I wrote down some of my thoughts before I left, highlighting what I was most excited for.
- As I was packing for Singapore, I put on BBC’s Planet Earth and watched it on repeat. It’s one of the few TV shows I’ve actually watched all the way through. In the last episode of the series, BBC gives a shout-out to SG for it’s Green philosophy. It’s known as the Garden City, and has plans to become a City Within a Garden. I can’t wait to go on runs in one of the many parks and not be suffocated as I was last summer in Bangalore.
- I’m curious about how the fairly well-defined cultures interact in Singapore. The main ethnic groups are Indian (mostly southern Indians), Malay, and Chinese. How prominent are these cultures in everyday life in SG? How does language relate to these ethnic groups – if someone identifies as part of one of these groups, will they speak their mother tongue?
- I want to know what it’s like to live in a city-state/city-country. The U.S. has so much land and so many states – I imagine Singapore in a very different way. A book I was skimming through, How Asia Works, claims Singapore is not a country in the normal sense. With everyone so geographically close, he says, the city encounters difficulties that other countries don’t and enjoy advantages that larger countries aren’t able to. On a personal level, I am excited to be able to fully experience Singapore. In a country like India, even a year is not long enough to even get a taste of the whole of the country. I do think, however, that I’ll be able to know quite a bit of Singapore in the four to five months that I’m there.