Then and Now

As mentioned last post, I have a second-draft book on my computer waiting for me to birth it someday. It’s the story of a year-long trip my then- soon-to-be wife and I took in 1978 and 1979. A few months in Europe, five months in India, a month or so in Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, two months in Java, Indonesia, ending with a few weeks in Bali and Japan. Quite a memorable adventure that echoed through the succeeding years in all sorts of significant ways. 

 

So when my “Meet and Greet” driver picked me up at the airport yesterday and asked if it was my first time in Singapore, I mentioned the eight times since 2008 I’ve come here to teach and then added, “But I was also here in 1979. It was quite a different place then!” She seemed embarrassed by the city that used-to-be and went on to send me, through WhatsApp (on her phone, while driving!), all the places she thought I would enjoy. Which unsurprisingly came down to 1) Shopping malls and 2) Restaurants. 

 

Quite a contrast to my experience in Ghana many years back, when I told a local person in the South that my family and I were planning to visit the North and he replied, “You will enjoy it so much.” When I asked what the main attraction was, he answered, “Good culture.”

 

But no surprise that the main attraction here is shopping, shopping, and more shopping. And to be fair, also some lovely parks (Botanical Gardens), science museums and yes, clean streets and things running smoothly. All of this was already here in infant form when I visited almost 50 years ago, as noted in my journal entries from that time. Fresh from the ancient and close-to-the-earth feeling in India, it was an adjustment for us to get used to “modern civilization” again. Here’s what I wrote: 

 

April 16, 1979— At the Malay border, we had to change buses and boarded a crowded, dirty, uncomfortable bus with non-stop insipid Muzak that made my ears want to throw up. Constant chain-smoking with windows closed and freezing air-conditioning that they couldn’t shut off. An all-night bus ride and rolled into Singapore at 9am, off the bus and through a room of pinball machines and shooting games. 

 

Found a Chinese hotel with men hanging out in those white, sleeveless T-shirts (wife-beaters, they’re called in America), and an Old-World  atmosphere with a 1950’s New York vibe. Late breakfast of rice, vegetables and tofu (our first!), then off to do errands in our most modern, upper class American-style city yet. Huge air-conditioned malls, everyone dressed up, back to the world of things, things, things. Tried to get our 10 rolls of film developed but no luck.

 

We lunched in a little outdoor place with three cooks side-by-side— a Tamil Indian, a Chinese, a Malaysian— welcome to Singapore! We opted for the Indian, eating again on a banana leaf and almost crying from Kerala (India) homesickness.

 

April 18— What kind of place is this anyway? We walked past long chains of hardware stores, auto-part stores, electronics stores and fancy air-conditioned malls that rival anything in the U.S.  Stopped at Dayville’s Ice Cream store where young girls served us wearing surgical masks over the nose and mouth, handed us the cone with plastic gloves on and cardboard fitted over the bottom of the cone. Quite a contrast to the man on the street in India handling cow dung as fuel and then giving us the chapati made on the grill! Now it’s the world of exchanging money done through a computer with a receipt, packaged in plastic (no banana leaves or newspapers), technology rolling on like an out-of-control monster determined to remove human beings from the market of exchange. 

 

After walking some more, we concluded that there is no place on earth with as many shopping centers as Singapore, each center with between 50 to 100 stores. All bright and glossy, sterile, stuffed with things, much of which no one really needs. Here’s a city with $500 fines for smoking on the bus, signs in the post office that says “males with long hair will be served last” with a photo of what “long hair” means (over the ears, eyes or collar), postcards boasting about its tall building and malls. If Bombay represents one end of the urban spectrum, Singapore is surely at the opposite end. 

 

(The aforementioned book ping-pongs back and forth between my old journals and my commentary that I wrote in 2021. It goes on:) 

 

“So that’s what it was like in 1979. And now? Still over-air-conditioned shopping malls without end and that funky little neighborhood our Chinese hotel was in long gone, more parks and botanical gardens than I remember from back then and still the blend of Chinese/ Indian/ Malay culture (though also long gone those roadside little stands where all three cooks stood side-by-side). It was clear back then, with its $500 smoking fine and discouragement of hippies, that the government was on a massive clean-up campaign and given the choice between Bombay’s homeless and the rats in the hotel we stayed in and the chaos of traffic, it didn’t seem like a wholly bad idea. But the policies were definitely leaning towards some kind of “benevolent dictatorship,” some “repressive peace and order,” with laws and fines that go from the serious (drugs) to the silly (durians), to the archaic (caning). Amongst them: 

 

1) $300 fine for littering (like a cigarette butt or candy wrapper).

2) Chewing gum ban, subject to fine and/or imprisonment

3) E-cigarette ban.

4) Public nudity ban, including walking naked in your home with the window blinds up ($2,000 fine or jail up to three months).

5) Boarding a public bus with a durian fruit ban (it smells strong).

6) Gathering in groups of more than three people after 10 pm in a public space ban.

7) Death penalty for serious drug trafficking. For those caught with less than the Death Penalty amounts, punishment can range from caning (24 strokes) to life imprisonment. 

 

While my liberal background has me questioning much of the above, I can also say, “Hey! It works!” San Francisco is awash with litter and suffering from drugged-out people, many of them homeless. I’ve been in Singapore some eight times since that trip and while still not a big fan of the malls and their way- too-freezing air conditioning, it is certainly a clean, safe and pleasant place to hang out in. But I’m sure that I’ve been out to dinner with friends past 10pm, so if you ever get an e-mail from me begging for your help in releasing me from a Singapore jail cell, it might not be a con! Back to the storyline.”

 

To be continued.