The Language of Singapore

The Jewel waits for unsuspecting travelers at the Changi International Airport in Singapore. This glimmering structure is an architectural marvel. Calming water cascades through an enormous seven story glass funnel above Terminal 1. Foliage melds with ambient music to lure visitors into the modernity of Singapore’s new age.

The sky tram hums to a neon metropolis of equally immense proportions. Utopian fiction of Asimov and Huxley feels tangible. I am a lone figure in the shadow of carbon titanium giants. The streets are empty. It is Chinese New Year. My time in The Lion City is a serendipitous celestial occasion.

I attend a friend’s family New Year’s gathering where 150 Singaporeans and a mix of other ethnicities commingle. Our gracious host has prepared a full feast and hired traditional dragon dancers, costumed kids who reprise the role of Naga. I am one of three Westerners and spend time talking to a wonderfully gracious American who has also spent time in Dubai and China. With Singapore his home for the past 20 years, I learn about its history through a retelling of his adulthood. Four plates of food later, my hunger is finally gone.

As the festivities settle like a tiger upon her rug, my new friend invites me to tour his office later that week. It is the iconic wonder of Singapore, the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Looming over the bay front city skyline like an Olympic titan is Marina Bay Sands. Three towers, each fifty-eight stories tall, support a floating fortress in the shape of a yacht. At the top, an infinity pool and fine dining wait for the next guests to arrive on deck. I have two days until I go to the mothership.

Singapore feels like a city constructed from an alien singularity. At Gardens By The Bay, craftsmen have propagated Super Trees. These twisting pillars glow in the humid twilight and omit a nightly musical spectacle ripped out of Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” playbook. The entertainment park is also home to a Cloud Forest and Botanical Garden, each half-day attraction housed in stadium- sized geodesic glass domes that add to the otherworldly atmosphere.

During the day, I learn that Singapore has a serious penchant for incredible toast! Kaya is a special kind of jam that makes the toast extra delicious. One must eat this delicacy to understand the bread mania. I waited an hour (really) to eat four slices of the any-meal-of-the-day snack.

As of this journal entry, I am convinced Kaya toast may have addictive properties.

Because of the new year, I bear witness to a drone show, where dueling dragons swirl through the air. A technicolor marvel of technology that unifies thousands of drones to create living art. The singularity is at work. Over ten thousand spectators were impressed with the display. While the crowd stares at pretty lights, I slowly inch my way out of the swarming mass to my air-conditioned hostel.

My special tour of Marina Bay Sands Hotel includes a look inside a luxury guest room the size of a small apartment, with handmade décor, and a trip to the 58^th floor infinity pool. A bit scary. At lunch with my host, his words and actions convey his excitement for the hotel, the food, and Singapore as a country.

As fellow Americans, we both understand that Uncle Sam told us that the USA was the greatest country on earth. But hey… after my trip, I would not mind Kaya Toast now and then with my morning breakfast.

The singularity has me.

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