Broadcast HQ on Rowell Road

In Little India for some R&R and thought to see what had become of Food #03/Post-Museum‘s old digs. It had been spiffied up to serve as an outpost of the Spa Espirit Group – Broadcast HQ (facebook).

The raw brick walls and uneven cement gave out a different vibe in this vastly different context. Retro school chairs, pewter tankards repurposed as utensil holders. Tender and well-flavoured Broadcast St. Louis-style Ribs (miso and black pepper) with smashed spuds, coleslaw, pickles. Flat white with beans from Forty Hands Coffee of course.

Sharing ground floor space was a music shop selling CDs and vinyls. Wireless headphones were available for podcast mixes. The bar and dancefloor on the second level will open this Friday.

In some circles, one might be expected to bemoan the current use of 107/109 Rowell Road, but (in light of wishing for a Bablefish during the recent Vietnam trip and today’s discussion about the beautiful lotus-referencing Bitexco Financial Tower in Ho Chi Minh City) was more pre-occupied thinking of Genesis 11. Our current struggle with language barriers is a reminder of what happened at Babel.

God’s issue with humans then wasn’t that they had become technologically advanced (oooh, bricks and tar!) and keen to perform an architectural feat of engineering beyond their time (skyscraper!). It was their terrible abuse of their God-given unity in language and numbers to defy God himself and attempt to take his place (Genesis 11:4. cf God’s command to fill the earth in Genesis 1 and 2). So God confused their language and scattered them over the earth. This scattering was a judgement and also a mercy – by scattering us, God limited our ability to hatch plans for even more horrendous acts of evil against him.

Because it was God who has caused this, then the unity of nations and communities cannot be created by a mere reversal of yuppification or the dismantling of large corporate entities or a return to a more peaceful kampung life. Acts 2 demonstrates that only God himself can unite diverse peoples and he does so only for the purpose for which humans were made – to worship him, united by the gospel. A divine reversal of Babel.