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Singapore Swings

by LARA MILLS

I was a backpacker equivalent the first time I came to Singapore. Over a year and several trips later Singapore is the only place where I land and pray I do not look like a backpacker. Now being scruffy feels like misrepresenting myself. Some might say this is progress or growth.

The Singapore immigration desk that stamps your passport at the airport gives you little mint or grape candies from a dish scooped out of itself. One foot beyond that is a plastic cup labeled “SWEET WRAPPERS ONLY” which is full of candy wrappers and nothing else. Soldiers pass with giant guns while you wait for your bag at baggage claim and later a little girl marches one-two in front of her mother’s cart before ordering it to STOP at the line of roughly fifty groups of people waiting for a taxi. Changi’s airport luggage carts brake aggressively. The girl and her mother are wearing matching black and white striped dresses. The line takes ten minutes; that’s five taxis deployed a minute, one every twelve seconds. Up front the old woman in charge is directing her clients to the refilling row of cars behind her with a white gloved hand and ruthless, silent efficiency.

My taxi driver has an iPhone which directs us in a calm measured voice to my hotel. The driver remarks on the different particulate sizes contained in the smog blown over from Sumatra last week and what facemasks can properly filter them. Huey Lewis starts playing on the radio, my favorite, favorite song when I was little. I used to stop walking in the middle of grocery store aisles and dance in spasms because of this song. I stare out the window and watch the city grow up around us.

Later I take a walk and let Singapore show me what it wants me to see. This is a perfect city for traveling alone. It answers every question I have and directs me towards everything I need and everything which sparkles. As I walk sometimes I notice hidden turnoffs and tunnels for workers – they are grey and uninviting and not intended for me. For the visitor there are lights and tree-lined walkways to follow. Often these walkways end at a finance center or mall. After all Singapore does need to pay for itself. It is not a cheap date.

There is only ever the present here but the present can be so damn lovely. Sitting on a low concrete wall by the harbor I inhale and send cigarette smoke into space. The concrete I’m curled up on is still warm from the sun which set an hour ago. The smoke twists over the water and takes on the million glassy colors of the skyscraper lights in front of me, all their colors visible and invisible, then disappears into the backdrop, first fading out as a sweet smell, and then nothing.

I smoke like this in cities the night before I leave them. The last time I was in Paris I knew it might be years until I was there again. I threw the cigarette into the river once it was finished; being a willful polluter bought me the cheapest landscape in the city, a permanent presence as an unwelcome piece of young American backpacker trash in France. That was six years ago. Here the harbor water looks immaculate. I think they might fine me if I throw my cigarette anywhere but a designated disposal. I will find a trash can. There are cameras.

And there’s a breeze – I could sit here by the harbor forever with this breeze. It doesn’t fill my pores with motorbike exhaust or my lungs with twice the tar I fill them with myself. It rolls off the water and brushes my hair back without a word.

“Excuse me can I buy you a drink?” “Huh?” A middle-aged man walking by would apparently like a cigarette and my company. I can’t tell where he’s from, maybe Indian. There’s no one else around. I give him an Indonesian clove and we chat a little. “So Jakarta, is it nice?” “Not really.” “Then why do you live there?”

I laugh this off but he doesn’t. He looks at me and watches me and really wants to know. I tell him that Jakarta is not a very easy city. I never say I don’t like it. He asks, “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s not hard because you have difficulty… blending in?” I have no idea what he means even though I might know exactly what he means. I consider responding in Indonesian but it’s not worth the attention. I shift from my wall to get back to my walk and wish him a safe night, a redundancy.

I walk for another hour or two without knowing where. Headphones at night are safe here and it is a pleasure to soundtrack the skyline. My iPhone says “NO SERVICE” yet google maps can somehow still show me myself, a moving blue dot among the boulevards. Singapore found me before I even knew I was lost. I don’t know where I want to go yet but it would like a say in the matter.

A day or two later I have to leave. After checking in to my flight I stop to watch an art installation outside security at Changi Airport. Hundreds of golden orbs are suspended on individual transparent fishlines while some mechanism in the ceiling above makes the orbs rise and dip in unison along each of their vertical tracks. It is hypnotic. A crowd starts gathering as music crescendos and the orbs accelerate up and down in concert with all the other orbs, beautiful movement from collective order, like ocean waves or backwards rain. 

I picture the headline: passenger misses flight because Changi is too beautiful. I start walking.

Once inside security I am asked twice how I am feeling. The first is a woman in AirAsia’s bright red uniform who walks up to me holding an iPad. The iPad is beaming as it asks me to use smiley faces to rate how I had felt about the airline’s check-in process and whether the check-in ladies had smiled at me. Sure, click. Then after I use the bathroom a smiley face on a video screen embedded in the wall asks me to rate my experience of the facility. I am almost glad it asked since the automatic hand dryer hadn’t been hot enough and cost me thirty seconds of my time in Changi. The rest was fine though so I give the experience a quick thumbs up. The smiley face winks and I walk out.

I mentally ask Singapore for drinking water and an internet hotspot and find both next to each other at my gate. My flight pulls away on time to the minute. By standards of execution Singapore is a masterpiece. The surveys I answered feel like a model asking whether I can see her wrinkles through layers of photoshop. I would never have thought to check but since she asked they must be there, and they must be on her mind. I imagine she might look relieved if I tell her she looks flawless.

Lara Mills is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Jakarta. You can find her website here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Photographs by the author.

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