Global Pop

Auditions for Singapore's 2009 version of the international phenomenon drew big crowds this month.

Simon Cowell & Simon Fuller – a ruthless media partnership bent on world conquest. Who can stop him? Did I mention that Simon Cowell is also responsible for Il Divo?

Labrador Nature Reserve

Labrador Nature Reserve overlooks Keppel Harbour, named after Admiral Sir Henry Keppel.

Looking from the Labrador hillside. Some of Singapore's petrochemical processing sites can be seen in the distance.

After strolling the neighborhoods on Saturday, the Passengers decided Sunday was a good day for a walk in the (tropical) woods. Ironically, we set off on the MRT for Harbourfront, the train stop for shoppers descending on the VivoCity megamall or for revelers catching a bus, cable car, or monorail to the island playground of Sentosa. Though we did call at VivoCity for lunch, our primary destination was Labrador Nature Reserve, parkland and recreation area. In the nineteenth century the British deforested this hillside and set up gun batteries to defend the port of Singapore. They proved an effective deterrent until Japanese forces overran the island in 1942. Today the jungle and its birds and ants and lizards have overtaken the concrete bunkers and visitors can walk along steep, shaded paths or picnic by the water.

The trail along the Bunker Path has been marked with appropriate flagstones.

The remains of a gun emplacement. A tree has grown up through the central platform for the cannon.

This 6-inch gun was unearthed further north in Kallang. It has been mounted here with a couple resin figures it pith helmets can keep it company. Passenger H worried that they "don't dispel the stereotype of Britons with flat bottoms."

The strategic effect of this lookout point has diminished over time.

Reworking Westminster

An aerial view of Westminster shows the abbey (foreground) with its present cap over the crossing of the nave and transept.

Big news for those of us who visit ancient churches: Westminster Abbey today announced plans for a gilded top over the church's crossing space. Currently, the building has a little stumpy finish in the middle of its roof because no previous architects, including Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and George Gilbert Scott, could come up with a structurally sound design within cost constraints. The new addition would sit atop the site of every English monarch’s coronation since William the Conqueror. The planned corona is part of a larger refurbishment of the abbey intended to add exhibition spaces along unused triforium level and amenities like a refectory.

As an art historian, I am of two, maybe more, minds about this development. My research depends upon accessing and visualizing medieval in their original state, but I fully recognize the many interests and activities that must compete for space inside an historic institution living in an historic building. Aside from ecclesiastical and tourist obligations, the church and its treasures must be maintained and secured. Add in an active music program, a world-class school, and a Poets’ Corner. It’s an absolute scrum for space and resources under a non-profit business model. These places must adapt in order to serve their mission and constituencies. Plus, the buildings I study often replaced earlier structures deemed inadequate or out-of-date. Renovation and replacement are constant in architecture as much as conversation and veneration.

King Edward the Confessor is interred in the old Westminster Abbey. Detail of the Bayeux Tapestry, c. 1077; Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux.

For the most part, England’s great churches have adapted over centuries. Clerics have prayed at Westminster since 960, and Edward the Confessor’s grand abbey appeared in the Bayeux Tapestry. The present building began under Henry III’s patronage in 1245, and numerous building campaigns since have lengthened the nave and added the western towers. Henry VII rebuilt the Lady Chapel in an ornate Perpendicular mode that became the model for the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) next door. Plus, the Suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII threatened all of England’s abbeys with destruction.

The Swiss Re building by Lord Foster rises above the Tower of London.

Such history means I would be foolish to suggest that every medieval church should continue its eternal mission whilst frozen in a monument built for other times and demands. However, the new corona represents the first major alteration to the silhouette of any of England’s remaining medieval churches since a few nineteenth-century restorers heightened a few towers, like George Gilbert Scott at Bridlington, or pulled down rotting spires. This is renovation on a scale beyond installing fresh stained glass in a few lancets. It will further alter a London skyline that has evolved significantly in the last decade with the addition like the London Eye and the Swiss Re building, aka the Gherkin.

