“Bendito el lugar, y el motivo de estar ahí, bendita la coincidencia…Bendito el reloj, que nos puso puntual ahí, bendita sea tu, presencia….” To my surprise, the opening strains of a Spanish song trail out of the open doorway, here, somewhere in northeastern Singapore. I peer into the car; the driver, an Indian man in his early thirties, peers back. We introduce ourselves, I jump in, and we’re off. We promptly get lost; he doesn’t ever take the metro, the MRT, and doesn’t usually drive home in a car. I’m apartment hunting, on a tight budget and a tighter deadline in a city with a quick rental market and unusually high rents. Everything is either too expensive or too far away, or the unlucky combination of both too far away and too expensive, with the dubious added benefit of a pool and overzealous security guards. It’s a race against the clock, as I have to be out of my current accommodations by Saturday night, as my host have relatives in to visit. So aside from searching apartment listings, I am also trolling for couchsurfing hosts, as a way to bridge the gap until I find something I like.
The doors open, and somehow the entire occupancy of the metro car realizes in the exact same instant that the transfer line, across the platform, is still there, the doors are still open, and some slim possibility remains for being able to board it. Suddenly, as if of one beast the crowd takes off at a run in a mad dash for the opposite car. And as soon as any individual reaches the interior they immediately stop moving and check their cell phone as if programmed to do so, and at the same time impeding the progress of everyone behind them in entering the car.
I must spare a word in ode to the MRT - the metro. It has an ingenious system where you purchase a metro card with a deposit of 5 SD, you load it up with money and you use this to pay your way. Rides cost between SD0.69 and 1.29 or so, who knows, depending on the distance. Basically, you beep in and beep out again, and you get a discount for transfers. It's fantastic, it's cheap, efficient, and harder to cheat than Germany's frequent "honor system" (you buy them, and someone occasionally checks if you did or not). There are buses going everywhere, and my only complaint is that stops aren't announced, nor is it listed on the locality map in the metro station which buses leave from which place.
No one in Singapore seems to cook. And why bother? What’s the point? It costs money (ingredients) and time, it’s messy, and just around the corner (any corner, it doesn’t really matter) is a battery of food joints, offering anything you could wish (as long as that ‘anything’ consists of ‘local food’ or ‘western food’, of which varieties are usually present. Meals with drinks cost between 3 and 5 Singapore dollar (2.2 - 3.7 CHF, 2 - 3.4 USD, 1.4 – 2.4 EUR). Keeping track of the names is tricky for me, but I had something kind of like a naan bread but greasier, with egg and onions in it and served with curry sauce; I had fried noodles and vegetables; I had a kind of local soup where you pick the ingredients and the whole thing is quickly boiled and served with chili sauce; I had some kind of apple bun which I think was actually blueberry… all new and different. Local coffee is served extra sweet and often made of instant coffee, you can get a bazillion varieties of iced tea at any little stand by the MRT or in a convenience store, and it’s all New and Different and Tasty. Yum.
Sometime around Thursday night we all met at a park and hung out, we being the contingent of international students (about 90% “Western” or otherwise Caucasian). It’s a lot like speed dating: you get there, you know no one, you need to figure out if you like the people in 10 minutes or less to move on to the next group. It’s all about finding a crowd who does fun stuff, from whom you can weed out the good friends later. I talked with some Germans, some Poles, some Norwegians and Hong Kongians and Mexicans and Danish and at some point I stopped keeping track. I need to see these people several more times before I remember anyone’s name much less whether or not I liked them.
(Chinatown - haven't been there yet)
We went to a jazz club. Actually, we were going to some concert where some friend of a friend was playing, but by the time we got everyone together the concert was long over and had been replaced by firedancers. Shisha pipes lined the sides of the streets in Haji street, surrounded by piles of people crowded onto faded rugs on the sidelines. We ended up at the Blu jaz, one of those places with a different offer on each level. It was Goldilocks. Outside was full, downstairs was boring, first floor was raccous and third floor was “just right”, and we settled into some tunes by an Amerian in a hawaiin shirt who offered to sleep with anyone who bought him beer, and his enthusiastic drummer pal. With renditions of Sting and Simon & Garfunkel interspersed with other tunes, and with an ever-increasing percussion section, they were great entertainment but didn’t play long enough, which is how we ended up downstairs with an overenthusiastic DJ / Singer guy in a yellow shirt. Aside from his spastic nature and odd voice, he wasn’t doing to badly. We should import him to Geneva; he’d be a definite improvement. We finished up with some “Tiger” beers at a corner bar, saving Clark’s Quay for another night.
