THE RULES-BASED ISLAND STATE

PETER LA. JULIAN

 

SINGAPORE--We ride on their MRT underground train network, public buses and cabs and this jaded Filipino could only gush at the efficiency of their transportation system. How clean and good-smelling are these transportation vehicles! (It's time we bury those Manila derelicts, those dirty, foul-smelling jeepneys along with those filthy, disrespectful drivers.)
     The trains are air-conditioned and are always overcrowded, especially on week-ends, but there is no hustle and bustle, no fear of delays or sudden stops, or a stranger picking your pocket. (Such overcrowding could be attributed to the growing population and the spike of foreign workers, a big number of them Filipino professionals and domestic helpers. The local paper, Straits Times, also noted a squeeze at the malls in Takashima City, The Plaza at Orchard Road, Vivo City and Velocity and even at Compass Point.)
     This is also true to their cable cars, some 90 of them running from 6:00 Am to 9:00Pm, criscrossing from Mainland Singapore at Harbour Front to Sentosa. This little island, some portion of which was reclaimed from the sea with earth fillings from Singapore hills, is a tourist paradise that could put to shame our own Boracay. (There is a beach here called Palawan, where natives and expatriates play volleyball on the clean yellow sands.)
     One bright afternoon in Sentosa, arriving here via a cable car overlooking the sea, we (my wife and son Christoffer who works in a multinational company here) climbed a rise of land to the 10-storey statue of the merelion (from the words mermaid and lion). This circular cream-colored structure, Singapore's symbol, is also a fixture at the Singapore River Bank forever spouting water from its lion mouth into the river. There is a shop at the base of the structure where they sell souvenir items and give tokens for tourists who scale the summit via an elevator. We joined a group who gawked and gushed at the sight from the top which is actually the head of the merelion.
     We saw as far as our eyes could see tha narrow Straits of Singapore, which separates the island-state from the Indonesian island of Batam, now emerging as a tourist and commercial area,
     We saw a lot of activities in the sea--boats, ships, barges plying the ancient waters. The Straits is the confluence of shipping lines, which make the port of Singapore the busiest in the world.