City of Red Brick

This week was relatively uneventful, but ended with a short jump to Boston to attend the Singapore Seminar, a gathering of Singaporeans in the States organised by the PSC. The organisation of the seminar itself struck me as rather cynical: the new PSC chairman unabashedly acknowledged that the purpose of the seminar was to maintain scholars' emotional attachment to Singapore. On the one hand, the fact that they think we need to have our emotional attachment maintained wrongs us by assuming that our resolve or morality were so weak that we cannot do this ourselves. On the other hand, the fact that this is an issue at all reveals such fragile levels of commitment among the young people who have been chosen to be the next generation of mandarinate leaders in the civil service. Neither notion is flattering

Also, predictably, the seminar itself was more show than substance. Predictably, when you put 140 officials and scholars together in a conference room, everyone is somehow compelled to take things more seriously than they warrant. So there was a striking amount of posturing and self-congratulation - as if we needed any more reassurance that our (future) bosses are important and influential people, and that the calling that we have chosen will be nothing if not demanding. The usual range of platitudes were recited (we need a more politically engaged population, we can't rely on the government to do everything etc etc), with no progress on how one should go about bringing them to fruition. Generally, then, it was the usual situation of an official event pretending to be more important than it really is.

Fortunately, for most of the people at the SingSem, the objective of attendance, far from being the lukewarm discussions, was the chance to meet old friends and acquaintances again. Once again, I am struck by the rather limited circle that we've been moving around in ever since secondary school. Many faces were familiar, if not outright friendly. But all the same, it was good to be with old friends again, among them YS, Joel and Jes. And more generally, it was a good time to compare notes and trade tips about collegiate life, especially from the people who've already been studying in the States for several years.

And when you put so many Singaporeans together, suddenly it becomes feasible to maintain a national clique. The use of Singlish, the clipped tones of conversation, the familiar hand signals and the use of common symbols to invoke nostalgia for home (nasi lemak, chicken rice, chili crab) suddenly all become acceptable, as the group is large enough to impose its mannerisms on the ambient social situation on the streets. Several groups of Singaporeans first met up for dinner on Friday at a local Chinese restaurant (lobster, fried crab, mushrooms and caixin, caixin and oyster sauce, fish head soup, Hainanese chicken), and then we trawled the streets of Cambridge, Boston for other itinerant groups, so that the Singaporean gathering expanded over time.

It also helped that we had a local contact, in the form of SJ, an old secondary-school classmate from the PRC, who had gotten into Harvard, and who had happened to get into contact with me (after years of having fallen out of contact) just days before we were scheduled to arrive in Boston. With his help, our group wended our way through the quaint streets of Cambridge, past Harvard's handsome brick buildings to end up finally at the banks of the Charles River. Then we went to his suite to hang out for a while.

Although it was night-time, it was clear that Harvard's facilities and environment far outstrip what Columbia can offer. The rooms are ridiculously spacious (to the point of making all the Columbia students' hearts break with jealousy), the buildings themselves exude stylishness and solidity in their architecture, and the streets and lawns are neat and well-kept. And today, we continued the self-demoralisation by visiting a dorm in MIT too, which belonged to C, who I have not talked to in years either.

(On a side note, it is clear from just walking through the environs of these colleges that these are special places, and that the people in them are brilliant beyond decency. Walking past a group of MIT or Harvard students is like running a gauntlet - I swear, you can feel the buzz of intelligence and genius in the air, and you feel somewhat like a trespasser. Also, there is a certain exclusivity and insularity in the campuses. The streets run through the campus, but many plots are surrounded by security fencing and thus only provide visual enjoyment to the random passerby)

Anyway, besides making ourselves resolve to transfer to Harvard and MIT, or at least to do summer courses there, we also took some time out to visit the city itself. We arrived in Chinatown on the aptly named Chinatown Bus, and had a glimpse of downtown before we went into the little streets of Chinatown itself to look for a nice place to eat. The Chinatown is not very big, and is mixed with a Little Saigon. However, we found a supermarket in Boston's Chinatown that is superior to its New York cousins in one crucial respect: it stocks durians. They are strange, misshapen, unstinky durians from California, but still, they have green, spiked shells. I could hardly believe my eyes when I found them.

