Much as I love coming to Singapore, it doesn’t much love me back – I always get hauled aside for extra screening for some reason. Anyway, I was eventually let through.
The day was spent travelling – it started well, with a tuktuk journey to the airport, followed by an easy flight to KLIA2 where I was saddened to find that our usual preferred dining spot, a generic Malaysian kopitiam chain where we used to get kaya toast and soft boiled eggs before flights, had closed down. The next flight was delayed though, and I didn’t reach the flat till a couple of hours after I was supposed to (partly thanks to the extra screening).
The flat itself is in one of the astonishing Singapore public housing complexes, what would be a solid condo building in other cities, with views to the ocean from walkways that extend across the six buildings. It’s a fascinating city state and society, and so interesting for one who has lived in Malaysia, the thuggish wastrel brother, both contemptuous and jealous of the more studious younger one who grew up to work for McKinsey.
I am staying with a number of friends: the Boddisattva and the Woodland Creature with whom we lived in Taiwan, and their Singaporean/Russian friends with whom we visited Alishan, and who came to stay with us in Istanbul last year. They have a simple, minimalist sort of place, with very comfortable floor seating, a few papercuts from Chinese New Year on the wall, and generally a Nordic aesthetic. I felt a bit envious of how easy they seem to find it to live together, it’s not what I would like (as Taiwan demonstrated) but it is nice to have close friends who are easy with each other. Perhaps a neighbouring flat – though not in Singapore, unless I want to be perpetually screened and rescreened.
We went for noodles for dinner, and then a short walk through a neighbourhood that thoroughly confused me. I always like that progression in a new place, as one slowly gets a sense of it and it becomes ordered in ones mind. It does close off some paths as well, from a amorphous geographic jumble to a map of what one knows.