There’s nothing like air travel to emphasize the reach of global capital, and what I’ll call postmodernism, the culture of globalization.
Flying through Hong Kong, my first thought stepping out of the plane was “Hey, there’s a Starbucks here.” There was also a Burger King, a Ben & Jerry’s and even a Popeye’s Chicken. The main distinguishing characteristic of the Hong Kong airport was that you get on the left moving sidewalk, not the right. This makes sense, since Hong Kong was a british colony, but that didn’t stop me from nearly breaking my ankle absent-mindedly stepping onto the bottom of a down escalator.
The Singapore airport is much the same, although there isn’t a Starbucks, as far as I saw, there are the same bottles of Johnny Walker in the Duty Free shop, the same brands of candy in the candy shop. Singapore proper, though, is even more stunning. In our two-hour lightning walking trip through the city, we counted five 7-11s. The bus shelter billboards are either run by Clear Channel or by JCDecaux, just like the ones in San Francisco. The ad to the right could easily be on Market Street.
I am now in India, in the heart of the new silicon boom, and will be posting more soon.