Singa Pura...

From Solomon Islands to Singapore, and back again. That is what I’ve been up to in the last two weeks, and two more utterly contrasting capitals on this earth I find it hard to imagine.

The tallest building in Honiara, the renowned Antony Saro building, stands a mighty four storeys high, closely followed by the Central Bank building with three storeys. Other three-storey buildings you can count on the digits of one hand, even if you happen to be a Simpson. In Honiara there is not a single international shop outlet; the closest we come to having a multinational conglomerate is the Bulk Shop, a company with three small outlets selling flour, spices and popcorn in big plastic dustbins. Apart from shorts and shapeless shirts, it is literally impossible to buy new clothes here, and everyone buys their clothes from one of the many musty-smelling second hand stores. Advertising, that bastion of corporatisation and globalisation, is non-existent in Honiara streets, with the exception of the A4 sheets nailed to trees announcing either the imminent departure of the MV Haurisea to a distant village in Temotu province or informing all would-be spakaman such as myself about an upcoming dancedancedance at the Moonlight Niteclub; when one of the more orderly mechanical tool stores recently hung a big plastic imitation chainsaw on the front of their building big crowds of people gathered to watch. In fact, shopping is such a marginal activity here that almost all stores close by 5pm, if not earlier.

And then there is Singapore. Singapore, the most densely populated country in the world. Singapore the development miracle, one of the very few countries to have genuinely made the transition from so-called ‘developing’ to ‘developed’ country. Modern Singapore, where everything works just so damn well, where the streets are clean and the buildings built yesterday, and whose transport system makes the London version seem on the verge of collapse. As we were whisked from the airport to the hotel where I was staying, I was torn between being mesmerized by the sparkling shiny state of every single car on the road, and being terrified by the death defying speed at which we were racing (about 90 kph for the record). Entering this world of soaring office buildings and shopping centres on every corner was like a sledgehammer to the senses, exhilarating but slightly painful. Singapore is probably the most consumerism-oriented society I have ever encountered, but fortunately it is also much more. And two weeks, in a swanky (at least to my unaccustomed eyes) hotel with hot water to drool over, with some money to burn on clothes and electronics (including this ‘ere laptop that I types on now), and endless meals sampling the delicious Malay-Indo-Chinese-Indian cuisine, was an entertaining contrast to life in the Pacific.

I didn’t, however, spend quite all my time going up and down shopping centre escalators. The reason I went to Singapore was for a two-week course of lectures and workshops organised by the IMF, which basically looked at the inter-relations between the four main sectors of an economy: government spending; the real sector (e.g. production and investment); external accounts (trade and whatnot); and the monetary sector, and what implications this has for policy. In light of my student days attending various protests directed at IMF policies, and writing essays on the problems with the IMF policy dogma and approach to development, it was slightly strange to be sitting in a suit behind a desk listening to their words of wisdom. But as it turned out there was nothing very controversial in what we were discussing, and after working for a year in CBSI I found it extremely useful. It was made particularly interesting by the group of participants, who heralded from Central Banks and Ministries of Finance in countries from the Asia-Pacific region including Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, and Afghanistan. There was even one (surprisingly pale) fella from the Solomon Islands. If it wasn’t getting so late I could harp on for ages about the hilarious social dynamics of the different nationalities, some of the predictable sub-groups that emerged, and some altogether more odd and surprising little groups. As for me, I flitted here and there fascinated by such a diverse bunch or interesting people, but ultimately spent most of my time with my fellow Islanders who surprised me by being the loud-mouthed life and soul of the party. Highlights included hitting the dance floor of Zouk, one of the biggest dance clubs in Singapore, with my typically huge Tongan friend surrounded by waif-like Asians all dancing manically, and getting the underground/double-decker bus with a terrified/delighted niVanuatua lady.

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”.