Back on the Homefront: "Experiencing" Singapore

Whenever I settle down in a place for the long term, I tend to neglect to do the touristy activities in area and only end up seeing the sights when a visit from someone else forces me out of my complacency in order to show them around, and in the process, show myself around too. So on the (double-decker!) bus-ride back from visiting the publishing firm I interned at one summer, I decided to get off at Chinatown and wander around specifically for the purpose of wandering around. No buying or browsing of merchandise allowed (no mean feat in Singapore, the land of wall-to-wall malls). Just roaming and observing at large.

In Singapore the Chinatown is a bit more difficult to differentiate from the rest of the city than in, say, Boston, or San Francisco, or London. In those cities, you can pretty much tell that Chinatown stops where the Chinese lettering and chickens hanging in the window do. Singapore, on the other hand, is about three-quarters Chinese, and consequently, is sort of a large Chinatown in itself. But "Chinatown" proper seems to be characterised by lots of brightly-coloured colonial-style buildings, and a denser concentration of "Chinese" establishments like herbal medicine shops, Buddhist shrines, and stores selling joss-sticks and paper money.

I lingered for a while near People's Park Complex where the rickshaw drivers park when they're not trying to convince sweaty tourists to take a ride. The construction of a stage had already begun in the square for Chinese New Year, when free dance shows and Chinese opera are put on for the public. There were also a lot of old retired men there, sipping coffee from cups made out of tin cans. The tops of the cans had only been partly cut away when opened, producing a hinged metal flap for the cup. A plastic string, looped through a hole bored in the flap, allowed them to dangle it from their wrist or a bicycle handle. The old retirees were congregated around marble tables with black and white grids, playing Chinese chess and a form of checkers which I can only describe as "Big Checkers" (since it involved the use of a 12 by 12 square board instead of the usual 8 by 8.)

I hung out here for a while watching the games before realising that I was getting funny looks as I was the only one there who was female and below 50. So I continued on and wandered down various side-streets.

I came across:
-a bookstore/cafe called "Whatever" which sold overpriced teas and fruit juices and lots of fuzzy, feel-good, spiritual self-help books which, for some reason, nauseate me since my conversion to Christianity.

-small rooms which would house exclusively a large Buddhist shrine, (the equivalent of a "store-front church" I guess?)

-a stretch of "stores" which didn't seem to be stores at all, but which looked rather dubious and might potentially offer other "services", and not services of the acupuncture variety either.

-a fancy-looking boutique hotel called "1929" decorated in purple-funky-goth. (Because everyone knows that purple-funky-goth was all the rage in 1929.)

After wandering for about an hour, I suddenly got a nostalgic urge to go to Farrer Park and find the tennis courts where I played my first tournament.

So I took the MRT to the Farrer Park station, trekked across a large football field, and found the courts, which I remembered looking much more impressive as a child. It was located behind an old, dilapidated boxing gym, and I remember sitting near the gym playing "cheats" with the other girls with whom I took lessons. I was living in Indonesia at the time, and our tennis instructor had signed us all up, including her daughter, for a tennis tournament in Singapore. We got to stay in a hotel and got free shampoo samples from the tournament sponsors!

The coach's daugher did really well and came in third place. I managed to come in fifteenth out of sixteen, and the only reason I didn't come in last was because the girl who came in sixteenth didn't show up for any of her matches. The only one I played whom I stood a chance of beating was a girl from Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, she was also my rooommate, and kept informing me that if I beat her I was going to sleep on the floor that night. I think I ended up losing 7 to 9. Standing on the stone steps of the boxing gym, surveying the run-down tennis courts, I could practically hear the threats ringing in my ears as if it were only sweet yesterday!