Guy Hoh is one of the very few people in Singapore who would not only survive but thrive if you were to drop him in the middle of the jungle with a rifle. After all, he runs his own safari agency, Blaze Global Safaris, which organizes trips and hunting expeditions to Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.
Shooting is in his blood – he was introduced to the sport when he was seven – and he fell in love with hunting when he was at university in the UK. “During that time, if I wasn’t banging my books, I was banging a gun,” he recalls with a laugh, adding that he was “one of those weird students whose fridge was never empty because I was always trading wild food with butchers and also eating [it].”
Home for Hoh is a bungalow in a quiet residential enclave in Novena, where he lives together with his parents and grandfather. They are, as he tells us, a “very laidback, very chilled, very kampong” family. His father is a “semi-retired agriculturist”, which is clearly evident once you step past the gates into the garden, where a mini trove of starfruit, soursop and banana trees, herbs and vegetables grow.
“Dad has very green fingers. He’s always been an outdoorsman, but more a fisherman than a hunter,” he says as he shows us his father’s projects with Scout, his eight-year old Daschund, in tow. “Dad’s latest project is growing passionfruit but the custard apple is his pride and joy. His custard apples kick ass.”
Here’s what else he had to tell us about his home.
In the beginning: When we came in 1991, the house was very much a Caucasian-style house. There’s still the central air conditioning unit. The windows were never opened, they were always sealed.
“The pond was already here when we came. Back then, it was just this green slimy muck so what we did was empty it all out, blasted it clean, sanitized it and installed a huge filter system.
My dad likes koi and he has names for every one of them. One’s called Snowball, another’s Patches…he knows all their names. I just feed the fish and that’s it!”
The wild ones: In this household, the only one who shares my taste in all things wild stems to one – her. So it’s usually me and Scout sitting in front of the TV with a big bowl of biltong (cured African buffalo jerky) or nuts or mushrooms. She has very high taste. She likes everything from gruyere to camembert. The stinkier it is the happier she is. She’s eaten Michel Roux’s duck rillette and all of that as well because of my work.
We used to have two dogs and four cats. We’re now down to one dog and one cat. The cat is very grumpy. She’s 18 and the old lady of the house. You see her in the morning to feed her when she deigns to pay attention to you for four minutes.
 
(Hoh in the family's "old school" kitchen)
Comeback kid: In 2005, I was diagnosed with leukemia and nearly died. I recovered in 2009 and being a cancer survivor, I have to eat fresh at least once a day, which means that one meal has to have a majority vegetable component.
This isn’t anything I learned but something I cooked up. It utilizes some of the things I really enjoy: sunflower seeds, raisins and a little bit of spiced biltong. This came from a cape buffalo that my hunter hunted last season.
Biltong is prepared by being brined in a very strongly spiced solution and then being air-dried in the sun for 6-8 weeks. After that, they vacuum pack it. This is good because it’s low in fat and very high in protein. It doesn’t get more organic than this!
A drinking family: Wine is nice to partake of but every time we try to collect something, it gets drunk. The family normally buys things in case and we’re forever looking for a good buy.
Last rites: This is a funeral urn from Sarawak. The Iban and Dayak people used to put their entire remains into these vases.
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Lisa said...
Very kampong, this is what I call home
October 26, 2011 9:33:00 AM
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