The local P. O. has been relocated from the
spaceship beside Paya Lebar MRT and was now housed in the new mall opposite
City Plaza. (Another older and more modest mall.)
The treacherous tiled forecourt needs to be traversed, where the row of water-spouts in that narrow passage remain unused. (At the first sign of rain the Ride-on Mopper comes out working sometimes with a second.) Here the retail art takes the form of a giant sculpture of an invoice stamp raised on its side and against the glass a sports-car on a platform awaiting lucky shoppers.
Toast Box left and Superheroes sharing the right front with Starbucks. The girl at bellapierre cosmetic counter obligingly directs you to Level 3.
The first number of times wading through the candy colours, the playground decorations and pumped perfumes with a sense of going under. LollypopLollypopLollypop either side whichever way one goes. Hanging out the tongue one could collect sweetness from the corridor without having to pay just from the luscious tints. Yankie Candie — reading at first as Candle—blows a gale into the passageway.
Keep right. The marker to look for is I. POISE JEWELS (pronoun; not numeral), diagonally opposite the escalators. Up is around on the other side—hooking through a nameless shoe outlet that has taken advantage of a narrow passage.
Blundering at Level 2 introduced Sliming Sanctuary, Old Hollywood Market and numerous F&B outlets. White picket fence and rustic cardboard brick elsewhere in the same tint.
Nearest other Post Office was up on Aljunied corner about a kilometer and half away.
The P. O. itself was unobjectionable. (How odd to actually miss the spaceship platform at Paya Lebar. Control Tower. Do you read me, roger? Who would have thought?) The same markers on the floor for queuing, giant-sized arrow-heads for the visually impaired; rather like the flight of geese on Australian living-room walls a generation past.
The problem lay elsewhere; not at the Post Office. Close-by the problem lay.
On the first sortie Level 2 below in the same corner discovered this strange assortment that had been passed more quickly.
Heguru could not be deciphered at first whichever way it was turned. Completely stumped by Heguru.
Juzmusic, then Ingenium and globalart.
globalart’s crooked second “l” stood in the shape of an old-fashioned rocket-pencil like we boys favoured in Primary School down in the Great Southern land. One had become used to the local creole; the moveable signage worn on the tees had been a particular study. Expats made a great deal of money tutoring bureaucrats and management, straightening the crooked tongues. Even official government signage could make bloopers. It was perfectly understandable. Where else on the planet had a foreign language been foisted upon a populace with main force like this? One of the fascinations for a curious-minded traveler and student of culture.
This was a rocky road in this particular corner of the new One KM Mall on both Levels 2 & 3. Something unexpected in the hunt for the post office.
Within globalart with the rocket-pencil second "l", naive-painted on an inner corridor wall, a worrisome Mona Lisa floated in a cloud of sunflowers and geraniums. Understandably the smile had created difficulties. A gallery of some kind this was not.
WTF? What sweet Jesu truly? Even a pattern was not immediately apparent, a commonality in the cluster. A mature-age wise-head standing around open-mouthed and staring.
Mind Champs. And beside globalart, Total English Learning Centre too failed to read immediately.
No product visible anywhere made it harder.
Really, it was only the small print that finally, properly revealed the mystery.
Heguru sold the promise of "Photographic Memory" and "Extraordinary Thinking Power". Sold more too. Added to the accomplishments available behind the glass at Heguru was in unmistakable English writ large: "Great Personality".
Great Personality. They had "Great Personality" brewed and bottled here on a shelf in an assortment of colours, twist-top or pop.
As the Messengers in the epics declared at the high points in the sagas: May the Lord's thunder-bolt strike if I speak false.
Jazmusic delivered the Suzuki Program and "Junior Playtime for 2 1/2 Year Olds" in the back corner of One KM Mall on Level 3. There was a high-polish black mini baby-grand against the glass inside.
Ingenium could "ignite (the) innate". Delivered "science by scientists". At the eatery table later over the teh the laboratory came of itself to mind with XXXS dust-coats, bunsen burners and petri dishes for the next generation Louis Pasteurs on the Equator.
Aduh! No drinking fountain in sight.
One or two parents delivered children to TV-bright front-of-house girls in uniform; a maid her charges. One or two little faces were glimpsed as they marched along. A mite at her colouring-in table in front of one of the places waited to get picked up after her session.
The mail becoming grubbed in the hands now. There seemed little point suddenly. The lifts stood near-by.
On the other side of the passage from English Learning Centre that had eschewed Lollipop and presented a corporate shop-front, Citibella Beauty Club & Atelier. Mothers popped in during their wait; maids could attend to the shopping in the basement supermarket and immediately opposite the cluster Gelare offered ice-cream. There was a logic at work. One or two business concerns operated all these stores, on both levels; the cosmetic counters and Yankie Candie too, all integrated.
The Singaporean educational model, like the urban planning model, the business-friendly climate and low taxes, the cleanliness and security regime, were widely admired and copied across the region. On the other side of the globe replicas of the Republic were mushrooming. India would be building an entire city from scratch with Singaporean expertise. How well they had done after all. None could hold a Yankie candle to Singapore. A foreigner could not recall the open sewers, the flooding, rats like in Malaysia and Indonesia. The wonderful security: women walking the streets into the wee hours without a thought in the world. It was impossible to overstate the importance of cleanliness in the broiling Tropics particularly.
Reports arrived subsequently of eight-month-olds enrolled in Enrichment classes and others attending 3-4 times a week after school.
Singapore was a parable; the existential contemporary drama nakedly revealed.
