

We had a cold on the second day of the train and learnt that Russians are almost as hypochondriac as the average Singaporean. One gave me a eucalyptus nasal spray and offered antibiotics. The older couple fed Willy some cough stopping medicine and tried to force a raw garlic clove on him while he was coughing. (not sure what he was supposed to do with it anyway). We appreciated the gesture.
No one in Russia likes haw flakes (San Zha)!

We are also getting an impression of the role of women in Russian society. Mar 8 is International Women’s Day and we’ve been seeing every woman carrying flowers!! The flower shops are going crazy and you can buy tulips at every metro station. We would say our impression of Russian women so far are – very much a woman and very much in charge. Men open doors, carry bags, fill water and generally do as they’re told. :) Google ‘Babushka’ to read more.

(sorry this is emo) - Sharon

Russia isn’t as easy as we (or maybe I) thought. You get the feeling of this vast nation being largely cut of from the rest of the world, and it’s a difficult sense of being a lower class citizen based on the fact that you speak English. Or is it a white supremacist thing? I think the only time I have come close to this was from kids in Japan and I think it was also that that area was more cut off from foreigners at the time.

In Singapore and most of the places I’ve been – Philippines, Thailand, NZ, Canada etc I realize that on the whole, they are pretty cosmopolitan and have a multitude of races and colours. Dunno if it’s a snobby general look, but we are getting a pretty cold vibe from Russians. Of course there are blessed kindly exceptions to that, and its wonderful coming to a backpackers hostel in Irkutsk which is filled with Russians who are friendly, informative, and interested in other countries. But its really quite a tiring experience to not even know how to tell the time, get directions, and pick food – and then have people give you that utterly disgusted look and ignore you completely when you try. Expectations lowered to the point that a disinterested but willing to communicate attitude is a great encouragement.
Sorry its so negative.. we love Russia and our journey on the Trans Siberian has been really great. Would like to let Nick know that danger of being robbed and shut in the cabin on the train is probably an urban legend cos 1. there are no cabins on third class (the most enjoyable way to travel I think) 2. the only one who can actually lock those doors from the outside is the carriage attendant. If you get locked into the toilet (possible I suppose) other passengers needing to go will make sure you are out. Had a number of unpleasant experiences of being scolded in the toilet on the train! Its depressing to be shouted at in a different language for something you are not quite sure of and when you are um.. needing privacy.