Tag: Singapore

20 Singapore: Chinese New Year

NEWTON ROAD
Along Newton Road, traffic disappears into the darkness of night. The endless black has long brushstrokes of illuminated lights, of reds and whites from flowing taillights and headlights, moving from left to right, into view then out of sight. From the behind the tall windows in the lobby of the Royal Hotel, I watch the traffic move. Already having checked out and settled my account, I am waiting for my taxi to take me back to Changi Airport; my flight departs at midnight, my taxi is booked for 9.30pm (which is about an hour or so away). Nothing more to do now other than sit with my cases and keep myself occupied. The lobby is large, polished floors, a long reception counter; things are happening, staff are busy, sounds are muffled into hushed silence. At times you find yourself wondering how time you have spent waiting – in transit, in limbo – at lobbies and airports when travelling; existing in a bubble of patience as the rest of the world attends to what needs to be done. You find yourself feeling like a character in one of Edward Hopper’s paintings – Night Hawks is the one that springs to mind. In this painting we see people siting in a diner, at the bar, at night. Nothing seems to be happening. No conversation seems to be shared. It is viewed from the outside, from the darkness looking in. And despite being in this vantage point (outside looking in) it is those in the diner who seem to be inhabiting a transitory existence, killing time, strangers isolated in a strange city almost as if they are the ones passing through. As an audience, we are people-watching them. On Newtown Road, I am waiting for my taxi to the airport.

Image by Karl Powell, Hanging Lanterns, Singapore 2008

Singapore had been recommended to me, as a stop over, by someone who loved it. Just somewhere to break a journey and see something of somewhere I had only ever transited in at the airport. I arrived here two days ago with no expectations, just the weight and baggage of missing those I loved who could not journey with me (it will be some time until I see them again). Lost in thoughts, I tried to write here during my stay but felt distracted – wishing they were here as well, sharing the immediate experience with me. Waiting now on Newton Road, re-reading what I’ve written in notebooks to share with them later.

ORCHARD ROAD
Arrived in Singapore sometime this afternoon. Arrival was a blur. The flight was a blur. A long flight – emotions of departure, sadness of leaving someplace, heavy lethargy, letting heartstrings sound through the ache of racing timezones, sunsets, coloured clouds, clear night sky, the bright shine of the moon, moving through the starlit skies, chimes of turbulence, morning meal, surreal reality, touchdown soon, welcome to Changi. Thirteen hours over. Arrivals, passports, luggage. Taxi to the hotel. Near to Orchard Road. Check in. Room 1124. Showered. Snoozed. Late afternoon. Need to eat, time to explore.

Image by Karl Powell, The Year of the Rat, Singapore 2008

Found my way onto Orchard Road and walked east, towards the river, towards Raffles. Felt so fatigued from the flight. Felt shattered and drained, disorientated, hot humid,  sweaty sticky light-headed thirsty. Managed to find a Turkish Café. Sat and ordered a biryani and some water. Pores on the skin wide open. Perspiration rises to the surface of the skin in little beads, evaporating in the breeze of the day.  

Image by Karl Powell, Walking in Chinatown, Singapore 2008

After eating, I ended up walking down towards Chinatown. Evening had appeared in the sky. Followed Orchard Road into Stamford Road then walked down New Bridge Road into Chinatown. Got there as daylight departed. Got lost in a series of side streets, all festooned with red lanterns, coloured lanterns, noises and smells of cooking food, buzz of activity, a crowd carried forward in motion, in slow stagnations, not looking where it was going, just looking and stopping milling and moving again. The Chinese New Year was being celebrated (it was the Year of the Rat). There were images of the rodent everywhere, caricatured, emblazoned in red, appearing on bags and walls. Part of the swaying crowd, too tired to stray I instead surfed the flow, walking, milling, moving forward. Allowing yourself to get lost within that safe blur of human movement. Eventually I made my way back up to Orchard Road and found a bus stop going to Newton. I was the only one on the bus. I spoke to the bus driver, a man from India, who told me to go to the Esplanade tomorrow night to watch the fireworks. He stopped the bus opposite my hotel so I could get off safely. We waved good night and goodbye and good luck as it drove off up Newton Road into the darkness forever.

