A Second Take on Singapore
Singapore July 29th....it is 945 AM and already about 85 degrees with the humidity of a soiled diaper.....
Before getting into Singapore some final thoughts on the vastness of
Australia....especially when flown across on the bias! I know that from
six miles above, not much of a land can be felt. Those prevailing colors of kaolin-ecru/beige/a muted burnt siena were pretty sopoforic...and yes below were aboriginal settlements (blenging organically into the whole), no doubt roos and dingos and emus and camels (imported). Still, despite the visual torpor of things I can't not take my eyes from an airplane window. I remember so many stunning sights from 5-6 miles up: the most amazing aurora borealis, Kabul burning, Venice from on high. I don't understand how anyone can NOT look out of the window. What if we crashed and LIVED (and the solipsim in me suggests I would): how would one know where they were? The Captain mentioned AYERS ROCK way off to the south...that rocky monolith which so many travelers go 2000 miles to see (possibly because it is the only thing of prominence to see in the boring landscape ala Sedona, Arizona?)...the guy across from me didn't even look out. It sure reminded me of one of the better moments between clients in the old days at Poe Travel:
"Where did you go on vacation?"
"The Cayman Islands"
"Where are they?"
"I don't know, we flew."
It is one of my oft told stories but one which is true true true.
Yesterday I was determined to find worth in Singapore. The Brits took these marshy bottoms at about the same time Little Rock was being founded (1820), drained some stuff, built their great city to protect their routes to the spices and the opium....the Portuguese and Dutch had sailed past for almost 300 years but never bothered for the landscape was daunting. The Brits found a people who were Malay-Indonesian (the two languages seem as close as Danish to Swedish) and as the city was founded attracted masses of Chinese from four distinct areas, they are now the chief population.
Through the years the marshes have been drained....a great deal of land has been added (I don't say "reclaimed" because how can something be "re" when it never existed in human history?).....the rest is history. the Japanese came in the back door of Invincible Fortress Singapore, surprising the Brits (I am reminded of those Arkies who were massacred by the Mormons at Mountain Meadows in Utah 80-odd years earlier)...and the Japanese were typically beastly to everone except the large Indian population (as they tried to set up that Axis-friendly state under Bose).....after VJ day Singapore and Malaya joined to form MALAYSIA....Singaore pulled out....Malaysia still has the rather inexplicable "sia" in its name (revanchism?) and here we are.
I was determined to find something of value in this dictatorship. Daddy Li who ruled forever it seems is gone and Baby Li has taken over....sounds like Papa Doc and Baby Doc in Port au Prince except the plumbing works here thank you. The place has been a semi-benevolent dictatorship (OUR kind the CIA might have said in its glory days?) ever since. It is a nation with ridiculous laws, thousands of them....possessing more than 5 stick s of chewing gum is a felony and chewing one is forbidden...one may not drive over the causeway to Johore in Malaysia without a 2/3rd full tank of gas:
buy gas at twice the price in Singapore (Baby Li owns some stations?).....Paul Theroux has written extensively that his forced years in Singapore (to earn a living) were the most painful of his life. Daddy Li had a NPD problem as big as Bill Clinton, Orson Wells or Bolshoi Catherine though Baby Li seems less narcissistic.....and things DO work. I am reminded often of Switzerland (although in that nation most people can not NAME their head of state...if you do not believe me poll some Swiss) but like a perfectly poached egg it is pleasant but gives us relatively little to ponder.
So yesterday was my day to be what my late friend Chris Kazan called a "Kulturmensch": the national museum is closed for renovation but alot of it has been moved into a pompous, wonderful Victorian building called the MUSEUM OF ASIAN CIVILIZATION (how is THAT for a name to put you to sleep?)...it's a good place with some very good khmer stuff (I figure local movers and shakers got it all pretty cheaply), some lovely early Chinese porcelains particularly celadon. There was also a traveling show of VATICAN ART but much as Victoria send second rate stuff to the colonies the Vatican seems to follow suit: lots of "ascribed to" stuff, a lot of trash...but nicely displayed. Typical of Singapore: nicely displayed. There is a terrific Singapore History Museum....with only a bit of political cant in it.....a rather darling museum of world philately (I love weird little museums...like both the clock museum and the museum of "medieval anatomy" in Vienna.
One gets easily from one place to the next. Taxis are plentiful and air conditioned. The subway is spotless (and it is s MIRACLE when you consider that they excavated through porridge to build it) yet I never thought I would be anyplace where I rather missed graffiti). Lots of buildings look like they had pharoahs as architects. Costs are reasonable, the GOODPARK HOTEL is a find of finds (but the cognescenti of Singapore know it...Raffles is for LA and Texas)...people are pleasant....though a little grizzled Chinese lady tried to charge me double for a liter of water in her vile little shop).....Reading the STRAITS TIMES in the morning has about the oopmh of reading the Pulaski Heights Junior High TIP TOP TIMES of my youth....but if you come to Singapore I will have some A+ notes for you and you may even like the place. I would sure rather live here than in that other dictatorship up north with the golf loving-marilyn monroe-loving monster ghoul in Pyongyang.
