la cucaracha

Maybe I’m not cut out for the tropics. The thought has occurred to me, continues to occur to me every time I’m in my kitchen. It’s hard to have all fronts covered at once; standing at the sink is a poor choice, near, as it is, to their evil lair, and I expect at any point an attack from below. I don’t want to sit at the table to eat, I know they’re also in the living room – seeing as how I have found several dead ones under the couches – and so I eat my salad from the mixing bowl, shoveling it hastily into my mouth while rotating steadily, aware I’m unprotected and preparing for the assault. The sink is where things need to get done – washed, prepared, filled – and is therefore unavoidable, and still I continue to cast a nervous eye on the hole from which they will, sooner or later, emerge. This morning, of course, I’m making tea and buttering my bread or whatnot glancing, as I always do, repeatedly towards the corner, not actually one, but two (two!) live ones crawling over the pandan leaves (which someone told me keeps them away as they ostensibly hate the stuff – lies! All lies!) and onto my otherwise spotless floor. All I can do is hastily grab the bug spray as my only defense, knowing they otherwise have no compunctions in coming for my foot, and wondering how much I will either inhale or accidentally spray on my food. I aim and fire, and it scuttles away towards the corner from whence it came, and I can only grab my tea and beat a hasty retreat. I can’t kill the fuckers, I just can’t step on them – not for lack of wanting them dead – but I just can’t squish anything that large. I’m still grossed out by – but am getting better at nevertheless removing – the dead ones, but the live ones I just can’t do. I’m terrified of my kitchen, I won’t hang out in the living room, and I am tired of (frequently) scraping dead and half-eaten cockroaches from the floor. Again. FML.

Sing sang sung

Somehow I can’t get past the alliterative aspects of Singapore. I’m sure it will continue to entertain me for quite awhile. Then again, I am usually easily entertained – bits of paper, pieces of string, and small shiny objects enthrall me. And distract me from whatever I’m trying to—ooh! A shiny thing!

So today I had carrot cake, which contrary to expectations was neither cake nor was it carrot. Instead of moist and fluffy carroty cake goodness, I received a plate of…something. They call it chai tow kway. There were eggs and little lumps of things that looked a bit like potatoes. Turns out they were bits of some kind of radish, which is apparently close enough that people would call it carrot (apparently the word for daikon, the radish, is similar to the word for carrot), interspersed with unidentifiable lumps and held together with egg. Slightly sweet, slightly salty, it tasted quite good and was likely unhealthy, and was available with or without soy sauce. This was accompanied by, if I recall correctly, a meatless version of Malaysian rojak, a roll of some kind of dough which is fried and sliced (or sliced and fried) containing some kind of vegetable and served with sauce and ground peanuts, otherwise mixed up with cucumber, pineapple, likely some kind of meat and various sauces. My curry rice sadly had to miss out on the curry part on account of me being vegetarian and the curry being made of chicken, but all in all was yummy. I felt like I needed to be rolled back to the motorcycle for the return trip.



Yesterday was my birthday, and that of a (new) friend here in Singapore (though sadly or gladly I am older by a few), which we celebrated with half of Grenoble at a sushi restaurant in a mall near City Hall. If any of this sounds surprising to you, it shouldn’t. French people plus sushi plus mall equals air conditioning, good food and a good test of my French. Anyways, for dessert we had….. chocolate cake! Which we consumed, ignoring the hint of wasabi and fish, with chopsticks. Welcome to Singapore, I suppose – east meets west.



The past few days have been the introduction to university life here. It’s called “shopping week”, which is where you go and have the syllabus introduced to you by the professor, after which students are free (and willing) to ask about five thousand questions relating to every possible detail and sentence of the syllabus. Apparently after this point you are supposed to drop the courses you don’t like, or else start to sign up for them – I’m not clear on the system, but I had to have my classes registered and approved weeks ago, and my last add-period expired last week. So I can just drop the stuff I hate and then beg administration to put me in another class, but it’s a small school and there are few choices (in a public policy school for someone who doesn’t study public policy, the options are particularly restricted). But I have four solid classes with nice and funny profs. One is a Singaporean woman of Malay origin who, thankfully, has a polisci background and is teaching courses on SE Asia in general and ethnic politics in specific. One professor is a beanpole of a man who speaks with exaggerated slowness, paces up and down the front like a caged tiger, and has a hilariously tangential way of talking that has the class in uproars. This is all the good news. The bad news is that I have a solid 8 inches of readings for the semester, of sufficient width to rival Genevan polycopiés and keep me “entertained” this semester.



