Adrianna Tan
There’s something discombulating about being from a place where nothing is exactly as you left it. Ever. Just walking through the structure of a city you know really well but everything is different. New roads, new infra, new buildings all the time.
I was surprised to see a photo of SF in the 1960s and know exactly where it was coz it still looked largely the same. I do not think I can do this with Singapore even a year apart, sometimes.
Adrianna Tan
This also means that many meaningful places are probably razed or built over, often quite quickly and with little fanfare.
There are still places that are meaningful to me but everything’s changed in major ways.
Here, more than anywhere else I’ve been, I get the sense of ‘if you stop and blink for a moment the world changes around you’.
Also probably why the people who live here are incredibly stressed
Adrianna Tan
Also, imagine a small city state country where everywhere is tall buildings and everyone is a type A, deeply anxious personality. If you don’t like that, too bad, we don’t have another city or town you can move to, or a rural area or a suburb really. You’ve got to leave the country! (Some do..)
Adrianna Tan
I just walked a route I’ve walked thousands of times.
As a teenager going from my school to the good English bookstore.
The entire underground passage has vastly expanded 5x. There are 2 new train lines I’ve never even taken (the blue and brown lines).
I know in my bones that this is where the cookie shop used to be, that’s where I got my ears pierced, that’s where I broke up with a boy.
I don’t have any evidence that that’s actually where it was and that’s actually what happened.
The entire building has changed.
Adrianna Tan
@irene yep I spent most of my life here being told I was indifferent and incomplete because I wasn’t anxious enough about anything
Irene Zhang
@skinnylatte wow I would do really badly there. I think I also never fit in as an Asian person because I’m really loud and opinionated and take up a lot of space. But I also don’t have the type A anxiety and don’t have much patience for it.
Adrianna Tan
@PrinceOfDenmark maybe a sense of there’s no point in nostalgia
PrinceOfDenmark
@skinnylatte Must be discombobulating. A few places I’ve lived are pretty much gone, but few if any are changed to the extreme you describe in Singapore.
Does it make you feel sad or nostalgic? Or just a bit out of phase from the current picture? Or something else?
Adrianna Tan
@flaki heh, artistry was owned by a friend and a common spot for activism.. I also had my 30th birthday there
Flaki
@skinnylatte fwiw this kept happening to me with Budapest in my glory days of months of back-to-back travel. And more than anything, my favorite spots kept closing, so yeah I can relate (funnily enough, this also happened to one of my fav places in Singapore when I'd return after couple months and find it closed, place was called Artistry cafe, it did western/cosmopolitan brunch (and pancakes!) phenomenally well, still miss it to this day — wonder how many of my old frequents will find when I eventually get to visit again...)
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