Singapore is indeed a tropical island. It is hot and humid every day, where a temperature of 80 deg F provides a respite from the outdoor sauna and you always wish for a breeze. There is no autumn where trees shed their leaves, and there is no winter when no flora grow. The 365 day growing season contributes to a surprisingly green landscape. Flowers, trees, and grasses line roadways.
A mango tree grows in the neighbor's yard, and Mr. Chen plucks the mangoes for the neighbor. He says the neighbor is too lazy to pluck, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It may be that in Singapore labor is cheap so you wouldn't think to perform such tasks yourself when it is so cheap to hire out. No doubt if you don't harvest the mangoes they will fall onto the expensive cars parked below. But who will harvest the mangoes?
 |
| Plucking mangoes with a custom plucking stick. He fashioned the stick with a fish net on the end of two taped together bamboo poles used as bars for hanging laundry. |
 |
After the plucking, a Lexus parked underneath.
You may notice a trash can on the street. Someone is using the trash can to indicate ownership of the parking spot -- kind of like in Chicago when you put chairs into a parking spot you excavated from the snow, except, here, no work went into creating this parking spot; people are just competitive and don't want to risk losing their rock star parking. Or maybe they're too lazy to risk parking further away and walking through the sauna from the remote parking. |
The neighbor's maid was apparently supervising. Domestic helpers are relatively inexpensive in Singapore, and it is common to hire them. By law, they can only come from Philippines, Indonesia, and Burma (maybe Cambodia too; I may be missing some other countries; apparently they don't come from Malaysia, India, or China because it could create sexual excitement in the home). Mr. Chen likes to talk Bahasa to the Indonesian maids on the block. You may remember that the national languages of Malaysia and Indonesia are mutually intelligible. You may have heard the languages called Malay and Indonesian, but they are also called Bahasa Malayu and Bahasa Indonesia -- these names may provide a better reminder of how similar they are. Mr. Chen learned Malay in school in Malaysia.
I spotted Mr. Chen plucking mangoes from the tree and talking Bahasa to the maid. Maybe it reminds him of his youth in his Malaysian village. Maybe the Singaporean neighbors really don't know how to pluck mangoes because they didn't grow up in villages with mango trees. But it is pretty easy to pluck mangos, so maybe they are just lazy.
 |
| Bobby and his dad surveying Limbok Terrace for mango trees |
Comments