Singapore.

First of all, I gotta say that there’s a really scary picture of Micheal Jackson on the 1010WINS homepage. He looks like a cross between a woman and one of those skull-faced Martians from Mars Attacks! You know that can’t be good.

This town is pretty cool despite the fact that, as I just pointed out in an email to a friend, I could be executed for doing some of the things I do back in the US – perhaps, even, some of the things that you are doing right now. As you read this. There’s a tourist t-shirt that says “Singapore – a fine city” and below that is a list of all the things you can’t do over here and what the penalties are ($500 for littering, $500 for spitting, a caning for larceny, execution for possession of drugs over 20 grams, etc). But the truth is that Singapore really is a fine and beautiful place. It reminds me of Miami when I was a boy, or Miami in the 1950s, which most of us only access during that short section of the Godfather trilogy when Michael goes down to Miami. It’s clean, tidy, sunny, warm, well landscaped and manicured, and full of both wide boulevards and cozy side streets.

In fact, my arrival on the airplane became a succession of reminders of times past; not memories, but little sights and smells that conjured memories. As we landed, the blue-green bay - replete with ships, groups of small sailboats, and the lone sailboarder – along with the Australian pines at water’s edge and the perfectly landscaped bushes and trees along the runway, reminded me of Miami Beach in my youth. As we taxied past the airport fire station alongside the runway, a small grouping of low white buildings with aqua trim and pumps and so on, I was reminded of field trips to various fire stations and water treatment plants when I was a boy. Miami at one time had enough money to make even the most unsightly utility look like a pleasant place to work; now Miami only has enough money to make the really rich people even richer, and everyone and everything else can fucking get nothing and like it.

A few short minutes later, as I walked up the aqua-carpeted jetway, I caught a moldy smell (from the carpet, no doubt) that generated a strong memory of old pool locker rooms and cabanas from the country clubs and run-down hotels I would sneak into when I was a kid. One after another, they came.

So, that’s that. It’s a lot like Miami, and not just because of my memories. As I rode into town in the cab, we passed under large, broad angsana trees that filled both sides of the road and provided ample shade. Beneath them were flower bushes, shrubs, yacht clubs, little strip malls, and other signifiers of a tropical city. The hotel is nice enough – quite nice, actually, though it is the Raffles Plaza and not the classic Raffles hotel, located across the street and a symbol of the colonial days of yore. Mine is more of the tower-and-parking-garage ilk, but the room is very well-appointed, and dig - there’s one of those overhead rainshower heads like you see in the ads in the New Yorker. Big old head with like 80 holes for pouring down on yo’ ass. Very nice. And you don’t step into a shower, really – the bathing area is separated from the rest of the bathroom by half a glass wall, and you sort of just stand next to the bathtub under this shower – somewhat similar to what F's family has going in Maine. To borrow once again from Nelson Muntz, it’s the kind I like!

After unpacking and waiting for a brief rain to pass, I walked down to Chinatown, taking some photos of local tags as I went. It was a little muggy after the rain, but still very nice out. I passed over a canal with all these little cafes alongside it and water taxis that reminded me of Bangkok, and soon I was in Chinatown. How do I describe this place? It’s busy, full of life and color. There are shops, restaurants, and a huge bazaar that sells all sorts of stuff for both locals and tourists – clothing of every type, clocks, watches, trinkets, underwear, tea, lamps, tissue box covers, jewelry, hardware, kitchenware, music, you name it. Narrow aisles are packed with the most colorful items imaginable, including some truly intense Asian dresses and coats and gowns. It would be a great place to eat some acid, though the caning you would get if you got caught would be, like, the antichrist of an acid trip. The bottom level was a huge wet market as well.

Outside the bazaar – in two places, actually – street performers in colorful costumes were doing all kindsa crazy shit. A woman lying on her back was tossing this cushion around with her feet, then she started spinning this huge square with her feet, then flipping it end over end and balancing it on one corner of the frame using one foot. You get the idea. I watched three Caucasian children, obviously siblings, regard the goings-on with stone faced disinterest, arms folded across their chests. I also saw some pretty funny signs, like “Pork Floss” and “BJ Massage” as well as a funny t-shirt on this Singapore version of a hipster chick that said “Fo’ Cheezy!” and had a cartoon drawing of a mouse about to lay into this hunk of cheese. That shirt was mad cheesy fo’ sheezy. There were also several tea shops with huge copper teapots out front for passerby – giant, shiny spheres with dragons. Perhaps the coolest thing about Chinatown is the colonial architecture, similar to that which I saw in Macau: stuccoed two-story buildings with columns and arches over the windows and painted shutters, overlooking small squares or narrow streets. Very cute. Like parts of New Orleans.