Tonight we’re off to Palau Tioman, an island off the east coast of Malaysia. It’s known for its backpacker bungalows, gorgeous beaches, and good diving and swimming. It’ll be a trick to get there, requiring a bus and a ferry, both of whose timetables are followed by “departure times are approximate” and “the first ferry runs at 8:00, and after that when full”. But with the promise of two days of sunshine and beach and jungle (with monkeys!!), we are setting off in a small Franco-Germanophone pack. For once in my life I will speak ALL the languages available in our little group, though I wager we’ll be speaking English more than not.



So I’m off to the beach, beeches, and I’ll see you on Monday.

Happy birthday to Yew, happy birthday to Yew…

…happy birthday dear Singapore…

Singapore turned 44 today, and we all turned out for the celebrations. Nothing much was to happen before 6 pm, yet at 3 already the caravans with construction workers were driving past banging drums and streams of red-clad families flooded into the city centre. Follow the crowd, follow the crowd.

Police were everywhere. I still find it unsettling to see small flocks of young men with big guns, yet at the same time the thought occurs to me that this would be the perfect opportunity, the perfect venue to plan something requiring maximum numbers of targets. But Singapore’s brave police and army auxiliary forces were doing their valiant job of protecting us. It was easy to be swept along in the rush of strollers and flag waving and patriotic accoutrements. Red, red, red, with soldiers directing us to the security checkpoints.

We fond a corner on the Esplanade next to a white guy, who turned out to be a freshly minted political science professor here for a conference. We got acquainted, we talked and laughed with the little malay kids, we hung out. And we waited, and waited and waited. Those few and lucky individuals with a ticket to the parade, I am sure, had something to look at, but the rest of us faced hours of waiting.

Eventually the parachuters spiraled lazily down from somewhere up above, heading for the stadium and the parade. They were eventually followed by the “anti-terrorist” display, which was mostly a low-budget James Bond-style jet ski-chase scene involving several Navy boats emitting sparks. Every time the boats approached any of the spectator banks, i.e. shores, the crowds would emit screams befitting boy band concerts. A Chinook and a few apache helicopters rolled in and flew by, and returned a few minutes later with the Singaporean flag. After awhile we had a flight of fighter jets fly by. I suppose what’s the point of having a military if you don’t use it for something?

In between and afterwards there was nothing, no noise, no music, no nothing. We sat and waited, we waited and sat, with the promise of eventual fireworks the only purpose of our presence. We had a round of cannon fire at one point. We waited and sat, we sat and waited. Some boats, decorated in white to have the approximate shape and appearance of a paper origami boat, float over to our part of the bay, and spend awhile driving up and down, rotating occasionally to mostly give the other side a view of the larger-than-life puppets inside. Mostly the boats were just kind of there. We watched and waited and sat. A line of little boats towing large paper-boat-shaped lanterns puttered by and back again. The most interesting thing was the pledge squad, a crowd of cheerleading girls with “Pledge moment” and 8:22 written on it, which is apparently the time when all Singaporeans are supposed to say the national pledge – or something.

Occasionally bursts of fireworks would emerge from down by the stadium, at which point the crowd would scream and ooh and ah and then nothing would happen for a long time.

Eventually, finally, and ultimately, we were duly rewarded with fireworks. Two sets, less than 10 minutes apiece, and already the crowds begin to shuffle off and we have to consider if this is another sit and wait moment or a get on and get out moment. We gave up and headed out.