(Sentosa - haven't been there yet either)
People seem to make some pretty crazy demands for future roommates - no cooking, no Indians, Malays or Muslims, no overnight guests, no hot showers, no couples, no men, no no no no no no.... it seems odd that people try to prevent all of this stuff. Couples or families rent out an extra room, and in Singapore's inflated housing market, they can earn a pretty penny on it. But they still want the kitchen to themselves, want no messes anywhere and no extra people - it sounds like the landlords, through their restrictions, are trying to solve problems that are really only solved by not living with other people. I also learned the hard way that being off the metro line is a bad thing. I did manage to tour Bukit Timah by bus, and while it was lovely (and not too different from anything else I'd seen), I was hoping to get somewhere a bit more quickly. People say Singapore's always 20 minutes from anywhere else, but for me it's an hour and a half. "Newton station? Does this bus go to Newton Station?" I ask. The bus driver nods. I board. We drive. And drive and drive anddriveanddriveanddrive. And we end up at Clementi station, which I know well as I've been there at least eight times before. We stop, and the driver looks expectantly at me to get out. No Newton station after all.... and I am sending somewhat hectic SMSs to the person I'm supposed to meet: "I'm running 15 min late," "I'm on a bus somewhere," "Turns out I'm at Clementi, my aus river led" (my bus driver lied, but I was walking and texting). I was an hour late for my appartment.
I was faced with the choice: live far away in a nice condo with nice people for not cheap, live farther away with nice but more restrictive people for cheaper, and off the metro, live central but expensively and still have no pool.... I couldn't decide. I tried to borrow a laptop from some kids at McDonald's, but the internet was too slow. But they were cool kids and let me try; they were working on a project of how to prevent AIDS from being used as a weapon. Sadly, they didn't yet know the answer. I tried to find internet in the swisshotel, but that required being a resident with a key card, which I wasn't and hadn't. I couldn't reach my hosts, I had no more numbers to call and no idea of what to do, so I started wandering around the mall, as it at least had air conditioning. and: internet! on my phone! I got ahold of a number and called, but no one answered... and then my phone died. Next stop: phone charger. The wireless store not only let me charge my phone, they also had computers with internet I could surreptitiously use to check my email! Lo and behold, the "perfect" ad appears and the guy actually calls me back! We agree to meet, I let my phone charge a bit more and off I go!
Thus I found my appartment. It's 10-15 minutes by bus off of a major and very central MRT station, it's public housing (sadly still no pool :( ) but on the 10th floor with an amazing view, very little noise despite being on a main street, an extra mattress, chill roommates (an American lawyer and an India Motorola employee), and within walking distance of my school (through the botanic gardens, no less). It's a humble place, no shining parquet floors and marble entryways, but it's less funky than many places I've lived, and with a bit of sprucing up in my room will be quite homely. And I'm here for only four months anyways - and it was a steal! I pay little more here than I do in Geneva, and have 13 fewer people with whom to share kitchen and bath facilities.
What, you ask, are my impressions of Singapore? It's huge (5 million people and 150% of the land area of Berlin). It's busting (try the MRT in rush hour - sardine time!). It's multiethnic (four official languages, people from everywhere, tons of unidentifiable languages). It's orderly, clean, and freakishly so. Everything works, everything is clean and pretty and manicured: no drainage ditches of trash, no seedy parks (that I've found), only occasional severely ugly housing, nothing like that. Singapore seems to be a giant public service announcement: not only is one enjoined from doing this or that, it's accompanied by the admonishment to "be gracious" "be considerate of others", i.e. "think of the environment, don't litter" (don't think about the 500 dollar fine....). The metros are adorned with a freakishly smiling lady in too much makeup warning me to "don't play, let me come out first!" to ask people to stand back from the doors. The inside of the cars are filled with instructions on how to wipe your filters and prevent dengue fever, anti-terrorism videos run on repeat in the stations, and through all of this "smile!" and "be friendly" are plastered everywhere. Be civic, and be damn happy about it. Strange place, this is....
more to come.
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1 comment:
(1) "I had something kind of like a naan bread but greasier, with egg and onions in it and served with curry sauce;"
That must be 'Roti Prata' :)
(2) "I had fried noodles and vegetables; I had a kind of local soup where you pick the ingredients and the whole thing is quickly boiled and served with chili sauce;
And that sounds like 'Yong Tau Fu' :)
Kian Wee
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