Back to Beyond

Who but Willie, with his sweet nasal nostalgia, could sum up what it feels like to be on the road again. Though Willie probably wasn’t thinking about setting off in the face of a storm warning (thanks Weather Channel) or a snow emergency (thanks Toronto).

We decided to face down the elements by ordering the kind of Uber with extra legroom. We set off to the airport in a bucketing snowfall with the intrepid Sergei, who had apparently prepared for the weather by leaving his wipers in the freezer overnight and then dipping them repeatedly in water, much like how I was taught the pioneers made candles, except Sergei had managed to grow small glaciers on each wiper which made that grinding sound of ice on glass as they swept swiftly, but ineffectually, across his windshield. We wept with joy when Sergei asked permission to address his wipers. We wept with more joy when he got us safely to the airport.

Now it turns out that heavy snow and aviation have a fraught relationship with one another. We were 90 minutes late boarding, 2.5 hours late pushing back, and three hours late getting to Taipei where we had a 2.5 hour connection to Singapore. Whoops. BUT, in a display that an Air Canada exec could imagine only in a fever dream, we deplaned to find an army of EVA ground personnel with folding tables and signs for all of the connections that had been missed, with new boarding cards for replacement flights already laid out. Our new flight left in 60 minutes, and was a terminal and a security clearance away. No problem. Like a mother hen, or maybe the turkey hens we see on the backroads of Northumberland County, our assigned rep marshalled the Singapore bound, counted heads, lined us up, and took off at a run/walk (in medium heels) that I could barely match, walkie talkie in hand and not looking back. We were at the gate with time to waste. Then an on time flight and ultimately barely delayed getting in to Singapore. Celebrate good times, come on! Kool knew what he was talking about.

And then BAM! Singapore! The wet flannel slap of 32 of the most humid imaginable Celsius degrees as you step out of the overchilled airport. And out of the hotel to start walking in the very organized and orderly western style downtown. But it is Asia. There are tiny 7-Elevens on every corner though, unlike in Japan, they do not seem to sell fresh white dress shirts and black ties. And then we found our targets – Little India and the nearby Kampong Glam, the Muslim area laid out expressly for them in the early 1800s, Things were looking up! Cue the crowds, the colours, the markets, the narrow streets full of restaurants selling biryanis and halal dishes and then a narrower street so full of bars and restaurants that it seemed like a form of cultural elitism to simply pass by without stopping and sitting at a high top table and ordering a couple of pints of Tiger and watching the world go by and thinking that this is Friday night in a huge city on the equator and remembering that the last time you slept in a bed was on Tuesday night half way around the world and very much in the northern hemisphere. Whew.

So, A long way here but we are in…