FASTEN your plastic, slip on your loafers, it's the GSS.

YEAR ROUND: Durians used to be a once-or-twice-a-year treat.

Just one letter away from the GST.

(GSS is of course the Great Singapore Sale and GST is the goods and services tax, for those of you living under a rock.)

My credo towards shopping is coloured by what a taxi driver said, 'If you got money, every day also is GSS.'

Well, you know what he meant. Got money, no need to wait for sale. Which is missing the point.

Which transports me back to primary school days, sorree.

Back in the land of Enid Blyton, we learned of the four seasons, spring when the crocus, or was it daffodil, peeped from the earth, summer when you exposed elbows in short sleeves, autumn when the leaves fell and the days grew short, and winter the magic wonderland of snow.

We could only imagine those temperate climes, as we read by our unchanging scattered rain and sunshine 365 days a year.

Till we discovered our very own special seasons in Singapore.

Kite season, durian season, goli season, bak kua season.

Yes, there was a time and place to fly kites. School holidays, because making the cut-glass string for fighting kites took work. Pounding broken glass, cooking it, and then lacing your ball of kite string with it to make it 'tajam' (sharp). So it could kill (cut off) other, weaker, ones.

Durians were a once-or-twice-a-year treat in August and December, wicker-basketloads from Malaysia, roadside stalls set up just for the season, or you went across the Causeway to get your fill. Usually next to a longkang piled high with the husks.

Like kites, marbles (goli) were sold seasonally and so played as and when.

Bak kua we only ever ate during Chinese New Year. Which made it very special.

The ready-to-eat supermarket variety and its all-year-round access has of course put the kibosh on those seasons once held and observed so dearly.

And kites and goli and chatek and paperballs are now like museum exhibits.

Briefly, television took over the seasons for us, and those seasons took over one's life.

You planned appointments and vacations around American Idol (that's nine years of your life you can't get back, jackass) and that's when I had to find substitute seasons.

Light it up

You didn't have far to look.

In between 11 public holidays (three minutes of silence for the demise of Easter Monday, Thaipusam, Boxing Day as public holidays) Singapore is rich in seasons we've come to love and anticipate.

The Chinatown light-up, the Geylang Serai light-up, the Little India light-up, the Orchard Road light-up now extended all the way to the sea at Marina Bay.

And then there's the month-long National Day 'season', more recently the F1 Singapore Grand Prix (season 3), and a first, the Youth Olympic Games (another four years for season 2?)

Slot in the computer and travel fairs, and the arts and music festivals, and the food, film, fashion fests, and of course the GSS, and once again Singapore is number one. In seasons.

A personal favourite is The New Paper World Cup season. Coming next week.

 Back to Columnists