How peculiar that one month after
meeting a former resident and rather jovially critical fellow who
resided for many years in Singapore I find myself on those very
shores.
My first impression of the city state
was a rather two faced one when the presentation of the strict values
that dictate so much of its laws came quickly and rather squarely in
conflict with the realities of a wealthy citizenry. The woman back
at the office who booked my hotel had managed to put me smack dab in
the midst of twenty-four hour eateries, late night karaoke clubs and
street side beer vendors, that's right folks I was staying in the red
light district.
To quote the football firebrand Mario
Balloteli who's as likely to rally against racism as he is to get in a fist fight with his manager, “Why
always me?” Well, what else was I to do but take a two am jaunt
around the neighborhood to see my temporary neighborhood in its
finest hour?
The whole of Singapore appeared to
present itself in a very secular way, but this shabby looking
neighborhood had a real and definite poor Muslim feel to it. Nearly
every shop featured a crescent and star somewhere on its front and
the meticulous manicuring and fastidiously cleaned buildings and
streets I had seen on the way to my hotel had disappeared to make way
for the grimy sky walks and dilapidated store fronts one would expect
to see in the south side of Chicago or the Arab neighborhoods just
off Las Ramblas.
I wouldn't call these people friendly
but they were accommodating. At one point I found myself watching a
football match surrounded by Singaporeans of every color when a trio
of scantily clad ladies emerged from a doorway just beneath the
television. It was at this point that I realized that the TV I was
watching was placed directly above the domicile of these ladies of
the night and that there must have existed some relationship between
this all night coffee shop and the housing establishment that seemed
to be a strictly ladies only club. I never saw a man either enter or
leave through this entrance or in fact the building as a whole. And
of course sure enough there was a collection of no less than a dozen
women speaking with equal parts coy flirtatiousness and self assured
salesmanship to a collection of men that came and went and grew and
shrank but never seemed to outnumber the women. I don't mean to
either glorify or belittle the people employed in the business of
prostitution, only to show it as it appeared to my eyes. I woke four
hours after I had laid down in my hotel bed and quickly departed for
an embassy who's location I only vaguely understood. If last night
was Singapore all stuble-faced and scruffy then this morning was
Singapore clean shaven and ready for work.
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| Chinese new year decorations in a mall |
Once the day had just begun to depart I
ventured out again. I was determined to find a good watering hole
and meet some locals, or at least be near them and observe. The
previous night I had drank only one beer and then swore it was my
first and last as its price was just over double the price I would
have paid for the same beer back in Thailand and nearly ten times the
price I pay for my usual swill. However, earlier in the day I sat
myself in a coffee shop on the main drag in Singapore to do some work
and found that I was paying just a couple bucks less for the coffee
than I had for the beer I'd so prematurely sworn off the night
before. So...as you could probably guess I ended up drinking Thai
beer (it's the cheapest) and loving every minute of it.
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| The perfect meal...wait, where's the beer? Waiter! |
So that evening I found myself eating
and drinking and watching a “Celestial Classic Movie.” The
subtitles were all very clear except that they kept saying heck this
and heck that and I'm from heck and that monster's from heck and all
of the sudden it occurred to me that you can't say the word hell (in
English) on Singaporean television. You probably can't say it in
Malay or Mandarin either but Japanese I suppose is ok as it didn't
sound like there was any censorship of the Japanese in the movie.
Overall the movie was a riot (even though I'm sure it was intended to
be a thriller) as it came complete with a wooden body double for the
heroine that was eaten by the demons and old school Japanese martial
arts choreography for all the fight scenes. I'm sure Kurosawa rolls
over in his grave every time anyone watches that movie.
The next day I picked up my passport
and settled down in a coffee shop to do some more work when another
thought occurred to me. I hadn't seen a single cop anywhere. No
police cars, no police motorcycles, no signs marking police territory
(as is very important to maintain corruption in Thailand) no bike
cops, horse cops or cops walking the beat in the busy retail
districts or shady red light districts. Where were the police? To
quote a very sarcastic segment of an Omali
Yeshitela speech (thank you Dead
Prez) “...I can tell you well you know you've got to have the
police, because if there were no police...uh look at what you'd be
doing to yourselves, you'd be killing yourself if there were no
police...” If I were to continue that quote it would say something
along the line of police only become necessary where crime exists.
Just for fun lets draw some parallels between Singapore and a city in
the US, Chicago.
Singapore Chitown
Population: 4.5 million 2.7
million
Singapore is sixty percent bigger
Civilians per police staff: 360 190
Chicago has nearly twice as many cops
per civilian
Acronyms: SPF CPD
Singapore has a cooler acronym
Budget in USD: 1 billion 1.3
billion
Singapore's police budget is thirty
percent smaller
Homicides in 2008: 8 513
Hmmmmm...no explanation needed.
In summary Singapore's combination of a social safety
net and frighteningly strict punishments probably does a pretty sweet job of making sure that Singaporeans
don't commit violent crime. For example you can get the death penalty
for firing a gun, even if no one is injured. On a side note they also have been
consistently listed as one of the most restrictive countries when it
comes to freedom of speech.
There certainly is crime in Singapore
it's just nothing that will get you killed...or hurt...or really
anything. While I was in Singapore the big thing that was happening
was that the government was up in arms because it had noticed a
slight uptick in traffic accidents and people needed to start driving
more courteously. I wonder if they shouldn't take a taxi ride in New
York sometime and then re-evaluate the safety of their roads.
* * *
I began this blog post on the day of my
arrival in Singapore (Feb 3rd) and have just
now (Feb. 22nd) managed to pick it up again. I attribute
this not to laziness nor lack of motivation but to my work. When I
was working at the French restaurant in Oakland there were weekends
when I would work a Friday night shift then a double on Saturday and
a double on Sunday which amounts to about thirty-five or forty hours
in a three day span. That was something that happened a couple times
a year. With Binumi I've been consistently putting in ten hour days
and this week in particular did fourteen hours on Saturday and then
fourteen more on Monday. I've also performed in two performance art
shows over the last couple weeks and before that was deeply embroiled
in the process of creating Survival Games. I have no idea when I'll
find the time to write to you all again and ponder the meaning of
life because if the website doesn't kick off and become successful
I'll be working my ass off trying to make it successful and if it
does kick off and become successful I'll be working my ass of trying
to keep up with the new demands that will come with success. Oh what
a conundrum.
I'm not the only one whose busy though.
Nana is directing an opera, creating and performing in a show slated
for a series of performances in Italy in July and now spending her
mornings trying to keep me and a host of other nutters at the website
organized. Oh yeah, she also recently found out she's listed on IMDB.
Loved your story about Singapore and your world. And, keeping busy probably suits you better than being bored. I would like you to include descriptions of the foods with which you taunt us via photos. Was the latest food-photo dish just various greens or did it have meat? If so, which kind? And, were those two red, skinny, serrano peppers lying on top? Love, Mother
ReplyDeleteI've never seen serrano's out here except at boutique places that specialize in imports. Those were bell peppers. AS for descriptions I'll do my best to include some descriptions in the future as it was a month ago that I ate that dish and I can't remember what exactly was in it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading.