Actually, I was back three weeks ago, but work and more work caught up with me, so I’m a bit late in getting back to Interior Designs, but ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh what a trip!!!

I’ll write more this weekend, but suffice it to say that Singapore remains one of my favorite cities in the whole wide world, that I definitely can’t wait to get back again (maybe next year? 2010?), and that people are crazy to think that America will remain a superpower if it doesn’t get its act together. Asia — specifically Southeast Asia and China — are such dynamic, forward-thinking countries that it will take a major re-evaluation of our current way of thinking (anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-immigration…the list goes on) if we’re to play catch-up with these countries.

Sigh. One of my deepest regrets is not spending any time at the Writers’ Bar (left in the photo) in the famed Raffles Hotel. We were at the Raffles nearly every day (it was about a ten-minute walk from our hotel), either having breakfast there or — more likely — enjoying the awwwwesome ice cream (mango! cookies ‘n’ cream! classic vanilla! Singapore Sling! Yes, there is such an ice cream flavor.) at the Raffles Creamery, but for some reason we never got around to imbibing an actual Singapore Sling at the Writers’ Bar. I loved just sitting around the hushed lobby and pretending like W. Somerset Maugham was just around the corner, perhaps scribbling away one of his famed short stories while sitting in a curved rattan chair facing the street (it used to face the sea before the city reclaimed some land and turned it into another bustling neighborhood). The Writers’ Bar was mere steps away — we took photographs of the sign — and we could just as easily have walked over and ordered drinks and sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote, but alas we thought, Oh, we’ll have lots of time in the future. But no, we didn’t. There never is, in the future.