Image by Karl Powell, City Lights, Singapore 2008

HAJI LANE
Slept all night. It was a deep sleep with intense dreams that made little sense. Disorientating dreams. When I woke up I had no idea where I was. It was the darkness that threw me. I sat up then felt the unfamiliar sheets, sensed the dimensions of the room, remembered I was in Singapore. Woke up again for breakfast. Showered, ate, went and swam in the pool. It was small – ample – and tucked around the side of the hotel with a patio. It seemed to catch what was there of the morning sun, steaming behind the tropical bank of cloud cover, shadows fell. It was nice to feel weightless and float in the water. Dozing face up in the heat and humidity (sunshine spread out and fanned evenly behind a bedspread of cloud cover).

Image by Karl Powell, Golden Domes, Singapore 2008

Sometime after midday, I made my way back to Orchard Road. Caught a bus from hotel. Already there was a sense of familiarity, creating landmarks, recognising buildings. Walked the length of Orchard Road and turned up North Bridge Road towards Little India. Bought a green coconut from a street vendor who had so many floating in a portable tank of iced water. He cut it open with a few chops from a machete and popped in a straw for me to drink. Walked along Arab Street and Bussorah Street. Found somewhere to sit and eat. It was quiet and peaceful – how an afternoon lunch should be. The golden domes of the Masjid Sultan Mosque shone above the surrounding skyline of this area. Afterwards, I walked around these quiet streets. Found another mosque, the Massjid Abdul Gaffoor Mosque that bore a sign outside its perimeter fence: Visitors are Most Welcome. So I walked in. I was greeted and welcomed and told to enjoy my visit. I walked inside the green mosque, around the edge of the prayer hall (musalla). It was a large, open space. Stillness pervaded the area. It was cool and birds could be heard singing. Book cases stood along the outer walls. An elderly man sat on the floor, leaning against a pillar, reading. As I passed he looked up, smiled and said hello.

Image by Karl Powell, Coconuts, Singapore 2008

ESPLANADE PARK
Near the Elgin Bridge, I crossed over from Orchard Road onto the Esplanade Park. It was here the bus driver had told me to go to watch the firework display celebrating the Chinese New Year. At night Singapore looked so beautiful. The city lights glowed in the humming buzz of neon emissions, colourful, bright, constant and flashing. The spectrum of colours danced and reflected on the surface of black water in the Singapore River. It was busy with people. There were many families there together walking in groups. Food stalls were cooking. Great clouds of flavour curled and tumbled, rising up out of grills and hotplates, drifting through the park. Red Chinese lanterns and lights hung from the branches of trees. After walking for some time, I found a small wall, near Anderson Bridge, where lots of people were sitting waiting for the firework display. A young couple next to me offered me some snacks they were eating and we all began a conversation; their names were Sean and Cheryl and were from Singapore. As we waited for the fireworks they told me about their lives – their working lives – in Singapore. They told me they were very happy and often worked long hours (most days twelve hours each day, only seeing each other for breakfast and at night sometimes).

Image by Karl Powell, Esplanade Park, Singapore 2008

And then the fireworks interrupted and exploded from nowhere across the night sky. Amid the bright flashes, crackles, thumps and booms were the oohs and ahhs of all of us watching coloured patchworks illuminate the canvas above. It was great to be inside a crowd, reminded how something like fireworks can captivate an audience. Whenever you try to describe fireworks – in writing, in conversation – you always feel as if you’re doing them a disservice. We all know what they look like and sound like; you are mindful not to overtly gush about them, or sell a display short. There’s a wonderful description which comes to mind about fireworks in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road when he describes his love of people who live their lives passionately and with wild authenticity:

…the ones who are mad to live… [who] burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

Image by Karl Powell, CNY: Fireworks, Singapore 2008

After the fireworks had finished, and after Sean and Cheryl and I had wished each other good night and goodbye and good luck, I made my way back to the hotel. The city was deserted. Everything seemed quieter than the night before. I caught a metro from somewhere back to Orchard Road. From there it was so late (about 1.30am) and all buses had stopped – maybe it was even a public holiday – but I found a taxi and made it back to my room.

