SINGAPORE — With cheap flights available, Singapore has become one of my favorite cities. It is near, a son and his family live here and a daughter is based in Kuala Lumpur so it is an occasion for reunion and together we revisit much-loved haunts. First stop, of course, is Boon Tong Kee the restaurant that arguably serves the best Hainanese chicken — Singapore’s brand dish, equivalent to our ‘adobo.’
* * *
The highlight of this trip was to visit the Singapore Garden Festival in Suntec — the city’ s cavernous 2-hectare Convention Center. The garden festival was billed as a return. The first opened in 2006 and again in 2008. Lucky for me that I should be here for this return. My friend, UP awardee, Louie Tabing who has an early morning program on “farming” had just announced in his radio program that I was now a certified farmer.
I will have to live up to that announcement. There was a lot for a neophyte farmer gardener like me to see and learn from the spectacular Singapore exhibit — landscapes, organic farming, including the very latest invention — vertical gardens.
You may not believe it but you could have a garden with herbs and flowers right in your condominium no matter how small. But the technology is there to make it possible. You can live green in the heart of a polluted city.
The trick is to grow greeneries vertically, whether on your rooftop or indoors through “drip irrigation.”
Netafim, the pioneer of the drip irrigation system, was in the exhibit. This answers the problem of how to preserve water while taking care, not just of small gardens but equally true of huge plantations. The magic is in “very precise watering.” In theory, we’re still far from that with so much land available for planting, but like the rest of the world we cannot begin too early about preserving water.
* * *
Peter Cheok, a Singaporean landscape artist, designed a farm scene typical of homes in our provinces. Cheok won the best of show and gold medal winner in 2006 and 2009.
I can see why he would be a winner to those whose message is that there is virtue in returning to the basics of life. He had designed the farm and house for Li-Ann who got tired of the long years working in the city when he returned back home to the simpler Bario (I wonder if he meant barrio life).
The design is centered on a nipa hut that he built himself and surrounded by bamboo. He wanted to be an organic farmer and would not use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The award winning Singaporean landscape artist was able to portray that concept of a simple life steeped in nature. If I had met him I would have asked if he had ever visited life in the barrios of the Philippines.
It was ironic that the grand Singapore Garden Festival 2010 gathering of the world’s top award-winning garden and floral designers would have a corner that celebrated barrio life.
On the other hand, the official Philippine participation was disappointing. A few pots of ordinary orchid plants and vines made up the entire showcase of orchids from the Philippines. But didn’t we have some of the rarest orchids in the world known to connoiseurs the world over? These were collected into a two volume book, Orchidiana Filipiniana by the Lopezes. Why could they not have helped the country with a better showing in the Singapore Garden Festival instead of those measly looking orchids? If they did, it would also have helped the magnificent book compiled by Helen Valmayor. A pity that our private sector and the government could not have gotten their act together for a better display in the exhibition.
* * *
What’s a trip to Singapore without visiting Kinokumiya, my favorite book store? I wanted to buy Tom Plate’s Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew subtitled Citizen Singapore: How to Build A Nation. It is part of a bigger project on “Giants of Asia.” But I need not buy the book, my son said, “I have already bought it for you.”
The book is on conversations that took place in July 2009 between Lee Kuan Yew and the author. According to one review which recommends the book “it has many insights into Mr Lee’s rationales for past decisions and policies regarding national and international situations.” But it isn’t all praise. There are criticisms too. But the conversations offer the persona behind the man who literally brought up this island state into a status of power from nothing.
* * *
Zakir Hussain writing in the Straits Times says the author, America’s only syndicated columnist, has taken a second risk in his Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew but it was risk worth taking. “His book could not be more relevant at a moment when recession, debt and dysfunction are plaguing the West while Asia strides boldly into the future.”
The 86-year-old Minister Mentor speaks on a wide range of topics, from his temper and children to various countries and his ‘authoritarian’ ways. These are captured in a writing style that is fast-paced and conversational over 24 chapters that are peppered with Mr Plate’s views.”
I am still reading his own books, so I don’t know when I can tackle this latest book in conversational style, of what others thought of him as the creator of the Singapore I so enjoy when I come to visit.
There is another reason why Filipinos especially writers who compare him to some of our leaders should read this book. They will be more circumspect when making the comparison. It is a simple fact that none has come up (at least in modern times) to the achievements of this giant of an Asian, both as an intellectual and a politician. Perhaps it is a consolation that being of Asia, we can also claim him as one of our leaders in the journey to the Asian Century.