Additionally, the abbey has long enjoyed/endured a symbiotic relationship with the Crown. Architectural historians have long noted the building’s physical similarities and symbolic correspondence to Reims cathedral, the coronation church of the French kings. The Dean and Chapter who now oversee the church have asked for public comments on its proposed developments, but Prince Charles, a notorious critic of modern architecture, would be the first monarch crowned under the new structure. The new corona, Latin for “crown,” will intensify and reassert the connection between Church and State in Britain, and the Royals will continue to have some say over the appearance of Westminster Abbey.

The space in front of the high altar has seen the crowning of every English monarch since Edward I.

Saturday in East Singapore

This 328 location, in a traditional Peranakan shophouse building, attracts diners hungry for Laksa.

Saturday featured a very successful outing. The Passengers ventured out with a few Americans to Katong, a neighborhood in East Singapore traditionally home to Peranakans (Chinese families who have long dwelled in the Straits region). These streets gave birth to a spicy noodle and coconut soup called Laksa. We perched atop small plastic stools facing onto East Coast Road and ate at one of the areas's best known stalls (above). We also strolled by the Sri Senpaga Vinayagar temple (below). Chinese have lived around here for centuries, but this Hindu monument on Ceylon Road was built in 1875.

Three military helicopters cross the sky on exercises for the National Day parade 9 August.

Next, we hopped in a cab and made for the East Coast Lagoon Food Village where we sat at seaside picnic tables with pitchers of Tiger beer and a great view of the current maritime parking lot (below). The Food Village is another of the open-air clusters of food stalls, or hawker centres, found throughout Singapore. We heaped up plates of satay, stingray, and carrot cake. I took pictures of a couple interesting signs. Good food. Good chat. Good views.

Primary Care Primer

Wherever I travel abroad and no matter the political situation in the United States, talk about life in my country invariably circle around to America’s labyrinthine system of health care. Generally, I welcome the chance to explain life in those United States to any willing listener/reader. I hope, probably naively, that conversations about real experiences help everyone to humanize and understand a world full of social caricatures. Most of the perceived deficiencies of the United States (or any country, really) are actually peculiarities, like two-party politics or SUV's. Usually, I feel I can give some apology and for my nation's various quirks that makes America less cartoonish. However, in discussions about the American health care system I have yet to find myself an apology, and every year our medical arrangements become even more “perverse and baffling,” whether measured by individual stories or systemic statistics. Simply put, a major illness can carry catastrophic and ruinous costs, and medical insurance provides only a modicum of security.

Americans understand very little about how they pay the doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies that provide their medical care. This has contributed greatly to inaction against the system’s incentives and inefficiencies. It also explains why health care reform becomes a political rallying cry about once a decade. For those abroad who want to know what Americans live through when they get sick and for those Americans who wonder why it has come to this and how to fix it, I have a sampling of the really informative and provocative journalism (bold links) that has been generated by the current clamor for medical coverage.

Presently, dissaffection has reached a level where Americans are actually willing to pay increased taxes for adequate health care coverage, but we are still fearful of what change could mean. As always, the Economist do summaries of the existing situation really well. For a detailed look at the difficulties in containing health care costs, read Atul Gawande's "The Cost Conundrum," a New Yorker piece cited by the Obama administration. Dr. Gawande also wrote an insightful, and more encouraging, look in 2008 about how various European nations built their health care systems. For a more global perspective in providing patient care, listen to NPR's All Things Considered's examinations of Taiwan and Japan for Frontline.

Gawande's assumption that Americans will probably want to keep insurance as the mechanism for paying medical bills has proved accurate given the current discussion of a so-called "public option" for medical insurance. Robert Reich and Paul Krugman both write repeatedly about the economics of how a public option might control costs. Of course, a badly designed public option has serious risks.

Of course, all of this political chit-chat rides the daily shifts of opinions and optimism, but much of America appears to be debating and thinking about what they want in the health care. I only hope that what we want will be good for us, too. Anyone else read a good story or study about American health care? Click on "comments" below and clue us in.

