What I Learned In The City pt 5

A Weekend in The City of The Lion
2005, so far has turned out be a great year for travel for me. I haven’t travelled to so many places in such a short time ever, in the history of my short/long life. The odd thing is that I simply seem to be treading paths already trodden. I’ve been to HongKong/Singapore/USA before at different periods in my life.

I began this year with New York and London.
Then spent a little bit of time in Bombay.
Then Hong Kong.
Then Agra (of course New Delhi comes in the middle of all this).
Finally, I spent the last 4 days in Singapore.

Singapore is an Anglicisation of the words Singha-Pura….which is Sanskrit for Lion City (thus the famous MerLion as Singapore’s emblem).

So here’s what I learned (with an inevitable HongKong-Singapore comparison, as many people refer to these city-states in the same breath). Can’t wait for the day that those cities get happy at their “de-hyphenation”, LOL.

1) (The Most important point, again). Cellphones are cheaper in India than in Singapore. In fact, Singapore in general seemed to be expensive – US$1 = S$1.65

2) There aren’t half as many tall buildings in Singapore than in HongKong. The population is also around half.

3) Singapore is very close to the Equator. This means that in June, it ALWAYS rains around 4 pm… (Hong Kong, on the other hand, has a cold winter). In July, you should also be sure to take your umbrella with you.

4)Despite all the alleged strictness and caning, I saw a drunken brawl go on for about 20 minutes in an area called Boat Quay, among some really happening clubs and pubs.

5) Singapore is the one place I’ve been to in the world that Indians are actually liked and respected. When people talk of Indians in Singapore, it’s not as a bunch of usurpers, but as locals. In Hong Kong & India, Indians are just plain hated. In USA, we’re tolerated, with polite comments about how tasty Chicken Tikka is. In the UK, we may be jumped on by plainclothes policemen and shot 5 times before they realize we ain’t terrorists( OK, that’s below the belt, but whatever). The local paper (The Straits Times) even has a whole section devoted to India alone. Wow. The current prime minster is also talking about how he wants Singapore to be to India what Hong Kong was/is to China. (A sort of conduit/middleman, which is mutually benficial)

6) Diwali is a public holiday in Singapore (I think Fiji and Trinidad also have Diwali as a public holiday.)

7) Despite the drunken brawl mentioned, Singapore (like Hong Kong) is amongst the safest cities in the world. You can be walking down a dark alley here at 4 am in the morning, and not worry about a thing. I think this leads to the women over here being generally friendlier and more approachable. And considering that most people here are mixed-race (inter-mingling of Indian, Chinese, Malay, European), they are tongue-hanging-out-and-salivating attractive….or maybe I just went on a good day.

There isn’t as much public transport as I expected. In Hong Kong, double-decker buses are basically piling on to each other, and climbing steep hillsides and the like. In Singapore, not so much. There is an underground train system, but it seemed more in the mould of the New Delhi Metro – most stations were a bit of a walk.

9) Following on from point 8, I think this is why the most common type of car in Hong Kong is a Mercedes (as everyone from poor to upper-upper-middle class doesn’t own a car, they just use public transport. Whereas in S’pore, the most common car I saw was the Toyota Corolla. Of course this is just anecdotal. I also saw quite a few Honda Citys (Cities?) on the streets of S’pore. This car is only made (and sold) in India, Thailand, Japan and Malaysia/Singapore. I like it (because I own it).

10) The (Jurong) Bird Park is a great place to go sightseeing. Lots of rare birds and a great bird show. The Night Safari on the other hand was not so impressive. I’ve seen Elephants up close, and South Asian Buffalo are NOT something to be included in a “Safari”. But to be fair, to the urban Singaporean, the Night Safari would be a cool experience.

11) You need a visa for Singapore, (which is easy to get, but still annoying). S’pore, Hong Kong beats you on this count.

The bottom line is that Singapore is Hong Kong in the Twilight Zone. The Same, but Different.
Well that’s that. I don’t have any pictures of S’pore, and am still deciding between posting a Flikr badge or using Google Images to get the Hong Kong pictures up.

Eve-Teased & Adam Attacked

I wonder about our Wonders..
Sigh. We interrupt the scheduled Hong Kong-pictures post with the following news bulletin. This Voice has tried hard to present the counter-view of India. It has always fought to show that the future is not so bleak, that things are improving, that life is getting better. This Voice still stands by all of that.

Unfortunately, however, all is not well in Agra. This will be this Blog’s first (and hopefully last) negative post about India. We have a host of other blogs up and running explaining how much life sucks in India, not to mention enough media. I grudgingly add this post to that list.

So I begin by explaining, that this Voice accompanied some of his American friends from college to Agra, to show them India’s Wonder of the World. So we left Delhi at 6 am, and hit National Highway 2. For the most part, this highway is in VERY good condition, despite the occasional nasty villages along the way, and trucks/buses driving on the wrong side of the road instead of taking U-turns at the appropriate junctions. Anyway, we made it to Agra in 3 hours flat. Nice. Sort of.

Agra is filthy. No, not only is it filthy, but it’s also disgusting. You would think, that for the amount of foreign currency gushing into the place, it would be in much better condition? No such luck. The (Eastern) Entrance to the Taj is also the pits. You don’t think you are about to enter a 400-year old Monument to Love. You think you might be entering a zoo, or a jail. For God’s sake, this is a WONDER OF THE WORLD. Clean out the shit and shops from around it, and keep it clean and nice-smelling. And make a clean and decent ticket counter, which does not have 3 babus sitting discussing the weather!

