It’s me. Hi. I’m the one who doesn’t write like she should, it’s me.

Taylor Swift mania has come and gone in Singapore. It was a long time coming as tickets went on sale what feels like forever ago and the chaos that ensued was, well, chaotic. Luckily, neither of my girls were huge fans (at the time) and I didn’t get sucked into the frenzy of the pre-sale that dominated all topics of conversation for weeks.

Anyway, it turns out that not getting sucked into the frenzy wasn’t such a bad thing. By the time Taylor Swift landed on the Little Red Dot I pretty much assumed we had missed our chance and I wasn’t exactly losing sleep over it. This was mostly true until the day of her first show.

On the first day of her six days stop in Singapore the girls and I were walking through the malls of Orchard Road and quickly developed a new game called “Count the Swifties.” The rules were simple: Count the Swifties (who were easily identifiable by their bedazzled, blinged, and cowboy booted outfits). It was during this super exciting game that both of my girls decided they, also, needed to go to the concert and, I can’t lie, I was starting to get major FOMO as well.

Taylor Swift started gaining in popularity when I was in my early to mid 20s so I think her allure has been lost on me. I admire her and think she’s bad ass for taking back her work and standing up for herself and, if she’s the artist my girls want to fan-girl over, then I’m fine with that; there are considerably worse people they could choose to admire.

Anyway, the day after our game of “Count the Swifties” (patent pending) I was talking to Marcus who was on travel when he mentioned he was surprised I hadn’t gotten any tickets to the show which, in turn, surprised me and I think it’s safe to say Singapore has turned Marcus bougie. No sooner had I hung-up the phone with Marcus when I got a text asking if I would be interested in seeing the show that night and in an hour. The catch? There were only two tickets available.

What I’m about to say is an absolute testament to how safe Singapore is because, for a split second, I considered sending my two girls by themselves to the sold-out, 60,000 people, Taylor Swift stadium show. To be honest, my only concern about sending them by themselves was two-fold: 1. They had never been to such an event and might be confused about navigating a venue such as that, and 2. How would I get them home? One thing was certain, I definitely could not choose one child over the other unless I wanted to go down in history as the WORST MOM EVER (which is not a goal I aspire to though I think I have had that distinction on occasion).

All of these thoughts were racing through my mind as I only had a few minutes to either accept the tickets or not because they needed to find someone who could take them ASAP. Obviously, I took them¹ and then figured out exactly what to do. I decided to escort the girls to the concert and was able to find a relatively cheap, partially obstructed view ticket online. Within an hour of the initial text we were at the stadium and in our respective seats. The girls had floor tickets and were about 20 rows from the stage which, for a first concert experience, is pretty epic and I’m 100% sure we can never replicate that. I, with my partially obstructed view and surrounded by a cohort of people who knew the lyrics to EVERY SINGLE SONG and who screamed-sang them, made myself at home with some beers and TSwift swag and kept an eye on my phone for if and when the girls needed me.

The concert was fun, my girls had a blast, and we all got home about an hour after the concert had ended which is the biggest reason why I knew better than to send the girls alone. It was kind of a long wait for Singapore standards but there were 60,000 other Swifties who were also trying to get home. What floored me more than anything, aside from the fact that everyone around me knew EVERY SINGLE SONG and screamed-sang them (did I mention that), was how we went to having a lazy Sunday evening to attending a Taylor Swift song in a matter of one hour. Maybe that’s the joy of living in a city or maybe that’s the joy of living specifically in Singapore where the logistics for attending a concert are about as complicated as driving to the grocery store. Either way, it is an aspect of living here that I will truly miss.

1. We were in a lottery for the tickets through Marcus’s work and we paid for them though at a deeply discounted rate. ↩︎