Easter In Singapore


Good Friday is a holiday in Singapore, but Easter Monday is not. One conclusion to draw from this is that the government is quite happy for people to celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus, but his resurrection is not worth commemorating. Is this a display of scepticism? Not thinking somebody who takes three days off at the weekend is a good example of scepticism? A sign that there’s some gnostic sect at work here in Asia? Is it out of fairness to all the other religions that only get two days’ holiday? Or if we didn’t get Christmas Day off (because theologically speaking, the Resurrection is arguably more significant than the Nativity) would having Good Friday and Easter Monday both off be too many days holiday in close succession? That can’t be right, because then we wouldn’t have two days off for Chinese New Year. All rather mysterious.

Such considerations were far from my mind today, because pretty much everything was far from my mind today. La Serpiente Negra woke us early this morning, and then I had work calls to take first thing; then I had to go over to the East Coast in a taxi that stank like an old barbershop to pick up some dehumidifiers. After that, I staggered around the house for a while before loading our daughter into the baby-carrying backpack and taking her for an excursion – we’re trying to toughen me up so I’m strong enough to carry the child on long expeditions this summer, but it’s hard to work up the curve of fitness.

Despite my exhaustion, it’s pleasing how happy my daughter is to be carried around like this. There’s too much distance between her and the back of my head for her to be able to pull my hair, but she’s still able to kick me in the back – good training for the long flights around the world, where vicious children may be assaulting me. Unless we take the last row of seats on the plane, of course.

We had an ok lunch in a bar called the Mad Poet, utterly devoid of other customers. Perhaps everyone else in Singapore is much more religiously observant and didn’t want to go out of the house when they could be inside, quaffing chocolate eggs. (I did bring a good haul of Easter chocolate back to Singapore when I returned a week and a half ago, but we ate it all before today. So much for planning ahead.) The food was ok, but the high point was putting our child in a very high chair, as if the bar had been designed to mess with people’s perspective.

I was so affected by this that I went home and slept for an hour and a half, before blearily getting up to visit friends, interact with another baby, and then eat some fairly decent Indian food.

To finish the evening off properly, we watched a bit of Spring Breakers, a film that’s "artistic" if you are being polite, and possibly "unwatchable" if you’re not. We’ve only got about a third of the way through though; it may improve, but it’s hard work. A bit like a distaff version of Killing Them Softly, which was marketed as fun flim flam, and then turned out to be agonizing and painful. Sometimes disappointment is a good thing.


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