CHAPTER 10 The Prince of Flamenco

On a Tuesday evening in mid July 1991, a couple of days before we departed for our summer break, one of Jane’s friends of many years, Jao Chai, came to stay with us in North West London. Jao Chai who is a Singaporean, had long been talking about taking a year off work. During this sabbatical he aimed to spend several months in Spain, where he planned to learn to play flamenco guitar.

He had started his long vacation by travelling from Singapore to London, where he visited old friends and hung loose. After a couple of months, there was some concern expressed, by his friends, that he might not quite get it together enough to make it to flamenco land.

Since we would be travelling ninety five percent of the way to Spain, it had seemed a good idea for us to take Jao Chai with us and we had offered him a free ride, when we had met him at a mutual friend's house, a couple of weeks earlier.

Jao Chai definitely does not conform to the stereotype of a Singaporean. Although of Chinese descent, his skin is slightly darker than many Chinese and when I had first met him some years earlier I had taken him to be Malay. I thought he could easily have been mistaken for a pirate, if he were to wear baggy black pantaloons, a red polka dot head scarf, an eye patch and were to brandish a cutlass.

As required by Singapore law, Jao Chai had done National service, but he seemed to have no particular desire to strive to possess the five Cs for which many Singaporeans are renowned for wanting. The five Cs are a car, a condominium, cash, credit cards and country club membership.

Not normally a slave to any clock or even calendar, it was only when he actually turned up on our doorstep, that we were reasonably sure that Jao Chai would in fact accompany us.

At this time holders of Singapore passports required a visa to enter France. Since Jao Chai was not heavily into forward planning, his passport did not yet contain the required entry permit, so early on Wednesday morning, we despatched him by underground train to central London and a visit to the French embassy. He returned a few hours later looking rather unhappy.

It turned out that he had forgotten to take one of his identification documents with him, and had queued up for a couple of hours before this fact was pointed out to him.

On Thursday morning he reluctantly headed off to the underground station again. Late in the afternoon he returned to our home, his mission successfully accomplished.

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