My next complaint is the with the entry fee. I know that many countries do this – but I still think that we shouldn’t. It works as follows:

Indian Citizens: Rs 20/-
Others: Rs. 750/-

Ummm, ok…How about 500 bucks for everybody. This is a Wonder of The World, people, not the front stall ticket at the (porno) morning theatre show. If poor people are prevented from seeing the Taj, then so be it – I think they have other priorities anyway…
I’ve known that the fee structure was always two different rates for foreigners and Indians, but I didn’t know the order of magnitude.

Ok, so we entered the Taj, took off our shoes, and walked up to the entrance of the tomb. It must have been especially bad day, because there was a lot of jostling and pushing and it was very crowded. This was my 4th visit to the Taj. The last 3 times, the experience was not so bad (even thought the entrance still sucked, as did Agra). There weren’t cheap louts hanging about the place, and people would enter and exit the main Tomb in an orderly fashion, with a decent guide narrating the whole story. But this time it was different. It was bad.

And now I come to the title of my post. My American friends were wearing dresses, which came just above their knees. They weren’t particularly revealing (in my opinion), but I guess you could call them borderline by Shiv Sena standards.

So a bunch of cheapo-creepos were sitting on the Taj lawns, and as we walked by, one of them had the nerve to say:

“Yeh Bhi Utaar Do” (TRANSLATION: “Why don’t you just take it all off?”

Now, Yours Truly, doesn’t usually play The Hero. I usually try to keep out of trouble – in school I was considered too wimpy to be beaten up, so nobody bothered. But there are limits, and this time they were crossed, so I decided, regardless of the consequences, it’s time to have a word.

(Warning: Bollywood-style dialogue ahead)

(Dialogue is in Hindi, and has been translated for the reader’s convenience)
ME: WHO are you taking to?
FUCKFACE (Grimaces as though I’VE ruined HIS day): It’s OK sir, I wasn’t talking to you
ME: NO, Sisterfucker, WHO do you think you’re talking to? If you weren’t a eunuch, I’d get your ass-kicked. And don’t think I’d do it alone. Would you like me to call my other friends? (There were no other friends, but that’s not the point)
FUCKFACE(Still looking exasperated and hassled!): I wasn’t talking to you sir. I was talking to my friend

At this point, one of women my friends (who is Indian) walks up to me and says loudly: “Don’t waste your time on these losers. Let’s go”

ME (Walking away): Looks like you didn’t get a chance to fuck your mom last night – that must be why you’re sitting here passing comments.

At this point, I spy through the corner of my eye, that the guy actually get’s up with his friends, and they actually walk away, and out the exit – instead of coming after me and murdering me.

Although it ruined our mood for the rest of the day, I can’t help but feel a little satisfied. I mentioned this incident to another friend of mine, and she said that it’s always best to ignore these things, and let it go, because “who knows what might happen”, and she went on to mention how another friend of hers got stabbed because of a similar incident like this. She tried to tell me that “you can’t always fight society, and that is what our country is like”

I have just this to say. This is MY country too. And that means I get to have a say in what it should and should not be like as much as the bastard who attempts to harass my female friends.

Thoughts? Comments? Curses?

What I Learned in The City Pt 4

The reason for my blogging absence

Once upon a long time ago (in the 1840s), England and China fought a war, over Opium. England sort of won, and got a piece of rock off the coast of China for its troubles. This rock was called “Fragrant Harbour” in Cantonese…or Hong Kong, if you prefer. It started off as a malaria-infested fishing village. And ended up being a 21st Century City (but it managed to do this all in the 20th Century). Spending my formative years in Hong Kong (from the ages of 3 to 12) was a boon and a bane.

Boon for many reasons:
because I got to see tall, shiny buildings,
efficient people, efficient public transport,
exposure to the West while still firmly grounded in the East,
the ability to visit a beach and go trekking on a hillside all in the space of 6 hours, while watching the world’s shipping barrelling in and out of the harbour.

Bane, because it left me jaded, and with high expectations from people and countries forever more. When I was studying in Philadelphia for my bachelors, on the first day my RA was waxing on how big Philadelphia is, what a multicultural city it is, and what lovely public transport it has…. While it left many people impressed, I greeted it with a head shake. For somebody who had grown up in Hong Kong, you could not call 12 skyscrapers a city. A rattling subway car (in which the lights would go out for 2/3 seconds as it raced under the ground, is NOT efficient public transport). And most important of all, I saw 3 guys on three separate occasions peeing on the side of the street, with nobody saying anything to them (whereas in Hong Kong, they’d be fined HK$12,000 (US$1538). These scenes are reminiscent of a 2.5-world country… Then on my first visit to Manhattan (at night) – everybody else was wowed by the awe and wonder of the tall buildings and glittering lights and the beauty of it all. Whereas yours truly sat there with a “Been there, done that” kind of look. To be fair, New York is much bigger than Hong Kong, and far older. But I’ve still seen better :-p “Octopus” Smart Card, and put $100 into it. Then you just have to flash the card in any bus, subway, 7-11, McDonalds or any other place that has a reader
5) Hong Kong is now home to a Soho, like London and New York, with restaurants, bars, pubs and art galleries (hey, Soho is a better name than the old one – Lan Kwai Fong )
6) Hong Kong Chinese people are still blatantly racist against Indians – if you are sitting in a bus, for example, they will simply REFUSE to sit next to you until they are forced to to.
7) Hong Kong shopkeepers are less rude than they used to be (There used to be government sponsored campaigns encouraging shopkeepers to be nicer to tourists). But this also means that ever time you enter and leave a shop your are hit by blasts of “Haa-lowwww” and “Buh-bayyyyyyyyyy”

Pictures in the next post….