Singapura, lah

Mom and I spent a few days in Singapore before we both had to leave and (besides my one night and day of food poisoning, which is weird, considering we ate basically all the same things) it was really lovely. Even though I wasn’t living at “home” anymore, it was good to be back in a city I am familiar with and can navigate easily. Plus, we did some things I’d always meant to do but hadn’t gotten around to. We went to the SAM (Singapore Art Museum), which was pretty nice. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, so I’m not really sure how to interpret what I saw. We saw an outdoor performance of Much Ado About Nothing on its last night in a park called Fort Canning right behind where we were staying. It was such a lovely evening. The set was beautiful and everyone in the audience brought mats to sit on and picnic dinners. We got a nice spot far enough away from the stage to see it all and right in the middle for a prime view. The acting was really great, too, and Much Ado is just such a fun show (good ole Will). As was the cheese, crackers, avocado, dried apricots, apples, wine and chocolate that we had for dinner. All the things I’d been missing in one night!

Mom and I also went up to the top of the Fullerton Hotel, a tall building with a bar on the 70th(+?) floor that looks out over much of Singapore. Mom had a lot of fun identifying buildings she’d seen from the street and figuring out exactly where she was when she got lost. I enjoyed seeing this city that I’d grown so comfortable in from a bird’s-eye-view with the sun setting over it and everything. Although Portland is my first love and the most beautiful city in the world to me, Singapore certainly held its own. When I was flying to Thailand for the last time (way back in the beginning of May for the FMP), we left in the evening and the plane circled around and gave us a beautiful view of the whole island of Singapore. It was so unreal to actually be able to see it all at once, just the way it looks on maps. You can’t ever see Oregon like that (go figure – state lines are manmade) or the states (except maybe from space). That was a pretty bittersweet moment because even though I knew I was coming back, all of my friends were leaving for the last time and going off to other areas of SE Asia. It all went by so fast.