Time for food, I say! I found a cool local place on one of the side streets and had a delicious, if messy, lunch of spicy crab and a side of shredded potatoes with green chiles. The battle for the crab meat can be spectacular – you basically need to put down the chopsticks and get a little Fallujan on them – but it’s so worth it. For the record, I just invented the phrase “get Fallujan” even though I am sure that some soldiers have been saying it here and there. I still invented it. Really good food, washed down with a big ol’ Tsingtao. Then back into the fray I went, shopping and taking some more photos, until the beer and sun forced me to grab a cab home for a shower under the Big Head and a quick nap. I was dogged out, believe me – went out like a light.

I woke and dressed for Little India. As some of you may or may not realize, you don’t get a ‘Little’ appellation unless you really got it goin’ on. I mean, you gotta be a lot – a whole lot - like the Thing if you’re going to live up to the name Little Thing. By this measure, Little Italy is in some ways some fake-ass shit, since it’s not a whole lot like Italy at all anymore – Little Odessa is probably closer to the real deal in the realm of the ‘Littles’ – but dude, Little India was the real deal. There were tons and tons of Indian men everywhere, loud, busy bazaars with barkers and Hindi music, all kinds of open-air restaurants, folks walking in the road along with the traffic, long-bed Toyota pickups with like 8 dudes chilling in the back…it was pretty damn cool. I mean, I’ve never been to India, so my whole “it’s the real deal” thing is a little thin, but it sure seemed more like India than Little Italy seems like Italy. I felt more Other than I’ve ever felt in my life; there were literally thousands of men out on the streets I visited, walking in groups, chilling by their cars, sitting out on the lawns of apartment buildings, and patronizing the restaurants and shops. There was a large, incredibly ornate temple along Serangoon Road with some slight touches of yellow neon on the façade, something I’ve never seen before. I also saw almost no women – about 4 out of maybe five thousand men, including the two women who served me at the place I had dinner.

I ate at a small establishment called Sri Saktivalas. Dig – I didn’t have samosas. I swear to God. Instead I had paper masala dosai, along with some vegetable korma and some saag paneer, which is not called saag paneer over here but it’s still the spinach and cheese just the same. And some naan and a mango lassi – soooo good. For like ten bucks, too. This part of the world ruleth.

After dinner, I just wandered around some more, being fully Other and just chilling. I have come to realize that this is the sort of ‘tourism’ or ‘experience of the world’ which I most prefer; rather than making a list of museums and mosques and temples and war memorials to visit, I much prefer to just walk everywhere I can and experience the city as the locals do. Of course, you know I’m going to the damn Forbidden City and the Great Wall, so I’m not totally going to front like that, but I really do enjoy the experience of just exploring with no map but the one in my head – that way is back to the hotel, that way is where the water is, etc – and seeing what a place is really like, off in the nooks and crannies and the less-traveled streets. I first felt that way in Macau, exploring the neighborhoods with moms, and really enjoy it much more than seeing all the stuff that’s in the tour books.

At that point, I decided to just walk home. It was a nice night, and only a couple miles at most, so why not? I meandered east and south, straying from the main roads and down empty malls with cats scrapping noisily and small groups of 2 or 3 people having a beer at outdoor cafes. It was nice. Shot a couple pictures – of two temples lying almost right next to each other – and came home to another nice rainshower (in my bathroom, that is). Threw on one of the nice terry robes in the closet and watched some SNL from 2001, which was really eerie – basically the Weekend Update mentioned that Osama bin Laden had been seen in a videotape, apparently in good health, attending the wedding of his son. To fete the new couple, Tina Fey said, Osama “blew up a Crate & Barrel.” That joke is so terribly – and I mean terribly - anachronistic, and in such a painful way. Based on other jokes about the inaugural and Katherine Harris, it’s obvious that the show ran very early in 2001 or late in 2000 (on a side note, can you believe that Fallon and Fey have been doing the Update together for that long? I guess he left recently, but still…), and the joke unintentionally reveals this lighthearted approach to the Osama threat, this naïvete that is so crushing to consider now. You can almost imagine Osama seeing that episode, saying, “Ok, fuckers, yeah, Crate & Barrel, whatever. Make your little jokes. I got something for you that’s gonna make you stop laughing with the quickness. Just sit tight. Go to work every day in the autumn.”

That’s it for now. Had a crappy night’s sleep – drank some Coke before bed, like an idiot – and headed on into work today. The office here is small and quiet, and it’s right near the hotel, which is cool. Tonight I’m off to Arab Street for food and perhaps more shopping, and then tomorrow I have the press lunch for which I came to Singapore in the first place. Then it’s back to the Kongsfordshire to start getting all my shit together for moving out of the apartment, Vietnam, and heading home to NYC. I’ll be on that Freedom Bird two weeks from today – SWEET!

More later,

Chucky