Singapore: We Flew Over for My Birthday, and the Whole Country Was Celebrating

August 2013

My birthday was coming up while we were in Bali, and we were deciding where to celebrate. We felt like doing something spontaneous. Where could we fly? Singapore was close, and we had never been. Well, let’s go!

That was pretty much how we decided. No long preparations, no elaborate plan. It felt like we came up with the idea in the evening and were flying out the next morning. My birthday is August 7. Two days later, as it turned out, Singapore had a birthday too. :)

After Bali, Someone Had Switched Worlds

The contrast was enormous. After Bali’s motorbikes, heading in every direction and constantly squeezing through gaps, you arrive in a city so well organised that at first you just walk around in amazement.

Clean. Convenient. Everything well developed. And incredibly green. Somehow, I hadn’t expected a city with skyscrapers like these to have so much greenery. Walking around was a real pleasure.

There was a separate form of entertainment for a newly arrived tourist: reading the prohibitions. It seemed you could get fined for almost anything. The durian warning particularly amused me. That fruit wasn’t welcome on public transport either. A fruit with so much personality it needs its own sign. :)

Littering was a more serious matter. In 2013, the maximum fine a court could impose for a first offence was one thousand Singapore dollars. A maximum court fine, not an automatic bill for every scrap of paper. Still, the prospect gives you a good reason to carry your rubbish to a bin.

You look around and think: wow, they really do take order seriously here.

An Evening Above the City and Trees Like in Avatar

Before the independence celebrations, we went for a walk and took a ride on the enormous observation wheel. We saw Singapore from every side: evening, everything lit up. Such a romantic ride. The wheel moved slowly, slowly, then stopped somewhere near the top and stayed there for a bit. That pause was a little scary. Then we carried on.

Singapore felt very futuristic in general. There was that museum with its unusual shape, like a lotus, and the gardens with illuminated trees, like something out of Avatar. We visited those gardens too.

We also visited that enormous covered garden, with fountains and waterfalls.

My Birthday, Then Theirs

We hadn’t known about Singapore’s National Day on August 9. We were simply walking around and noticed lots of people heading somewhere. Everyone looked festive and nicely dressed. Something was clearly happening.

We asked some passers-by and found out that this was Singapore’s independence celebration. Wow, great! We had to see this.

And then it all unfolded. A military parade, a city celebrating, helicopters against the skyscrapers. Three helicopters in the sky, with a huge Singapore flag hanging beneath one of them. It feels completely different seeing something like that in person rather than on the news.

In the evening, there were fireworks over the bay, with Marina Bay Sands in the background. You look at that hotel, the lights, the fireworks, and you’re simply happy to be there.

I love surprises like this when travelling. You haven’t planned anything special, you’ve come to see a new city, and you get a huge celebration as a bonus. You expected one thing and ended up with much more. That felt fantastic.

A City of Millionaires

There’s a photograph of me standing by the water, with tall buildings behind me and more construction going on in the distance. To me, it was a view that felt very Singaporean: the city was already impressive, yet it was still growing.

I called it a city of millionaires. I was struck by the thought of apartments costing millions. You look at those buildings and immediately think: how many people here have that kind of money?

When you live back home in Ukraine, a millionaire seems like some super, super successful guy. A very rare person, somewhere far away. Here, you suddenly feel how big the world is, and how many people live with that scale of money as an ordinary part of their lives.

Of course, the price of an apartment alone doesn’t tell you everything about its owner’s wealth. What caught my attention was the thought itself: there are far more people like this than you imagine from within your usual circle.

It makes you think bigger. People can have two problems with money: too little of it, or too much. And you have to choose which problem you want to live with. :)

If there are so many millionaires, why couldn’t I be one of them?

Even on the metro, there was a man sitting beside me doing something on a tablet. As I understood it at the time, he was buying or selling shares, something like two hundred thousand dollars’ worth. I wouldn’t swear to the exact amount or transaction, but my reaction was: wow! It was 2013, and this man was simply riding the metro and doing things like that. Another wow moment for me: what a high-tech place.

