A trip to Singapore

It's been a long time since I wrote and I'm sure half my readers, which is about 2.45 to 3.12 people, have forgotten that this blog exists (I arrive at my readership numbers the same way I do for quoting any official figure, by picking up arbitrary numbers from the air and adding decimals to it them to make them sound genuine, if this method sounds familiar, there is a 56.45% chance that you've read this in a Dilbert strip, so is this plagarism? The answer is No, coz, I thought of this concept on my own but have later realised that I may have read this in that cartoon strip too. You see 98.71% of all original ideas have been used already!).

The lack of posts has primarily been because of my work. I travel a lot and life has been hectic. It's time though that I wrote something before I loose the other half of my readers. I ain't gonna be artsy fartsy and say I write for myself! Heck I write so that I'd be read.

I just got back from a 2 1/2 day offsite in Singapore. For the uninitiated, an Offsite is a trip sponsored by the company, to the location of the boss's choice, where apart from shopping, site seeing, nightclubbing, drinking etc, you also spend a few hours in front of your boss, discussing meaningless future revenue projections, all the while trying to hide the dismal current year's peformance.

The onward journey late thursday night was a minor fiasco. My flight was at 00:20 hours on Friday morning, and we had to check in 3 hours before, which was 21:50 hrs. Thanks to a delay in our visa processing at Delhi. The Visas landed at 22:00 hrs in a Delhi flight and with some swift talking, I had it in my hand at 22:10 & a colleague whose passports & tickets I had landed up from another city only at 22:40. Thanks to these delays we had to rush through most things and barely managed to board the plane. Around 02:54 (random again, just incase you thought otherwise), we woke up to pandemonium, the flight was in what I felt was a free fall, I opened my eyes to see my two colleagues hit the top of the plane and bounce back down. Later I was told that the plane had entered a vacuum. Those few seconds, I think all of us had come to a quick realisation that we would be dead in a few seconds, it was a totally irrational fear but all I can remember from that time was how calm I was and the seatbelt was a big help (Wear them all the kids! It saved me from bouncing off the walls of the plane!). Whatever it was, I was the calmest of the three in that row.

Fear is a funny thing, there I was, thinking I'd be dead in a few seconds but was calm about it and just the entire week before, I had been walking scared stiff in anticipation of a presentation I was going give in Singapore to my new bosses. It's a fair assessment to say that I was more afraid of public speaking than of dying. Coming from a family where three of it's members earn a living by teaching and also considering the fact that I'm into sales, it's strange. I've always been good at meetings where I can sit down for a discussion so, give me a guy or gal across a table and I can nail the meeting but give me a bunch of people in chairs and I'm a log of wood.

A friend suggested that I should imagine that everyone sitting in front of me were wearing skimpy lavender coloured lingerie, I thought this might work. The only hitch was that I kept imagining that I was wearing skimpy lavender coloured lingerie, instead of my audience. Not a nice thought, I can tell you. I could feel a draft of cold wind creep through. I barely managed to maintain sanity and not throw up or piss in my pants or say something like "I think ya'll would look good in a lavender lingerie". Considering all this, my presentation had the best reviews. Go figure.

There were a lot of nice things to see in Singapore, which thanks to a crooked tour operator & a bad plan, we couldn't see any. I did what I do in most cities, I walked a few kilometers down their roads, observing people, watching them lead their lives. You can tell a lot about a city by that. What I realised immediately was that this was a city for couples. They were there everywhere, holding hands, kissing, walking, talking, smoking etc etc. I almost felt an intruder in their private space. There were hardly any single folk anywhere. I've travelled alone and had fun in a lot of new cities, this one was different. I didn't like being a stranger in a crowd here. There were some moments when I wish I had someone with me. Those moments disappeared soon after they came and I was thirsty for beer again.

(Talking about beer, I had one called the Dutch Royal Stout, which was thick and red and tasted like turpentine and toilet cleaner mixed at the ratio of 73:27 and left in a tin drum for 3 days. Trust me, avoid that one like the plague or better still, use em for your Christmas gifts. On the other hand a Corona with a slice of lime is awesome!)

People here in Singapore do two things a LOT, they eat and they shop. If you've visited Singapore, you would agree with me. I don't think any restaurant, was empty anytime of the day or night. People just kept eating and the worse part is that none of that eating showed on them! I mean, how can that be?

And as far as shopping goes, any wrong turn of the street, magically got you inside a shopping mall. Any subway actually ended up being a shopping mall too. Malls have a sublimal way of entering your path, yes, the mall finds you, rather than you finding it. Before you are out of the trance, you have a shopping bag full of stuff and you are on your way. Like what a local Singaporean of chinese origin would say...Shopping? Can, can!

Every one of these malls was FULL through the day. I guess Christmas, the festival that celebrates the rising revenues of retail stores, was just around the corner and everyone around was doing their bit. But even then, shopping malls running full at 4 am??? Crazy! One thing I was advised was to ask for a discount wherever I go. I'm used to bargaining in a small shop but to do that in a mall? Well, I took my tentative steps when I bought a T shirt at a New Balance store. As the clerk was getting the bill ready, I cleared my throat, he looked up. I smiled, and said "Umm...is there a disc.", before I could finish, he smiled wide and said "Ofcourse Sir, I'm give you a 15% discount" and bowed too. Wow! I mean how cool was that? Soon after, I even bargained down an Sony Handicam from $899 to $750. I was an expert in no time. (After all I'm a part of the scum sucking bottom feeding profession of banking aren't I?)

From the nice lady at the American Express counter who changed my money and sold me a local simcard (She very patiently tried to explain how it worked, eventually gave up and wrote the directions down for me) to the taxi driver who talked to himself as he drove, the experience with people was awesome. That says something about the city. It was great that people bow when they take money from you or give money to you coz I;ve seen way too much of disrespect for money here in India. In Singapore, every transaction happened with a smile or aleast a small nod of appreciation. I think I would have an attack of I get that kind of treatment from an autodriver here in Chennai, leave alone anyone else.

Another thing that I appreciated was that anytime I asked a person who looked Indian, if they were Indian, the answer was a standard, No, I'm Singaporean. The pride that these words carried was great. Considering that Tamils are 12.53% of the population, this showed their effort in maintaining homogenity. We Indians are a homogeneous group only when it comes to Cricket (I think Greg Chappell has changed that too), I guess we have to learn from our folks out there .

All in all, it was a fantastic place to visit, but too clean for the likes of me, I like my city nice and dirty. What is life without a walk past an overflowing garbage dump? Imagine eating a vada pao in the sanitised environs of Singapore instead of a dirty pushcart near a ditch in Mumbai ? Imagine driving to work without worrying about the traffic jam or the pollution or the potholes or about not hitting the guy jaywalking in the road? Or Imagine having to wait in line to get a taxi? No way!

It's been a while since I wrote, this isn't exactly the best I've written but I've liked writing this. Unlike some earlier posts were forced. I hope to write more regularly again. Thanks for visiting & reading :-)