Status Updates From The Singapore Grip

“…those who governed the destiny of nations had remained as remote when he appeared in person as they had when he had written letters. Years, he remembered, had been spent roaming the corridors of palatial hotels (all the doings of the Committee [for International Understanding] had been attended by the most drastic luxury, as if the mirror suggestion of economy would have blighted its high ideals)…”

“It was a peaceful and leisurely life that people lived here, on the whole. Yet, if you look more closely you would see that it was a suburb ready to burst at the seams with a dreadful tropical energy. Foliage sprang up on every hand with a determination unknown to our own polite European vegetation. Dark, glistening green, was smeared over everything as with a pallete knife…”