Innovative Ramp

At the Esplanade, the not-so-long-ago opened Singapore Theatres on the Bay, I saw this innovative walkway that is functional for both types of users: straight steps for the regular walkers and zigzagging ramp for wheelchair-users.

Singapore Musea

On Sunday we went to the Asian Civilization Museum on Armenian Street, but when we got there, it was closed for renovation until 2008. My guidebook was printed prior to the beginning of this year, which was when the Museum closed its door for a couple of years. Further reading revealed that this museum would reopen as a full-fledged Peranakan Museum (Peranakan is a term used to describe the assimilative Chinese culture to the Indigenous one.)

My friend and I decided to walk a few blocks to another museum, the Singapore Art Museum. The Museum celebrated the native sons and daughters, as well as those from neighboring South-East Asian nations. It is housed in what used to be the Catholic all-boys school, the St. Joseph's Institution. The current museum opened in 1996.

As I mentioned before, going to Singapore back in the 70s and 80s was synonymous with going shopping, not visiting galleries and museums. It was not for the lack of want, but back then, the focus of this city-state was its economy, and the government probably ushered foreigners from the airport right onto Orchard Road. Although there were educational outlets cum natural showcases, such as the Bird Park and Botanical Gardens, or entertainment for the masses such as the Sentosa Island, museums were not aggressively marketed. The Singapore Art Museum, for example, only opened in 1996. Like in Indonesia, the arts and the artists have always existed, but never appreciated and recognized the way they are now.

This Singapore Art Museum is quite young, which is apparent from its collection, but its 13 galleries with over 4000 works of art have made the museum the biggest collector of South-East Asian contemporary art in the region. One special exhibition, titled the Beneath the Pavement: Discovering the City, had a twist in the title. An image conjured up from such title of an exhibition was of the infra-structure of a city, or perhaps the sewage system, but in actuality, it referred to the basic element of a city: its people.

The layout of the temporary exhibitions could have been better planned and executed; the way some exhibit was arranged looked like an afterthought. The former open-air corridors of the building are now glassed in, but there does not seem to be any thought about shielding the work of art from the direct exposure to the sun.

***

On Monday we visited the "other" Asian Civilization Museum at the Empress Place. The one we visited on Sunday (the same one that was closed for the renovation) was Phase I. This museum, Phase II, is housed in the Empress Place (named after Queen Victoria, Empress of India) and has opened since February of 2003. More than a hundred of grade school to junior-year students happened to choose the same day to visit the museum. As a result, there was no studying any relics without hearing within an earshot some giggles or gossiping nearby. I limited my visits to the South-East Asia and China departments. The guidebook mentioned the conspicuous absence of Japan. I suppose in keeping with the non-confrontational attitude that is Singapore, it is better to keep potentially controversial and debate-arousing presence of Japan off the museum floor. Somebody has done a real life Photoshop!

Click here for more pictures.

When in Singapore...

I suppose my friend and I had become truly Japanese. We flew all the way to Singapore to go to Takashimaya, Isetan, and the Kinokuniya Bookstores. Well, what do you expect? Prior to landing, Japan Airlines (JAL) put up a short instructional video of the Immigration and Custom procedures. When this technical part was over, it was followed by a short program on Singapore. Both my friend and I watched intently at the cultural hot spots that the program might feature as its recommendation. To our bewilderment, the show featured Japanese shops and restaurants. There was nary a mention of the famous Singapore car park food vendors, or a suggestion to eat the Hainanese Chicken Rice, pepper Crab, or Roti Prata. Why even bother going to Singapore?

