Return from Singapore

Note: the corresponding picture album to this blog is here - check it out!

I am now well established on my flight back to the States. We departed at 10:45 am, local Singapore time, with the sun rising high into the sky, aiming towards that “directly overhead” you need to be near to equator to experience. Now it is 4:30 pm (Sing time), almost 6 hours later. We are flying north-northeast, heading towards the north pole. Our course follows a great circle route, almost exactly paralleling the Asian coast, passing north of Alaska, just missing the pole, then descending southeast to finish in Newark, NJ. My flight progress display says that we are presently passing just east of Japan – my display says Nagoya, and sure enough, to my left over perhaps 20 miles of ocean, I can see the dim profile of a city and land. We are passing from dusk into night. The sun has dipped below the horizon, with a sunset looking in many ways as it would on the Florida gulf coast – except we are watching it from 30,000 feet, and over another continent.

6 hours down, 12.5 hours to go. I ty to make sense of daylight and darkness, to make sense of this journey around a rotating globe. As I write, I am entering night, with Asia on my left. North America is completely in darkness, with dawn currently somewhere over Iceland. In New York, where we will eventually land at 6 pm, the sun will rise in several hours, and their day will begin. Their day will pass, and as I once again enter the US from northern Canada, I will get to see my second sunset of my day. One day, two sunrises and two sunsets, yet with no numerical date change, thanks to the international date line. I start on Sunday, then Saturday night , then Sunday.

It has been a long trip, and it is time to come home. The days, the work, and the flights were was long, but I have no regrets of making it. I won’t write about the business end of things – that were reasonably successful, but at the cost of 14 hour days were too long. But I did get to see enough of the city to get at least some tourist impressions, and hopefully a bit more.

The city
I say city, because to most travelers, Singapore is indeed a city (it is essentially a city-state), as well as a region, and a country – all packed into an island roughly 25 kilometers square. For all practical purposes (I am told by a resident there), your address is essentially written Singapore, Singapore, Singapore (City, region, country). That is if you happen to live in the city, as most do.

And what a city it is! I understand that like most cities there are poor areas, but much of the city is, well, almost postmodern. I can’t really think of a city in the US that feels the same – the closest match I can think of is newest parts of Toronto – also a rather “new” city.

Once you start to explore the city, you get two immediate impressions, and I think they are accurate. To the visitor, he city seems to be about shopping and eating. Stores, usually in the form of many, many huge malls, and food courts, often with hundreds of food vendors, seem to be found at every turn. Our hotel was in the depths of one such upscale district. On one side was the Sun City shopping center – a collection of five tall buildings, each with 5 levels dedicated to shopping, including two underground, all arranged around the famous “Fountain of Wealth”. Five buildings are by design – each building is meant to represent a finger (and thumb) of an outstretched hand, “holding” the fountain. I understand the complex was designed by a famous Fen Shei architect, and balances, well, just about everything.

But that is not all, all I have to do is turn around and there is another shopping center, this one only distributed across 3 buildings of similar size. These all within a 300 meter radius of my room, and each is probably about 4 or 5 times the size of Eastview mall, or double Eaton centre. And, based on a count on my map, there are no fewer than 10 other similar centers in the city. Much of the central part of the city is covered by underground tunnels, and they are worthwhile, as they are air conditioned.

Ah yes, air conditioning! Very useful here! The climate in Singapore is pretty much the same all year – highs about 31C, lows about 24C. Sounds pretty nice, right? Well, yes, but there is one small problem. The humidity is rarely below 80%. Rarely. At least if you are me, you will sweat when you go outdoors. I started to get a little used to it, but after an hour walk outdoors in the evening, it is about the same as if I were slowly running in the summer back in Rochester – you need to shower and change your cloths. You probably need the right genetics. While I was sweating like this in shorts, natives were wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts and an occasional sweater – 28 degrees must have felt a bit chilly to them.

The Hotel
I didn’t make our hotel reservations – our sales guy did, and no surprise, he had good taste – this has not been a cheap trip. The hotel is amazing, the best I have ever had in my life – if there is anything better, I don’t want to know about it. First of all, there was actually too much help. Everywhere I turned there were people “helping” us at every opportunity. They were not looking for tips (Singapore is generally not a tipping city), but it all seemed to be part of the impressions the hotel was paid to make. Here is a typical experience – you arrive back from your day of work, and there are at least two people at the front door (sometimes four!) – one to open the door, and a second person to stand inside and greet you. So greeted, you go to the elevator. Anyone looking your way will also greet you. If any attendants are near the elevator, they may very well dart inside the elevator, ask you what floor you want, and press the button for you. If you go to the business lounge (a privilege we had), you would once again be greeted by several, often by name (I think they memorized them when we gave them our business cards on registration). They would find you a place to sit, and then fetch drinks, and generally hang around, hoping you’ll need something.

The room itself was very nice-- no surprise there. Very modern, with a big bathroom and a glass encased shower with separate tub. There was a telephone next to the toilet – in case you got any calls while indisposed.

But, the room came with a puzzle to solve. After arriving in the dusk after my first day meeting, none of the lights worked! I walk up to a desk lamp, and there was no switch. I walk over to the bed, and find a panel of multiple pushbuttons – this should do the trick! But no, I push some and nothing works. Wheels turn in the head – there must be a master switch somewhere, probably on the console. But damn – I can’t read the buttons, ‘cause it is sort of dark. When I push several, little colored lights came on (later found to be the “room privacy” feature), but not light. Hmm – maybe by the door.

