Recollections of Singapore
I decided not to write any more after my final day. The cab ride/plane ride/exhausting travel wasn't very notable, and it went by fast enough, if you believe it. But I thought I would spend a minute pondering the funny things I remember from Singapore--the sense memories that are left behind. Martin's List of Remembrance
- Indian men riding in the back of open trucks after work
- Tile everywhere. All bathrooms, all malls, all surfaces that weren't asphalt or concrete, all tile. No wonder they are concerned about people not dripping water.
- American movies with Chinese subtitles playing on cable.
- Chinese movies and, better yet, soap operas playing on cable with English subtitles.
- Bollywood everywhere. even in your soda (um, okay, not in the soda).
- Motorcylists wearing coats backward. Never did figure this one out, but it may have to do with keeping dry in the rain.
- I saw many ladies shading themselves with magazines, even on not-so-sunny days. I think some were shading their faces from traffic for some reason.
- The awful chill of being drenched in rain and then going into air-con.
- Arnott's fine, fine snack-foods, most especially Tim-Tams.
- In Singapore, you don't go for Chinese food, you go for Hokkien food, or Canotese food, or Haienese food, and so on. A food for every region.
- Hot, hot coffee in thick walled cheap china mugs with spider-web cracks all throughout. The handle is tiny and you can't fit your finger through it, so you pinch it to pick up the mug, but the walls or so hot that you nearly burn yourself. So, you stir with the chinese soup spoon and then do it all over again. Every day.
- Every food stall has pictures of the food they serve.
- Cabbies listening to 70's easy rock.
- Monday going very far.
Posted by: Martin McClellan
On the date of: November 17, 2004 08:35 PM
comments
I will add four of my own Singapore sense memories to yours:
1. The odd feeling of swimming in a pool that really is lukewarm, like a bathtub left just five minute too long.
2. The curious morning call of the Black-naped Oriole (I was obsessed to find out what this bird was after hearing it every morning. the bird book describes it as a "very vocal bird" whose call is "a variety of fluty notes issued in a rapid ascending and descending manner")
3. Loud tinny music from blown speakers in Little India.
4. Dappled sunlight streaming through the high branches of the rain trees which I keep calling (for no reason, really) Umbrella trees.
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