A Wonderful Weekend In Singapore!

Experiences from the weekend:

  • Some Chinese people know nothing about any of the other cultures that live in Singapore. At a formal dinner on Friday, we (I and other law graduates) were served Malay food. When the gado-gado arrived, people were staring at it blankly and asking what it was. When some of us (I and the Indian guy next to me) read “potato cutlets” on the menu and concluded that it was probably bergadil (I have no idea how to spell it, because it never appears on the menus, but I’ve used the word my whole life), others looked blank and said they’d never heard of that either. Over the months I have been home, I have also met a first class honours NUS law grad who, when told the cuisine we were eating was from Kerala, said “What is Kerala?”, Chinese people who don’t know Muslims don’t drink alcohol, and Chinese people who know nothing whatsoever about Eurasians. So much for Singapore being a multi-cultural society. If you’re Chinese, apparently none of the others matter.
  • Multiple travel agents promised that I could take a direct ferry from Tanah Merah ferry terminal to Tioman, and offered to sell me tour packages on this basis, but the service stopped running in June.
  • Singaporeans are willing to queue up for hours to secure condominium bookings, Hello Kitty commemorative dolls, and Singapore Idol audition slots. They are also noted (derided?) for their compliance with rules and respect for authority. However, announcements in four languages and so many ground markings that the platform looks like the scene of a gruesome arrow massacre are not enough to persuade Singaporeans to let people off the train before shouldering them aside and charging in, before sitting comfortably in seats reserved for the elderly/pregnant, studiously ignoring the at least eight-month-pregnant woman teetering in front of them.

How Now Unibrow

I got my eyebrows threaded for the first time today, and I think I’ll never go back to plucking. For $5, I no longer have to squint into my bathroom mirror with tears of pain running down my face as I brandish small sharp tweezers dangerously near the windows to my soul.

Instead, I get to lie prone pulling my eyebrow skin taut with my fingers as a beautician rips entire lines of my eyebrow hairs out at a go. Then she mops my tears of pain up with tissue.

It’s a total upgrade.

All I Was Missing Was The Trucker Cap

As usual, I woke up late, threw on some clothes, grabbed my bag and headed out for my morning lectures. Later, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and was slightly horrified at my indie conformity – black Sonic Youth T-shirt, black plastic specs, bedhead hair, copy of Garden State in my hand. If I were a jock, I’d beat me up.

So tomorrow I’m wearing an orange halter-neck top and skanky hoop earrings. Better ho than hipster.

Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

London is the meanest ex ever.

I’ve spent the past year trying to get over our breakup, trying to convince myself that I’m happy with Singapore. Sure, this new relationship may not be as passionate or exciting or bloody-fucking-gorgeous as London was, and yeah there are still awkward silences on most of our dates even a year after we started going out, and yes it’s true that I spend most of my time and energy trying to avoid its hot sweaty hands, but at least Singapore is safe and reliable and it’s trying its best.

Who needs passion once you’re past a certain age anyway? You don’t need fire in your loins, you just need to be able to share a five room HDB flat¹ without killing each other. I can exist in Singapore. Who needs to live?

If I repeat this to myself several times a day I even begin to believe that I believe it. And then I find out that Battleship Potemkin will be shown on a huge screen tomorrow in Trafalgar Square, with a new soundtrack performed live by the Pet Shop Boys. For free.

I know London’s moved on and is having a great time without me, but this is really rubbing it in.

¹ Public housing

Say What?

Two snippets of Singapore from today.

#1: I Donno Where Is This Democracy

Me, getting into taxi: Hello, Parliament House please.
Taxi driver: Where?
Me: Parliament. Parliament House.
Taxi driver: Near where?
Me, perturbed: City Hall.
Taxi driver: Oh, so take ECP¹ then Rochor Road?
Me: Yes.
Taxi driver: After that you direct me hor. I donno where is this Parliament House.

* * *

#2: Racism 20% Off

Young friendly male sales assistant in a earring shop in Bugis Village: This one you like or not?
Me: Mmmm, not sure. Maybe something a bit longer.
Sales assistant: You dare to wear like ke ling kia or not?
Me: What?
Sales assistant, waving a long dangly earring: This one, like ke ling wear one.
Me, finally understanding what he was saying²: No, it’s okay. Thanks.

¹ An acronym for one of our expressways
² Ke ling is a derogatory word for Indian

Privacy My Ass

“Privacy is a destination,” coos the billboard advertising the new condo development next to my house, with bedroom windows which will look straight into mine. Asswipes. Now I have to pull the blinds down if I feel like being nude.