NEWTON ROAD
On Newton Road, I am still waiting for my taxi to the airport. Traffic is still driving, still moving, still disappearing. Sitting here reflecting, looking at suitcases, watching the check ins and check outs, I begin to realise that my stay here barely scratched the surface of this beautiful island. Realising as I’m leaving that I would like to return and explore more, see more and travel around more – to just sit by the river, to belong in a crowd, to ride metros and buses with no destination in mind. To just ride and ride. Like Iggy Pop’s Passenger: just looking out from glass, looking through a window, seeing stars come out, seeing bright and hollow skies, seeing that everything in the city looks good tonight. To be the passenger. I put my notebooks away. Headlights pull up to the hotel. A white car parks in a bay. It says ‘Taxi.’ A driver speaks to a doorman and enters the hotel lobby. He makes his way to the front desk. Could be my taxi to Changi.

Image by Karl Powell, The Passenger, Singapore 2008

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8 Citizens of Nowhere (Changi Airport)

ARRIVE SINGAPORE       21.35                         DEPART SINGAPORE  07.40         

Beginning the descent into Singapore. We’re landing at Changi Airport in about half-an-hour (maybe less). The cabin is preparing to land; a sudden buzz of electricity charges and changes the torpor around me. People fidget, people manically check the overhead lockers, people queue again outside the toilets. An amazing sunset is occurring to my left. A vibrant, burning red blazes beyond the window. The sky is on fire. Ardent colours. I take photos. Don’t feel so good – light and lethargic. Am here for the next ten hours until my connecting flight departs tomorrow morning. There are no real expectations of this layover, now. When I booked the flight, I was looking forward to spending time here at Changi. Of all the times to get food poisoning the day before a long-haul flight was not the best. Seat belt signs chime on. The sun has now disappeared behind a wall of fog, leaving behind a changing kaleidoscope of nebulas and bursting supernovas. Exhausted. All I want is to shower; to lay down on my bed and close my eyes. But like the speaker in Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” there are commitments still to navigate:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The sky is now filled with colours and magic. Descending through silent clouds. And there are miles to go before I sleep.

Image by Karl Powell, CDG, 2018

I can remember waking yesterday – in the middle of the night – with cramps in my stomach. Laying in the darkness not daring to move I can remember thinking I was lucky to only have been ill this late into the holiday (the last day) and feeling ok with it (like it was some kind of pact). Then the illness struck. For an hour I vomited and struggled to keep down any water. It happened in violent waves. Sitting on the floor of the bathroom I can remember being surprised how physically tired I felt. After the illness had passed, I showered and lay back on my bed. I felt shattered and wobbled between extremes of being too hot or too cold. At one point, I lay as still as I could in the dark, trying not to move, to breathe softly, to not think, to be as motionless as possible. I listened to the sounds of the rainforest outside the room sing through the final arias of the nocturnal symphony. I could hear the ocean against the shore. Eventually I fell asleep sometime in that strange elixir of dawn and first light.

Image by Karl Powell, Approaching Singapore, 2009

At breakfast I felt ok. Nibbled on some fruit, had a coffee. My taxi had been booked to take me from my accommodation to the airport just before lunchtime (an internal flight then an international flight to Singapore at 6pm; ten hours before the second leg of another journey).

It didn’t take long before I was ill again. I made it to the bathroom in the cafe and then again to the one in room without disgrace. I lay on the bed, perspiring and now resigned to the situation; nothing else to do but wait for the taxi. My bag was packed and ready, but I was ill. Seriously ill. Now it was concerning. At what stage could I honestly say ‘the worst of it’ had passed? Would it pass? I plucked up the courage to venture to a chemist a short distance away. The walk there was painful and slow. Lethargy weighted each of my steps in the humidity and wet tarmac. My stomach winced, tender as if it had been kicked. But I made it and explained my story; buying hydration tablets and all manner of pills out of desperation to not vomit on any of the planes (or airports). Can’t remember much of the journey to the airport. Can’t remember much of checking in. Can’t remember much of that first flight. Everything just happened.

