Saturday, July 09, 2005

Singapore: Some Serious Thigh Chaffing




















If you took Vegas and removed the immorality, quintupled the size of the strip, making it into an entire city, adding a dash of Waikiki, you'd start to get a feel for what Singapore is like. As for the culture, I saw a T-shirt that summed it up nicely. A Bengali tiger and a Chinese dragon were intertwined with one another, with Indian and Chinese pretty much making up the majority of the populous. It seems as if the Malaysian and Pilipino people have a strong presence here as well. Peggy and I guessed that there is about 5-10% of the population who are Anglos living here full time, but use of the English language is the common denominator here, everyone speaks it quite fluently.

The shopping is unlike anything we've ever seen; it is truly a national pastime. The malls blend together, all look exactly alike (with no apparent street numbers for reference) and there is no real definition between where one ends and another begins. It is as if every square inch of space in between buildings is taken up by a maze of retail corridors. If shopping is not your thing you're up for a pretty boring time. Even venturing off to some of the other neighborhoods proved to be more malls, just with different flavors of locals.

Similar to places such as Montreal or Minnesota, they build entire cities underground. Here, entire malls have been built underground from the malls at street level. Unlike Vegas, there does not seem to be the majority of tourists taking over the streets. The locals increase in number and crowd the streets as it gets later in the day. This might just be an untrained eye, but the entire country also seems to look like they are under the age of 25.

We also were questioning the level of debt that the average young S'pore (Singaporean) carries with them, since it appears as if everyone is spending each waking moment immersed in a retail experience. Peggy supposed that it was not as high as the U.S., due to the amount of disposable income created when you remove ownership of an automobile (licenses alone cost over $100K) and reasonable apartment rental rates. This economy must be as strong as an ox, because it is spend, spend, spend for everyone.

Everyone here is either on their cellphone or has one in their hand. This is what I imagined (and could likely still realize) Tokyo to be like. The presence of consumer electronics is pushed everywhere, it is as much of a status symbol as a car is in the states. No devices that I've seen unlike the latest and greatest technology released back home, but certainly the market saturation / public usage is much, much larger. After two days in Singapore, we need about a week in a sensory deprivation tank. If ADD is ever traced back genetically, this town will prove to be its' point of origin.

The weather is hot and humid, around 90F, which is not spontaneous human combustion hot, but certianly hot enough for some serious thigh chaffing. When we leave the hotel in the morning, sunglasses and cameras fog up immediately due to the moisture in the air. No rain as of yet.

Today we visited places like Little India, Arab Street, Raffle's Long Bar (and had the obligatory Singapore Sling), the IOC convention, a suit tailor, and watched a parade for National Day. Now, given the size and scope of this parade (think May Day in Moscow), we thought it was the real deal; a stadium of about 30,000 people dressed in red and white (Singapore's national colors), a full military procession complete with tanks, soldiers in full camo and face paint, several batteries of missiles, large-caliber guns towed by trucks, bridge multiple F-16s and cargo plane flyovers, a 'how great we are' flotilla praising the different areas of achievements that S'pores can - and have excelled in, with an awesome fireworks display to conclude. Nope. Just a dress rehearsal for next month. Who rehearses patriotic rallies? Is there going to be a panel of judges that declares, "No, sorry, this year wasn't patriotic enough, back to communism for you people"? The nationalistic message is really hammered home, in the subways especially with placards promoting good public habits, army enrollment, unity as a whole.

On the flip side, it is very safe and clean. We've never felt threatened in any situation, except almost being stampeded after the National rally let out. This town is spotless, no litter or homeless anywhere, giving it an eerie feeling of sterility. Now, mind you, we’re from San Francisco, where visible human feces and the stench of urine are like Sourdough and Rice-A-Roni.

We're going to try to get out of the city limits a bit further tomorrow and see if we can put things in a better perspective. Being a Sunday, we're not sure if it mandates shops and stores close down or not.

posted by ncawthon at 7:36 PM