Well, technically its been more than a week in this fabulous city of Singapore and I have to say that my first impression of this place is pretty awesome. I don't know whether I'm qualified enough to make this comment because technically (again!) this is the first overseas country that I've traveled to. I mean I have visited Hong Kong and Bangkok as a 4 year old kid with my parents, but thats way before my memory began to take up a cognitive nature. So, although I've been living away from home (which is Calcutta) for the major portion of my life thus far, this is my first stint on foreign shores.
However, I wasn't expecting the city to be, well, what it is! Images of South East Asian cities conjure up the same images that any Indian city would-high ride structures residing besides slums, multitudes of people jostling on the streets, noisy and vibrant, throbbing with the pulse of life, the glorious and the bastardized co-existing etc etc. The list is lengthy. However, these images all flew out of the window of my mind the moment, I left the precincts of the airport and ventured my way into the heart of the city. Everything was so manicured-driveways leading onto lawns of lush green, leading onto golf courses overlooking the harbour with yachts and small vessels lazily floating by overlooking the impressive high rises over the harbour front with the Singapore eye in the background. This surely was a grand city!
However, the measure of a city, a metropolis does only nominally reside in its architecture. Its the culture of the place, the people who live there that create the fabric that constitutes the true character of a city. Although a little premature, the citizens here came across as well behaved and civil but not warm. Somehow, like everything here, everything and everyone has been imported, plucked out of hitherto natures and environs and placed here in this unfamiliar and unresponsive territory to go about their lives. Its like putting the whole He-Man entourage on a game of Monopoly. Everything here seems "curbed"-the vegetation, the emotions, the people.
Its like Singapore is an interim between two places-people are waiting here to ultimately go away somewhere else which suits me fine until now, but I'm not sure about the coming months. I remember an old Latin line from a Francis Bacon essay I read in college (he said this of London I think):
"Magna civitas, magna solitudo" (A great city, a great solitude)
In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Japan, its made me wonder what would be the impact here if a similar event (hypothesizing here) were to befall this perfect city of restraint? Would the curbs disappear to give way to a heightened sense of belonging and camaraderie.
Ok, now to snap out of all the cosmo sentimentalism and onto some matters of higher importance-the state of the women in Singapore. If Bangkok is well Bangkok (read shady brothel) then Singapore is Milan. The women are unbelievable, adjectives would prove futile-elegant, fashionable, lithe, beautiful, so on and so forth. Byron would have a field day here, he would written a 1000 or more other love poems.
A more detailed post on this is definitely merited and I shall oblige myself with this later. Also not to forget some of the people who I've met here and even made friends with. My impressions on them in my next post. For now, just signing off with 2 lines I conjured up sitting at a roadside joint:
"In this flossy city by the sea,
Sullen with sea winds,
This island of lost dreams and
Flitting fairies, I write to stay alive."
However, I wasn't expecting the city to be, well, what it is! Images of South East Asian cities conjure up the same images that any Indian city would-high ride structures residing besides slums, multitudes of people jostling on the streets, noisy and vibrant, throbbing with the pulse of life, the glorious and the bastardized co-existing etc etc. The list is lengthy. However, these images all flew out of the window of my mind the moment, I left the precincts of the airport and ventured my way into the heart of the city. Everything was so manicured-driveways leading onto lawns of lush green, leading onto golf courses overlooking the harbour with yachts and small vessels lazily floating by overlooking the impressive high rises over the harbour front with the Singapore eye in the background. This surely was a grand city!
However, the measure of a city, a metropolis does only nominally reside in its architecture. Its the culture of the place, the people who live there that create the fabric that constitutes the true character of a city. Although a little premature, the citizens here came across as well behaved and civil but not warm. Somehow, like everything here, everything and everyone has been imported, plucked out of hitherto natures and environs and placed here in this unfamiliar and unresponsive territory to go about their lives. Its like putting the whole He-Man entourage on a game of Monopoly. Everything here seems "curbed"-the vegetation, the emotions, the people.
Its like Singapore is an interim between two places-people are waiting here to ultimately go away somewhere else which suits me fine until now, but I'm not sure about the coming months. I remember an old Latin line from a Francis Bacon essay I read in college (he said this of London I think):
"Magna civitas, magna solitudo" (A great city, a great solitude)
In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Japan, its made me wonder what would be the impact here if a similar event (hypothesizing here) were to befall this perfect city of restraint? Would the curbs disappear to give way to a heightened sense of belonging and camaraderie.
Ok, now to snap out of all the cosmo sentimentalism and onto some matters of higher importance-the state of the women in Singapore. If Bangkok is well Bangkok (read shady brothel) then Singapore is Milan. The women are unbelievable, adjectives would prove futile-elegant, fashionable, lithe, beautiful, so on and so forth. Byron would have a field day here, he would written a 1000 or more other love poems.
A more detailed post on this is definitely merited and I shall oblige myself with this later. Also not to forget some of the people who I've met here and even made friends with. My impressions on them in my next post. For now, just signing off with 2 lines I conjured up sitting at a roadside joint:
"In this flossy city by the sea,
Sullen with sea winds,
This island of lost dreams and
Flitting fairies, I write to stay alive."
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