Is a Singapore Sling at Raffles a cliché?
I used to consider myself a travel snob. Certainly not a tourist and even back-backing was beneath me. I went for the authentic experience; small holdall with only the bare necessities, travelling and staying with the locals, keeping off the beaten track. So when I was in Singapore recently the question of whether to go to Raffles for a Singapore Sling agonised me. My old self would have shuddered at the idea. What a tourist cliché! I’d find a smoky café in the Arab area and drink thick coffee and puff on a hookah. What is worse, I’d preach against any way but my way- if you’d been to Singapore and stayed at Raffles you hadn’t really been to Singapore. Unless you’d eaten from street stalls and slept under a fan you were just a (spit) tourist.
But I’m in Singapore on business and I’m older and wiser and I hit the Long Bar in Raffles and like almost everyone else, I do the tourist thing and order the Sling. And the experience was appropriate to my circumstances.
Sometimes I wonder if this snobbery rears its head in my professional world. We choose Firefox over IE, Ubuntu over Vista, agile over waterfall. Ruby on Rails is our passion, anything else is just beneath us. Commercial success is to be looked down upon; “selling out.” Bob Dylan sold out when he went electric, right! There’s a thin line between passion, pragmatism and snobbery. The thing is to know the set, setting and circumstances. Who are you working with, what’s the context and why are you there. Keep those questions in mind and the appropriate level of snobbery you may revel in should become clear.
