speed

3 men riding the train home from a day out at the racec- click for larger flickr view

The desire for speed is bewildering. Rubber on tarmac. Ecstatic champagne bottles. Loops and crashes.

More understandable is the desire to be part of a spectacle, to participate in revelry, to gape and gawk and cheer, to say "I've been there too". That we collect experiences and their memories is also part of our desire to consume. So the the Singapore Tourism Board knew that the crowds who attend the Formula Races would in fact be spending more time (and money) in other forms of consumption.

Yesterday afternoon, with J's work meeting and my class assignment out of the way, we decided to spend the afternoon luxuriously sipping tea, across the street from Raffles Hotel, at a fancy cafe with lace curtains, tasteful furnishing, and the conspiring whispers from the ladies at the other corner. We've always wanted to do the lady-of-leisure thing. And we did. There. Experience consumed and collected.

In a way, we were really no different in our motivations from the folks who gather to watch the F1. Perhaps only that our experience was much slower and far quieter.