The Push and Pull of Singapore

Towards the end of my time in Hong Kong, I began to miss Singapore. I was yearning for the familiar spaces, for family and friends, for the food and Singlish. I so desperately wanted to be back home that I changed my flight to one 4 days earlier.

Not quite from a plane, but from 1-Altitude, the highest al fresco bar.

As the plane descended over the thick carpet of fairy lights that is my country at midnight, there was a sense of satisfaction at finally being back on home ground.

But it was barely 24 hours before I started to feel the creeping sense of regret at not being somewhere else – not limited to, but including, being back in Hong Kong. I booked my flight to Mexico (for the end of March) with undisguised glee.

What is it about my country that makes me miss it so when I’m away, yet so eager to get the hell out when I’m here?

I steamed in the mad humidity yesterday, along with everyone else on this island. Following two months of dry winter the sudden change in climate wasn’t very well-received by my skin, and I felt distinctly cracked, oily, flushed and unattractive. But it was the general sense of heaviness that was much worse – for some reason I felt weighed down, stuck and impatient, and I just wanted to get away from it all.

Unfortunately, that’s a feeling that’s not unfamiliar while I’m in Singapore. I spend so much of my time at home restless, buzzing with the need to be out there doing something, feeling something, more than what my regulated little homeland can give me with its petty squabbles and too-often-”misunderstood” politicians and suddenly abundant defamation threats.

Every place you go to has its own energy. Wellington was a quirky, artsy place, while Christchurch was laidback. Hong Kong was buzzing with life at a speed that waits for no one. Singapore, though, often feels business-like and matter-of-fact, and very much about keeping up appearances. It’s not so important whether we’re fine or not, as long as we seem fine, as long as we have the best airport and the largest wheel and the highest bar and the most simultaneous games of Scrabble.

The need to be clean, shiny and new all the time can be stifling, the orderliness exasperating. The reluctance to admit problems and mistakes drives me to distraction. The speed with which we feel the need to point out the (bigger) problems of other countries to hide behind is constantly rage-inducing, because it’s such a cowardly, petty response that doesn’t address any issue at all.

Sometimes all I want to do is yell out, “Look here, we’re totally messed up. It doesn’t matter who has it worse, what matters is that we are pretty screwed-up too. It’s okay to admit it!”

When I’m away, though, this frustration melts away, leaving me with just the memories of Singaporean foibles. The obsession with food. The kiasuism. The way we joke and laugh and have a good time. The diversity amidst which we live our lives.

When I think of these things, I find myself really missing my home, and the people I share it with.

I suppose it is only when I leave Singapore that I succeed in cutting through the issues and niggling annoyances to properly appreciate the essence of my country, and get a fresh perspective on a place that I will always be tied to. And it’s when I am away that it becomes clear: there is something special about the essence of Singapore, and we can do so much more to nurture it. We’re amazing, but often we spend too much time keeping up with the Joneses to really recognise it. And that’s a shame.