I was told that I am the proverbial day late and a dollar short. The Singapore Tourism Board has switched from 'Uniquely Singapore' to 'Your Singapore'.
"Singapore is many things to different people. And with the richness and variety of experiences here, it's easy to enjoy Singapore in your own personal way. Come, make Singapore your own at yoursingapore.com."
My early 80's Singapore used to be a clean, highly regulated, boringly efficient, 'sterile', uptight kind of place. This time around it seems to have first world hardware that is not fully supported by the software.
We have some very impressive buildings, including the airport which is in constant 'upgrading' mode - or sprouting new terminals.
Take the Marina Bay Sands (MBS)where friends checked in via the Paizza lobby only to find their commode had not been flushed!
While we were out for dinner (seafood and durian) the hotel called and tendered their apologies and said they'd be upgraded (their luggage would be moved for them into their new accommodation).
By the time we had returned from our durian 'fix' the new room was ready but we had to wait for their luggage. In the meantime, their 'personal' butler appeared and introduced himself and made a cup of tea for us. After that he disappeared not to be seen again during the rest of their stay.
I had driven there as I could not find either a good map or directions to MBS (even on their website). Unbeknown to me there is no self parking, only valet parking at some astronomical hourly rate - but casino guests are 'comped'.
The 'personal' butler didn't seem to know too much about the procedure for my friends to obtain a voucher so that I would not have to pay an arm and a leg to retrieve my wheels, so we went along to the 4th level walkway between the hotel and casino.
There the casino representative started off being unhelpful until we reminded him that his lady colleague had said that when she went off duty he would issue the necessary voucher(s). Apparently no vouchers were required and I was given a card with a number on it and asked to hand it to the Valet Parking counter and have them call that number.
I left my friends to amuse themselves in the casino and wound my way through the teeming hordes in the long lobby. I handed the valet parking ticket and card to a female attendant who asked me to pay. I had to repeat what I was told to say a few times before she turned and handed the papers to a male colleague and said, "she was told to call this number". He didn't bat an eyelid and called for my car.
There was a glassed in room behind the Valet stand and I didn't realise what it was for until I waited and waited for my car to appear. The sheer number of cars being parked and retrieved meant a minimum of 20 minutes' wait and usually more, and the room was for people waiting for their cars!
Anyway, I was quite relieved to be able to leave the chaos for the comfort of home.
Next morning, I climbed into a taxi and we made our way to MBS. Except that as we got to the environs of Suntec City we hit a wall of vehicles. Uh oh, they had closed some roads for YOG (Youth Olympic Games - which maybe some of you who are overseas may have heard about).
There were no signs directing us to alternative routes so we crawled along to where some auxiliary policemen were directing traffic and my taxi driver said we were going to MBS. The auxiliary police directed us to an expressway and mention an exit number.
When we got close again (from the opposite direction that we had tried before), traffic ground to a halt again because there was only a single lane to exit the expressway. This took us through a small maze of streets that ran through construction sites - again we were stymied because a street that terminated in a T junction had it's right arm blocked. And it was the route to MBS.
The auxiliary coppers had stood by watching other drivers making the same mistake without helping us or them avoid it. The taxi driver and I consoled ourselves that the coppers probably had not been fully briefed either, so it might have been a case of the blind directing the blind.
While findind our way like a pinball in a machine through these streets we noticed there was no traffic on the roads reserved solely for YOG vehicles and VIPs.
Obviously no one had considered the local populace and traffic or they would have sent batches of vehicles along those roads when no YOG and VIP vehicles were around; after all what are sophisticated communications equipment and CCTVs for?
It had all the hallmarks of planners with maps sans commonsense and experience who were instructed that YOG trumps everything else.
Thus while YOG participants and entourages had a privileged and, hopefully, favourable view of Singapore the rest of us were ignored.
Some volunteers complained of their lunch boxes and others got food poisoning.
Others did not volunteer because they found it nigh impossible to get tickets for events in which they were interested - yet when the games started there were empty seats and red faces.
It's not the Sin$387 million reportedly spent on the YOG (up from an original estimate of Sin$122 million give or take) but the disconnect between plans or visions and reality.
I sometimes feel that my Singapore today is groping it's way from a gritty and successful start and needs to be properly grounded lest we soar like Icarus.
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