Update (29 June 2009): Columnist David Brooks delivered an incredibly astute assessment of the legislative machinations toward health care reform a couple weeks ago. It's one of the cleverest passages of non-partisan political commentary I have read in some time.

Asian Mystique: Literary or Lurid?

Jean-August-Dominique Ingres-Montauban, detail of Une Odalisque, 1814; Musée du Louvre, Paris.

A new book, The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters, has hit the shelves. The author Richard Bernstein, a writer for the International Herald Tribune, explores the various attractions and abuses within relationships of Eastern and Western partners, particularly White men and Asian women. I have not read the book, but I wish him all the best at an hopefully honest attempt to crack open and sort through a can of worms that probably also contains botulism. This a topic that I anticipate will elicit visceral reviews and responses.

The cover features a detail from the famous Une Odalisque, and the image certainly packages up several issues that make discussions like Bernstein's so fraught. The nude Ingres created for the 1819 Paris Salon falls into a category of images art historians label as "Orientalist." Paintings like this, ostensibly a rendering of a harem girl, latched onto exotic and salacious aspects of Near Eastern culture to serve up titillation to Western viewers, whether factual or not. These compositions had a place alongside travelogues and a larger oeuvre of depictions that created a stereotypical East in Western minds, full of exotic morals and behaviors. This was the Orient of harems and geishas. Numerous scholars, following Edward Said's post-colonial treatise Orientalism, have shown how this caricature of a sexually available, and morally backward, East gave justification to colonists who saw the territory as open to military and economic penetration. Such attitudes of the East as populated by people "not like us" abetted the dehumanizing absuses of colonialism. Unfortunately, some present discussions of foreign relations have really not moved too far along. A book about sexual encounters between East and West would examine this dysfunctional relationship at its most personal levels.

For a good perspective on the present day, check out Laura Miller's cogent review of Bernstein for Salon. She acknowledges that both men and women can consciously choose a foreign-born partner but remains aware that prevailing circumstances usually don't favor Eastern women. Most importantly, she points out the central fallacy in the myth that Western men treat their chosen partners better than Eastern men do. Such allegedly superior mores largely derive from the ongoing struggles of Western women for greater respect and equality, and men who head East for female companionship could be considered runaways from such moral constraints. Her critique helps to explain the perception of injustice that often arises when people opt out of the supposed pool of acceptable partners. I heard one vivacious white woman in Singapore sum up her frustration with the local dating scene by declaring that no white men asked her out because they were all looking for "a taste of Asia."

However strongly such beliefs are held, some evidence exists to suggest that the predilection of white men for East Asian women constitutes more of a niggling anecdote than an actual phenomenon. Social experiments by Ray Fishman suggested that white men overall (in America) did not exhibit any racial preferences in their attractions to the opposite sex. Plus, new patterns of migration have greatly diminished the specter of colonialism. For example, how should sexual interactions involving well integrated children of immigrants or expatriates be classified? These couples might fit an White + Asian phenotype, but does this distinction become irrelevant when both partners share in the cultural principles of the adopted society? My experience has included multiple examples of mixed couples, including white chaps with Asian women, who enjoy relationships based on mutual attraction and affection. Awful stereotypes, like "lecherous, overweight Western sex tourist" or "gold digging Asian," surely represent an equally narrow and dangerous way to perceive the world. It's the plank in my own eye that I should worry about most. Another reminder to remain patient and generous when bedding down in another land.

Update (1 July 2009): Johann Hari has added a review of Bernstein for Slate, and ballet dancer/author Toni Bentley read the book for the New York Times. Also the vivacious white woman mentioned earlier had a second date with a nice chap last week.

Home Away from Home

At the entryway, please remove your shoes. Take a seat and relax on our vintage Flintstone settee. Seriously, that amorphous perch is rock solid.

