05 September 2007

Singapore Short Stories - Raffles' Statue

Having covered the ancient founding of Singapore...we'll look at the modern founding. Well, we know that Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore in 1819. Many years later, a statue of him was made to commemorate him. Have you wondered why the statue shows Raffles stood with his arms folded and wore knee length pants? Here's the story...
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According the The Kin Jio Leaf, Raffles wanted to look for a suitable port in this region to break the Dutch monopoly. He went to several places and every time the ship reached a fairly suitable coast, he had to roll up his pants. You see, he needed to find a new an untouched coast so of cos no jetty also. They had to jump off the boat, walk in knee deep water before they can reach the beach. After a couple of times and sick of rolling up his pants, he simply cut the lower part off. He searched for several places around the Riau islands but couldn't find a suitable location. In one particular hot afternoon, hungry and tired after all the searching, he started whining like the horse.

"Wa lau! I need some chicken!"
"Got your CPF already huh? Heard that people take their CPF and go Batam for chicken...you wanna go?"
"Batam have nice chicken rice meh? How come i didn't know?"
"...oh...chicken rice ah...then we should go Singapore. A Hainanese from China serve very good chicken rice there. Best in Singapore and JB and some say Batam. Wanna try?"

So, off they sailed again, heading for Singapore. Upon reaching, Raffles thought the waters were knee deep so he just jumped in...and got himself all wet...underwear also wet wet... because the waters here was deep...so deep that he was fully immersed.

"That's it! *gulp* This is the *gasp* place! Very deep water *gulp* for a port *gasp*. Large ships can sail right in!"

When his crew fished him out, he was so cold that he had to wrap his arms around himself while they got him a blanket. Meanwhile, a budding artist saw the scene and painted his drenched, cold, arms folded, shivering in that silly knee length pants picture.

Many years later, when people wanted to make a statue of Raffles capturing the very first image when he arrived. The grandson of the artist showed them the painting.

"This cannot la...he looked so miserable and wet...but we don't have any other picture...sculptor! Can you do something about this, at least make him look smart or something"

And so...we see the smart looking version of Raffles in the statue.

Note:
CPF-Chicken Procurement Form...you see, Raffles' employer dun wan their overseas staff to anyhow leave seeds. Only under special circumstances the staff were issued with such forms...one form per visit. They had to fill it up so that they can trace any claims.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Got to change CPF-Chicken Procurement Form to include annuities.

Ape said...

yeap...yeap...still working on the details...but certainly it has become compulsory :(

Anonymous said...

Froggy here...

Cool, funny kekekeke. Keep it up :)

Got one more pic for khirsah to upload... any email addy?

Ape said...

Hi Froggy...PMed my email to u in CNA...
cheers!