Singapore 2019 (Part 3) – When We Didn’t Wear Masks

I met Sze Wan, a sweet lady who represented Vyvo at the convention earlier (you might have seen my picture with her in the previous blog post). She invited us to 6 Battery Rd, Singapore for a meet up and to explore a new kind of technology. We instantly agreed.

I was kicked to enter this huge building, sat in their office and met many others who had been working with them from countries like Indonesia, Philippines, China, Thailand and so on. Sze was kind enough to treat me with an Indonesian lunch in the basement food court of the building. Located in Raffles Place, Six Battery Rd was one of the many high rises that make the skyline of Singapore what it is today.

After this, I suddenly just asked Sze, “how do you get an office here in this building?”. She replied “oh! I also have a rented desk here on the 30th floor, let me take you there.” The view from the 30th floor looked like a dream. I could see the Marina Bay Sands from the lobby.

Audrey, the manager took me through the Servcorp facilities and showed me a demo of the IVR call. She asked me “what name would you like to keep for your company office?” and then based on my response she did a demo call where she received the call and said “Good morning, welcome to Incfrog, how may I assist you today?”. I remember sitting in the conference room while a completely new vision unfolded in front of me in that moment. “I want this office” I said to myself. I stood over there looking at the Marina’s majestic beauty from the office and my older days which I spent in the little shop I started in 2008, the small incident where someone insulted me over a chair that I had borrowed, an email from my earlier partner who resigned saying this company is not going anywhere – everything flashed in front of me. I turned back and asked Audrey to send me the list of formalities; I didn’t know what I would do to afford it, but I did what I had to.

After going out, I sat in a corner of the Raffles Place and kept watching the crowd, the buildings and kept thinking how I can grow my business to the extent that all this becomes accessible. I decided to come out of the comfort zone yet again and started talking to strangers. One of them was Daniel (picture above). This young guy was a sales agent of some financial products. I took a moment to understand the livelihood of Singaporeans from him as he shared about his family and people in general. I shared about Incfrog and what we wanted to do with it; I wanted a general opinion about it, and he was generous enough to share his thoughts and contact details.

The previous day when I spent some time at the Marina Bay after the conference, overwhelmed, I said to myself that everyone around me thought I was not good enough! I realized, my school was not good enough for me!! Life is the best university, your body & mind is your school. And the journey is divided into chapters of living & surviving. Failure is practice and to succeed is to get ready for another lesson. That day I walked barefoot across the bay area and reached the Merlion. By the way its nothing like as its shown on TV. It’s much more than that; you need to see it, get drenched under it to feel its grandeur.

That day, the bay area was not overwhelming anymore because I thought I have got some sort of a direction in life. I decided to enter the One Raffles Place to explore.

I saw the Rolex showroom, drooled around it and then posted this picture on social media stating “can’t afford a Rolex at the moment… have borrowed the ‘green’ for the time being!!”. On the right was Japanese chicken chowmin (i forgot the actual name of the dish) with coriander toast; it was delicious. I sat in this eatery & I was surrounded by Japanese families & couples. I didn’t know what to order, because the menu detail was not in English. It was a blind arrow that hit the bull’s eye. And yeah, that’s the actual colour.

Later that day we went to visit the Sentosa Island. To get there you need to pass through VivoCity. There’s this ship “Esmeralda” stationed at VivoCity – it reminded me of The Pirates of the Caribbean. I took the walking path to the island. The view on my right was beautiful. My goal was to get to the Universal Studios and click a picture under the iconic globe.

I could not visit the studio attractions because the tickets were pretty expensive and I was short on budget. So we decided to just look around and reach the Sentosa beach. There’s a train that runs within the island. We took it and there we were.

I spent a lot of time there, grabbed a glass of beer and chilled under the sun. Foreign beaches hit different, because people don’t look at you. The sun was too bright. I wanted to visit the Palawan Beach but I was hungry and tired. I decided to leave for the hostel and take the remaining time out to shop some chocolates and souvenirs for my family. On the way back, I did help some Japanese girls to take the perfect bikini shot on a huge rock – well that’s a story for some other time 😉 .

It was the last night in Singapore and luckily my friend Srinivas who lives there, came back from an office trip. He was excited and wanted to meet. So I took the MRT to Raffles Place at night and went on a pub hunt. He took me to this tall building called One Altitude. I could feel my eardrums popping in the elevator. To my right was a Russian lady, around 6.4ft tall dressed in a long black dress and on my left was a Mexican man in a bright red jacket. For a moment I thought I’m in the middle of a gangster movie. When we reached the top, the view of the entire city was visible – the buildings, Marina Bay, the boats and ships in the sea; everything! We drank some beers, took some photos and left for Boat Quay. Later that night we grabbed more beers in Boat Quay with some fresh fries. The waitress tried to become too comfortable with me when I whispered to her “I’m engaged”. She left respectfully.

Srinivas later dropped me on a Grab cab. While returning I was wondering why there were gallery seating on either side of the main road. Srini said “it’s for the Grand Prix, in just two days”. Then the cab took off – flew I would say in speeds unimaginable for a cab on Indian roads.

That was the end of the 2019 Singapore trip, but while returning a thought kept bothering me. That day while leaving from Raffles Place, I saw hundreds of men and women wearing masks while heading towards the main exit. Even Sze kept checking the air quality on her smartwatch and asked me to wear a mask. She mentioned something about Sars-Cov virus. I couldn’t get a hang of it. Who knew, what Singapore was already preparing for in September 2019, would change the entire world in the time to come.

In case you missed the previous parts, here are the links: Part 1 | Part 2