By popular demand here are some pictures of our apartment here in Singapore. H’s job has installed us in a chic, serviced apartment so we have more amenities, like maid service, drop-off laundry, an on-site gym, than we could ever possibly use, not that we are unwilling to try. It’s a one-bedroom flat in a complex haughtily called The Sail @ Marina Bay (sound alert). I like the open plan, modern fittings, and the whimsical chandeliers, but I remain very suspicious of the wraparound sculpture that passes for a sofa in the living room area. We certainly have more room than the 400 square feet we so treasured in New York, and the location in the Central Business District (CBD) makes for an easy commute to work. It also means that our bedroom looks out at the offices of One Raffles Quay. Sadly, all these perks will have to end in about six weeks…

The kitchen looks onto the living room area and faces the full-length windows.

The bedroom offers a great view of the neighboring office space. At left is the desk from which I have written numerous posts.

I love the walk-in shower and its rainwater spigot. Did I mention the daily towel service? That's nice, too.

Update (Re: BBC or NPR?): We discovered the Public Radio Tuner iPhone/iPod app yesterday. Now we can listen to WNYC's morning shows in the evenings.

Chili Crabs, Pepper Crabs

Eng Seng coffeeshop only has a limited number of crabs each night. Anxious diners routinely queue on weekends.

It has been another stirring weekend for the Passengers in Singapore. I want to put up a post before the week takes off again at full tilt. We recently took an outing to a small, open-air diner known as a coffeeshop, or kopitiam. No one went for coffee. Instead, Eng Seng on Joo Chiat Place specializes in chili crab and pepper crab, two of Singapore’s signature dishes. Pieces of Sri Lankan crab are fried up in thick, savory blends of spices and served up with pieces of bread for mopping up the sauce. The sweet meat of the crab flesh nicely balances the piquancy of the spices. This dining establishment attracts a very local crowd; our party was the only collection of Angmos (white folks) all night. The bill for eight crabs, drinks, plates of noodles and vegetables, and bowls of fried rice totted up to less than S$200 (about 138 USD today). Hard to argue.

Pepper crab was my personal favorite. Eng Seng will also serve steamed crabs for those who demand purity or lack a sense of adventure.

Chili crabs come with lots of tasty sauce. The Tiger bottle (back left) is the flavorful local lager.

The Joo Chiat area features preserved shop houses built with store fronts below and living space above. This stall sold overwhelmingly fragrant durians, definitely a subject for a future post.

Denny's Disasters

The Onion (America's Finest News Source) has provided another pitch-perfect indictment of American life decrying casual dining and cable news; see Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals for America After Visiting Denny's. Courtesy warning: This video includes a few words not suitable for broadcasting over your cubicle wall.

American food has on occasion been praised for its mass appeal, but our odd predilection to combine comestibles with propellants deservedly invites derision from the French and, yes, even the English. Perhaps casual dining restaurants, those indistinguishable iterations of Applebee's, Olive Garden, and TGI Friday's, best capture the American urge to standardize, homogenize, and mediocritize the culinary experience. Among these Denny's stands proud as the forerunners who blanketed America with their version of the neighborhood/all-night roadhouse diner. They might be described as a sanitized edition of an American institution, but they scrubbed out all the charm and let their cleaning skills lapse. However, they are cheap and always open, plus senior citizens get their own discounted menu.

For those Britons who have never been into this restaurant, please conjure up some crude American stereotypes: fluorescent lighting, plastic booths, badly positioned smoking section, food retaining the shape of its container, apathetic waitstaff. Now subtract flavor and fun. The dishes don't require many ingredients, but they still taste like cardboard. Denny's is a place visited out of necessity -- when everything else is closed, because it's affordable, because I had a coupon. It's stationed at the bottom rung of American society, which means either customers are too ignorant to want something better or just unable to start climbing higher.

Been to Bintan

The Passengers spent this weekend relaxing on the island of Bintan. Actually, we whiled away two days in a cabana upon Singapore’s tourism beachhead in Indonesia. The island is a favorite getaway spot for urbanites looking for a tropical round of golf or quiet beaches away from the maritime parking lot that mars the sea view from East Coast Park. The ferry only takes an hour to cross the Singapore Strait and deposit weekenders among idyllic scenery and tropical breezes. Visitors frolic in a nearly closed, isolated system. When booking our getaway, the ferry website asked to know our resort. Then, upon disembarking from the ferry, we were loaded onto a shuttle bus at the terminal and whisked off to our resort. When it came time to leave, the resort completed our ferry check-in and handed us boarding passes before we caught the bus back to the terminal.

