New York, New York ✈ Singapore, Singapore

24 hours, 2 flights, a stopover in Shanghai and a few hours of unsuccessful sleep later and I’m back. With memories of a chilly New York fall just beyond, I’ve assumed a far balmier climate just one degree north of the equator. Palm trees line the highway leading from the airport into town and at just past 6am on the Wednesday I arrived, I witnessed the day slowly creep to a start. The ethnic diversity I’ve come to expect is abundant at every turn. Westerners jog through neighborhood streets, Malay women in Islamic hijabs are just nearby and the Chinese majority are present at every juncture. Milling about tourist heavy Little India may lead to one weaving in and out of one of many air-conditioned malls that dot the island. Singapore is perpetually cloaked in summer temperatures, but from the buses to the MRT (the subway), malls, shops, eateries and back, there’s no shortage of chilling indoor intermission.
Singapore was the first nation practically forced into independence just 46 years ago. The colonizing British decided to leave and neighboring Malaysia passed on the opportunity to join forces. Though possessing few natural resources, being just over 3 times the size of Washington, D.C. and barely a few decades old, this island-nation possesses one of the strongest economies in the world. Fruits of this can be seen within the towers of the Central Business District, estates of Bukit Timah, skyline alongside the iconic Marina Bay Sands and resorts of nearby island Sentosa.
I’ve taken a peak at them all. But just barely two weeks in and with more cuisine to explore and acclimation to assume, I feel I’ve barely seen a thing.

Spring to Fall

Despite convincing myself that I would only visit New York upon returning to America, it took just under a week for a full on move. While still toiling about India, the wheels of motion began to set themselves based on the possibility of work. Imagining all of the usual gaudy scenes, gritty pedestrian cavorting and reunions come to life pushed any previous avoidance of a fast return to stage left. Making the rounds in Brooklyn and Manhattan started during a chilly Spring soon transitioning to summer’s balmy gaze. Barbeques on the relatively low perches of the East Village to toasting Queens high atop an East River straddling terrace. Idealizing home throughout my time abroad allows cloudy skies framed by the skyline to appear priceless. Taking in the Empire State Building and giddily name dropping my location leaves me falling deeper into love with the City having now experienced not having it for so long. Further disorienting my grasp on reality, I stumbled onto the set of a television show on Avenue A I watched faithfully months prior from my flat in Seoul.
I walk to work past grouchy Houston Street truck drivers and into the clutches of swarming Prince Street tourists. The sun beats my shoulders at lunch through the looming oak above. As congested my surrounds, every day brings a new joy. A new privilege is offered forth, fallout from stalking the capital of the world.

“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.”

In my latest effort to capsule the experience, herewith, (incredibly grainy) disposable camera pictures from my last year in Asia.

24 days and 24 nights

5 April 2011

I’m washing down a warm honey-filled croissant with a sweet latte. The walls of this café are lined with a novelty collection of jams and jazz plays over the speakers. One could assume I’ve long departed India and am now back in the cushy confines of the states, but it isn’t so. I’m a stone’s throw from India Gate and the Taj Mahal Hotel having brunched with a couple of new friends in Bombay (the newly assigned “Mumbai” is only present on maps and the tongues of tourists). My brother Stuart made an e-mail introduction to an old college friend of his, Arunoday, and he’s allowed me to tag along with him for a taste of the city in my final days.
Mr. Singh and his friend Aditi have proven gracious hosts and we speed around, offering forth a taste of 1st world India. My entire trip thus far has been swathed in delicious roadside curry, offers of ear cleaning on train platforms and illegal spice markets. Digesting the contrast between the levels within which I’ve been embedded derives a perverse sense of entitlement. Bargaining with rickshaws days ago has now become waiting on the valet. Fruitless attempts at locating English periodicals in Calcutta are no longer. Arunoday and Aditi introduced me to an international newsstand stocked with local titles, one of which includes a feature on him (a budding Bollywood star).
Having once been among the masses, the vantage I hold from the passenger seat of an air-conditioned SUV has created a complete shift in the experience. My go-to options previously would have been to frequent the tourist heavy sites of centuries past, but I’m now truly living as a local. To witness Bombay from the placement of moneyed Indians has involved a sudden transition that I could not imagine possible when wiping dirt from my brow after a day spent on the back of a motorcycle chasing through the streets of Varanasi. Spending what amounts to $70 in the local currency on lunch feels intensely insensitive having witnessed certain abject poverty all trip long.
When traveling, I painstakingly research, plan and obsess. After laying out the structure to my adventure, I imagine what types of welcome surprises will slap me in the face, things I would never be able to foresee. More than my rural accident outside of Delhi, Nepalese encounters in Darjeeling or glucose charged adventure in Bangalore, being allowed a couple of days under Arunoday’s charge has proven to be the most enthralling surprise thus far.
He, Aditi and I dine, see a movie, wax poetic over music, I jostle with a film director over the untenable debate of baseball vs. cricket and as soon as it as all began, it is time to say goodbye. Goodbye to my new friends. (Friends human and friends imagined, as I’ve shamelessly laid claim to a connection to the land based on my brief foray.) After a satisfying near month long exploration I bid India and Asia farewell, my return home finally before me.