Day 1… Actually f*** that, let’s just go through everything in a sprint.

Red-eye via a cheap Singapore Airlines roundtrip with a spare seat and Academy Award-nominated new releases all ready to watch. You could say my flight in was pretty comfy. (Likewise for my evening flight out.)

I can summarize my time into a few things: Singaporean origins, food, transportation, and, of course, dance.

Singapore was a British colony, but is there anything more to its history than that? Today, Singapore is a hub of commerce and business. As such, Singapore has way more in common with its start than the colonial perception gives it credit for. Before Melacca came into the picture, Singapore was the forked river in the maritime silk road, so to speak. The trade that occurred between the East Indies and Arabia would come across the path of the sea gypsies that would call the Singapore River home. As Malaysia gained greater shares of the trade, Singapore lost a little of its shine until Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles entered the picture and spiffed it up. For the most part, his arrival brought plenty of good things, but since objectively the British were terrible human beings (they may be non-imperialistic [insert you choice expletive for the British](s) today, but they are still the cream of the crop when it comes to douchebaggery), it comes as no surprise that they fueled ethnic divides by partitioning groups into specific communities with the Jackson Plan (1822). Lo and behold, the transformation of a mediocre river crossroad into the beginnings of a powerful hub, catalyzed by no taxation and few restrictions, of course not without its downs, which you can learn more about from the Library of Congress.

Hey, SG is doing pretty well today went it comes to ethnic diversity, but admittedly it is a bit planned. Large apartment complexes must follow ordinances that require their building occupancy to reflect the ethnic percentage of the entire population. While it is also nice to see Malay, English, and Chinese practically everywhere, with Tamil, Japanese, and Arabic also appearing with regular frequency, to say people tend to form cliches and in-groups is not a far-fetched claim. Fortunately, my own Singaporean friend that I got to grab a feast with elaborated the multi-faceted nature of it. When young Singaporeans enter school, English becomes integral. Near everything is taught in it. Students, however, can (and often will) also learn their native tongue if it is one of the other main languages (Malay, Chinese, Tamil). If you want to learn another language, you’ll need to have passed your own language classes with flying colors. Such rules are pretty understandable and even logical when it comes to language learning, but it creates a rather large problem if you would want to share culture with someone else by hindering the freedom to explore and limiting access to a select few. Sure, it can be understood at the surface but deep shared experiences cannot be had without diving into the culture fully. Creating such divides into an already divided population is likely not the best means to change the sharing economy state of Singapore’s cultures into the melting pot SG hopes to be. Granted, not all children let such things block them from making friends with someone different but the clique-y nature of school life can bridge into adult life. SG YouTube kind of both supports and counters this point.

Of course, not all of my trip was focused on understanding Singaporean identity. A beautiful result of ethnic mixing is very much the food and SG is quite the food city. Obviously enough, you have your halal South Asian curries, your Hokkien and Hainanese noodles, your Malay roti, and then everything else you can imagine from the Thai, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Western influences that arose via food. One of the coolest things to blow my mind was ice cream, in both a wholesome ice cream block form and an alcohol-infused milkshake.

Although I had a ton of food, I’m actually going to only focus on two meals since they reminded me of home.

Unsurprisingly, I got these simple post-Jummah-esque meal from a nice little Pandang place right by Masjid Sultan. Not going to lie, I could have probably just stuck around there all day to try everything. I stuck with lamb for lone meal but man did the chicken tikka was also looking fine. The meal actually hit the sweet spot for spiciness, a pleasant change from the Korean 고추 ridiculousness and the mediocre attempts at South Asian food I’ve had around East Asia. I just don’t understand why South Asian spices are not sold everywhere as a necessity. HIT ME UP WITH THAT TURMERIC PLEASE.

As I mentioned earlier, a friend of mine took me out to feast at LOCATION. Actually, I met Fabian when I was backpacking Europe two summers ago, when he had graduated and was spending his break time wisely before his auditor life unfolded. Since SG 월급쟁이 (salary man) hours are ridiculous, we didn’t meet up until midnight, but fortunately he lived near NUS. Roti is a go-to late night snack in SG as much as it is a breakfast food for me. Folks were buzzing in and out all around us giving even the slow late night and faster pace so we got heavy things to slow it all down. Murtabak, a meat stuffed paratha of sorts, was an herbier choice and added a kick after we used the curry sauce on the side. The mushroom and cheese Roti John was a Malay roti sandwich that made me think calzone the entire time I spent eating it but was too sweet to actually be one. To accompany the variety of flavor we amped up said variety in beverage form: the tarik and sirap bandung. One of the most on point chais I have since I left home and the sirap bandung made me believe that rose water was made from the heavens.

Now transportation in SG is pretty comfortable but how good is it? I still have not visited a city outside of New York that keeps trains open after midnight. The trains were similar to Taipei with its spacious nature and intelligent design, all underground stations and most overground platforms were placed in the between lines. However, despite the wonderful speed of the metro, the stations are not the most conveniently located stations nor is there a plethora of them packed around the island. They drove British style and, like the British, even had some double decker vehicles. A few cons I found with the buses was how one actually called them down (if you didn’t actually hail them down, they would not make a courtesy stop) and the drivers often did not know routes outside their own. I cannot tell you much about taxis but I’m also glad about that. SG works on a distance rate system similar to Japan, but it starts off and increases with a more pleasant rate (maybe you should mimic that, Tokyo).

So the main reason I can to SG was to attend the first ever Summer Jam Dance Camp, hosted by Jam Republic, a union of notable dance studios around the world. On the business side of things, they still need a lot of improvement and a better tech and media team, but on the actual dance side of things, OH DAMN. So much fun! Not only did I get to meet and learn from some of my favorite choreographers, but I got to check out the dance scene of various Asian nations via their dancers. SG has a pretty sweet scene but Vietnam also has a growing urban scene. I knew there are tons of b-boyers in Thailand but I was a little surprised by the number of contemporary folk they also had. The guy who founded Jam Republic also gave me a break by letting me attending Radikal Force Jam, their b-boy and popping competition, for free. I have definitely improved from the time I came me but there is still a lot more that needs to be learned.