I Heart Singapore

Ok, so it was Singapore Day last saturday. No, it's not national day; it's just singapore day (don't really know what that means). On a practical level, it translates into a whole bunch of singaporeans and their friends (6,000 of them!) congregrating at central park for free makan and free sunshine during the day, and another 300 of us swooping into the New York public library during the evening for cocktails and dinner. I was not at the day event because i had some Spanish concerns that overtook my Singaporean patriotism (i'm sure the other kacangs will have something more to write about on that).

The evening event, however, went far beyond my expectations. The cocktail hour was very classy, decked out with a spectacular presentation of hors d'œuvres on trays with orchid insets served by abercrombie & fitch models lookalikes. i was semi-seduced now. We bumped into some unexpected company (some welcome, others not so), did some checking out of our fellow country people, and then proceeded to the dinner hall for the banquet sponsored by Min Jiang restaurant of Goodwood Park Hotel (they will remind you of this a few more times throughout the evening).

The first thing that hit me was this I Heart Sg sign, which i thought was pretty in your face. But i figured i could Heart Sg the entire evening if it was as nice as the cocktail hour, which it turned out to be. I was told by our host from the Overseas Singapore Unit (OSU; part of the prime minister's office, no affiliation to Contact Singapore, New York Singapore Association, or the Kacang Puteh Club) that this event was conceived as a way to tie in the uncoordinated efforts of the various overseas singapore units (i'm paraphrasing), and that, no there was no agenda whatsoever except to get fellow Singaporeans in a foreign land together. Thoroughly seduced by now by the glorious food "sponsored by Min Jiang restaurant of Goodwood Park Hotel", which i was told was specially adapted to fit into the evening's chi-chi scheme, i believed him. Even when Kit Chan came forward to talk about how "there's no place like home", i continued to believe, probably drunk from the Mapo Tofu martini. I should have known better. At the end of an unexpectedly enjoyable evening filled with entertainment only a true Singaporean can fully appreciate, the whole cast got on stage and did a rendition of, you guessed it, "We are Singapore." I guess this is singapore's way of subtly reminding us that New York is NOT home, even if we call it so for now.









mapo tofu martini