The Singaporean government, which represents legal migrant workers in employment disputes and claims of exploitation, requires that they stay in the country until the disputes are settled. If they leave, their claims are closed.
My own experience with trains dates to long-ago childhood trips with my family in Mississippi to see my grandmother off at the station in Jackson, bound for Memphis.
Historically, war journalists have embedded themselves with one side, which means the greatest threat comes from the clearly delineated enemy of that side.
Long-distance train conversations are unlike the perfunctory exchanges one normally associates with strangers, or the truncated, cut-to-the-chase kind that sometimes take place between seatmates on a plane.
Conflict photographers grapple with two worlds that are themselves often in conflict – the one where bombs fall and bullets fly, where adrenaline runs high, and the other, back home, which is comparatively secure, and where the big event of the day may involve selecting swatches of fabric for a new sofa.
Historically, maritime travelers had to pass around the entire mass of North and South America, including the bottom tip, the tempestuous Cape Horn, which was littered with shipwrecks.
Aside from its parks and nature areas, Singapore is intensively developed, and due to the shortage of land, is building up, down and on manmade islands and landfills.
The ocean is the last frontier of human empirical knowledge; even the contours on that eighth-grader’s globe are the product of a mix of scientific measurement, inference and conjecture.
The slow pace of trains in the U.S. can be maddening, particularly during delays on rail sidings for an hour or more to enable freight trains – which have the right-of-way – to pass.
Poor laborers from all parts of Asia as well as Africa, the Americas and even Europe are transported by plane each day to wealthier nations where low-tier jobs are plentiful; sometimes the travelers board without even knowing their final destination.
Right up until the late 18th century, when the first weighted lines were used to probe the ocean depths, many people believed the seas were bottomless – the watery equivalent of infinite outer space.
Most of the planet’s terrestrial surfaces are visually accessible through video cameras and satellite imagery, if not physically within reach. Even the approaches to Mount Everest are now littered with human debris. One can drive to Timbuktu, which for centuries was synonymous with inaccessibility.
Life feels more vivid in a conflict zone. It is clear what matters, and who you can count on, for what.
Architecture students are generally given theoretical projects, often located at distant locations, and told to come up with a design.
Without effective human intervention, epidemics and pandemics typically end only when the virus or bacteria has infected every available host and all have either died or become immune to the disease.