DIARY OF MOMENTS ❖ loving a city as if it were a person

I am a woman of the dirt and Singapore is famous for being very clean

But the more I have explored, learnt, reported and written about Singapore over the last 13 years and counting, the more I have discovered—and continue to discover—that there are many, many Singapores: a Singapore for the rich, a Singapore for the poor, a Singapore for citizens, a Singapore for migrant workers, a Singapore for the Chinese, a Singapore for ethnic minorities, a Singapore for the powerful, a Singapore for those who dissent.
— Kirsten Han, “The Singapore I Recognise”

1.

How do people usually make friends in a new country?

I’ve been meeting people I really like here by accident. One girl said she went to Yale-NUS, a US-Singapore university partnership that lasted for five years until the Singaporean university shut it down because the kids were becoming too radicalised.

Radicalised as in they would hold a permitted queer rights protest in a park cordoned off by the government for protesting activities, she laughs. I’m hooked. I look at my calendar and realised I’d unintentionally lined up coffees with several people from this strange limited edition pool of Yale-NUS alum.

There is a smattering of stories of a rebel culture here, it’s fledgling, eager, and government-permitted. Like a teenager tipsy on their first glass of wine from mum.

A giant abandoned mall was going to get demolished but in its last year had become a spontaneous and beloved community hub full of scrappy social enterprises and creative exhibits, so when its time finally came the government permitted a techno rave in the giant mall. Every shop housed a different DJ, and 1,500 ravers were giddy to be allowed to graffiti on the walls, scrawling hopes, heartbreaks, and goodbyes over the three-level Peace Centre.

Sydney Marrickville warehouses couldn’t contend, I think to myself.

2.

Little India is full of mustachioed men in striped coloured polos bumping into each other like billiard balls. Many of them are South Indian patriarchs juicing deliciously plump Singapore dollars into rupees for their family.

There are signs everywhere that say “MOMENT OF ANGER LIFETIME OF REGRET” and a graphic illustration of one man holding another on the ground by the collar, arm pulled back about to punch him. I ask B and his friend if they have these signs anywhere else except Little India? And they say exchange a glance, chuckle and say no.