Low life | 21 September 2017

I got off the plane at Changi still pleasantly sedated by Xanax, passed through the ‘nothing to declare’ channel, and there, waiting with my name on a signboard, was my guide for the next four days. Joy was short, middle-aged and had a low centre of gravity. She was Chinese, she said, pleased about it. A minibus and driver were waiting at the kerb. ‘Get in!’ said Joy. I did as I was told. We drove to the centre of Singapore just in time for the Garden Rhapsody light and sound show.

‘Look! Supertrees! Can you see them?’ she said. You couldn’t miss them. Towering above and around us were a dozen or so 50-metre-tall branched steel structures twinkling with coloured lights. For a quarter of an hour the lights changed colour in time to the chord changes of sentimental songs from hit musicals. We sat cross-legged on the ground among a thousand other tourists gaping upwards.