Lightpost…
Red house…
Lo bend…
Cross road…
Small Axe…
Borderline…
DBSI…
King’s Base…
Aside from the workshops, and the shopping, and the eating, and the drinking, there was little time for seeing much else in Singapore. But this wasn’t really a problem, as Singapore is not a city to visit as a tourist. I did manage to find a day and half to do a few ‘guidebook activities’, visiting Sentosa island (which a Chinese cabbie quite accurately explained stands for ‘So Expensive, Nothing To See Actually), going to the impressive Asian Civilisations museum, sampling a few Buddhist temples. But to get a feel for Singapore it strikes me as much better to visit for a week or two on work. At lunchtime there are an unlimited range of delicious cheap eateries to choose from in the various food courts and arcades, where you can grab a tray and sit surrounded by Singaporean workers in suits shovelling rice or noodles into mouths. After work the evening possibilities stretch ahead, with restaurants, bars and shops opening late. You can wander Chinatown grazing from the huge number of stalls selling food and Tiger beer, passing the seedy clubs with gangs of Phillipino girls in the doorway trying to lure you in (hence the cabbie’s translation of Chinatown as ‘Come Honey, I Need Action’). You can hit the Quay areas thronged with young people every night of the week (everyone seems to have money here), or if you’re feeling particularly flush you can visit one of the many hotels and get stung viciously for the privilege, most notably at the beautiful colonial Raffles Hotel, home of the Singapore Sling, where amazingly the astronomical price is actually worth the hour or so spent in the famous Long Bar, chucking peanut shells on the floor, listening to the Cuban band and sound of the fans on the ceiling, and (slowly) sipping the famous cocktail. I spent quite a bit of time too in Little India (I’ll Never Do It Again), the only place I saw in Singapore that is chaotic and dirty, but where I tasted Indian curries that blew my mind, and where the huge tangled mess of Mustafa shopping centre opens 24 hours a day.
So during the first week I dived head first into this jamboree for the senses, scarcely able to picture the sleepy world of the Pacific Islands I had left behind or imagine how I could return. But by the middle of the second week this began to change, and slowly I began to tire of the shopping, the hotel world, and all the bricks piled on top of each other. By the end of that week I was pining for a sweet coconut and fantasising about stepping off the plane into the familiar Solomon air and smells, and missing the smiling faces and laughter of my adopted countrymen. So I was more than happy to return on Sunday, and to see that in my absence nothing had changed at all save for some white lines that had been painted on the Lengakiki road which goes up to my house. Best of all my homecoming was particularly sweetened by the feast I was served thanks to Fi and her auntie crew cooking up a motu pigpig storm, replacing the gulf left by crappy airline food.
And now, adjusting to being back at work, I am left still thinking and pondering the enigma of Singapore. There is no denying it is a remarkable place. At the crossroads of international trade routes (all along the coast there are mountains of containers piled far higher than the tallest buildings in the Solomons) it is a truly multicultural city. It is a city where West meets East and everyone is (originally) an immigrant (Chinese make up about 70% of the population, followed by Malay, Indians, Sri Lankans and Europeans), and as such there can be no objection to other ethnic groups or new arrivals, only acceptance and tolerance. But it also strikes me as a city of paradoxes and, as in most places, first impressions are somewhat deceiving. For example Singapore is seen as the epitome of successful free-market liberalism, where a minimum of red-tape and government interference has made it a regional hub of international business and investment. In fact the situation is far more complicated, and the heavy hand of government is surprisingly omnipresent, constantly prodding and pulling the economy in new directions. The government is playing a big role in the construction of huge new resorts and a massive solar power generation plant (costing around 1,000 years of GDP in the Solomon Islands), and is effectively the owner of Singapore Airlines and 90% of taxi cars in the city (driven by extremely disgruntled cabbies).
Beneath the smiling, polite and helpful surface of Singaporean society, there is also a hard and somewhat brutal core. One contact I had there is currently finishing his military service, which basically involves ingraining a discipline and obedience to authority in all young people, in sometimes masochistic fashion (fortunately for him, as a university graduate, he was one of the officers dishing out the punishments). Another example is the whippings dealt out to the worst criminal offenders, which leave them not able to sit down for 3 months. Less extreme, but equally indicative of the hard-minded mentality of society, are the stipulations for being a Singaporean Airline hostess. There are five rounds of interviews (including a swimming costume round), candidates must be over a certain height and below a certain weight, have a certain kind of (pretty) look, and once they get the job they are weighed on a regular basis to ensure they do not put on weight. At 28 they are retired from aircraft duty to take up a desk job.
The name Singapore comes from Singa Pura, meaning Lion City, and the aggressive approach to development by leaders of the country (which is officially a democracy but in fact extremely authoritarian and effectively a one-party state) has so far proved incredibly successful. The true test of the government, and the population’s willingness to allow the leaders on high to make all decisions on their behalf, will come when the economy starts to falter. On which note I leave you with the words of a Chinese fisherman, speaking about the early boom days that transformed the sleepy Malay fishing village into the beacon of globalisation it is today. “Everyone traded on their luck”, he said. “If you have the luck of a coconut fibre, you float. If of stones, you sink”.