Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

very small earthquake, nobody killed...

I was woken this morning at about 2.00 am local time by my very first earthquake, it was a most peculiar sensation, a sort of cross between someone shaking the bed and a surreptitious belch. I suppose what woke me up was the strangeness of it, not that it was extreme or terrifying.

We’re all finding it very difficult to get a handle on Singapore; it feels very familiar, yet very strange. It is very obviously a former British colony; the cars drive on the left, there are British 13 amp plug sockets and everyone speaks the lingo. Yet at the same time it has mutated into a sort of mega-capitalist state, where brutal skyscrapers are demolished to make way for yet more brutal skyscrapers and everywhere there are shopping malls, even the theatre we are performing in has its own mini-mall, just in case you hadn’t shopped enough when you come to see a show. Yet the audience seems to be very discriminating and discerning (I’m not just saying that because we are sold out for both shows), people actually seem to know who we are, and despite the fact that we are sharing the building with ‘Phantom of the Opera’ there is a genuine appetite for experimental theatre.

After putting the show in today, we were invited to go for a meal with the festival organisers, one of whom is a vegetarian, and the other suffering from a gippy tummy, thus the three of us were forced to struggle with a five course seafood banquet, which, as a piece de resistance, offered us the local speciality: a vast cauldron of chopped up crabs in chilli sauce. Quite apart from being totally impossible to eat decorously, there was also way too much for us to eat. Our hosts kindly had it parcelled up for us to take away, and suggested that we eat it later. I’m afraid it was deposited in a convenient bin on our way home, it was delicious, but, rather like a kebab, existed only of the moment, and would only have been regretted if encountered in the morning.

Our lazy meander back to our hotel took in Raffles Hotel, because you have to, and we ordered Singapore Slings and tried to look manly drinking them. I can safely report that they were disgusting, and tasted of pink, the only other thing to say about Raffles is that it had rather an interesting shrew which did a couple of laps around the bar before vanishing into the shrubbery.

I felt that this was encouraging, as it was the first piece of indigenous wildlife I had seen, this was followed by two geckos in another bar, and things were looking up.

Our Hotel is not actively very nice, the hybrid Asian/Japanese/European breakfast takes a bit of getting used to; Dim Sum with Bratwurst, Toast and Jam anyone? Singapore is used a lot as a transit point, so there are loads of stopover passengers, mainly elderly Australians, who are casually labelled up and shepherded on and off buses. Everywhere you go, you will encounter troupes of them, each with their colour coded sticker to distinguish them from another party.

posted by Lampy @ 4/20/2007 09:55:00 am