2018 "Song of India" Adventure - Day 4 - Singapore

Day 4 – Friday, February 23rd – Singapore

(Allan writing) The day started as usual, with the two of us waking up, showering, then trundling off to the breakfast buffet on the main floor just past the lobby. The food was quite good, and there was enough variety that you could have an entirely different breakfast every day for a week if you wished. I, of course, do not waver J: eggs, much bacon, croissant, 2 – 3 cups of coffee, and possibly a small glass of orange juice.

Today’s plan was to return to the Marina Bay area, check out the shops, then visit the ArtScience Museum. We left the hotel right around 10:00 and made our way down the slight hill that the hotel rests upon, past Mt. Elizabeth Hospital, to the Orchard Street metro station. Our destination was two trains – one stop on each – away from our starting point. We were at Marina Bay in no time. We never had to wait more than 5 minutes for any train while we were here in Singapore. The trains were always clean, like the city as a whole (very), and very well air-conditioned.

Slight side note here: Singapore, at least what little we saw of the core of the city, has an underground component teeming with life and vitality. It sort of reminded me of some of the similar tunnels and warrens of shops to be found near Grand Central Station in NYC. These areas were always busy, even late into the evening when there was much less activity on the street. I’m sure the constant heat and humidity had a lot to do with this.

We got off the train and meandered a bit through the mall that’s across the street from the Marina Bay Sands. It was too early for most of the shops to be open yet, so we just enjoyed the cool air and some of the interesting window displays as we made our way to the ArtScience Museum at the far end of the mall (in a separate building – the one shaped like a giant partially deconstructed lotus flower).

Once inside the museum, we got our tickets and decided to go ahead and do this first since the mall wasn’t really open yet. There were three main exhibits currently open: Art of the Street, Futureworld, and The Natural World. We did the Futureworld exhibit first. Entering through a blacked-out portal, we came out into a space with a video projection being cast onto three of the six walls in this completely dark room. The projections were an endless series of constantly changing sea waves roiling against each other in the darkness – in black and white. The effect was mesmerizing. We remained here for a couple of minutes while we waited out turn to enter the main part of the exhibit. First, we walked into a small room with a light shining down onto the floor in the center. After a minute the light went out and a projection of the silhouettes of several crows sitting on branches began moving across the walls. All of a sudden the crows took flight, and tracers of light flowed out from each of them in a scintillating dance of light. These moved over the walls and the floor and eventually became something like dandelion heads that dissipated, reminding me of a segment of the Dali-Disney short film DESTINO. 

The next room was a cacophony: lots of beach ball like objects being played with by a mass of squealing, very small children in an enclosure in the middle of the large room (about 30-40 meters long and maybe 10 meters wide). The balls were of several different sizes and were brightly lit from within, glowing in various primary colors. On the black walls, there were several large fantasy projections being displayed, with unicorns and castles, and lots of birds and other animals – again to the delight of all of the young children present. The effect of all this on me was interesting. It was delightful to hear the pure unadulterated joy coming from all these little ones. It was infectious. I found it a bit difficult to leave behind. That particular quality of joy and happiness is not something we as adults get to experience (or allow ourselves to experience, I guess) very often. Move on we did…

The next installation in the exhibit was a walk-through space with 170,000 LED lights strung in rows that hung from the ceiling on floor to ceiling strings that pulsed with many different colored lights in a symphony of orchestrated pulses that were supposed to simulate celestial events in the universe – each light being a star. The effect of walking through this was almost beyond anything I’ve ever experienced of a visual nature. Spectacular is a wholly inadequate word to describe it. After about ten seconds I had the strange sensation that I was falling away and all that was left were the lights. It was exhilarating and disconcerting at the same time, but I just let it wash over me. Maybe there was some residual joy that had rubbed off on me from the children in the previous room, but whatever it was, I felt that pure joy and awe that we so rarely experience as we get older except in the presence of something utterly new and wondrous. I really had to drag myself out of this place.

