Anyway

I was recently in Singapore for a Liberty Alliance meeting. I hadn’t been in Singapore for 10 years, so it was interesting to see what was the same and what was different.

Orchard Road was the same, but more so – more Western shops, more malls, more hotels. The air conditioning in hotels and restaurants, which I had remembered as being somewhat over the top, was even more so, to the extent that we moved meeting rooms within the meeting hotel to find a room that was somewhat warmer and went outside as much as possible to thaw out! Outside was the warm tropical air and thunderstorms I remembered, the mix of people on the streets, and the tropical plant exuberance on the streets that helps make Singapore so memorable.

Things have changed since 1995. People seem more relaxed, the streets aren’t by any means dirty but they’re not quite as “is this really a city”-spotless as they used to be. The taxis no longer have the annoying bell that says when they’re going too fast (just the standard annoying bell when someone isn’t using their seatbelt). The Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel is new, built to look much like the old one, but somehow without the same feel. It feels like a movie set, complete with over-eager airconditioning. The old Long Bar, the authentic one, had much more of that tropical sundowner feel. It’s probably still worth seeing as a tourist, but I wouldn’t bother going back, whereas the old Long Bar was somewhere you could spend hours in, lazily watching the fans and listening to the crunch of peanut shells on the floor.

The old and the new – one block from Orchard Road

On the way back to the airport, I asked the taxi driver about the highway with the large plants in pots, planned as an emergency runway. It was quite a sight and I couldn’t figure out how I had missed them. It turned out that Singapore had added a new direct highway into the city; the pots are still there on the older highway. The taxi-driver was sure that emergency runway would never have to be used and I found his explanation touching. Singapore is in the Commonwealth and the Queen is very proud of what Singapore has accomplished, and therefore all the nations of the Commonwealth would help if Singapore were ever to be attacked, he said. I hope he’s right, and I hope his belief is never tested.