From the Plane From Singapore to Beijing

Singapore

While I was in Hong Kong, everyone kept telling me how the weather in Hong Kong was sooo much better than the weather in Singapore and how horribly hot Singapore is. So far, I am excited to say, they were incorrect.

Singapore is 2 degrees from the equator, which is much, much closer to the equator than other famous tropical places like Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Fiji. But it has nice sea breezes that at least while I was there, kept the humid weather pleasant (and very similar to Hawaii in Spring and Fall). The air is infinitely cleaner than the air in Hong Kong. I was told by one proud Singaporean that ‘Singapore is safe from all natural disasters’ (famous last words…I did a lot of knocking on wood after that one while waiting for the earth to open up in a freak earthquake/tsunami/tornado/blizzard disaster of epic proportion).

They are only plagued by a cloud of pollution that apparently gets blown over from Indonesia once a year that my new group of friends (which included Indonesians) referred to as “Singapore’s tax to Indonesia for its gracious absorption all of the other natural disasters that would otherwise plague Singapore” (including, but not limited to: Tsunamis, hurricanes/cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanoes – all of which can be experienced in abundance in Indonesia). Indonesia served as a barrier during the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, and thus kept Singapore untouched by the devastation that started next door and travelled all the way to Africa.

The office is in a sufficiently tall, ostentatious building with a bunch of investment banks, and that was pretty much all I saw of Singapore on weekdays (plus a number of underground shopping malls that connect practically the entire city).

This weekend I did some exploring around Singapore and managed to stumble into a new great group of friends. Charif, one of my colleagues from Initech, invited me to Sentosa (a ‘resort’ type island that is part of Singapore and that you can reach by bridge) to meet up with some of his friends. We were quite an international bunch, and I was the only westerner in the group (and was represented proudly by the Australian college students drinking in the pool and dancing on the poolside bar). There was Charif (from Lebanon), his fiancée Tomoko (from Japan), his friend Moliya (from Indonesia, living in Singapore), Moliya's girlfriend Pax (from Jakarta visiting him), another friend Sky (a Chinese Singaporean who lived in Doha for two years as a stewardess for Qatar airways), another friend Ferai (from Zimbabwe, living in Singapore), and a few other people. Everyone was connected to everyone else by one person - Kevin Bacon would have been proud.

We ate dinner, including the biggest prawn I’ve ever seen (much larger than a Maine lobster and definitely not a 'shrimp'…) and then relaxed on big beds on the beach and talked about all sorts of cultural things (Thanks to NPR for allowing me to have a slightly intelligent discussion of Mugabe and Zimbabwean politics and the situation in Lebanon and thus demonstrate that I am not a stereotypical ‘do you mean Iran and Iraq aren’t the same’ American).

It is times like this that I always like to stop and think about how awesome it is that I am spending my Saturday night discussing Zimbabwean politics with a Zimbabwean and the situation in Lebanon with a Lebanese person on a beach in South East Asia. In case you were wondering, the situation in Zimbabwe is tough and Lebanon is more dangerous by the minute and some Lebanese family friends who were visiting Singapore are now unable to return to their home in Beirut and are stranded homeless in Singapore. These are always the types of circumstances where we have the opportunity to transcend our normal opinions of cultures, history, and politics that are put together by any number of media, and actually talk to people who actually have experienced something firsthand.

I like to think of these situations as amazing opportunities to demonstrate to one person at a time that not all Americans are ‘World Cowboys’ like Bush, prancing around the world picking fights with no understanding or appreciation for other cultures. If only everyone had the desire to learn from other people and cultures, we would probably be in a much more peaceful world. I consider it my unofficial duty to engage in this kind of micro-diplomacy as much as possible, and I love it when other people want to do the same. Once upon a time, it was a situation like this that allowed me to ask my Muslim friend how she feels wearing a full burkha and later on to experience it myself, and for her to ask me how I can get up every morning without my extended family to guide me and take care of me when I'm down. It's possible that more understanding between cultures happens in these moments than happened in the entire UN general meetings in 2007.