Image by Karl Powell, Changi Airport, 2013

There is an acute awareness of entering a parallel dimension inside an airport. Time operates differently. Past and future are no longer fixed. The conventional sequence of existence erodes. Personal time differs from external time; time zones are crossed by the hour, body clocks operate independently of local time, departure times and arrival times become one and the same thing. Time becomes a paradox of metaphysical theories. The airport becomes something of a wormhole – a rogue existence punched through the space-time fabric allowing Citizens of Nowhere to come and go as they please. Time breathes; Time just is. There are no longer the fixed coordinates which order our everyday lives. The airport is a journey into an alternative reality, where, to paraphrase the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleu-Ponty, the flow of time broods before us like a storm on the horizon and we are merely floating downstream towards it, always aware of its presence. 

Image by Karl Powell, Above Singapore, 2009

On arrival at Changi Airport (21.35) I flowed out into a terminal with the rest of the flight. And here in Singapore airport, like any other big airport, colours of confusion swirl and move without any familiar anchorage. Colours of clothes, of currency, of passports. Citizens of Nowhere all in transit, all in symphony, all in situ, searching for screens bearing information of the brooding future: details of flights, departure gates, destinations so far away. Staring at screens, pockets of silence eddying in the flow of motion, simultaneously reassuring and unnerving. I walked along coloured corridors, on moving walkways, weaving in and out of people as they weaved in and out of me. I could not go fast – my body ached and I felt drained. I looked at maps. I searched screens. Couldn’t find my flight. I walked through shops selling duty free and magazines. I found an information desk. They took my boarding card, checked something on a computer, confirmed my flight the next morning, advised me what terminal to go to. Before leaving, I asked about the airport hotel. Someone had mentioned it to me weeks ago – a transit hotel in Changi Airport where you could stay overnight. I was given a map of the airport; it was circled here and there, showing me where I was, where to find the hotel (and my departure gate at 07.40). 

Image by Karl Powell, Three Friends BKK, 2017

From Terminal 3, a Sky Train to Terminal 2. Singapore Airlines, Air India, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa Airlines, Silkair. Transfer Lounges, Walking Times, electric bulbs and neon signs become the canopy of stars overhead. Moving through the fatigue that had weighed me down I passed through coloured lights, busy bars, people moving until I found the Transit Hotel. Leaving behind the flow of people, I entered the silence of a glass door and approached the familiarity of a reception area. A smiling face told me rooms were available. Minimum purchase of six hours (with additional hours added on by the hour). Money paid. A key card in my hand. A room of one’s own.

The hotel room – 422 – was perfect, clean with a shower and a bathroom. Another world within a world. A step off the carousel. My own space again. Stillness and silence; the hum of air-conditioning. Here I could leave my bags, put them down, let them be and walk around without having to drag them behind. The shower – a welcomed shower – left me feeling refreshed (skin, scalp and face). In clean clothes I sat on the bed like a Nighthawk in one of Edward Hopper’s paintings, feeling the weight of my body sink into the solitude of mattress. And then my stomach began to speak again. This time, not tender pangs of anguish, but an eagerness to eat again. The joys that can be found in the smallest of things.

Image by Karl Powell, Doha: World of Business Lounges, 2019

And so, I re-entered the cloud city of Terminal 2 at Changi Airport. I walked slowly now and noticed how amazing this airport really was. Free from the stress of needing to pay attention to small things, of guarding your belongings, of having senses stimulated beyond retention I became a Citizen of Nowhere once again. The legs could stroll and I could marvel. There was a cinema that played movies for those in transit. There was an area playing live music. There were places to eat all about me (Thai, Indian, Italian). And yet despite these temptations all my body craved was a whopper from a Burger King (with fries and a coke). This would be my first meal in nearly a day. I walked and sat in a large, open Sports Bar with a giant screen. It was screening a match between Liverpool and Celtic. It was only a pre-season game but it was of importance as Liverpool had recently appointed a new manager, Rafa Benitez.  I sat and ate slowly, watching the Reds win 5-1, and everything felt good.

At some stage I went back to the room in the transit hotel and slept. I slept well and set my alarm. The illness had passed. And so I slept soundly in Changi Airport as a Citizen of Nowhere – lost in time, unaware of coordinates, transiting beyond borders. And everything felt good.

Image by Karl Powell, Approaching DXB, 2016

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