Reflections on Singapore

We have just returned from Singapore. It was idyllic in that frenetic way that a city break can be.

Singapore has a reputation for being regimented. I thought it was less so than in Japan. People talked on the cell phones on the train in Signapore. Speaking of trains, they do not run really efficiently. They run every 10 minutes or so in the shoulder periods. Things are...slower than in Hong Kong. People even walk slower. I even passed people!

It is really a beautiful city in a way that a master planned city should be beautiful. Trees line the streets and the horticulture is lush as you leave the airport (not unlike Orlando). There are trees and parks and lovely spaces that are the interstitials between the lovely colonial buildings (that they make an effort to uplight the windows in at night - quite stunning) and the nouveau architecture that punctuates the rather aberrant skyline.

The sky is clean and crisp and there is no evidence of factory dredge anywhere. It is a metropolitan utopia.

It is an interesting place because they (the mysterious and ubiquitous they) have sanitized their reputuation while still maintaining the history. The opposite of Hong Kong really - whereas HK has sanitized the architecture but allowed its citizens some autonomy, Singapore allows their people little autonomy but has a mind to juxtapose the old and new aesthetic (and keep them both clean).

The government seems to prescribe to a Scared Straight philosophy. There was a constant loop on the train of various train bombings around the world and how you! A private citizen! Could help stop these crimes. Blood and gore - the imagery spared no details of these previous rail tragedies.

And the cigarettes! I do not even smoke but I was struck by the packaging. The boxes have these irremovable images of gangrene. Dead fetuses. Men who have holes for where their cheeks should be. Every possible visually abhorrent ramification of smoking permanently affixed to the boxes.

The images around Singapore (at least on the trains and the fags) are not for the faint of heart.

I would live there in a heartbeat.