After the Futureworld exhibit, we moved on to The Natural World. This was a traveling exhibit put together by the British Museum of Natural History and contained some key pieces in the story of the study of evolution. I didn’t care for this exhibit at all, except for some of the videos that were cast onto the walls in several spaces. These were all computer-generated imaginings of exhibits of extinct animals’ skeletons coming to life and crashing out of their glass enclosures, running around the museum, and in the case of the saber-toothed tigers – feeding on another animal that was unfortunate enough to be nearby. For the most part, this exhibit consisted of bird and insect specimens just sort of tossed into their display cases haphazardly. Meh. (I have to concur. Drawers of dozens and dozens of beautiful dead birds just made me sad. SW)

(Steve writes) From the subfloor levels, we ascended the large glass elevator up to the art exhibition area (the leaves of the lotus, as it were). The galleries were arranged around a central core. The exhibit we saw, “Art of the Street”, was about how graffiti went from 1970s public nuisance to 1990s art. The large displays were in segment in chronological order. Artists from Paris and New York were featured. Now, I’ve always hated (and still hate) graffiti. I remember the NYC subways being covered with it in the 70s, and I remember being shocked on our first trip to Rome in 2004 with the amount of graffiti in the city.

Once these “artists” went to canvas, however, there seemed to be more discipline in the design, even if the message was just as pointed. In fact, I found some of these works more enjoyable than a lot of “art” I’ve seen hanging in Modern Art museums around the world.

By the way, the dramatic exterior design (by Moshe Safed) of the museum just didn’t carry through to the upper gallery interiors. They seemed somewhat lifeless, and some of that was probably due to the skylights at the highest points being covered up with cloth, no doubt to protect the collection.

After we left the museum, we returned to the mall and went in search of food. The “food court” area on the lowest level was packed. It also featured a spectacular animated floor (as if in a skating rink) where kids were running around interacting with the images. Above it was a multi-story light fixture that was also animated. It was very magical – something Disney might have done at one of their theme parks.

We ended up eating at the DC Comics Super Heroes Café. That’s right, boys and girls: a restaurant built around DC Comics characters. But the menu was something out of The Joker’s realm: bizarre dishes and drinks, all organized in a multi-page menu that would give even Superman a headache. The place was deserted, which at crowded lunch time wasn’t a good sign. Perhaps it was the location several stories above the food court. Perhaps it was the bizarre menu. Perhaps it was the higher-than-normal prices (SGD $19.00 for a beef quesadilla). We felt bad for the staff, we just stood around bored out of their minds. The food was good, and nicely presented. But this concept has “major flop” written all over it.

A lot of retail space, devoid of customers

(Allan writing) After our strange, but tasty lunch we headed back to the hotel for a nap and then Steve found a highly-rated Peranakan restaurant named, surprisingly, The Peranakan that was just a short walk from our hotel. The restaurant, situated inside a mall on the second floor, was a garishly colored and charming collection of kitschy goods and foodstuffs displayed for sale a few meters before you even made it to the front of the restaurant. There were several types of wallpaper competing for attention, and many small chandeliers, brightly lit. It was loud and boisterous and just felt – fabulous! We were led to a table in the back along one wall, seated next to a couple of large groups that seemed to be having celebration dinners of some kind. We were attended to by several waiters but one (probably Malaccan) in particular took a very hard shine to Steve. He was a very sweet, large, young man – about twenty-five or so. He wanted to know the usual stats: where we were from, how long were we in town, and seemed crestfallen when we admitted we were leaving the next day.

The Peranakan's dazzling interior - a stylistic potpourri

Our dinner was wonderful!

We asked this waiter where we could find Peranakan spices in the city and he suggested – Mustafa Center! We all laughed as Steve regaled him with our tale of woe from the night previous, and he brought us some lovely tea with honey after our delicious meal of Beef Rendang (beef cubes cooked in a rich coconut and spice mix – delicious!) and Ayam Goreng Ketumbar (chicken thighs marinated with turmeric and coriander and then deep fried). Steve even ate the little Prawn Rolls that were served as an appetizer (sort of like wontons with a dried prawn and spice paste inside – very good!). (SW: I was duped into believing it had no fish!)

One of the other, much older, waiters explained to us (as I had also read on Wikipedia earlier in the day) that much Peranakan, or Nyonya-style, cooking is time-consuming and best served/eaten at home. The spices and recipes used are handed down from one generation to the next and are not divulged. At any rate, our dinner was most delightful and we would happily recommend The Peranakan to any visitor to Singapore.