Singapore Swings (Pt. III)

Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, there was something wanting in him --some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say.
~Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad


Sam is Irish, 35 years old, blonde to the shoulders and stands a full inch taller than me. You can’t miss her in an Asian crowd even if you wanted to. I found her at the coffee shop with a tired face but looking slightly charged being so far away from home. Neither of us got jetlagged but she’d been flying further and longer from San Franscisco. Sam holds like, two PhDs or something and currently works in the medical research field. I duly reminded her that if she really wanted to do porn, now would be the perfect time to do it. She looked her prime and it will all be downhill from here..

The Old Uncle made us uncomfortable with his interruptions so we keep changing subjects from Hong Kong to malicious insects, gene therapy to the evils of capitalism. We were both curious about the casino development. Sam mentioned casually that over the years that we’ve known each number, we visited a number of game heavens. We’ve been together in Las Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City and most recently, Macao. For a couple of non gamblers, those holidays were peculiar. I asked if the Uncle knew where Mr. Yew lives but he didn’t seem to understand the question but it shut him up.

We were staying in Sentosa, Sis had the entire family so she wanted to stay in a resort and had the babysitters look after them devils. Other adults were scattered in hotels around Orchid and nearer to the hospital. I wanted to see nobody at all and generally preferred not to meet anyone related to the Old Man and took only the night shifts. The days I spent mostly reading a book on Howard Marks.

Mr. Nice was a major English dope dealer that controlled some substantial amount of the international trade in marijuana. Marks was arrested with a phony passport using that name. A friend loaned it to me and I’m liking it enough to probably not return the book. I strongly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the sixties generation.

Sam had some very bad ideas about how to make her very short visit in Singapore a lot more fun even without the tacky casino lights but Uncle Cab whipped us with a frightened glare. I’ve discovered that a very large number of Singapore taxi drivers are ex military officers and we took the more prudent route and ceased teasing him with subversive conversations.

Sam bought me an Alan Aldridge book and I bought her a black stone in Hong Kong. We arrived at the hotel peacefully and tinkered with our presents. The extra bedroom in my suite was vacant so she dropped her bags there and showered before getting back out for the hospital. We took a different and friendlier cabby with a functioning humour and Sam called him Ming.

At the hospital she was greeted as Dr. Blondie and there was so much giggling between us the other people thought we were funny. This was a professional visit and thus I was dismissed and left to my own device for some forty minutes with psychedelic pictures while Sam went in to do her smart stuff. Alan Aldridge illustrated The Beatles songs.

There were a number of guests and a few family members. The little Devils were there and I was in charge of minding the herd. I personally thought it was ridiculous that these little ones were even presently in Singapore, never mind roaming wildly in a hospital at this time of the day but their mother thought they better learn to understand that bad things do happen, even in Singapore. She had a van and a dedicated driver but most of us just took the cabs. When Sam reemerged and mingled for the official report it was late and we hitched right back to the hotel. She called this driver also Ming.

She thought I need some treatment for my disliking of Singapore and not of the medicinal kind. We drank only orange juice and talked about random things. She was every bit as she always was.

Many years ago, she was completely alien to my sensibilities. Perfect abandon of any kinds of attachment - Samantha has no place for commitments and social values in the traditional sense. She was often too detached and disjointed for most social encounters that I am certain shrinks would have a field day with her head. She’s a Catholic with a strong animosity against the Pope and had at some point, dated Dave Navarro, appeared in a soft core title, performed brain surgeries and presently spends her time researching End of Mosquitoes full time at a top secret facility deep in Smarlands, California – a quest that had brought us together in the first place.

A lot of things changed along the years and things moved all over the place. Some familiar faces were completely forgotten and new friends were made. New social alliances were established and old ones rearranged. Cities moved and countries go to wars and normal people died.

I think both of us changed quite a bit since. She is now much drier and bitter. Not necessarily darker – the girl is fun to look at. She has a pair of hilariously large boobs, too. Except the older Sam had somehow grown malignant and malicious. She was always fiercely territorial but never really took an aggressive pose. The last two years of her is more a belligerent spinster than a blonde bimbo.

One would probably describe the symptoms as radicalization.

