Pure Grandeur

We have moved into our 1,200 square foot apartment in the middle of a Singapore borough with a population density of about 16,000 people per square kilometer. It’s called Ang Mo Kio, which reportedly means “tomato” or “Red Haired Man’s Bridge,” depending on who you ask. The words “ang mo” are supposedly very offensive to dudes who look like, well, me.

Our apartment complex has an uber-Asian name: Grandeur 8.

What does that mean? What does Grandeur 8 mean?

It means everything and nothing at all, which is exactly why I love it. It sounds like we live in a flat straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel. I feel like someone is going to leave a small origami unicorn made from a tinfoil gum wrapper just outside of our door. (Can anyone name the movie, please?)

Ang Mo Kio is about as different from SE Aurora, Colorado as we could find. As I write this, I am sitting in my 6 x 6 foot office space looking out at about 100 towers and skyscrapers that disappear towards the hazy horizon downtown. I can watch the metro trains on the north/south line come and go far below. A steady stream of tiny Asian cars loops through the Ang Mo Kio town center, just there. I’m still not used to them driving on the left; each right turn across oncoming traffic gives me vertigo.

                                                                                         

The handover of the keys to our new apartment was similar to what receiving the keys to, say, 10 Downing Street or 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. might be like: thorough, intense, full of scrutiny. Picture me and two other guys walking through the place with spreadsheets of about 200 boxes to check and make notes about (i.e. “small scrape on upper tile of bathroom wall”), and you kind of have the idea.  Tedious. As. Hell.

New lifestyle feature for us Americans: remote control air conditioner units. There’s a separate unit in each room, and each unit has its own remote. I like the “swing” feature.

Similarly, there’s a water heater that needs switching on and off before and after usage. I remember that cultural difference from my last time in Asia. Many cold showers to come for sleepy Americans used to 24-7 hot water.

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Shopping at the Ang Mo Kio Fair Price Market, I was treated to some of the best back-to-back-to-back in-store music I’ve ever heard: “Still Lovin’ You” by Scorpions, “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, and (I kid you not) “Stairway to Heaven.” The volume was pretty loud for supermarket music, which was integral. I was playing so much air drum and air guitar that the family acted as if it did not know me, and the Singaporeans stayed far away as well. I was in my element and did not care one jot. Not a jot. Rockin’ to Zeppelin in the rice cake and seaweed aisle is where I wanna always be, man.

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Callie’s finally back with us full-time. I am starting to notice that Singaporeans are terrified of dogs. The sight of Callie has made several very normal-looking people scream. It is a TOTAL disconnect from American culture, where we love our pooches. I am completely amused by this, especially since Callie is The Greatest Dog on Earth and is as about as aggressive as a manatee.

I keep asking Callie, “Are you the best dog in Ang Mo Kio?” and she smiles and wags her tail. There are dark brown, smallish squirrels here, and she loves to try to chase them (until the end of the leash jerks her back to reality).

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Because the climate is so humid, drying clothes here is a trick. On the back patio space thingy on our apartment, there are drying racks with bamboo poles that stretch across—maybe 5 foot long poles. You hang sheets and towels over said poles and then stretch the poles across the racks. I am almost positive that we are doing it incorrectly, but things are drying.

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I am seeing more badminton and table tennis during these Olympics than in all previous Olympics combined. The passion! The drama! The weird sweat-flinging thing they do! Zhang Jike of China is my new favorite athlete, I think. That dude can play him some ping pong. Fearsome.

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People here fly kites with multicolored-LEDs attached at night. Eerie and beautiful. Alien. Extra-terrestrial. Haunting and goofy at the same time. Funny and mesmerizing, kind of like a firework explosion that’s been frozen in time and given a string. We want to get one!