I’m not a travel blogger. It is not my real passion to write down what I do during my travels. I could mention I went to Tagaytay in the Philippines and sat down there overlooking a beautiful lake, trying to write something but lacking inspiration, I could write about a few more days in Manila, that I enjoyed with my new friends, about a short flight to Singapore, about being proud that everything went as planned, about finding out that Singapore is not as modern as I had expected, and that it took me some time to “get online” and find my way to my host.
I have a good time here. Singapore itself is not nearly as fascinating as I thought, and I surely don’t like shopping (something offered here in abundance). Walking around the city-state with a proper map, exploring patches of green, avenues, and backstreets, was entertaining. My host lent me a bicycle but I quickly found out that this city is not made for cyclists. I did make it to the botanical gardens and back, and if you have to spend some time in Singapore, the freely accessible botanical gardens is a nice place to be. There even is a tiny part of rainforest you can walk though on a convenient elevated path.
This is a good time to unwind, and to write a few hidden sentences here, where nobody sees them. I considered myself a writer, but don’t feel at home in any language. My mother tongue confidence, after eleven years, has become fragile, and so has my expressive capacity in other languages. I would love to practice silence, but how would the world know, then, that I’m not just aiming to be a parasite on other people’s hard work? Perhaps it is the poison of ill-conceived perfectionism and reading too many “good” books, perhaps I don’t have much to say. But it is a problem. Will I believe myself when I hear myself telling others I want to be a writer? I’m afraid not. But what else could I be?
I think about modesty. Why do we want endless “personal growth”? Isn’t that just an application of the metaphor of capitalism, the inclining lines on the charts? And aren’t we fooling ourselves, especially when that personal growth is sold to us with concepts like harmony and balance? Embrace, I say, the harmony and balance you had yesterday, and the day before.
Singapore is a crazy city. I’ve heard stories. A simple apartment costs half a million. A permit to drive a car 70k per year. Yet you can eat noodles in a Hawker market for around S$2. There are many foreign workers here, the city is an economic machine, if there is any. It is – as in all extreme places – nice to be a guest here, as I always marvel at differences. But this place is rather low on my list of places to live.