from the horizon

Arriving in Singapore was easy. It just works: the subway, using my credit card, people speaking English, my hotel reservation.
I had to get my Indonesian visa here, and although I found it a little unusual to hand my passport complete with $160 over to a complete stranger, who I met outside a McDonalds, everything worked smoothly, and I had my visa on the same day.

In my quest to buy a laptop in Singapore, I found myself at the Comex computer and electronic expo. I found the 4 massive halls filled with electronics slightly overwhelming. The amount of money that was being spent; the cost of some of the products there. I ogled the plasma screens, with their screens which were so life like, showing the same unbelievable Hollywood movies. But I couldn’t help thinking: where are the donkeys?

I sifted through the overwhelming number of options, and eventually found a laptop which suited my needs. Charging the $2200 to my credit card I realized that I had just spent more than the annual salary of a Pakistani on a single item. I consoled myself, repeating the mantras of technology: it is more efficient, it will save time, it is better, faster, stronger.
The next day the keyboard on my brand spanking new laptop stopped working. I spent the morning taking the laptop back, where they changed the keyboard, reinstalled the software, and then eventually just gave me a new laptop. The time it took stressed me out, I was busy enough already, without having to deal with technology not working.
One thing I was looking forward to was going back to the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery. This is the largest Buddhist Monastery in the region, and I had visited it on my previous visit to Singapore. It was interesting relating the modern temples in this monastery, at the eastern horizon of the sphere of Buddhism, to the Buddhist ruins in Taxila, far to the west. 2000 years and 5000 kilometers separate them, and the Chinese influence is evident, but an statue of Buddha is still a statue of Buddha. Especially when it’s 14 meters high. I wonder what sense the small plaque on the side, with the email address of the contractor who built it, will make in another 2000 years.

One of the things which disturbs me about Singapore, is how manufactured everything is. Everything is designed, planned out, quantized in a way that doesn’t allow for natural creatively. You can walk all day, always inside away from nature, in malls, subway, underpasses.

An even the little nature there is has to designed. The bark on these trees on Orchard Road did fit with “the plan”, and so it had to be covered with this “designer” pattern. What’s wrong with a little unordered nature?
The reason this disturbs me, is because Singapore works. It is the leading economy in the region, poverty is low, it is clean, for many of the social indicators, it just works. Is this the Brave New World which we are heading towards? And when the authoritarian government plans everything out and decides what is best of all the citizen, what is lost in the quantization?