Postcard from Singapore

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – Winter is apparently not too late for monsoon season. The clouds in Singapore seemed omnipresent. Light intruded incandescently, throughout the malls that seemed to dot the isle.

When one goes to the Tropics in the winter, be warned of monsoon-like conditions. Even in the face of modernity, storms are undeterred. The furies whip up a flare when the palm trees sway. Be so lucky as to be indoors, and the water may not whip your face. Even a stroll to the post office in the local dormitories may cause your socks to be soaked through. The bookshop down the way in Tiong Bahru is all locked up for the eve. Not a soul is in front of the temple, and the plant shop is shuttered as well. Only the lone porridge shop has its lights on, and the door opened.

Dotted all across the isle are malls. These malls are Vegas strips in and of themselves. On a rainy day, one could get lost in a single unit for hours. It is also a good way to quickly become discombobulated with the real world. What this means is a general pervasive sense of stuffiness. People upon people; polite, yet in your face. The lights strewn along Orchard Road are decadent in cheeriness.

Orchard Road was depicted in Chu’s CRA. It is impossible when one’s first impression of Singapore is this movie not to compare the scenes laid out with the ones experienced. However, real life is greater than the sum of its parts, and Orchard Road with Takashimaya beamed out from the cold winter’s eve.

What is hard to gauge about Singapore as a tourist is the way in which it was built up. Even though it has the pervasive sense of being old, a lot of its architecture is a mash-up of modern more so than old. Gleaming above a high rise is a small apartment complex. Most of these structures are heavily subsidized by the government. People could not afford to live in them otherwise. The financial echelons of the city are only a couple of minutes bus ride away, yet they seem to loom far and away.

Sitting on top of the double decker bus, one is bound to meet any type of person in Singapore. Wrapped in the air-conditioned cocoon, one can overhear a Singaporean family gossip about their Canadian days and old Singaporean nights. This, as the ferris wheel sits in the blue distance on the harbor.