Yesterday night, after checking into the hotel, we took a long walk from near MIT to Harvard, passing a street lined with bars and college-age revelers out to welcome the weekend, a small plaza in which a garage band was playing, Harvard's endearingly handsome dorm buildings, and the Charles River, spanned by elegant bridges dramatically lit up at night, and lined by a long strip of grass and historic buildings strikingly highlighted by spotlighting. And then today, we went down to MIT, looked at some of its impressive array of modern buildings (quite the opposite from Harvard's style - and I am told that one of the MIT buildings was even designed by I.M. Pei), then went back to the Charles River, where we took some really stunning photos of the Boston skyline, and then made our way to Massachusetts Avenue via Fenway.

And I have to say that Boston really is a gorgeous place, a place more in keeping with Singaporean tastes (if I may be so bold as to assume that such a thing exists and that Singaporeans generally subscribe to it). The streets are wide and clean, the subways are modern and fully functional, and many of the downtown buildings are less than 30 years old, giving rise to exciting cityscapes. The river district is especially seductive, with the wide river flowing, royal-blue, through the centre of town, lined by tree-lined banks and brick or glass-sided office towers rising gently in the background. For me, it sets a standard f0r what a city can do to exist integrally with its river. And all throughout the city are old, quaint buildings which are either Victorian or turretted apartment blocks built out of a deep-red brick. The effect is to create dignified streetscapes with dramatic contrasts of colour: the walls and the foliage. The beauty of Boston (combined with the splendid weather) took my breath away more than once.

As for the people, they are clearly more helpful than the average New Yorker, though they do fall short of the kind of generosity I saw in Philadelphia. An exception must, however, be made for students, who are liable to behave somewhat erratically. Also, I do feel somehow that racial awareness is more acute in Boston than in either Philadelphia or New York. People actually do complain in your face if they see a whole group of ethnic Chinese walking along; of course, it could only be that we were making too much noise or taking too much space, but I think there is no ignoring a certain condescension or criticism in their once-over glances. Nevertheless, encounters with members of the public are generally civil and polite; the streets feel safer there if you're a traveler with no knowledge of local norms.

All the same, beyond the stunning city and the enviable schools, the real attraction was really the chance to interact with old friends again. SJ and C are people with whom I haven't talked in years, and I got the chance to visit them in their schools in Boston over the weekend. Also, there were nice moments when Jes, Joel and I were poking holes in the arguments presented at the SingSem, and trying (not very hard, though) to stifle our giggles at some absurdities we uncovered. And YS was guiding us around Boston, so it was like old times again, travelling with my old flightmate and exploring a place. There was even a river scene, which reminded me of the times previously when we had also sought out foreign rivers, and other times beside other rivers with other people.

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It occurs to me that this trip up to Boston really is a sort of escapism on my part: an attempt to escape the stresses and routines of Columbia life, or to revisit some parts of the past. There really was a desire to just go somewhere - anywhere - else. So the delight at those moments in Boston were somewhat tempered by the thought of having to return to New York so quickly - New York, with its crumbling sidewalks, construction work at virtually every corner, its fantastically complex and unpredictably operating subways. And while New York is a monumental, awesome city, Boston is more livable, more humane in some ways too. Boston feels real, whereas there are places in New York that are so ingrained on popular culture and public conceptions that to be in the actual places strikes me as surreal.

And yet, when it actually came time to go, there was no real regret. After all, Columbia may be inferior in almost every aspect to the Boston colleges, but it has something that no other college has - New York City. And when, on the bus, the constellation that is the Manhattan night scene suddenly appears out of the darkness, and you see the complex interplay of lights in the night, suddenly you realise that this is New York City that you're going to, and nowhere else is quite like it. In Boston, things may be nicer, but here in New York, things happen. And you're right in the thick of it.