In conclusion, I submit photographic proof that we accomplished our plans for some serious sloth. We didn’t leave the comfort of the charming, thatched Mayang Sari resort, despite the availability of other inter-resort shuttle buses, so I will not pretend that our experience remotely approached the everyday life of Indonesians. I do hope that the stream of visitors benefits everyone on Bintan.

The main building and reception area.

Our own chalet, complete with front porch and high, breezy ceilings.

Expansive sands and warm, gentle waters.

Until next time, Bintan.

A Sign of the Times

At least one ship has cargo to deliver today. An overview of the world's busiest container port.

Borrowing a journalistic device from the Brian Lehrer Show, I present today’s “Uncommon Economic Indicator,” signs of the global downturn in pictures and events, rather than cold numbers. Most of the activity I have seen in Singapore seems oblivious to the larger economic climate, and the economy has stayed healthy in a few ways. Several important banks operating here stayed well away from the complex financial instruments that have threatened to topple American and European giants. The proliferation of cranes across the skyline demonstrates a confidence in continued demand for commercial and residential real estate. The construction shown above, outside my building's sky terrace, certainly has been running at a blistering pace.

However, from these same windows and in the background of the same image (detail, above) can be seen this revealing marker of the worldwide drop in trade. The waters around Singapore have filled up with a massive flotilla of unladen cargo ships. Notice the lack of shipping containers piled on their decks. Demand for goods in almost every market has plummeted so these ships have nowhere to go. Instead they wait in deep-water anchorage. The view above looks off to the southeast, and the pile-up beyond the port and past Sentosa appears below. This online map shows the larger parking-lot conditions in real time. The effects of stagnation remain unknown, but the prognoses suggest that Singapore cannot defy gravity endlessly.

Another view (below) looking southeast, but from a higher floor.

Instructions

For the first (and possibly only) time, hello, Passenger H here. Today I will mostly be discussing that which brings Britain and Asia together, tea. Now I will concede that unlike the gorgeous photos Passenger J has been posting my photo looks like smeared peas, however it actually shows the wrapper from a tea bag (green tea obviously). Due to my photographic limitations I will have to transcribe the text below:

JASMINE GREEN TEA
Selected Premium Leaf
Preparation
1. Put a POKKA Jasmine Green Tea bag in a cup.
2. Fill cup with 150cc of hot Water.
3. Jiggle tea bag a few times and let it rest in cup for 30 seconds.
4. Jiggle tea bag again, then remove it from cup.
5. Now enjoy a cup of really good POKKA Jasmine Green Tea.
A Quality Product of Japan

Italics mine.
Jiggle twice, cup once. (Passenger J’s commentary)

Summer in the City

The Guardian just published a new travel feature on New York City with ten destinations to help visitors enjoy the summer weather and escape the oppression of warm asphalt and sun-baked dumpsters. The suggestions should encourage both NYC residents and those who need another reason/excuse to visit. I now want to visit Wave Hill Gardens, especially now that I finally have friends living in the Bronx. I would like to add a few endorsements and addenda to fill out the Guardian's well-conceived recommendations. The numbering below corresponds to the newspaper's list.

1. Water Taxi Beach: I am glad this summer institution is expanding, but the original Queen's location with its view of the Midtown skyline will be hard to beat. Speaking of beats, to make the most of a foray into this outer borough, go dancing in the afternoon sunshine at PS 1's Warm Up. The avant garde outpost of MoMA deploys its Young Architects Program to transform its courtyard into a recreational space where families and hipsters and locals enjoy world-class DJ's every Saturday throughout the summer. If dancing doesn't suit you, try the nearby Noguchi Museum and its gardens (above).