Sure enough, I walk over to the door and find it – a slot to put your room key. I insert and remove my key card, and sure enough, a light comes on! Problem solved – now I can go to the bathroom! But NO – I press the bathroom switch, and nothing happens. Hmm – when you gotta go, you gotta go! I go back to the central control console and try some buttons – no result. Then the entranceway light goes out. Damn! But in that I finally had the key to the puzzle – it reminded my of my car, that keeps the dome light on for some time after I close the door. This time I insert and leave the card in, and all is ok from then on. Still though, I find this system a bit over the top. If you are sitting at the desk, you can’t turn on the light – you need to walk over to the bed to do so. But it is nice when you leave the room or go to bed – everything goes out instantly.

The Food
Three words – lots and varied and cheap. Food was everywhere – I will use pictures to tell that story. Most was what I would generally describe as “Aisian” – you could find Thai, Chinese and what I suspected was “Malaysian, etc.”. It was all very tasty, and I ate as many different types as possible. The prices were very cheap on the street, usually $2 – 4 for lunch, and a bit more for dinner. In the trendy malls it was perhaps double that, matching our US prices. A typical setup would be an outdoor, but partially covered “food court”. These would typically be several hundred feet square, with multiple small “booths” on the periphery, with tables in the middle. Every type of food was represented. Curiously enough, none of the food vendors also sold drinks – you went to drink vendors for that. Very specialized.

People
Although Singapore is an international business and trade center, almost everyone on the street was Asian of some sort – not the mixing pot I see in Brussels, at least to my untrained eye. It was very interesting to me to be immersed in such a culture – unlike traveling in Europe, there really is a skin color difference, and I was well aware that, well, my skin was sooo pale and pink. Don’t misunderstand, I was treated no differently, and this is a very polite culture. But it was a case of “which of these is not like the other….” I think this is one of those important experiences to have – next I’ll have to try southern Africa to get the full dose.

Everyone dressed smartly, and the women all paid attention to details – with perfect haircuts, very warm smiles and everything “just so”.

Night life
Yes, lots. Shops stay open until 10 pm, later on the weekends. The city has many people, and the streets are quite crowded well into the night. Singapore is rather famous for being a safe city, and it was routine to see women walking alone on the streets at any time I was out myself (e.g. 10:30 pm). Hundreds of people go running at night, often singly, sometimes in large groups of a dozen or more. You go down on the harborfront, and can see scores of teens and twentysomethings hanging out, flirting, and generally having fun time. This is one thing I really miss in the US, you find this type of nightlife in very few places.

Everyday life
I know the least about this topic, so will just detail a bit of what I learned. Cars drive on the left side of the street, British-style. Measurement system is metric (of course). The cars tend to be rather expensive models, you would see Lamborghinis here and there, which is pretty amusing, given I think the island speed limit is 90 km/hr, and often lower. At the 200 mph these cars are capable of, you could probably drive coast to coast in 5 minutes And one does not don’t break the law here – penalties and punishments are high! I understand that it is quite expensive to register cars, and about 25 percent of the 4.5 million residents have one. Housing is 80 percent in apartments or more commonly condos (owned apartments). Actually as I understand it, you lease them for 99 years, and the lease is expensive (guessing things start at $500K).

The city has a very nice metro. Probably the closest I have been in previously would be that in Washington DC. It is the type of metro with different prices depending on destination, and fares ranged from $.50 to a max of $2.00. They have a cool way of buying individual tickets that beats the Washington method – each terminal has large touch screens which show a map of the metro system, and you simply touch where you want to go. It then tells you how much money to insert and gives you a farecard. This would never work the US or in Europe, as someone would vandalize the screen. But, as most know from the news, this is taken very seriously in Singapore, and, well, no one seems to do it – so it works. Caning hurts - lots.

The country has very tight control over who is there, and who is not. Like the US, they have need for a strong immigrant worker pool, primarily for the lower job functions (here, construction seems big). These are done using non-permanent visas, which are pretty easy to get, but only last for 2 years at a time, being sponsored by the hiring company. I understand they are tracked effectively, and in this way illegal immigrants are rare. On the other side of the intellectual continuum, permanent immigration is encouraged if you are highly skilled, usually with advanced degrees. They seem to be attracting researchers by offering rather free grant money with little red tape few restrictions – no stem cell research bans here.


Senosa island
Senosa is Singapore’s answer to Disneyland. I went there on my final day (which had no meetings – hurray!) for two reasons. The first was this was one of the “standard destinations”, and I am told you had not been to Singapore until you had been there. But the second reason was really more for my soul. After three days in the city, while I was blown away by the plentiful modern city with its food and shopping, I really needed to get away and find a forest. Senosa had such a forest, even if it was small. And beaches. The pictures tell much of the story, but suffice it to say that it was very lush, very well outfitted and prepared, and a very nice place to be indeed. It was not an amusement park, really, but more of a resort, which was fine with me. I wandered around in some low, somewhat scrubby rainforest, but rainforest nonetheless. And I dipped my feet in the South China sea, only 1 degree (70 miles) north of the equator.

Overall
Upon my arrival, I was very impressed with this city, and that general impression remains. It is certainly very clean, very modern, and very safe. As I explored further through several areas, I was a bit relieved to find that everything is not perfect, but generally people seem to be happy, provided you can stand the heat, humidity, and nearly three meters of rain per year. They are rather cramped for space, there is a very high urban population density, and so don’t have the large parks that are useful in a city to maintain sanity, so it is not a place for me. In fact, large cities are not really places for Chucks. Having said this, however, I would be interested to return – next time exploring more of the island proper.

Midway though the trip, I visited the Fountain of Wealth. In the middle of the overall fountain is a central fountain area with a circular walkway. Tradition is that you walk to this center, hold out your right hand, and circle the fountain clockwise three times, with your hand continuously in the water. If you do this properly, and make a silent wish, you will have wealth. I did so, and there is no question that I have such wealth. But of course, I have had wealth all along – and it so continues, slightly enlarged.