Singapore

Thursday

Clarissa Tan

What Michael Gove should know about going to school in Singapore

I like to tease my friend Wei about being a tiger mother. She once told me of an incident where her daughter Shu was making an artwork for a friend as a birthday present. Shu doodled for a few minutes, then showed her mother a sketch of a funny face. ‘I told her to knuckle down, spend more time, and come back with a far better drawing,’ said Wei. ‘It just wasn’t good enough.’ I said that was a bit harsh on her eight-year-old, especially since it was not schoolwork but part of Shu’s leisure time. Wei snorted. ‘It was a gift for her best mate, yet she hadn’t put any thought into it,’ she said. ‘She needs to know that you must make an effort for the things you really care about.

Tuesday

Clarissa Tan

The Visit – Shiva Naipaul Prize, 2007

The 2007 Spectator/ Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize was won by Clarissa Tan. The prize, named after the late Trinidadian author, is for 'the most acute and profound observation of a culture evidently alien to the writer'. The judges that year included William Boyd, Matthew d’Ancona (then editor of The Spectator) and Mark Amory (literary editor of The Spectator). Clarissa is now a staff writer at The Spectator. To find out more about the Shiva Naipaul competition, and how you can enter, click here.   The Visit Clarissa Tan I wish to write about a place of which I know everything yet nothing, where everything is familiar yet strange, a place where I feel I go too often, but never quite enough. This place is the same for everyone, only different.

Thursday

Clarissa Tan

The Royal Wedding (extended expat version)

Last month, dressed as a town crier, the head of the British Club in Singapore, Sean Boyle, visited the offices of every major newspaper in the country. Accompanied by an entourage also in fancy dress, he declaimed that the British Club would be celebrating the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton in a festival that would last 10 days. The reception to his announcement was warm. An editor of the Tamil Murasu, the newspaper that serves Singapore’s ethnic Indian population, left the newsroom to return dressed in traditional Indian costume, to pose for photos with Boyle (see above). The team at the Berita Harian, the Malay-language daily, gave the entourage a standing ovation.