Where do I begin, again?
Right where I left off is as good as any - that would be India. Two months ago Shruthi and I left India and headed to Singapore. Singapore was going to be a two day layover and ended up being a landing base we have come back to several times. Being much more expensive than living in India, we had been fortunate that one of Shruthi's friends, Karn Kongsawat, welcomed us to stay at his place anytime we were in town. As a Thai-American expat working as a tech consultant and as a newly published author of a self-help book, Karn exemplifies the undertone to Singapore's face of high rise buildings and enterprising multi-nationals.
Singapore is a city republic where a sense of its culture and its people give way to an orderly run collection of business enterprises. At the end of one subway line called Vivo City, the exit does not lead to street level in some neighborhood but to the inside of a shopping mall. The "culture" of Singapore could be described as commercially manufactured though for Shruthi and I, we still have wondered if a "culture" of a different kind exists.
Malay is the official national language and English is widely spoken for business purposes though Singapore still recognizes four different languages: English, Malay (Malaysian), Mandarin (Chinese) and Tamil (Indian). So while the "cultures" from where these languages come from can be felt, a Singaporean culture seems hard to find.
Perhaps it is a place that is still "finding" itself given that it only officially became its own independent nation in 1965. So like Karn who contributes day-to-day to the economic forces yet strives to be heard as an author who comes from a rich and diverse history of experiences, Singapore is a place full of color and culture - somewhat hidden, somewhat revealed in the spaces among the steel and concrete towers, I'm sure.
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