Blue-eyed Singapore

Another full page ad more of the same in the Straits Times. The pornography of palatial living in one of the towers being raised daily. (24/7 night and day in fact in the construction sector.) Certainly selling daily in the S.T. Just like back home in the broadsheets there in fact. The tabloids don't pick up that revenue stream. At a guess those papers here tout hair replacement and colouring, Viagra, $40,000 cars and coloured contact lenses. Meanwhile middle managers and wannbe entrepreneurs are herded to all things chic and shiny never mind the costs and torments.

Here an aspect of this particular kind of sell needs highlighting; specific to this corner of the globe.

Familiar the smoky blue and grey tones that have long denoted true style and splendour. The motifs would be the same in Paris, N.Y., Tokyo, Sydney and L.A.: faux industrial shades hanging over the kitchen display bench; mini-cacti; stencil art 1.5 x 750 on the wall in the kitchen nook. Stainless fridge and stove. Outsized Samsung screen one of a pair (the second would be mounted in the master bedroom, reigning over the inactive couple—fertility rate a concern). 

Nice irony the wooden sea-chest like the granddads hoicked from China on the passage out. Wickerwork baskets.

Tone, arrangement, added flourishes.

Kick off the heels and pour yourself a glass. You've deserved it.

The lass on the leather knees-up, legs folded, flicking a magazine ordinarily like the Bond vixens used to do were this still the sixties. Bond—James Bond. In this case lap-top. 

Caught watching cartoons while the hubby had been detained at the office and pleasantly surprised by the camera in her private domain.

         — Well, hell-Oh!

         Luckily the lass's done her hair, recently renewed colour, facial, lippy.... Just one thing. Odd. Why was the woman Australian? Or English? Or West Coast surfing U.S.A.?... French, if not Parisienne. Why?

         Expats made up a tiny percentage of the population in Singapore. Caucasian perhaps point 0 five per cent of home buyers. What was going on? True, the Straits Times was English language. But was Lianhe Wanbao carrying a substitute Asian face? Not likely.

         Put together with the whitening creams at every corner of every street; the surgeries for double lids. Add the elevators shoes. Rolex watches from the snow-capped Swiss heights. Polo and golf. They race horses in this climate, run at night as in HK. Add the ubiquitous reproductions of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Westminster and the Union Jack. The blue contact lenses. Add the forcing of the colonial language.