It is too early to be awake.

We are at the airport and I have some time and the Singtel internet connection so I am blogging one last time from Singapore.

First, the food here is amazing. I have eaten Japanese, Indonesian, Egyptian, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Turkish, and French at least and it was mostly (the Turkish was horrid and the Egyptian was just hummus and tea so I don't know if that counts) wonderful.

The amazing food is a consequence of the international character of the city, which makes it very hard to get to know. This is not helped by Singapore's incredible popularity as a vacation, shopping, and business destination. I grew up in a tourist town and you build a sort of skin where there is local and other and it is very difficult to brake through that, especially when everybody comes to Singapore to shop and, as a tourist, you are expected to spend tons of time trolling through expensive shops and spending money. You would understand why this can be especially exhausting if you had ever followed my father through a rock shop; Singapore has hundreds and most of them are in the sections of the city where malls don't have chairs. It was tiring.

However, there are other things. The art community seems to be vibrant and fueled by the clash of Chinese, Malay, and Indian. And some of the art I saw had a sense of humor and a life, even when it was protest stuff, that I loved and that is all too often seems to be abandoned in contemporary art in the states in favor of either irony or general smugness. The clash of cultures and the way they deal with it in Singapore is fascinating (my Dad's class told him that Singapore had four ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese, Indian, and other; which means Western). And you get the feeling that lurking behind the shopping malls and frighteningly thin and well-dressed people in the expensive parts of the city there is something more in the mixture that is so much a part of the country. Also, there are karaoke bars, even though my parents wouldn't go to one with me. And I got to see the Depavali parade.

The way they are negotiating their own place in the world in the midst of all of those clashing countries and ethnicities is a strange mixture of pride (I really meant to blog about this whole thing on the artist Affendi and how he was supposedly the first sort of local artist to be called a genius by John Berger and how they tried in the exhibit to be both very proud of him being an non-Western artist in defiance of the West's stranglehold on genius and very proud of him being named a genius by the hegemonic powers of that very stranglehold. I mean John Berger, people.) and defiance.

So I am glad I came and I wish I had enough money to actually buy art or clothes here and I would come back. Oh and foot rubs are the one thing that are cheap here: can you say hour long foot reflexology massage for about $20 US. Man will I miss that and the food.


And my flight is being boarded now so I will talk to all of you people sometime after my day of flying. Please excuse any typos as it is very early and I am writing this very quickly to give a summary of my feelings in the airport before I leave. I'm sure I have said something I will want to delete later when I am actually awake.