Newness – Angelina Tang

Newness

By Angelina Tang

Newness is a break, an “untanglement” from the previous, inviting a freshness of perspective, so it feels born again, hopeful, full of possibilities.

This is how Changi Airport, Jewel, feels like.  It feels new, understandably so, for it has been built in 1981 - not without first starting site preparations in 1975 by demolishing 558 buildings, exhuming 4096 graves and clearing nearly 80 hectares of swampland - and then re-invented many many times over, always new-er than before.  The sense of renewal and progress is always present.  Over time, Swensens, the first restaurant at Changi Airport in Terminal 1 in 1981, became a place more familiar to generations past.  What is new-er is featured in a long list in the airport’s directory: Hoshino Coffee Japanese Cafe & Restaurant; Putien; Luke’s Lobster and of course, the obligatory Starbucks in Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 4.  In time, these will, inevitably, become another Coffee Cafe & Restaurant, another specialty eatery and another chain cafe.

Every few years, we put on a fresh pair of lenses and witness Changi Airport reincarnated, newer, more exciting, multi-faceted Jewel-like and yet, it is the same ancient narrative of newness, of being born again, hopeful, full of possibilities.

How new is new but to the receiver of the experience?