Cheerio, FRED
Before getting into Singapore some final thoughts on the vastness of
Australia....especially when flown across on the bias! I know that from
six miles above, not much of a land can be felt. Those prevailing colors of kaolin-ecru/beige/a muted burnt siena were pretty sopoforic...and yes below were aboriginal settlements (blenging organically into the whole), no doubt roos and dingos and emus and camels (imported). Still, despite the visual torpor of things I can't not take my eyes from an airplane window. I remember so many stunning sights from 5-6 miles up: the most amazing aurora borealis, Kabul burning, Venice from on high. I don't understand how anyone can NOT look out of the window. What if we crashed and LIVED (and the solipsim in me suggests I would): how would one know where they were? The Captain mentioned AYERS ROCK way off to the south...that rocky monolith which so many travelers go 2000 miles to see (possibly because it is the only thing of prominence to see in the boring landscape ala Sedona, Arizona?)...the guy across from me didn't even look out. It sure reminded me of one of the better moments between clients in the old days at Poe Travel:
"Where did you go on vacation?"
"The Cayman Islands"
"Where are they?"
"I don't know, we flew."
It is one of my oft told stories but one which is true true true.
Yesterday I was determined to find worth in Singapore. The Brits took these marshy bottoms at about the same time Little Rock was being founded (1820), drained some stuff, built their great city to protect their routes to the spices and the opium....the Portuguese and Dutch had sailed past for almost 300 years but never bothered for the landscape was daunting. The Brits found a people who were Malay-Indonesian (the two languages seem as close as Danish to Swedish) and as the city was founded attracted masses of Chinese from four distinct areas, they are now the chief population.
Through the years the marshes have been drained....a great deal of land has been added (I don't say "reclaimed" because how can something be "re" when it never existed in human history?).....the rest is history. the Japanese came in the back door of Invincible Fortress Singapore, surprising the Brits (I am reminded of those Arkies who were massacred by the Mormons at Mountain Meadows in Utah 80-odd years earlier)...and the Japanese were typically beastly to everone except the large Indian population (as they tried to set up that Axis-friendly state under Bose).....after VJ day Singapore and Malaya joined to form MALAYSIA....Singaore pulled out....Malaysia still has the rather inexplicable "sia" in its name (revanchism?) and here we are.
I was determined to find something of value in this dictatorship. Daddy Li who ruled forever it seems is gone and Baby Li has taken over....sounds like Papa Doc and Baby Doc in Port au Prince except the plumbing works here thank you. The place has been a semi-benevolent dictatorship (OUR kind the CIA might have said in its glory days?) ever since. It is a nation with ridiculous laws, thousands of them....possessing more than 5 stick s of chewing gum is a felony and chewing one is forbidden...one may not drive over the causeway to Johore in Malaysia without a 2/3rd full tank of gas:
buy gas at twice the price in Singapore (Baby Li owns some stations?).....Paul Theroux has written extensively that his forced years in Singapore (to earn a living) were the most painful of his life. Daddy Li had a NPD problem as big as Bill Clinton, Orson Wells or Bolshoi Catherine though Baby Li seems less narcissistic.....and things DO work. I am reminded often of Switzerland (although in that nation most people can not NAME their head of state...if you do not believe me poll some Swiss) but like a perfectly poached egg it is pleasant but gives us relatively little to ponder.
So yesterday was my day to be what my late friend Chris Kazan called a "Kulturmensch": the national museum is closed for renovation but alot of it has been moved into a pompous, wonderful Victorian building called the MUSEUM OF ASIAN CIVILIZATION (how is THAT for a name to put you to sleep?)...it's a good place with some very good khmer stuff (I figure local movers and shakers got it all pretty cheaply), some lovely early Chinese porcelains particularly celadon. There was also a traveling show of VATICAN ART but much as Victoria send second rate stuff to the colonies the Vatican seems to follow suit: lots of "ascribed to" stuff, a lot of trash...but nicely displayed. Typical of Singapore: nicely displayed. There is a terrific Singapore History Museum....with only a bit of political cant in it.....a rather darling museum of world philately (I love weird little museums...like both the clock museum and the museum of "medieval anatomy" in Vienna.
One gets easily from one place to the next. Taxis are plentiful and air conditioned. The subway is spotless (and it is s MIRACLE when you consider that they excavated through porridge to build it) yet I never thought I would be anyplace where I rather missed graffiti). Lots of buildings look like they had pharoahs as architects. Costs are reasonable, the GOODPARK HOTEL is a find of finds (but the cognescenti of Singapore know it...Raffles is for LA and Texas)...people are pleasant....though a little grizzled Chinese lady tried to charge me double for a liter of water in her vile little shop).....Reading the STRAITS TIMES in the morning has about the oopmh of reading the Pulaski Heights Junior High TIP TOP TIMES of my youth....but if you come to Singapore I will have some A+ notes for you and you may even like the place. I would sure rather live here than in that other dictatorship up north with the golf loving-marilyn monroe-loving monster ghoul in Pyongyang.
Cheerio, FRED
posted by ultimatetraveler at 7:50 AM
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