You And Me, & Fifty Bucks.
cc: LOVE
I was conducting a study experiment on mobility for the last three and a half years, living in a fairly situated moderately-sized apartment in northern singapore, where the locals consider not as ulu, in a condominium that
packed with families, and children from the international school across the road. So yes, noisy weekends without a vacant chair at poolside in sight.
Which led me to thinking about where to put the budgets when you are at an intersection of a circumstance where you no longer have the privilege of a certain nationality/ job/ and quite recently, marital status? All these changes are for the better, but without context, they are considered vague, and to a certain non-millenial set, even unpalatable.
So, mobility tackles being in the state of motion - but more from point A to point B - which is actually a pointed subset of migration. And with what happens with the twenty-first century happenstance of being somewhere else, other than ? The current techonomy tackles the circumstance of being place to place in a wandering mode, as mapped to that device that’s revolutionised our lifestyles - mobile phone. So, being mobile
now encases the duty of being staid in a suspended apathy towards the ends that you can imagine yourself to be. Mobility is that, and examining all that the cultures can propose - from an academic to a business standpoint - always considers the issue of currency and to an extent, a proper monetary independence or establishment of sorts from point of origin to the actual destination.
Mobility addresses the issues of having the current milieu actually support this and become what is the certainty of being the last one standing when it comes to all types of changes in the event of being caught outside of your country, in a panic - without a diplomatic visa, without friends or expat packages’ insurance kicking in, and without the proper prescriptive help of community counselors (by the cultural embassies), rabbis, priests, or paramount advisors in your midst, or at your disposal.
So why $50 bucks?
Creating personal viaducts or places of retreat is very important. I have created the analogy of how the iconic Ethan Hawkes has proposed this tidy evaluation to the sum of Five Bucks to Winona’s just-fired valedictorian behind from a media role set in the very pragmatic early ‘90s, Ben Stiller’s breaking out of the mould debut movie Reality Bites has us reeling from its quadra-centric moving in with your friends’ coolness, to being slapped into a cigarette-smoking, Big-Gulp-toting free world symbol of an x-er generation’s / pre-hipster idealist’s liberation of their inhibitive societal mapping to what the youth of today, the un-slacker productive version, should be.
But, in today’s dollars, and the asian context with which i write from, has the need to start with fifty - because we have no sense of scale and the per-capita unemployment rates are tied to having no speaking a word of chinese. You’re left with burger king (which has a strong affirmative action constituency, so speaking with 50-somethings are something you need to take a liking to), or the multinational offices that have for the most part considered this a second HongKong, in terms of getting the office headquarters in the region (lucrative, but highly - eye-gougingly- competitive).
What can you buy for $50?
Apart from cigarettes, and the occasional $20 bar drink, which you can on Fridays actually get at half-price on happy hours around the island, you just need to go where the alcohol flow is - with happy joints that offer a group rate, or a festival in the weekend that issues out plastic pints of beer by the fifths and you get indie fix right where you gather. So, operative word here is: find your friends, keep them, and move around town with them.
Hawkers have beer for about $5-10 a round, and with pretty tasty noodles to boot - the omelettes are fab, and the fritters are as fly as the popiah (like vegetarian samosas in a roll). And in the breadth, and fancy of winona & ethan, can become more than a new york minute when you aspire to spread your group to more than four people. And because it’s Asia, you
have a mixed offer of japanese toriyakis (grilled chicken bits with leek in teriyaki sauce) or authentic ramen houses for the definitive post-pub grub, thai noodles or omelettes (pad thai / tom kha ga), indian samosas / pappadums & biryanis, korean bbq’s (popular but it’s not street food, it’s more sit-down and cook it yourself), indonesian gado-gado salads, turkey wraps (with the requisite fruity shishas), recent offers of brisket & chopped livers in most jewish diners, and the various other exotic offers (frog legs in porridge, insects deep-fried, burnt chicken ass, tripe in soup) which might cost more than the arm and leg in your regular supper clubs, but feel right at home in the neighbourhood offers.
For a really late snack, there are coffee houses that offer different delights - there’s tea (which in a former british colony will attempt at a proper mid-day tea with scones and pudding), as well as the more modern coffeehouse agendas of mid-hipster america as well as the australian ground bean covers.With all the healthy asian options, you can opt for greasy and burnt and cholesterol-heavy at your own expense - it happens to all the places that tourists stake claims for - and has a higher cost of living, when you have no real grasp of what you can do on a friday night, and not really understand what you can afford - socially, or culturally. In most cultures in a city, at one certain point in time, there are things you can afford to have, lose or take upon yourself to make - and it depends on which end of the stick you actually carry - or where you’ve become expired in a sense of whether it was an energy equation that you keep recycling, or the actual product itself.
When you live on the edge, or on a budget (it could be the same thing), you need to understand the one thing: be able to take up the slack of what is on offer, what you expect, and what is absolutely something amenable in the future innovative future.
Maybe, that’s what Love actually is.
Credits: (because i can’t write with just eyes without a face, unlike billy).
• lime margaritas by muchachos & (cocktail week Cufflink Club with Charlie F, genius mixologist)
• lippies by urban decay menace + rimmel 110 + NARS funny face
• cheek blush by Muji in coral
• innisfree browcara in espresso
• moto torn boyfriend jeans
• accessories - vintage medjugore medallions + etoilé wedding ring
• scent by chlöe’s love story
• playlist: LOVE on spotify
• shoes, metallic beige-ish sneakers by SuperGa
• the friday acai coffee smoothie, by project acai
• desk-café by Working Capitol (Monday to Friday consortium hot-deskers)
• fries & wifi, by potatohead folk
• cabs by über
• sobering mists by la roche posey (eau thermale)
Written at dusk, during cocktail hour around 7pm SGT, on a cool-weather Friday. //Gestalten//