Lee Kuan Yew: A Story That Gives You Goosebumps

For me, Singapore is closely connected with Lee Kuan Yew. I had read his book From Third World to First, and his story had really inspired me.

What struck me most was the scale of one person’s influence. How do you take a country with such a difficult starting point and help turn it into a global financial centre? Obviously, a city isn’t built by one person alone. But when you see the result, you feel particularly strongly how much someone’s decisions and persistence can change.

It gave me goosebumps. What a remarkable guy. What an impact.

Stories like that are very good at taking away your desire to make excuses. Some people explain why nothing will work; others get on with doing it. And when you walk around Singapore, that thought has a very concrete shape: the streets, the greenery, the transport, the skyscrapers around you.

Sentosa and Universal: Wow, Wow, Wow

On Sentosa, we went to Universal Studios. It was my first theme park on this level. Roller coasters, different worlds, everything big and bright and brilliantly put together.

My favourite was a ride where you travel in a carriage inside a building, surrounded by 3D effects. A bit like a roller coaster, except the movement comes with an entire world that pulls you in through images and visual effects.

You seem to fly upwards, then drop, then race along these impossible slopes. You know it’s a ride, but it all feels so real. I think there were Transformers in it, though I wouldn’t swear to the exact name. The most accurate description of how it felt: wow, wow, wow!

The park itself keeps switching you from one world to another. Jurassic Park here, Egypt over there, then Madagascar. It feels as if you’ve entered one park and found several inside it.

The Egyptian section really suited that feeling of little journeys within a bigger one. A moment ago, you were surrounded by one set of scenery, and now the whole atmosphere has changed. You don’t need to fly anywhere. You just keep walking, and there’s a new world around you.

I liked that it wasn’t only about going on rides. The themed areas were interesting to explore and photograph in their own right. Egypt became one of those stops: linger for a while, look around, take a few more pictures. For a first encounter with Universal, it was fantastic.

Sentosa also had an evening show with “singing cranes.” Even that had been turned into a performance of its own.

Colourful T-Shirts and Grades for Food

On the metro, we met people wearing very unusual T-shirts. They seemed to have started out white, but now they were pink and covered in colourful patches. As if someone had deliberately painted them.

That was when we first learned about the Indian tradition of throwing coloured powders during a celebration. That festival is Holi. But the people in our carriage seem to have been returning from The Color Run: that is the name visible on their T-shirts. We did not quite work out which event it was at the time. You’re simply riding the metro, and there’s this colourful story right beside you.

Another thing that really surprised me was the letter grades, A, B, C and D, at places serving food. Even small street-food stalls had a hygiene grade. They were inspected for cleanliness and working conditions, and customers could see the result.

I liked the logic of it. A small business owner has a reason to make an effort and earn a higher grade, because people look at it when deciding where to eat. To me, it seemed a very well-designed system: good order extending beyond the grand avenues, right down to a small kitchen.

In the Front Row at Robert Allen’s Seminar

A seminar on August 16 became a separate part of this Singapore August. Robert Allen, the author of Multiple Streams of Income, was speaking there.

I had read the book long before. Sitting somewhere in Ukraine, working through the author’s ideas, finding things that mattered to me. And now I was sitting in the front row, with the actual man in front of me, speaking from the stage.

It’s a completely different feeling. A book has already given you something valuable, but there’s still a distance between you and its author. Here, you’re in the same room. You’re getting knowledge straight from the source.

For me, that was another big “wow.” Someone whose ideas you had read far away from here was suddenly right in front of you.

That was Singapore. It all began with a spontaneous “let’s fly somewhere,” and then there was so much: my own birthday, a whole country celebrating, Universal, a book’s author speaking to you in person, and a city that gives your mind a little more room.

The world is big. And it seems to hold far more possibilities than you can see from your usual spot. Sometimes you just have to go and catch that flight. :)