Singapore Solo

After Edu-Dine on Friday I walked from City Hall to Boat Quay to meet Ken and Ida for drinks at Hideout. It was a cool night, and my higher-than-usual heels were surprisingly comfortable, so I walked. Round the back of Parliament House, past The Arts House, light playing on its walls to an actually rather charming version of that “Let’s take a little trip around Singapore town on a Singapore city bus” tune. Across Cavenagh Bridge, dotted with tourists oohing and aahing at the view of the Esplanade, facing one way, and down the quays, facing the other. Two real cats among the Kucinta sculptures.

In Hideout, Colin messaged asking if I wanted to go to Phuture, but I decided my toes were too vulnerable in my dressy shoes. When we parted ways for the night, I meandered through the streets, taking an extra-long route to the not-so-nearest bus stop, simply because I was enjoying the walk. Along South Bridge Road, tourists stopped me and asked for directions. I directed people to Clarke Quay, to the Fullerton Hotel, to the War Memorial Park. I finally reached Hill Street Fire Station, which I’ve always rather liked, and waited just beyond it for the bus home.

There seemed to be a buzz and a euphoria in the air that I don’t usually sense. The tourists seemed genuinely excited by what they were seeing, and where they were, and amazingly, I was too. Singapore is beautiful by night, whether you’re looking at gleaming restored colonial buildings around the Padang, the dark quiet hulk of skyscrapers in Shenton Way, or the fluorescent town centres in the housing estates.

A year on from my return, and I could actually stand to watch the National Day Parade today. I still rolled my eyes at a lot of the commentary eg. “This lively dance truly reflects the passion of our youth for arts and sports!” but I watched the singing of the national songs happily enough.

I’m still not sure I can sing along to Home with all sincerity – if home is defined by “where my dreams wait for me” and “where my senses tell me” then I’m afraid we’re still pretty much stuck in London. I’ve also always found the line “This is where I won’t be alone” particularly meaningless, in that I am addicted to London precisely because I can be completely alone there and still completely blissful.

But progress is being made, albeit in baby steps. My Friday night walk was a taste of what’s possible for me and Singapore, even when we’re all alone.

How Dare They

What a week. Lots of stuff I wanted to write about got swallowed up in the demands of the professional legal course I’m on, where it seems they are starting to want us to, like, learn actual stuff about being a legal professional. How outrageous. The entries that follow are my attempt at catch-up.

Reason To Celebrate

Today marks one year since I returned to Singapore, and one year Alec and I have spent in different continents from each other. It’s also Alec’s birthday.

During this year, I have drawn much-needed comfort from him at some of the lowest points in my life, discovered countless new things to love about him, and embarrassed myself frequently while alone in public when the thought of him brings a smile to my face.

Many people don’t believe that long-distance relationships can work. I’ve become accustomed to the look of polite disbelief that passes fleetingly across people’s faces when I tell them I don’t agree. I don’t really blame them, given that everyone has examples of this friend who got cheated on and that friend who got stifled by jealousy and still more friends for whom romance without physical proximity was just unsustainable.

Theoretically, I understand how all these problems can arise, but from the personal experience I’ve had so far, I can’t actually identify with any of them in reality. If I feel this lucky and blessed and loved now, what more when he finally moves over? In the meantime I wait, hope, and thank God for him.

Goodbye Mr Stephens

Mr Jim Stephens was my lecturer and tutor in criminal law in my second year at UCL. Two years later, he would still smile and say hello whenever we happened to meet on the streets of Bloomsbury, or in the corridors of the law faculty. This would perhaps be understandable if I had been a good student of criminal law, but I wasn’t. Through no fault of his, I missed at least a third of the lectures, and was usually woefully unprepared for tutorials. But even though I certainly entered the doors of his room with very little in my mind, I always left with much more.

He bewildered and frustrated us at first. The robustness that cut through the dead air of lecture theatres and kept even sleepy me awake as he snarled “Hey, FATTY!” in lectures on provocation was almost too much to handle in his faculty room, where each of us in turn would be hemming and hawing at the end of his penetrating gaze as we racked our brains for the answer he was looking for. He insisted on a highly systematic approach to dissecting the many different elements of a problem question, and in my conceptual haziness I chafed as what I thought were reasonable answers were often not considered precise enough. Over time though, things got clearer, and everything started to make sense. I believe his rigour in those tutorials was behind my eventual First in criminal law.

It would be inaccurate to frame this post as a goodbye to a beloved teacher. The nature of my university life was that I engaged with my teachers as little as humanly possible, because I was acutely aware that I was quite possibly their laziest student, and if they didn’t already know that, I didn’t want them to find out. But when I heard the news today, memories of Mr Stephens were easy to find, easier to find than memories of most of the people who have only just lectured me in NUS. I remember a clear blue gaze, a ready smile, and pavement conversations where he seemed genuinely interested in what and how I was doing, and all this for a student who faltered on questions like “What is the leading case in defining recklessness?”

The next time I am in London, Bloomsbury, and the corridors of the UCL law faculty, will feel a little emptier.