Inside the Thian Hock Keng Temple I meet Yue Gong Niang Niang. She is a matronly woman with long braids who promises to fulfill my requests. I have only been in Singapore an hour and already it's competing with Berlin for top spot on my list of all time favourite cities. It has more than compensated for the fiasco the school sponsored errand (read: visa run) I've been sent here on is proving to be.
In order to meet Madam Ying before 10 am (Sing time) I am up before Rusty (the rooster) with my alarm set for 4:30 am. The driver is supposed to pick me up me in an hour. I shower and dress. I pack my bag. I check and recheck my packing. I will buy breakfast in Sing so, with five minutes to spare I open the front door and sit down on the couch to wait. I watch the charcoal sky shade to purple, then violet to orange. Still no driver. My ferry leaves in twenty minutes so I text Ms. Shanty. Correction. I try to message Ms. Shanty but the message fails. I try Yheni but that message fails too.
Ten minutes until the ferry leaves. I use the house phone and call Ms. Shanty. Ok, she says, she will call the driver, and promptly hangs up. I walk across the street to Ms. Yeni's to see if she might know what's wrong with my phone but she's not awake yet. The next ferry isn't until 8:30 so I begin to scrounge some breakfast. The driver pulls up, rolls open the van door and shouts in bahasa. I grab my bag, curse and swear at the door as I try to lock it with the ill fitting key, then race towards the van. The driver practically pushes me inside. It feels like a poorly executed get-away.
It's 6:30 am. Nothing in the ferry terminal is open and I have another two hours before the next ferry leaves. I walk laps, in circles around the terminal like a caged animal. I use my limited knowledge of cell phones to try and coax mine to send a message. This involves resetting it by removing and reinserting the battery. Repeated attempts produce no result. An hour later the mobile shop opens and I swoop in like a hawk. I show the girl my problem. She takes my phone, punches something into it, and she shows me my problem. My pulsa have expired.
In Canada you buy minutes, in Indonesia you buy pulsa. In Canada you use your minutes until they're gone. They don't, as far as I know, expire. In Indonesia if you haven't used your pulsa in a month you lose your pulsa. I buy a ridiculous amount of pulsa as I suspect I'm not going to have a good day and may need them.
After boarding the ferry I message Madam Yang as I've been instructed to do, before settling into a seat on the observation deck for the crossing. I am notably not hungover. The ferry cuts through the seemingly endless patches of garbage helplessly adrift at sea and I feel remorse for all the plastic bottles of water I've already bought in my short stay and the incalculable more I will in the year ahead. The only other distraction from the approach of the futuristic Singapore skyline are the tenacious tugboats, dwarfed by the cargo ships looming large above us but somehow admirable and more impressive for it.
By the time I make it through customs it is after 11 am Sing time. I practically run into the adjoining mall, glancing about wildly for the agreed upon meeting place, when I hear a voice ring out clearly, "Hallo, Ms. Eris!" I turn and see the sweet smiling face of a young Chinese girl and her mother. Madam Ying I presume.
"Hallo!" I smile in greeting. "I am so sorry I am late." I reach into my bag and proffer the file of papers. "I think these are what you need?"
When I look up the woman looks mortified. She doesn't take her wide eyes off me while she and her daughter discuss something (call me narcissistic but I suspect it's me) in Mandarin. My name is mentioned twice before I realize this is not Madam Ying but some darling student from school with her mother.
I excuse myself again. I try to explain I am meeting someone, I don't know who, I am late, and in the rush I mistook them for... they are both staring at me in horror. I stop. I smile and try again.
"What are you doing in Singapore?" I ask the student, my mind racing, wondering where I need to be and how to get there. She grins and tells me their vacation plans. In less than a minute I have them both beaming happily so I excuse myself before I create any more confusion.
When I get to the meeting place no one is there. I try to call Madam Ying but my phone isn't working. I try Ms. Shanty back in Indonesia but my phone won't call home either. I wait. Five minutes later my phone rings. It's Ms. Shanty. She tells me she will call Madam Yang.
When Madam Ying arrives I like her instantly, despite or possibly because of the fact, that I can hear her berating me even before I can see her. When the crowd parts, like the red Sea for Moses, to let her through she is a tiny woman, far too old to be wearing a business suit that tight and still looking that good in it. She interrupts my apologetic explanation.
"Why you no phone? At least you phone, tell me where you are, but no, Missy no phone!"
When she is done scolding me she takes the file from me and begins to sort through the papers talking a mile minute. I don't really understand most of what she says, but I understand that there's no need for me to understand because she is Madam Ying. the Universe does Madam Ying's bidding, willingly or not. She takes the glasses that hang on a silver chain around her neck and slips them onto the edge of her nose. I feel like I'm auditioning to be trafficked as she compares my photo to my face.
"Must be same, yes. They no like, they no take," She says as she reaches up to turn my face a bit more to the left. Finally she nods. "Okay." Then the file is snapped shut, the papers which only moments before were in remarkable disarray considering we have no table, having instantly righted themselves at her command, and Madam Ying tells me to meet her at 5:00.
