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Where in the world is Singapore? Singapore is in Southeast Asia, approximately nine thousand seven hundred miles from here. If I aimed to breathe Singapore's sultry air, I would have to drive more than an hour to the closest airport, tiptoe through security, find my seat on a plane, then spend nineteen hours on pins and needles, zipping through the air, hoping and praying to land in one piece on the tarmac at Singapore Changi Airport. I cannot imagine undertaking such a feat, especially the part about spending nearly a day cooped up in an airplane, listening to the roar of those engines. The longest flight I have endured at one stretch is about five hours, and that is plenty long enough for being airborne.
Located on the other side of the world, Singapore is smaller than Rhode Island, and it takes someone like me twenty minutes to find it on the globe, while squinting through a magnifying glass. English is the most spoken language there, and a few more than six million people reside within its borders. Internet sources describe it as clean, efficient, and conducive to a high quality of life. It has a tropical climate and high humidity. Instead of four seasons like we have here, it experiences two main monsoon seasons and two inter-monsoon seasons in a year.
But why am I bringing up Singapore?
Assuming that AI is not teasing me, Singaporeans are reading my blog, as well as Brazilians, Hongkongers, Americans and others around the world. Thank you.
I mentioned to my friend, Sylvia*, that more than a few Singaporeans are reading me, and she exclaimed, "We should take a trip!" Sylvia is the adventurous type, and I have no doubt that, if I suggested we pick a date, she would pull out her suitcase and start packing. But alas, Singapore, as exotic as it sounds, must wait for me. Aside from my overall uneasiness about aeronautics in general, except for observing the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds with the feel of the ground beneath my feet, I seem to meet up with trouble at airports. My track record with airport security is more disappointing than my sprints on the track team in high school.
At an airport out west, a security guy accused me of having a pocketknife in my purse. After defying him not once but twice, and after two scans of my belongings on the conveyor belt, the accusation turned out to be true, much to my dismay. My nephew had given me a wee pocketknife, about two inches long, inscribed with his business logo, and it had become wedged deep in the crevice of my purse, only to be spotted by x-rays. Not only did I suffer embarrassment at my oversight and my defiance, I lost a memento from someone dear. Right now, my beloved pocketknife is snug in someone's pocket somewhere between Colorado and California.
On another trip, I mistakenly checked the wrong bag. The carry-on bag I held in my hand should have been stored in the airplane cargo hold, but there I stood in the security line with a duffel bag filled with bottles and liquids that could send me to jail. My hair spray, contac lens solution, body lotion, and all the necessities of life in travel and at home, were confiscated by two men in blue uniforms, and I was almost in tears from humiliation and the incriminatory eyes of onlookers.
These incidents happened even after Barry had coached me on how to sail through security. He knew the ropes, and despite his best efforts and my good intentions, I still failed, and he stood there shaking his head. Ashamedly, I admit that airports and I are not compatible, but that is only part of my hesitation about boarding a plane and singing my way to Singapore. If I were to leave on a jet plane, like John Denver sings about in one of my favorite songs, I would miss my spacious woods, my sunny front porch, and my inadequate writing desk in a corner of the bonus room above the garage. If I were to leave on a jet plane, I would be so homesick, I could die.
Update on David Copperfield:
With almost a dozen chapters remaining, I continue plodding through Dickens' masterpiece and toward my goal of finishing by Halloween. In the wee hours of this morning, when sleep ignored me like FB friends do, I read about David's terrible, heartbreaking sufferance, which I will not reveal here, in case anyone else is reading it. How eloquently the author expressed the young man's sorrow. Some say that David Copperfield is autobiographical, and I must find out if this tearful, traumatic event happened in Dickens' real life.
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