Shady Doings in Singapore

While  we were in Singapore, my husband attended a business meeting, and I was free to see the sights.  My itinerary became my protag's (main character). We were both tourists and that made the writing easier, because I didn't have to know the area like a native.  A lot of my photographs inspired scenes in the book.

My husband's group went on a harbor tour in a boat just like the one in the photo.  They served a pretty ordinary "western" buffet and I was terribly disappointed not to get some chili crab or even Hainan chicken rice, some of the local specialties.  I put the cruise into the book, of course, without editorializing on the food.

Young string musicians played while we ate - very charming. 

A few paragraphs from the novel.

Monday, May 8

Delegates  Dinner Cruise of  Keppel Harbor aboard  a traditional Chinese Junk

Keppel Harbor world’s busiest.   Singaporean buffet and music

A  commercial armada  of ships of every nation at anchor.  So much tonnage in one place impressed all of us, for Information technology people always need to quantify.

  Even now, I recalled a perfectly flawless evening. I wore my thin pink linen shirt and dark pink silk shorts. Tied my hair back with a floppy white bow, and wore those cute sandals with thin gold and white straps. Franz said I looked nice. Wayne had said just wait until those breakfast buffets catch up with her, and made disgusting oinking noises. But I had the last laugh, because his dumb jet lag diet left him too sleep deprived to join us, and he had to settle for a coffee shop dinner.

            Franz told the cabbie  to let us off at Clifford Pier. The skyline was  fantastically modern, a mega-contrast to the men lounging on the sidewalk in their trishaws, one up in travel evolution from the rickshaw. Smoking while they waited for customers. The kind of scene I loved: an old man tried to get his trishaw going with a hefty woman and her paunchy husband in tow. His skinny bowed legs hung  out of baggy yellow shorts, and his head is covered by a conical fisherman's hat. No matter how he pushed and strained, the trishaw wasn’t  moving. He dismounted, hunched his bony shoulders and indicated he could only transport one of them.

            Then I noticed Peter Weber way down the pier, lounging against a post, looking lost in some private joke. We all boarded an elaborately carved red, green and gilt-trimmed junk, reserved just for us. 

When I walked up to him, Peter said, "Pretty in pink.” Flirting as usual. I took his arm and chided him for not taking me to lunch at the hawker center, and suggested it was time for a Singapore Sling, since we’d been here one whole day without a sip. He promised to take me to Raffles Hotel after dinner, where the drink had originated. He turned to Franz and said loud enough for me to hear, “when she got tight, everything was all right so we kept her provided with gin.”

 I rolled my eyes.

The sunset that night was the kind you remember forever--a big swollen ball on fire in the tropical twilight. I stayed on deck while  Peter and Franz disappeared to get drinks. When the musicians came on board, I recognized the girl who lunched with “No English.” When I looked back at the pier, I saw “No English” himself, standing just where Peter met us, scowling and staring at his feet. I yelled “Hallo Luby,” and did I ever get a reaction! Luby dropped his jaw and gaped at the junk, but I was incognito in sunglasses. He crushed his cigarette and stalked down the pier with his rolling, muscle-bound walk.