She asked if I knew anything about elections in India. I am having problems keeping up with the Indonesian ones at the moment. We admitted that it’s a very entertaining time to be in this part of the world at this age. Sam had purchased a Blackberry but only to check her work mail and nothing else. She’d never bought anything online. She knows more about Indian election and we talked a little bit about caste and Asian values. Feudalism is an excellent instrument for social engineering but the transitions were often brutal and the rules seemed draconian in current day terms.

She asked if Facebook terms and conditions can be described in those same terms but neither of us are on Facebook so we can’t say for sure. I promised to check and investigate.

She asked about the Malaysian Royals and gods and religions and stuff. I strongly believe in secular governments and I truly, honestly prefer not to be in Malaysia for any length of time than the absolutely necessary for this very reason. The idea of a feudalist cult under a pseudo-democracy regime with a religious bent I find repugnant and annoying. The obsession with phallic symbols nails it.

I love Singapore for its quirks. There’s an impressive nature to its orderliness. Singapore is when you live in a world that works exactly like how a world should if you’re a certain kind of people.

It is an elegant place to do business as it works like a clockwork, everything is done and always on time. In most of the transactions I’ve done, we did it in Singapore for the very simple reason that Singapore bureaucracy can do what would normally take two or three months in Indonesia, to a precise three days.

Sam never likes Singapore – or any other Asian cities – thinking she looks ‘conspicuous’ in the crowd.
I suggested she wears a veil.

We asked Suzanne if she knew of any underground Singapore film scene at all. I knew her from working with agencies and she knows all sorts of creative types. Suzanne promised to find out but we didn’t have that much time to go anywhere. My flight back to Jakarta was later the following day and she was flying for Sydney in a few hours. The room grew obscenely cold and we were both chain smoking in the darkness the looking at shadows.

She asked if Asians value death differently. There’s probably the same sense of loss and slight panic in the more dramatic moments but they also differ greatly from one another. She was excited with the idea and thought we should plan for a weekend to sit somewhere with palm trees and lots of champagne on her way back so we could actually drink a little and talk a little bit more. She assured me things will be okay.

That was a few weeks ago and Sam just now called with the most recent update. I told her that I’ve a plan to be in Jogja to check the theatre scene. She volunteered to read a part for the role and explore if the role was probably a blonde. I thought it was a good idea to test and sent her the text.

Sam asked about what Asian Values are on the institution of marriage. I think marriage is largely an obsolete feudal institution. She thinks Asian countries will be the final frontier for traditional marriages. I’m not sure what Singapore marital laws are like but Indonesian ones are very grubby. We smartly avoided the conversation about commitments and the mushy stuff.

Everything else was fine and there’s nothing to worry about. It doesn’t seem likely that I am going to Australia anytime soon. The Old Man will be back in Jakarta in a few weeks time. Sam is flying ahead of time with a stopover in Bali, Jogja, Jakarta for a two working day stop and then to Medan. Sam insisted on seeing for herself the largest explosion in the recorded history and planned to try the mushroom on the Stone Age island.

She asked if there’s anyone she should be worrying about at the moment in Jakarta and I told her that catfights are highly unlikely. Jakarta doesn’t like commitment much either and the city is really no place to fall in love. I am positively single at the moment.

For a long while longer we were only looking outside to wait for the day break and the time to leave for our flights. Singapore at night lit up like a distant bitch, bright and colourful and very definitely pretty. It was comforting to know that everything will happen in just the right way, with the best possible outcome.

The rules were imposed with a military zeal, a passive aggressive tone of rigidity and occasionally bizarre impulses. A popular trick for a homogenous society to evolve and survive is moving as fast as possible and the Singaporeans have mastered this to a boring precision.

It’s a very good place to be if you’re about to undergo a surgery or a private dispute of some sort. The odds are better in your favor but eventually everyone dies and occasionally dreams go kaput. The city state also has the highest execution per population anywhere in the world.

She thought I should source the women from Conrad for the blind naiveté.

We went to back to the airport at some early hours, I was exhausted by the long quick hops and Sam was jaded. We bought stuff at the duty free and went to the smoking lounge on the roof to wait for our planes out of Changi. I bought her a copy of King Rat to read on the plane. The story was set in Changi, by James Clavell set a few generations after Shogun.
I’ve always loved how it ends:

And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.