Running from something
I've only been in Singapore for 3 days now, but I'm considering extending my visit. I only told my teachers I'd be gone for a week and a half, but these days it's easy to blame flight cancellations, bad weather, etc. I really love it here . . . it's not as rife with historical landmarks and famous, tourist overtaken, sight-seeing destinations as Paris, London, or even New York, but Singapore City itself is without a doubt the greatest urban center I've ever seen. Unabashedly modern, breathtakingly industrial, though without the rust and smog that one usually associates with that word . . . the way I want to describe it is "pristine," although not in the sense of a mountain waterfall, but rather like a spotless sheet of hard, untarnished steel. The city reminds me of an enormous machine, still somehow elegant, which runs seemingly thoughtlessly but still impossibly smoothly. I feel like I'm in a computer simulation of a city rather than a real one. In fact, that very sense of something exquisitely manufactured that attaches itself to every aspect of life here brings with it, for me, a sort of foreboding. Perhaps it's overly fatalistic of me, but I can't help but feel that nature would revolt against a city so devoid of anything truly natural. Singapore City is an urban Titanic, with every eventuality seemingly taken care of, and as much as I maintain my belief in the potential of humanity, I've seen too many movies and read too many books to believe that man can ignore nature with such casual facility. Even basic human nature is almost forgotten in this metropolis, where every action, interaction, and function is swallowed by such formality and ritual that the terms "basic" or "primitive" can not be applied to such essentially natural things as eating, or even fighting. More on this later, I might not be able to post again while I'm here, but I'll fill in the blanks when I get back, whenever that may be. As long as this futuristic Eden is in existence, I want to experience it.