Fountain of Wealth, Singaporeans' life achievement symbol.
Singapore impressions
Concorde Hotel atrium Foreign workers sitting under statue of Singapore founder and British empire builder Stamford Raffles. Liang Seah Street, downtown Singapore, with coffeeshops and curbside tables.
It's a jungle out there in northeast Singapore A city arises from reclaimed land at Marina South
Little leg room in traffic-congested Paya Lebar Road
Passers-by at Raffles Place
Florist shop in Jurong Point shopping mall
Palm-fringed lakes no longer exist in concretised Singapore
Clifford Pier
New arrivals in Singapore
War Memorial to victims of Japanese occupation in Singapore
Lunching out by the sea at Collyer Quay
The concrete jungle -- Paya Lebar train station
Singapore's multi-million dollar arty-farty art centre, the Durian
Unnaturally neat Bishan park with pond and 3.3km running track
Singapore is an overbuilt, over-neat, over-airconditioned island city state, with unimaginative chunky housing and office blocks. Even the attempt at constructing something other than a brick leads to hilarious structures such as the double durian domes housing the Esplanade art centre (centre picture, last row).

The top picture shows the Fountain of Wealth at Suntec City shopping mall. It reflects Singaporeans' main concern in life -- to accumulate as many Cs as possible, i.e. Cash, Credit Cards, Country Club memberships, Cars, Condos, Condoms (for weekend trips to neighbouring Indonesian islands to fuck cheap prostitutes) and Cholesterol.

However, with selective perspective, framing and cropping, pictures of most of Singapore's ugly places can still look good. All pictures by Francis Chin, 2003

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