We had so much fun on Saturday night that we all met up on Sunday for brunch at a place called Dempsey, near the botanical gardens. Dempsey is a lush area with restaurants and shops among big tropical banyan and firangi panni trees (If you read HyderabadAdventures, you may remember that in Hindi 'firangi panni' means 'gringo water.' I asked the Singaporeans about the origin of the word and all they could say was that it is said that the trees are haunted by spirits. Firangi panni are also used as funeral flowers in India. Interesting etymology - funerals, spirits and white people are all related). Dempsey is also a favourite among expats and the whole area looked like an expat bomb had exploded and left millions of curly toe-head British and Australian children running around half naked as their parents lounged drinking the bar clean of mimosas.

Afterwards we all wandered around and I went with Sky in her family’s Mercedes to Orchard Road (the Beverly Hills of Singapore). Interesting fact – to just have a car in Singapore you must pay SNG$70k (about $50KUS) just for a 10 year license to have a car. That means that the only cars in Singapore are luxury German cars, Italian sports cars, and luxury Toyotas (for the families), since you have to be able to afford the tariff before you even buy the car. This also means that cars are generally communal and shared by the entire extended family.

I went with Sky to the Goodwood Hotel because Sky really wanted me to taste the famed stinky durian fruit, and she thought that a durian pastry would be the easiest introduction. Lucky for us, the Goodwood Hotel has a ‘Durian Fiesta’ (their term, not mine) somewhat similar to the Gilroy garlic festival, except taking place in the posh patisserie in a 5 star hotel, where they make cakes, pastries, and other concoctions out of durians. The smell is so strong, that they have to keep everything frozen and package it immediately to prevent the entire hotel from smelling like a high school boys locker room.

Suffice it to say, even in cream puff form, the moldy-cheese scented (and flavoured) durian was not my cup of tea, and indeed, after a cup of tea (and a coffee, and a coke, and dinner...) I could still taste and smell that little bastard.

Afterwards I went with Frenje, a Singaporean friend of a friend from Stanford, to some ‘suburban’ public housing neighborhoods to get a sense for how most people in Singapore live (despite the condition of public housing in the US, almost everyone in Singapore lives in public housing and it is infinitely nicer than public housing anywhere else).

We were quite voyeuristic, and just went up elevators of random buildings and walked around looking into open doors. Women were cooking spicey food with the windows open, old men were sitting in front of TVs on leather couches. Floors were tile or marble, furnishings were modern, incense burned outside some doors and crucifixes hung on others. All signs were in Singapore's 4 official languages - Malay, Tamil, English, and Chinese, and some elevators were more modern than others. Some buildings were 6 stories and others more than 20. Air conditioners hung in boxes outside each window.

All throughout our walks I could identify when we were coming upon a stand selling durians, since the scent in the air matched the scent stuck in my body – a scent I hope will only be E² (external and ephemeral) in the future and not permeating through me like garlic after an Italian wedding banquet.

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Overall, I’m super excited about Singapore. It is a modern version of that 'melting pot of culture' that we always heard about studying American history. It has an extremely diverse population, including many, many new immigrants from all over the world. It is a center of commerce and wealth in Southeast Asia, and in many ways demonstrates some of the positive effects that a socialist government can have for its people (draconian gum-chewing penalties notwithstanding). It has amazing food (including every kind of curry imaginable), multiple spikey fruits to choose from, linen is always in style, and you can drink the water, which means you don’t have to constantly be worrying about ice and unpeeled fruit like you do almost everywhere else in Asia.

Oh, and it is a one hour boat ride to luxurious tropical Indonesian islands that cater to Singaporeans in their cleanliness and safety. With a slightly longer boat ride you can reach more authentic bastions of Indonesian and Malaysian culture; that is, if you don't get held up by pirates - an interesting prospect, but, I am told by my Vietnamese friend who was actually captured by Southeast Asian pirates as a refugee on a Vietnamese fishing boat 20 years ago, disappointingly lacking the Johnny Depp type of pirate and instead featuring the toothless, dirty, AK-47-carrying pirate of the modern era (proving once again, that sometimes newer isn't actually better...)

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Just had breakfast. An odd concoction of western and Thai 'fusion.'

Breakfast on Thai Airways:

Main course: Pad See Ewe Chicken or fish cakes

Lychee and melon

Croissant with jam

German yogurt

Tea (with powdered creamer)

The Singaporean Chinese ladies next to me have been popping chinese herbs for the last 20 minutes. They just ate some sort of brown cube. I hope the herbs aren’t for ‘cleansing their systems’…

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Now that I have finished the tales of my most recent travels, I am now sitting in the airport in Bangkok next to an enormous group of Former-Soviet-Republic tourists who make up the majority of this flight, and give the distinct impression that this is 1978 and we are flying on the Air Orient Express from one communist country to another. The news is flashing images of the devastation and 100,000 dead in Sichuan from the earthquake, pushing the 100,000 dead in Myanmar in the aftermath of the cyclone to second page news.

When tragedy hits in Asia, it hits big – can you imagine 100,000 dead in the US? The world trade center was a few thousand. The world as we know it would collapse (knocking on wood again).

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Thinking about America, I would like to switch gears and take this moment to reflect on the recurring masochism that is the experience of trying to explain American politics abroad.

Long ago and far away, for 4 years I was able to say ‘Bush stole the election, I didn’t vote for him and the majority of Americans didn’t either.’ Then for 4 years all I could say was ‘I’m from California. We’re a blue state. We know the Iraq war was wrong and I was against it. Blame Texas.’ Now imagine, after all of that, if I have to say, ‘Oh yeah, the Iraq war, we just can’t get enough of draining our national resources to keep a country who doesn’t want us there in total anarchy. Oh yeah, and we’ve decided that global warming doesn’t exist, we’re not in a recession, the earth was created 8000 years ago in 7 days, ours is the supreme and only acceptable form of government, and the sky is now purple rather than blue. Oh yeah, and we’re right and you’re wrong – didn’t you get the memo?’

The fact that John McCain at least claims to be more reasonable than Mike Huckabee and Dubya doesn’t change the fact that the party and interest groups that he represents carry a platform that is not only amoral and masked in the shroud of ‘religious morality’ but is dangerous for the future of the US and the world. We are at a pivotal juncture in history and by continuing to make policy choices that are entirely focused on the now rather than the future, we are ruining our entire nation’s hope for a future equally prosperous to the last 70 years of success that we’ve seen since WW2.

America is in the midst of a PR disaster, which is particularly dangerous, since one of the major factors in America’s success has been that people want to be our friend. In case people weren’t aware - other countries don’t like us. And other countries have very good reasons.

Did you ever wonder what would happen to the ‘popular’ bitchy girl in high school if her cronies who followed her around suddenly stopped supporting her? She would go from the ‘popular’ girl who people hate but elect prom queen because of her image, to the most detested girl in school – and how many of those people she was mean to will be willing to go out on a lim for her if she needs help? Not one.

Well, America, you’re walking a fine line. Even when you think you’re on top, you’re only on top because other people want you to be. When they stop (Europe, for example decides to stop backing you up in the fights you pick on the playground), you will be sitting alone, clutching your homecoming crown from last year, weeping about the glory days and wondering why Britain has stopped calling you (“was it something I said?”). The next thing you know, Europe and China are fighting it out for your vacated seat on the homecoming court, and everyone in the class is choosing sides between two new superpowers that aren’t you. Uh oh.

Our only hope is to really show that we are not that mean, vindictive girl - we were misguided and forgot to think about your feelings when we were picking on you. We're really sorry will now be represented by a reasonable person who you need to be friends with. John McCain winning the election will prove that we like being the bully, and we have no desire to change. Screw what you think, we don't need you anyway (except we do...). We will bully and push until we alienate all our supporters, and then we won’t have anything left but an enormous deficit and a world who has continued on in economic development without us. Have no doubt, much of the world can go on just fine without us. It will be tough, but they will figure it out while we are still regrouping from the trauma of being kicked off the homecoming court.

I just hope that the majority of people who are only concerned with the present and the irrelevant, petty issues that dominate our politics, are finally getting the understanding that our standing in the world is important, and it will be our downfall if we can’t get it together soon and prove, once and for all, that we are the moral, thoughtful, noble country that we think we are.