I reach for my wallet to pay her but she waves it away.
"Money is not important. You late. Now everything mess. I see what I can do but maybe no visa for you today." I start to apologize again but she interrupts, "You no apologize. Your driver no good. I would fire heem." I have no doubt she would and I have no doubt that she will have my visa by the end of the day.
It's almost noon when I set out to find the subway to take me to my first stop, the Taoist temple, where I meet Yue Gong Niang Niang, the Goddess of the Moon Palace. She is a matchmaker and young women pray to her for a good husband and married women pray to her for happy marriages, beauty and youthfulness. Figuring it can't hurt I buy and light an incense stick and tell her I want to fall in love again and ask her to help make it happen.
I take the subway to Little India for lunch. I haven't had Indian food, real Indian food, since I left Winnipeg half a year ago and I am giddy with anticipation. The waiter is amused when I order butter chicken and aloo gobi without rice or bread. He comes back numerous times throughout my meal to see if I've changed my mind. I smile every time and assure him no, I'm fine with the potatoes and mango lassi to wash it down. But it's better than fine, my taste buds are dancing a shimmy shake, and if it wasn't outrageously expensive ("Sing prices" as everyone in Batam says) I would have ordered more for take-out.
After lunch I stop by the exquisitely appointed Hindu temple and watch the puja candles being lit. Taking the long way back to the subway I realize, Singapore's India is exactly like India if India were clean. I begin plotting and calculating how many trips back I can afford to make over the course of this next year.
With only an hour to spare, I head to the Ritz Carlton which boasts one of the finest modern art collections in the world. Exiting the metro station though, I get turned about. I finally stop to ask for directions and notice a young business man walking towards me and the local who tells me "That's it right there."
Turning to walk back to the corner, I hear the business man say to the local, "Roight, I'll just follow 'er then." and in two strides he's sidled up beside me.
"I think I've crossed this intersection five times now," he says by way of introduction.
"Oh good," I answer, "you've practiced. I'll feel better about crossing with you then. You can give me the inside scoop on any tricky bits."
"But this is the one side I haven't really had a go at yet you see, which is why I thought I'd better follow that girl there 'oo looks like she knows what she's doin'. 'ow did you land up 'ere anyway?"
So I tell him about the visa run and he tells me he just interviewed for a job on the 38th floor of the building across the street.
"How'd that go?" I ask, worried I'm going to have to give a pep talk.
"Fantastic! They're sending me the contract as we speak!"
"Congratulations! How lucky are you! You get to live in Singapore!"
"I know!" he says and we continue to exclaim excitedly back and forth while we try to find the entrance to the Ritz. I don't recall ever sharing that amazing I-just-got-my-dream-job moment with a stranger before this and I feel kind of special knowing that I'm the first person on the planet to know that Paul, the British engineer, is flying home in two hours to give notice.
We seem to have an instant rapport. "Paul," I begin after the concierge hands us our iPods for the free guided tour. "You're a bit squeamish about putting that in your ear aren't you?" He says without waiting for me to finish. "I'll put one in one ear then and I'll give you the gist, yes? Okay roight now, they're saying, blah blah blah, oh sod it that's not interesting at all." And so we roam the hotel soaking up the air conditioning and enjoying the company.
"This one's untitled."
"That won't do. What would you call it, Paul, if it was yours?"
"Splitchy, wait, no Splotchy."
"Right, Splitchy Splotchy it is."
In the last five minutes we make a final dash around the lobby trying to locate the David Hockney's which was what drew me here in the first place. When we find them he picks up the pencil lying on a table beneath them and scribbles something on hotel stationary. Please let that be your e-mail address I think. But instead it's David Hockney's ("Or 'Ockney old boy, as we like to call him back home in England") "autograph". I promise I'll try to sell it on e-bay.
Then he walks me back to the metro station where we slowly have a hurried awkward goodbye, each of us hesitating but he doesn't ask me for my email address. I imagine he either found me dull, smelly (though frankly in this heat we all are by late afternoon), or he's married so I smile and wish him all the best with his new job. Either Yue Gong Niang Niang has something mind meltingly incredible in store for me in the future, or lighting incense sticks in front of statues doesn't work any better than internet dating.
I am exactly four minutes late and brace for another tongue lashing but Madam Ying is not there. In fact it's nearly 6 o'clock when a man approaches me apologetically and hands me my visa. I have missed the 5:30 ferry home so, after paying him, I wander through the mall and buy shoes, chocolate and wine.
When the 8:30 ferry pulls away from the harbour the gondolas to the amusement park are lit like gigantic fireflies in the night sky. I don't want to leave. At home I pop some wine into the fridge while I shower before crawling into bed with two pieces of chocolate, a glass of chardonnay and movie. I fall asleep before the plot thickens but my guess is, in the movie at least, the boy gets the girl.