Someone must bear witness. A Superhero scribbler in tight
costume had taken the pledge and would keep faith. The story must out. Take
one's place in the queue quietly and that was all.The treacherous tiled forecourt needs to be traversed, where the row of water-spouts in that narrow passage remain unused. (At the first sign of rain the Ride-on Mopper comes out working sometimes with a second.) Here the retail art takes the form of a giant sculpture of an invoice stamp raised on its side and against the glass a sports-car on a platform awaiting lucky shoppers.
Toast Box left and Superheroes sharing the right front with Starbucks. The girl at bellapierre cosmetic counter obligingly directs you to Level 3.
The first number of times wading through the candy colours, the playground decorations and pumped perfumes with a sense of going under. LollypopLollypopLollypop either side whichever way one goes. Hanging out the tongue one could collect sweetness from the corridor without having to pay just from the luscious tints. Yankie Candie — reading at first as Candle—blows a gale into the passageway.
Keep right. The marker to look for is I. POISE JEWELS (pronoun; not numeral), diagonally opposite the escalators. Up is around on the other side—hooking through a nameless shoe outlet that has taken advantage of a narrow passage.
Blundering at Level 2 introduced Sliming Sanctuary, Old Hollywood Market and numerous F&B outlets. White picket fence and rustic cardboard brick elsewhere in the same tint.
Nearest other Post Office was up on Aljunied corner about a kilometer and half away.
The P. O. itself was unobjectionable. (How odd to actually miss the spaceship platform at Paya Lebar. Control Tower. Do you read me, roger? Who would have thought?) The same markers on the floor for queuing, giant-sized arrow-heads for the visually impaired; rather like the flight of geese on Australian living-room walls a generation past.
The problem lay elsewhere; not at the Post Office. Close-by the problem lay.
On the first sortie Level 2 below in the same corner discovered this strange assortment that had been passed more quickly.
Heguru could not be deciphered at first whichever way it was turned. Completely stumped by Heguru.
Juzmusic, then Ingenium and globalart.
globalart’s crooked second “l” stood in the shape of an old-fashioned rocket-pencil like we boys favoured in Primary School down in the Great Southern land. One had become used to the local creole; the moveable signage worn on the tees had been a particular study. Expats made a great deal of money tutoring bureaucrats and management, straightening the crooked tongues. Even official government signage could make bloopers. It was perfectly understandable. Where else on the planet had a foreign language been foisted upon a populace with main force like this? One of the fascinations for a curious-minded traveler and student of culture.
This was a rocky road in this particular corner of the new One KM Mall on both Levels 2 & 3. Something unexpected in the hunt for the post office.
Within globalart with the rocket-pencil second "l", naive-painted on an inner corridor wall, a worrisome Mona Lisa floated in a cloud of sunflowers and geraniums. Understandably the smile had created difficulties. A gallery of some kind this was not.
WTF? What sweet Jesu truly? Even a pattern was not immediately apparent, a commonality in the cluster. A mature-age wise-head standing around open-mouthed and staring.
Mind Champs. And beside globalart, Total English Learning Centre too failed to read immediately.
No product visible anywhere made it harder.
Really, it was only the small print that finally, properly revealed the mystery.
Heguru sold the promise of "Photographic Memory" and "Extraordinary Thinking Power". Sold more too. Added to the accomplishments available behind the glass at Heguru was in unmistakable English writ large: "Great Personality".
Great Personality. They had "Great Personality" brewed and bottled here on a shelf in an assortment of colours, twist-top or pop.
As the Messengers in the epics declared at the high points in the sagas: May the Lord's thunder-bolt strike if I speak false.
Jazmusic delivered the Suzuki Program and "Junior Playtime for 2 1/2 Year Olds" in the back corner of One KM Mall on Level 3. There was a high-polish black mini baby-grand against the glass inside.
Ingenium could "ignite (the) innate". Delivered "science by scientists". At the eatery table later over the teh the laboratory came of itself to mind with XXXS dust-coats, bunsen burners and petri dishes for the next generation Louis Pasteurs on the Equator.
Aduh! No drinking fountain in sight.
One or two parents delivered children to TV-bright front-of-house girls in uniform; a maid her charges. One or two little faces were glimpsed as they marched along. A mite at her colouring-in table in front of one of the places waited to get picked up after her session.
The mail becoming grubbed in the hands now. There seemed little point suddenly. The lifts stood near-by.
On the other side of the passage from English Learning Centre that had eschewed Lollipop and presented a corporate shop-front, Citibella Beauty Club & Atelier. Mothers popped in during their wait; maids could attend to the shopping in the basement supermarket and immediately opposite the cluster Gelare offered ice-cream. There was a logic at work. One or two business concerns operated all these stores, on both levels; the cosmetic counters and Yankie Candie too, all integrated.
The Singaporean educational model, like the urban planning model, the business-friendly climate and low taxes, the cleanliness and security regime, were widely admired and copied across the region. On the other side of the globe replicas of the Republic were mushrooming. India would be building an entire city from scratch with Singaporean expertise. How well they had done after all. None could hold a Yankie candle to Singapore. A foreigner could not recall the open sewers, the flooding, rats like in Malaysia and Indonesia. The wonderful security: women walking the streets into the wee hours without a thought in the world. It was impossible to overstate the importance of cleanliness in the broiling Tropics particularly.
Reports arrived subsequently of eight-month-olds enrolled in Enrichment classes and others attending 3-4 times a week after school.
Singapore was a parable; the existential contemporary drama nakedly revealed.
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