Last week SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK spent three days in SINGAPORE – enroute to South Korea.

Here’s 10 (mostly) yummy takeaways…

I discovered, courtesy of the in-flight entertainment offered by Singapore Airlines, the movie CREED 3 is a near scene-by-scene remake of ROCKY 5. Is that an exaggeration? Yes, but only just.

Unlike in Australia where inflation has grown wings and gnashing teeth, upwardly mobile prices appear to still be in check in Singapore.

One of the perks of people-watching – especially if you count yourself a reader – is clocking up your daily word-count scanning t-shirt slogans. These are three t-shirts I saw on actual humans while walking the streets of Singapore.

The ‘Just a Girl’ fashion piece was spotted on a girl btw, as opposed to the one above. Don’t know why that needed clarifying, but SWS has always had a soft spot for authenticity so maybe that’s it. I really don’t know.

Humidity, thy name is Singapore. Brisbane born and bred, I got my ‘hummer’ license a long time ago. And two years (2010/2011) sweating it out in the Torres Straits added my Captain’s stripes.

But nothing and I mean nothing – could have prepared me for humidity on this scale. Sink or swim? We literally swam in the lather of our own perspiration for three days and nights.

Can you believe the lowest temperature ever recorded in Singapore – back in 1934 – was a balmy nineteen degrees? Really.

Spruce architecture and stylin’ buildings? Yep, Singapore does that pretty well.

The piece of magnificence with the cruise ship built on top pictured below?

We got to eye-ball that one up-close. A thing of improbable beauty like that you should have to pay for the privilege. Might even rent a room in it one year. Now THAT you would have to pay for. A heap.

Yeah, they go. Even faster than the ones I remember in Tokyo twenty years back. Then again, that WAS twenty years ago. Sort of like comparing internet speed from the early 2000’s with the ‘ol blue cord plug-in to now, I guess. Something you wouldn’t do. Ordinarily. I guess.

Staging this picture of my 13-year-old daughter Lia cost me, by my own estimate, roughly two kilograms in sweat. The other-worldly reverse-sinkhole effect was the goal here. It was the goal of 60 other people who lined up that steamy morning as well.

The super-heated waiting transformed every suffering soul in the que to a liquid state by the time they’d reached the front. We got the shot we came for. We got it and we earnt it!

You can’t tell from this picture – taken from the website of the hotel we stayed in – because they’re using the ‘ol smoke and mirrors trick (with heavy emphasis on the mirrors part) to make this broom-cupboard-sized-gym appear 100 times larger than it actually was, but trust me… it was built for the likes of Antman. A skinny Antman at that.

So squished and micro was this place I had to breath in every time another person who was in there with me would do a barbell curl – just to make room.

I love my retro, and the hotel foyer carpeted stairs delivered in spades. Nothing like licorice–all–sorts design to bring those 70’s memories flooding back.

I remember my mother returning from a trip to Singapore in the 1970’s. She mentioned how they had licorice-flavoured chewing gum.

This ‘meat shake’ at Burger King (Hungry Jacks in Australia) easily tops that in the weird food stakes. No offence Singapore but the cartoon guy with the letter ‘S’ on his t-shirt is me running a mile.

Yep, they’ve got one of these. And we went. And I want to thank the place for briefly renewing my love of a music band I used to like love adore back in the 2000’s.

Everyone at the park that day – for some reason – was treated to a selection of songs by the CRYSTAL METHOD over the grounds loud speakers.

Thank you Universal Studios Singapore!

For a country of less than six million people, Singapore packs a punch. And a lot of sparkle.

They were three happy days in Singapore. But wait… there’s more HERE.

To coincide with this coming Monday’s ‘JUNETEENTH’ public holiday in the United States – commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans – comes this classic letter written in 1865 by Jourdon Anderson (1825 – 1907).

After 32 long years in the service of his master, Jourdon Anderson and his wife, Amanda, escaped a life of slavery when Union Army soldiers freed them from the plantation on which they had been working so tirelessly. They moved to Ohio where Jourdon found paid work with which to support his growing family, and didn’t look back.

A year later, shortly after the end of the Civil War, Jourdon received a desperate letter from Patrick Henry Anderson, the man who used to ‘own’ him, in which he was asked to return to work on the plantation and rescue his ailing business.

Jourdon’s reply to the person who enslaved his family is a blazing triumph that deserves no less than a fist-pumping standing ovation. Here we go…

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can.

I have often felt uneasy about you. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well.

Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville.

Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.

I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars.

Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future.

We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense.

Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

P.S.—Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

On a different note, if you’d like to visit HAPPY DAYS click HERE.

It’s no secret I’m a fully-blown fan of the 1970’s TV series HAPPY DAYS. Well… the first five seasons anyway.

And as far as tv mums go, back when I was growing up (still doing that, btw!), the big three were always Mrs Brady (Florence Henderson 1934 – 2016) in THE BRADY BUNCH, Mrs Robinson (June Lockhart 1925 -) in LOST IN SPACE and Mrs Cunningham (Marion Ross 1928 -) in HAPPY DAYS.

It was a no-brainer that when Marion Ross released her autobiography titled MY DAYS: HAPPY AND OTHERWISE in 2018, I would go out and buy a copy. It just took me five years to get around to it.

Her story is of a child who ‘knew’ she was destined one day to become a star actress (she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame back in 2001) but didn’t end up fulfilling that ambition until later in life.

Her original dream was to become a theatre actress on Broadway. While still at school she managed to secure the services of a number of drama coaches – “all rather eccentric little old ladies” – and audition and appear in a number of plays.

After winning her first acting award – an ashtray (which she says she still has to this day) she was hooked.

Following her senior year, she enrolled at San Diego State University where she studied drama and acting for the next four years. This was the later half of the 1940’s.

She continued auditioning for roles and discovered she was good at accents. Enduring lean times and years of struggle, she continued accumulating many small, walk-on roles in films and doing live theatre.

Eventually landing a contract with PARAMOUNT PICTURES, this led to gaining the part of Patty, the best friend of the main character in the 1953 film FOREVER FEMALE.

More character parts followed –

but she would have to wait another 20 years for the breakout role that would put her in millions of living rooms around the world every night.

One of the more interesting anecdotes in the book – and there are many – involves the amazing series of connections, coincidences, and right-place-right-time serendipitous twists that led Ross from appearing as a featured extra in the 1970 movie AIRPORT to her role as Mrs Cunningham four years later in HAPPY DAYS (1974 – 1984).

HAPPY DAYS ran for 11 seasons for a total of 255 episodes and is the body of work Marion Ross is best remembered for.

Ross cites her all-time favourite episode as the third season ‘DANCE CONTEST’ in which she begins ballroom dancing lessons with Fonzie without her husband Howard’s knowledge.

I have always loved this episode as well.

Post HAPPY DAYS, Marion Ross secured recurring roles on these television series –

as well as regular voice over work on these animated series –

Marion Ross officially retired from acting in 2021. Her autobiography is a warm and confiding look back at her life and career.

To check out the site HAPPY DAYS: THE FIRST FIVE SEASONS click HERE