Several times a week I’ve been going to a ‘Wellness Club’ across the street from my apartment to use the weight machines. It’s in Revenue House which is the office of the Singapore tax authority.
To get to the club I walk past lots and lots of tax-filing terminals and lines of people waiting to fill out paperwork, then past a bunch of cash machines (we can guess what they’re for) and then I go up to the second floor and catch the freight elevator (because I don’t have a passcard to use the ‘normal’ elevators since I’m not a tax official). The freight elevator inevitably takes 10 or 15 minutes to travel 4 floors up because Singapore is in a constant state of renovation so there are always giant palettes of girders and equipment being loaded and unloaded.
The club itself is very cozy. It’s about 50% exercise area and 50% lounges, pool and ping-pong tables, and outdoor barbecues. During lunch time the place fills up with office workers from the building coming to have a bite or a nap, but at other times in the day I pretty much have the place to myself.
There are not leather wing-back chairs, cigar smoke, or men with waxed mustaches lamenting the decline of the Empire. I must be in the wrong part of town for that.