Today we actually went to the Kinokuniya bookstore so that my friend could get his own guidebook, something that he did not get to do before arriving here. Although in Tokyo we have our own Kinokuniya, the branch here was humongous. It almost felt like we were in one of those boxy mega stores of Wal-Mart or Target. The layout of the store at first glance was difficult to grasp, but for this trip, I had no plan to tackle the blueprint of this floor anyway…

The staff, unfortunately, was not as courteous as their counterparts in Tokyo. Within less than 30 minutes, three people had given me either the evil-eye, finger-talk, or the lazy-butt. Upon entering and not knowing where things were, we consulted a self-help computer at a kiosk. When that did not work, we summoned a nearby staff, Ms. Evil Eye, who approached us with an air of contempt, perhaps thinking that we were as useless as tits on a boar pig. That was, until she realized she stumbled on the same problem. Another instant, I asked Ms. Finger Point, who did not even lift her head to make eye contact, but instead used her digits to point at things. For a fleeting moment I wanted to be Hannibal the Cannibal and nibble on one of those digits, accompanied with a glass of Chianti… slurp slurp…The last one was Mr. Lazy Bums, whose behind were glued to his stool. From the low point of where he was sitting, it was rather difficult to see what landmark or reference point at which he was pointing. And may I remind you how humongous the bookstore was? Even Borders employees in the U.S. are much more helpful in finding things in the computer and actually guide you to the spot until you find the book! Perhaps it is time that Mr. Lee Kwan Yew’s son, Lee Hsien Loong, should start the second wave campaign of Mr. Groovy!

Click here for more pictures

Singapore, Revisited

Singapore…, boy, has this city changed since my last visit in 1991!

I am here to accompany a friend who had been wanting to come here for a while. This would be his first time ever. We flew in from Tokyo on a direct flight from Narita, arriving in the early evening, rush-hour Friday traffic. The interior of Chang-I Airport has not changed much at all, but the convenience was extremely remarkable: the path from disembarkation to the immigration hall to the luggage concourse to the taxi stand was the most straightforward route I had ever taken in my entire travel experiences (the opposite being Narita and Heathrow, among others).

My first trip abroad in the 70s was Singapore; in December 1975 to be exact, around Christmas time and shortly before our trip to Australia. Back then, Singapore was the affordable luxury for Indonesians residing in Jakarta: a weekend shopping trip, or a week-long wallet-walking. Well, that seemed to be the one and only reason to go to Singapore during that time: to shop, shop, and shop, and perhaps take a break and eat at the ubiquitous car park food fair in the evening. Most I knew never made it past Orchard Road, the famous stores-lined street.

Thank goodness my parents were not obsessed with shopping (although each and every member of our family has a weakness for any good bookstores). They took us to the satellite city of Jurong to see the Jurong Bird Park; the Tiger Balm Gardens (now the Haw Par Villa) and a trip to the Sentosa Island. The Tiger Balm Gardens, as one may suspect, was built by the Asian analgesic balm king, Aw Boon Haw, as an entertainment venue that featured Chinese legends and mythology.

Singaporean English was the first English with a local dialect that I have ever heard. When we were learning English, it was the formal British English, where rubber really meant eraser, and not the protective means that you put in your penis before a sexual intercourse. Our intonation was purely English, but to hear the locals speak English was quite entertaining, not too mention confusing at times. One evening, for example, we were trying to go back to the hotel, so my father told the taxi driver, “Hilton Hotel.” The driver kept looking at him quizzically. He kept on pronouncing the word with slightly different accents, but to no avail. Being the former Boy Scout that he was, he took out the hotel’s business card and handed it to the driver, who studied it seriously before a loud “A-HA!” “New-Toong Hotel!” said he. We were looking at each other and thought, “What?”

My father asked him to pronounce it again. He must have thought that this was how local pronounced the hotel’s name. So, the next time he told another taxi driver to go to “New Toong Hotel” and voilà, the driver understood it immediately. My father was beaming that he could speak like the locals; that was, until we were delivered to a hotel with the name Newton or something like that. Then the pronunciation game started all over again.

For me, that first time abroad to a country known for its discipline and hard working people opened my eyes to what a city-state could look like: the sidewalks were always swept clean, the store fronts spotless, and the people honest. Lee Kwan Yew, the Prime Minister at the time, was having a campaign where he wanted the people of Singapore to smile more frequently. In most department stores I went, I encountered employees spotting a fried-egg-sized bright yellow button of with a smiley face we came to know as “Mr. Groovy.”

Click here for more pictures