Lounges and spaces

I don't really remember when lounging around started becoming much of an obsession for me. Considering how much my childhood revolved around studying, it was notable that I hardly took any notice of where I did my work. And that's funny because I had a wooden desk, and I hardly used it. It would be in a room that was too hot to study in.

Later on, I went to college, and there were fine reading rooms in the libraries for doing your work. The dorm that I was in for my first year wasn't necessarily conducive towards doing work, but I started realising that being in the right room increased your concentration. I wish I had known that.

And after I left Snowy Hill and went back to Singapore, I developed a taste for reading, I also developed a taste for sitting at a cafe for hours with a book. It was probably not the best use of your time, but that came with my taste for reading. It was the trifecta I got a taste for: jazz, coffee and books. Infamously I spent my 30th birthday in Borders. By my 35th birthday, it had closed down.

I think the rise of Starbucks and Coffee Bean gave rise to the idea that tables in coffee shops were lounges, and people could hang in there for as long as they wanted. “Friends” made the cosy living room something attractive. Maybe when I was young, I didn't think that their ice blended drinks were too sweet, or too expensive. I don't know how many weekends and evenings I whiled away in those places, going to libraries and borrowing more and more books to read.

I think it was one of those things where a public space would be a form of escapism for me. One of them was a way of distancing myself from my parents as much as I could. I would just go out on a weekend and be on my own, either walking aimlessly through yet another mall, or hanging out for hours in a coffee shop during a down time, trying to make the one drink I purchased last for as long as I possibly could.

I think one of the first places where I thought of public spaces as places to hang out was the book shop, where I could just spend hours browsing the magazine racks, either for the latest computer games (I was a kid back then) or for music. Then it turned into whiling away all my time in a music store, looking at album covers and very occasionally making a purchase or two.

Then came college, where everything was tastefully furnished. Snowy Hill was a cold place, and a lot of time was spent indoors. Maybe the internet turned into another public space, but I did take a lot of walks into university buildings, which were invariably furnished with nice finishings – this was an American university, and the best ones had to make their interiors look good. Of course, this was coupled with a love for learning some kind of a bookish knowledge, but sometimes I wonder how much I just liked the way that the university looked. Years later, I read an article which stated, flatly, that one of the business models for the American University is that it served as some kind of a hotel. It made me cringe, but I recognised the truth in it. It's one of the reasons why it makes you feel so wonderful when you're in it – you get to study in nice surroundings, and kid yourself that you're there because of the knowledge acquisition and character building. IT's like telling people you read playboy magazine for the articles.

Then there was public transport. At one point I was such a bookworm that I would always have a book with me, and I would always be reading it when I was on the MRT, standing up. Or I would be at the back of a bus, slouching and reading it. It must have been one of those long bus rides from the city to Snowy Hill when it occurred to me that I would love just whiling away a lot of time, reading on a bus.

Then there was that time when I was training up for long distance running, and I just took it as a form of tourism to just run through streets of Singapore and try to see as much of this city as I possibly could, to go through housing estates that I've never seen before and I might never see again. I loved the dinners and suppers that took place after those runs, when I would just feel so hungry and actually gobble everything down. I had to burn off 10 miles running worth of fat in order to feel that way.

But I suppose that's why I felt a big sense of loss when Borders closed down. It was around the time when I was about to go to Mexico. I don't think I loved the University of Mexico as much as I loved Snowy Hill. It was a more austere university, although they tried to make a nice looking campus for us. We were the most wealthy department on campus, and there were always places to hang out, although I think most of the time I was more fretting about trying to complete my degree and also trying to land a gig. What I liked about University of Mexico was the vastness of the campus, and the great weather, although it was a rapidly growing university full of life and vigour.

I went to work at a tech firm, and the first few years were pleasant enough. It finally seemed that I had the life I had always wanted, a good pay, and a 40 hour work week. It wasn't to last, unfortunately, but that's another story for another time. I liked the office. Maybe the open pantry and the free snacks was not the main point – truth be told, we were in an expensive neighbourhood, and if not for the free snacks, I would have found it quite dreary. I would rather pay for good hawker food, but we weren't in Singapore. We were in an old warehouse that had been converted into work / living lofts. There was red brick on the exterior. It was a nice big space, and of course, the floor was bare concrete, as per standard Silicon Valley aesthetics. I liked it until I got tired of it.

Similarly, what I did like about “Mexico” was going into eating establishments, and usually it would not be too crowded. You could go somewhere for coffee, and hang out in there and not feel totally ripped off. I welcomed it at first. But here's the thing: of course it wasn't pleasant if it was too crowded, and at the same time, it also wasn't pleasant if you were there all by yourself. Just you, staring at the barista and the barista staring at you. I liked that it was less crowded in the US than in Singapore, but after a while, I got pretty sick and tired of being some kind of a stranger.

During my last year before I left Singapore for “Mexico”, I discovered a few other spaces. I was taking night classes at NUS, and NUS was always my “what if” place. What if I had studied there, what if I didn't have to juggle the college experience with being some kind of crazy alien. I also discovered the study room in my condo, which was absolutely crazy, because all this time I could have used that for my own reading and stuff and I never did that. And that year was also the year when we had a general elections, when the opposition was unexpectedly competitive, and suddenly there was a big raucous atmosphere. It wasn't just about the PAP getting threatened with expulsion, although that was part of the fun. It was the intoxicating feeling that finally the citizens were in charge and had a stake in running things. I haven't experienced that any other time in my life and I suspect that I might never experience it again.

At the same time, the public space in the US wasn't pleasant at all. If you were in the wrong side of town, you'd get surrounded by lunatics, addicts and freaks. Most of the time they were just scary, rather than dangerous, but you're lucky to be in Singapore and safe from all this. A lot of the time, you'd be sitting in a fast food place, and fast food restaurants have less latitude to tell a homeless person to just leave the place, and you might have to deal with their presence.

But here's the point about this whole piece. I'm a person who likes spaces, particularly urban spaces. I'm an introvert, but not an extreme introvert. I like feeling the buzz, the life of a city. And I don't get that anymore. Not in this pandemic. I don't feel that things are alright. And it will take me years before I feel safe in the outdoors, that this world is a welcoming rather than a threatening place. That's probably what's going to get me down.