Singapore: Entering the First World
Landing in Singapore, I saw that I’d only now entered the first world for the very first time. By this I only mean that it's super high tech, scrubbed bright, safe at any time of day or night, & highly efficient--from its airport to its medical care to its shopping.
Enhancing Singapore’s splendor, of course, is its stark contrast with Jakarta. Suddenly: the sky is so BLUE! The sidewalks: so exquisitely FLAT & walkable! Buildings look painted yesterday & their corners are all so square. There’s no garbage anywhere. Everyone & their grandpa seems to have a cell phone / blackberry / iPod...more than in the US. Even the pretty Flame of the Forest trees lining streets look painted & perfect. The government is so...large. Superficially, the visible standard of living appears universally high (as even unsightly poverty is tidied away).
My hacking cough—which had grown chronic in the last month breathing Jakarta’s outdoor air pollution & indoor AC pollution—disappeared within an hour.
Best of all: I’m back in the English speaking world.
It took me two days to stop saying, Thank You in Indonesian to every cabbie, waitress & stranger giving me directions.
I'm writing this from Sydney, of course, where I’ve been for a month. I'll tell you about that soon. E is there now, however, in Singapore, & just wrote saying the same thing, in the same words:
The First World.
He’d had to see a doctor for his own third world complaints [he is now fine]. As we’d heard numerous horror / frustration stories, he did not want to go to a clinic in Jakarta. So he’d been holding out. In Singapore, he not only saw a doctor the same day, had zero wait time in the hospital, first class facilities, & immediate results—but he paid USD $32 for it. It wasn’t anything complicated, but still: that was the complete & total cost of the appointment & medications.
A functioning public medical system! Now that is first world. And we haven't even talked about the public education system yet. I doubt I’d vote for Singapore’s government, but there’s definitely something admirable going on here.
The government does limit our freedom, 4 or 5 strangers spontaneously volunteered to me in cabs, elevators, waiting rooms & lobbies, as if I'd voiced concern. As if they were still trying to convince themselves. It builds wherever it wants & censors some things, but...life is good. It doesn't take advantage.
True: the trains run on time here, as it were. Even in Indonesia, we were actually hearing people casting back to the days of the (popularly overthrown) Suharto regime, which had--along with many abuses--brought a temporary prosperity to the land. People's tolerance for huge governments & even terrible abuses is greater when it raises the standard of living.
The 2nd most densely populated nation, Singapore has the globe’s highest number of executions per capita.
I spent three days in Singapore: not only to take a tour of the first world, but to meet up with the indomitable PBH & celebrate the drafts of our books. Also to eat. Because for all this first world talk: what you really go to Singapore to do is EAT.
Enhancing Singapore’s splendor, of course, is its stark contrast with Jakarta. Suddenly: the sky is so BLUE! The sidewalks: so exquisitely FLAT & walkable! Buildings look painted yesterday & their corners are all so square. There’s no garbage anywhere. Everyone & their grandpa seems to have a cell phone / blackberry / iPod...more than in the US. Even the pretty Flame of the Forest trees lining streets look painted & perfect. The government is so...large. Superficially, the visible standard of living appears universally high (as even unsightly poverty is tidied away).
My hacking cough—which had grown chronic in the last month breathing Jakarta’s outdoor air pollution & indoor AC pollution—disappeared within an hour.
Best of all: I’m back in the English speaking world.
It took me two days to stop saying, Thank You in Indonesian to every cabbie, waitress & stranger giving me directions.
I'm writing this from Sydney, of course, where I’ve been for a month. I'll tell you about that soon. E is there now, however, in Singapore, & just wrote saying the same thing, in the same words:
The First World.
He’d had to see a doctor for his own third world complaints [he is now fine]. As we’d heard numerous horror / frustration stories, he did not want to go to a clinic in Jakarta. So he’d been holding out. In Singapore, he not only saw a doctor the same day, had zero wait time in the hospital, first class facilities, & immediate results—but he paid USD $32 for it. It wasn’t anything complicated, but still: that was the complete & total cost of the appointment & medications.
A functioning public medical system! Now that is first world. And we haven't even talked about the public education system yet. I doubt I’d vote for Singapore’s government, but there’s definitely something admirable going on here.
The government does limit our freedom, 4 or 5 strangers spontaneously volunteered to me in cabs, elevators, waiting rooms & lobbies, as if I'd voiced concern. As if they were still trying to convince themselves. It builds wherever it wants & censors some things, but...life is good. It doesn't take advantage.
True: the trains run on time here, as it were. Even in Indonesia, we were actually hearing people casting back to the days of the (popularly overthrown) Suharto regime, which had--along with many abuses--brought a temporary prosperity to the land. People's tolerance for huge governments & even terrible abuses is greater when it raises the standard of living.
The 2nd most densely populated nation, Singapore has the globe’s highest number of executions per capita.
I spent three days in Singapore: not only to take a tour of the first world, but to meet up with the indomitable PBH & celebrate the drafts of our books. Also to eat. Because for all this first world talk: what you really go to Singapore to do is EAT.
posted by Anne E. Campisi at 6:31 PM
1 Comments:
Back in the day, William Gibson wrote a famous article on Singapore for Wired magazine called "Disneyland with the Death Penalty"--an apt title, which your post instantly called to mind.
Gibson's piece is in the Wired archives at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html
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