Wherein I See a Capering White Man

Saw an article by Mr Wang about a deaf-white-man selling pins. Of course, asking for charity is not uncommon in Singapore - I'd be hard pressed to remember a single trip down Orchard Road without seeing at least one flag seller, basker or tissue-auntie - but that a white man was doing it was probably stranger.

Just a couple of days back at Lido I was walking around with Nick when we spotted a man, standing at the entrance from the mrt capering about to a nursery tune (I forget if it was three-blind-mice or twinkle-twinkle little star). He was dressed in rather faded clothes that looked vaguely like pieces of torn clothing sewn to a slightly-less torn piece of clothing, and had a sign saying something about eating his family or feeding it (I'm hoping it was the latter). We gave him a wide berth, as his antics (and poor grammar!) suggested he was not entirely of sound mind (which is also why I took no pictures, in case he lunged forward and ate my phone). His act was sadly even less entertaining than the off-key Celine Dion impersonator at Bishan MRT to whom I sometimes give money to, and I had my doubts as to whether he would get any that day, considering that there was another basker at the other end of the tunnel with the much more impressive display of playing two different musical instruments at the same time.

(Note: in Singapore, basking is generally considered an act of charity - begging is illegal so our destitute and homeless are forced to learn to play musical instruments or sell tissue paper - anything to make them even vaguely productive)

Like Mr Wang, I generally expect white men in Singapore to be expats, students or tourists, not charity-cases. How a poor white man arrives in Singapore is a mystery to me. After all, we're not exactly the streets-paved-with-gold city that would draw someone looking for a job. Plane tickets to Singapore are generally rather expensive from any white-man country, compared to the other choices available. Coming from land... well, you'd have to come from the North and there are a lot of nicer places you'd probably stop at if you were a poor white man. Even the descendants of white men in Singapore do seem to be rather more affluent than the capering-to-nursery-rhymes sort.

Of course, it could be that he was really an artistic rebel protesting the commercialism and infantilism of Singapore's performance art scene, and the begger-like, governmental-dependant demeanour of Singaporean artists by staging a satirical piece in which he spasmed along to a nursery rhyme whilst onlookers (didn't) threw coins at him. But then a piece like that would never be approved by the MDA, and he looked rather too old to be a rebellious arts student/activist.

I do wonder about his story.