Impressions

15th May.

I am excited on my flight to Singapore. It is the first time I will be traveling out of India, the first time I will be on a flight which is longer than two hours. The last few days have been a blur of exams, shopping, planning and packing, giving me no time to contemplate the approaching adventure. My thoughts are still unsettled as I join Geeta, a classmate at the Mumbai airport. I love the flight, with the weird accented air hostesses dressed in graceful traditional skirts, the wide selection of music and videos, cocktails ('Singapore Sling' highly recommended) and the food. Makes me feel pampered, and makes me feel like a child on her first ever international flight. Both of which are accurate enough descriptions I guess. :) I have managed to sweet talk the ground staff into giving me a window seat, and I love the breath taking views of the ocean and the coastline I'm regularly offered.

The Changi airport is clean and efficient. Two words that make a frequent appearance as I observed how things are managed and maintained here. We check our mail, are filtered through immigration, pick up our luggage and a couple of information brochures and take a taxi to the university campus. (Note the order of priorities :P) The taxi is wonderfully comfortable, the driver dressed in a starched white shirt. The brief flashes of the city through the speeding windows offer promise. Everything seems unreal, including me. I can't seem to fully comprehend that these are my fingers pressed to the glass, that it's my head which is trying so hard to commit these first moments to memory.

Enter Spica. Physics buddy, project buddy, girl talk buddy. The IISc connection, which for some reason refuses to fade away like the many others I've forged. She's as spicaish as ever. I will save the detailed list of her quirks till later... later being the (distant) point of time when I promise to fulfill my long standing promise of writing her a testimonial. After an expensive and unsatisfying dinner (something which is soon to become an everyday occurrence), Spica and I settle down to one of our all night discussions.


16th May.

Today is our first official day of 'settling down'. We deal with the necessities - groceries, a phone card, travel cards. It feels so liberating to be on my own again - doing my own stuff, handling it all because I'm on my own. :) I realise how much I miss all these little things. That somehow I associate doing these little things with the notion of being 'independent' as a person. Today is also a day of acquaintance - we find out how Singapore functions and how we are supposed to function in it. It is the day of the first vending machine drink, the first supermarket spree, the first bus ride. I'm on a kiddish high because of the new things I see. Today is also the day of first impressions. And mine is that of a toy city, with toy people. Everything is ordered, picture-perfect: the cars and buses move smoothly, the people all resemble each other and look like little a set of new china dolls, the rolling lawns and the rising buildings seem as if they had been planted there a moment ago by a cherubic hand. Everything is sparkling, fresh - like the pieces of a new lego set.


17th May : A Day at the Zoo!

I'd thought that the zoo days were behind me. Like really. But I'd overestimated myself and underestimated the management of the zoo and Singaporean zeal in general. I had fun. All of us did. And that's an understatement. It was a day full of lighthearted fun. The kind you used to have when you were a kid and went to the zoo. Just like that. Let me get more descriptive before I get emotionally entangled. Here is the zoo map to give an idea of what it was like: http://www.zoo.com.sg/visitor/IMAGES/ZooMapFeb08_big.jpg . We spent the whole bus ride carefully plotting out our route, and then arrived at the zoo to realise that our plan wasn't as smart as we'd figured. We decided on walking around and exploring everything that came our way. I really don't remember the names of all the animals we saw, but I do remember the sense of amazement that I felt. I don't know how much native animal and plant life this little country has - apart from the standard equatorial rainforest fare, but they sure made up for it! As you've probably noticed, the zoo has been thoughtfully divided into independent parts - each with a particular, self-contained theme: 'Australian Outback' in which you can see kangaroos and emus, a large tank with polar bears, the 'Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia', and 'Wild Africa', to name but a few. In each part, the available resources had been utilised so cleverly, to make a walk through it a memorable experience. Each animal (or group of animals) were allocated an 'island', surrounded by a moat. The animals were able to move around a bit and the visitors got the impression of having seen the animal almost in the wild: uncaged, in its 'natural' environment. The aquatic animals: like the polar bears, or crocodiles or pygmy hippos were housed in large glass tanks. I literally got goosebumps when I was able to 'touch' them. We were entertained at the 'Splash Amphitheatre' and at the 'Elephants of Asia' exhibit by well trained seals, penguins, sea cows, elephants and of course, the warm and vivacious human hosts. I was enthralled by not only the animals, but by the whole show. It's not easy to hold the attention of and entertain a crowd of about 200 adults, and it's not easy to do it so well that you're left giddy with laughter and the warm glow of kiddish enthusiasm. But the thing which I enjoyed the most was the tropical rainforest. It was a huge, covered enclosure which housed tropical plants, trees, birds, tarantulas (!), lemurs, bats and mouse deer. As we walked through it the animals and plants welcomed us, submerged us. This wasn't a small section of a bustling city - this was the real thing: a walk through the Amazon basin. As we left the rain forest, we passed a few exhibits: interesting insects, insectivorous plants, tribal implements and a board displaying an old Cree Indian saying:
" Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."
For some reason, this really stuck with me.
And that was the coolest thing about the zoo: it didn't attempt to only awe, it also paid attention to little details, it provided information, encouraged conservation, and amused and entertained simultaneously.


13th June.

A lot more has been witnessed since then: Sentosa Island, the Jurong Bird Park, shopping expeditions, Singaporean night life and coffees with old friends. But somehow, I feel more like the jaded tourist now, and less like a child. And yet, I wish for more time. More time to spend with Me, with Spica, more time to run on the beautiful running track encircling the jade of grass, more time with a new problem, more time with the old one. More time till I face another year of schedules and uncertainty.
My narrative ends here. This was more of an experiment than the sharing of an experience. :) Feedback?