5. Rooftop Bars: I commend the Guardian for promoting a low-key, inexpensive alternative over the more outrageous rooftop bars of the city. I will add a this recent guide courtesy of New York magazine. I support all trips to Koreatown for a laid-back venue, and Bookmarks, atop the Library Hotel, offers an urbane spot to watch the flicker of city lights. I will take that crowd above the painfully hip choking the Meatpacking District any day. The Metropolitan Museum also has a roof (above) overlooking Central Park with drinks available.


7. The Cloisters: I am very proud that the Metropolitan Museum's medieval annex in Fort Tryon Park garnered a mention, not least because they have kept me in beer for now three years running. Garden Days at the Cloisters happen this weekend (6, 7 June) for all who appreciate the museum's stunning displays of plants and historical botany. I recommend the Cloisters to all who will listen, but I further advise everyone to expand your visit into a mini-break from Manhattan with lunch or brunch on the patio of New Leaf Café, also in Fort Tryon Park.

8. Brooklyn Botanic Garden: The New York Botanical Garden gets my pick over the smaller, more crowded BBG. Still, this garden makes for a nice day out, especially when combined with the fascinating and charming Brooklyn Museum (see McKim, Mead, and White façade atop the post, from Josh and Josh) and the idles of Prospect Park. King's County (i. e. Brooklyn) has built for itself a number of cultural institutions that would be nationally renown if it wasn't for those pesky, august bulwarks elsewhere in the city. For a look into Brooklyn's effortless appeal to families who somewho maintain adult lifestyles, visit the museum on a Target First Saturday.

And those are a few of my suggestions for how to take the New York Summer to 11. Don't worry, my nostalgia should pass quickly. The Passengers are spending this weekend stretched out on the Indonesian beaches of Bintan.

Wanna go halves on a teen pregnancy?

The Gruen Transfer on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) may be the cleverest act of media jujitsu executed by state-supported television in decades. I know this post wanders features neither Anglo or American culture nor life in Singapore, but the show's format and mission are seriously interesting and simultaneously entertaining. Essentially the television program deconstructs the mechanics of advertising using, in large part, the talents and words of top Australian marketing firms. The same people who came up with the hilarious Big Ad and beer catapults turn out to be really engaging behind-the-scenes characters.

Teaching the public about the methods ad men use to sell products to their audiences constitutes an unassailable public mission for a broadcasting corporation supported by license fees. The real twist comes from the choice to include, or maybe even co-opt, the advertising firms themselves in presenting the revelations. Reality programming has demonstrated that few people can resist the opportunity to appear on television, but it's the weekly Pitch that keeps the show entertaining rather than preachy and makes ad firms clammer for inclusion. The Pitch features two major ad firms in a head-to-head showdown to see who can sell ice to Eskimos and convince Australians to keep cane toads for pets, i. e. selling the unsellable. The results capture the Australian spirit of self deprecation while gently dismantling the insiduous displays that interrupt commercial broadcasting. It's almost like an extended case for state-supported, commercial-free media.

Unsurprisingly, good programming will always serve as the best argument for continuing the BBC-inspired license fee model of state media. I have embedded above and below a couple highlights from the first season of the Pitch.

Singapore Botanic Gardens

Another exciting weekend in Singapore, on Saturday the Passengers took time to explore the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Its idyllic like an English garden with winding paths and interesting overgrowth, beloved by families, joggers, and those with picnic baskets. The twist starts with the realization that all the plants normally inside a hothouse in Britain are here outside in the tropical air. The National Orchid Garden is the crown jewel of the park. It’s one of the preeminent breeders and cultivators of orchids in the world, probably because many varieties of orchids love Singapore’s natural climate. Here are some highlights, but I am afraid that all photographers when visiting a botanic garden are unable to control the insistent shutterbug perched on their left shoulder. I did try to narrow down the selections.

This variety of Goldendianae below is widely used along the Orchid Garden paths.

Of course, one of the joy of orchids stems from the endless parade of totally outrageous looking varieties. Alien aesthics or evolutionary diversity?

The day's favorite orchid appeared in the VIP Orchid Garden where dignitaries, often in commemoration of a garden tour, have been honored with hybrid orchids in their names: Nelson Mandela, Princess Masako of Japan. Below is the aptly titled Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher.