On the Road to Singapore

(Part two)

Saturday, June 26, 1999

3:55am (California time)

Back at the apartment after a shopping trip. I needed to buy a swimming suit, forgot to pack one, knew there was something. Gregory and his family (wife, three-year-old daughter and domestic) drove me to the apartment from the airport. It is on the eighth floor of a twelve-story apartment house, one of a large number within view. Gregory went up with me and introduced me to Helen (her western name) the third person living in the apartment. I share a bathroom with Supakorn (not Helen). Hot, hot, hot and sticky. Ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity. [It is Tuesday evening around seven thirty as I type these notes from yesterday. I am wearing only my bathing suit, the air conditioner is running and I can feel rivulets of sweat dripping down my back.] It doesn't rain here so much as just condenses. I have to learn to remove my shoes on entering the apartment. There is a little closet next to the front door with row upon row of small shelves for shoes. Out here you don't keep your shoes in your bedroom closet, all are kept communally by the front door. The feeble window unit air conditioner tries but fails to cool much. I was told by Gregory to go outside and hail a cab and go to 'Neon City'. "Lot's of shops," he said.

So what the heck, no way to sleep at one in the afternoon so I went downstairs and outside and found my way to the street where all manners and shapes and sizes of vehicles drove by at a quick pace and all on the 'other' side of the street as this was once a British colony. I waved at a few cabs as they whizzed by, all with passengers. A hundred feet up the street from where I stood a woman also waved at the cabs. She saw me and walked back to where I was standing. Asian, early twenties, pretty, nicely dressed. "I've been trying to catch one for forty five minutes," she said, the frustration plain in her voice. "But it's Sunday afternoon and everyone is having weddings and everyone is going to them and coming from them in cabs." After a few minutes of our standing side by side waving at the passing cabs without success she decided to try the other side of the street. Another five minutes passed and she snagged one. She had the driver make a U-turn and pull along side me, the door opening before it stopped. I jumped in. "I'm going to Neon City," I reminded her having told her during our previous conversation. "It's on my way," she replied as we took off.

I never learned her name, but in the ten minute ride I discovered that she is an industrial package designer, born in Singapore but moved with her family as a young girl to Melbourne, Australia where she lived until sixteen, then back to Singapore to live with her grandmother while going to school. Next January she will go to Atlanta, Georgia where she has been accepted at the Portfolio Center, a two year graduate school in industrial and commercial design, one of the best in the world. This was her third application to the school and she is looking forward to it with great eagerness. We arrived at my destination and after I gave her my share of the fare, she and the cab drove off.

Not 'Neon City' but Ngee Ann City, six stories of high priced stores and boutiques, Versace, and the other labels, etc. I got lucky and found a pair of swimming trunks quickly at a reasonable price and escaped to the street.

Noisy, crowded, hot and muggy. One step out of the air-conditioned Ngee Ann City and your clothes stick to you with hot dampness. People everywhere, young, old, some Euro tourists, but mostly Asian. Everyone carrying or using a cell phone. Music everywhere, street performers, busses, cabs, cars, all on the wrong side of the street. Across Orchard Road from where I started and up the street, past two more multi storied glitzy shopping centers (Marks and Spencers, Hagen Daz, Swensens(!?)) I found Lucky Plaza where Larry told me of silk scarves. Even more crowded and noisy inside, store upon store, floor upon floor of small shops selling electronics (almost always Sony) and silk scarves, blouses, dresses, and house coats. I saw a sign for the Lucky Plaza Reptile House and walked over expecting to find iguanas and such, instead found purses and hand bags made of reptile skin, not so lucky for the reptiles. I stopped and looked at a silk blouse, black, very pretty. "How much?" I asked the attentive sales lady. "$65 (Singapore, about $40 US). I thanked her and began to move on. "Wait," she said. "If you want to buy now, I reduce." I thanked her again and left.

I left Lucky Plaza and went outside again and again was assaulted by the heat and humidity. I went into a Starbucks like place and ordered cappuccino and a sandwich. The teenager behind the counter spoke perfect English. I realized all the signs were in English, in fact, all through my walk all the signs, advertisements, street signs, everything is in English. Yet the language you hear spoken is Chinese.

I sat at my table and drank my coffee and ate my sandwich. Except that all the people were Asian and speaking Chinese, I could have been in Starbucks at Mowry and Fremont Blvd. Even the cadence and tone (and probably the subject matter) of the conversations are the same.

I stood in line for a cab back to the apartment. "Eunos Apartments," I said with confidence as I settled into the back seat. "Don't worry," Gregory had told me earlier. "All the cab drivers know where it is." Just my luck to find the only cab driver in Singapore who didn't. But he had a cell phone (of course) and a map and I called the apartment and asked Helen to give him directions. Problem solved.

I took a short nap, how many hours since I have really slept? Went out and found a corner market and bought a 1.5 liter bottle of coke to drink back at the apartment. Came back and went for a swim. The pool is nice and large and clean. Kids, adults, but so large as never to feel crowded. I did my usual routine when swimming. Swim underwater as far as possible, rest a few minutes with only my head above water, then swim underwater again.

The pool is deep and I was able to swim deep. Take three very deep breaths, long and slow. Exhale the last as much as possible. Take a very short breath and slip under the water, kicking against the side of the pool to launch yourself downward. This way your blood is rich with oxygen but your lungs empty, so you are less buoyant and you go to the floor of the pool with ease. Swim with and easy, slow frog arm and leg pattern. Skim the pool's bottom by inches, eight feet below the surface. See how far you can travel on that one breath. I used to make it across an average pool's width with ease. Then it's time to surface and the first vestiges of panic set in as you head upward and upward expecting to break the surface with every arm movement, but eight feet is a real long way to climb as your breath runs short.

It is all of eight o'clock now. Very dark out - we are only a hundred miles from the equator and the days and nights are always twelve hours each - no long summer days and cold winter nights. The sun goes down at seven and it gets dark quickly. It rises at seven and gets light quickly. Plain and simple, day in, day out, all the year round.

I have the air conditioner off and the window open. The sounds of a busy city street fill the room. It is time for bed.