This was easier said than done. I have no idea how many people were crowded into the waterfront area, but all of these people wanted to leave at the same time. It became massive red shuffling as everyone headed for the MRT stations at the same time. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Little kids are draped over their parents’ backs and we opt out of going through the tunnel which looks like the Tunnel to Hell – full and crowded and soon to be enclosed. Instead we end up climbing up an embankment and climbing over a fence, shuffling in a snail’s pace. We shuffle down one way for awhile before discovering we can’t cross the street ahead and shuffle back. We shuffle down the street, past where we climbed the fence, over down to a street crossing, and back opposite to the fence. After several minutes of stop and go bottleneck we make it down to where the tunnel comes out – we would have saved a good half hour of crowds had we taken it, but oh well. We outsmarted ourselves, I suppose….

But all in all it was underwhelming. Compared to similar events in the US and in Germany, there was considerable patriotism, less entertainment and far less beer. No party was to be seen, just the ubiquitous bags most (other) people had been given. I could have saved myself the six hours and the massive crowds, and accrually enjoyed all the stuff in the stadium from the comfort of my living room. Next year…

The Singapore post - part 2

There are a few things that almost every Singaporean tells me: people here largely don’t cook, the city is very safe so you can walk alone at night, everything is punctual and efficient, and I should travel to Thailand. It’s a bit odd living in a city that’s an entire country, but I guess if you live in NYC or DC you might as well be visiting another country when you go elsewhere.

The CIA Factbook summarizes it well: “Singapore was founded as a British trading colony in 1819. It joined the Malaysian Federation in 1963 but separated two years later and became independent. Singapore subsequently became one of the world's most prosperous countries with strong international trading links (its port is one of the world's busiest in terms of tonnage handled) and with per capita GDP equal to that of the leading nations of Western Europe.” Because of the British legacy, people drive on the left side of the road. As one would expect, foot traffic largely follows street traffic: oncoming pedestrians pass to your right. The large exceptions to this are (a) the oblivious tourists or recent expats who insist on pushing a baby yacht against the stream, and (b) the occasional escalators which intriguingly do not follow this pattern and are reversed for no apparent reason. This whole driving on the left thing was something I didn’t know before I got here, but I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. In fact, I knew very little of Singapore before coming here: I knew it was an island (it’s actually about 25 islands together) and had four official languages, and that’s about it. I had to look it up on the map to find where it was in relation to anywhere else.

The entire country of Singapore clocks in at 697 sq km, which is about 3.5 times the size of Washington, DC and places Singapore as the 199th largest country in the world, following Bahrain and the Federated States of Micronesia, out of 256. The smallest, by the way, is the Vatican. There are, as of July 2009, 4,657,542 people in Singapore, which makes it only marginally less populous than the United Arab Emirates (4,798,491) and Norway (4,660,539), and more populous than 120 other countries, including Costa Rica, Ireland, Puerto Rico. It has twice the population of Jamaica, Kuwait or Latvia. Singapore also has one of the lowest birth rates in the world (218 of 224), followed by Austria, Germany, Italy, and Japan. For all of this, it has the 8th highest GDP per capita in the world, ahead of the US and just slightly behind Luxemburg, Kuwait and Norway. For all of this, Singapore has a massive army. It has compulsory military service of 2 years for men, followed by reserve duty until age 40. This makes 1,033,961 people fit for military service. I suppose being little makes Singapore nervous…

“Against all tenents of Western liberal democracy, Singapore works,” a Singaporean friend told me. Singapore is kind of a one-party benevolent “parliamentary democracy”. The ruling party has 82 out of 86 seats, of which over 30 were uncontested. It’s essentially a one-party system, but, as my friend commented, they offer low corruption, wealth, and excellent infrastructure in exchange for keeping opposition quiet. Of course, my friend was a journalist and perhaps a cynic. Still, someone else commented that the rulers that they have are just fine, the question is what happens when they’re gone – are there mechanisms in place to ensure the future crop of leaders is equally as benevolent? (more on this topic here ).

The beach we went to was on the island of Sentosa, accessible by bus, cable car or expressthingy from the adjoining supermall. The island is one giant theme park / resort / tourist attraction, like being at six flags or something, without the ferris wheel. It’s got butterfly pavilions and dolphin encounters, a jungle fort, and lots of beaches full of imported Indonesian sand.

The Singapore post – part 1 of many

“Over here! Do you see me? No, cross the street! No, the other street! Now turn, farther, farther farther, silver car…. See?”

“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.