Day 13: Art, Party, Satay
The last day of vaca. I couldn’t help but feel a bit wistful as I ate my final hotel breakfast and did some writing before venturing out into Singapore for the last time before flying home. The first stop on my farewell tour: the National Gallery to soak in some art. En route I passed the Raffles Hotel, one of the city’s most famous buildings and surely one of Wes Anderson’s inspirations.
At the museum, I wandered through over 100 years of Singaporean art, starting with skewed maps depicting ill-proportioned continents and mermaids and ending in abstract ink paintings and Duchamp-like found objects. Hours of art later, back I went by foot to the hotel to rest—after a week of post-beach activity, the battery is finally running out.
Come evening, though, I went back out on the town to attend the Spotify “Industry” party my Singapore coworkers invited me to. I met Sarah, Kossy, and Chesca last year in Seoul and Sarah was kind enough to extend the offer. My anxiety wanted me to abstain but I powered through it, telling myself over and over again that it was novel research if nothing else.
The party was held at the Mandala Club south of Chinatown, in an area I think is called Tankong Pagar and is busy with restaurants and bars. I identified it easily—the windows and building were lit up with Spotify green. Inside, I spotted the few people I knew and said hello, then got out of their way as they went about schmoozing with various managers, agents, and label reps from the Asia markets. Apparently, Singapore’s biggest music conference is taking place this week, and I just happened to catch Spotify’s annual party that they host in conjunction with it. Whoops/cool?
lol @ this eye contact
In the end, I surpassed my goal of staying one hour and made it to one hour and a half. I also chatted with Beyonce’s former agent (now at Spotify), got asked for my number by Kehlani’s manager 🙃, and gave the latest updates on our product development to our head of business for APAC, who I’d also met last Sept. Still, I felt only significant relief as I escaped into the night and hit up my last Hawker Centre for satay (chicken and beef skewers with peanut sauce, cucumber, and onion), rojak (a “salad” made of apples, pineapple, jicama, bean sprouts, and pieces of chewy fried dough smothered in a sweet peanut sauce), and popiah (a burrito-like wrap sliced like gimbap and stuffed with vegetables and rice noodles). An ideal final meal.
