Finding Singapore

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Friday, October 15, 2010 | 5 photos

Strictly no jaywalking, litter-free streets, riverside bars for financial execs, labyrinths of gleaming shopping malls at Orchard Road, New York run by the Swiss. Every place has more to reveal than ideas and images of popular prejudice that spring to mind when hearing of a foreign place. I am living in this city-state as an exchange student at the National University of Singapore and when I landed here I decided seeing and photographing no further than widespread gossip about Singapore would blind me from its reality.

So I ventured out from sterile, artificial coldness of air-con and such conceptions, into a city that makes you sweat like you’re in a sauna. I explored the hidden places. I scurried excitedly through China Town’s snaking lanes built under British colonial rule. Violently swerved my bicycle very nearly off a bridge in Pulau Ubin’s mangroves, hearing what I swear was a dengue fever infested mosquito hungry for my blood, while searching for Malayan water monitors. I followed my eyes and ears and found an underground art scene where Singaporean reggae bands play melodiously into the night far away from state suppression or tourism.

Singapore is an image of Twenty-First Century high-rise HDBs and skyscrapers thrown into a garden plucked from the pages of the Jungle Book. Armed with my point-and-shoot and a bursting imagination, I think I found and captured Singapore. I hope my submission for this scholarship is strongly considered. When asked which career I wish to pursue the answer is invariably “I would love to be an explorer and photojournalist for National Geographic”. I understand the value of this scholarship as an opportunity, and incredible learning experience for technical skills I must develop to pursue such a career, while being an awing journey.