Reflections...

It’s been nearly six months since I started out on this journey and although it only seems like two minutes since I was packing up my London life and coming out here to make a new start, I guess I’ve discovered a lot but in some ways I’ve only just scratched the surface. Some things are easy, some things are hard and there is nothing more satisfying than writing a list about what is floating my boat and what is not.

Floating the boat

Travel – Singapore is one massive bus stop to the world, either by air or by boat. Nearly everything coming from West to East or vice versa comes in close proximity if not actually even stopping here. Taking a cursory look out of the window down to the beach (ok – I exaggerate about the quality of my view) it’s one long cavalcade of container ships, freight and tankers ploughing up and down the Straights on to destinations further and more unpronounceable than I know. The same goes for me. It’s possible to be in a different country every weekend for a year in less than 4 hours on a plane for a few hundred dollars and not even hit the same place twice. I’m whittling them down a bit but even I know it’ll be a list of places that would take a lifetime to see and I’ll be lucky if I even do half of them.

Food – Trying desperately not to put on the famous Singapore Stone is a tricky job. One of the two national sports here is eating and it’s possible to eat out on hardly any money at all and satisfy one’s palate on everything and anything from any corner of the globe and some odder places in between.
As long as you like it with chilli sauce you’re sorted. Screwed if you don’t. Even McDonald's have a special chilli sauce pot that I’ve only ever seen served here.

Cheap beer – Singapore is actually an expensive city to go drinking in if you don’t watch what you are doing. It’s quite easy to be racking up S$16 beers if you don’t pay attention, but in the same sentence, if you shop around when plying the local barmen for his trade, you can easily be knocking back S$5 beers a few feet in the opposite direction. Happy hours are the rule here and hawker stalls peddle the amber nectar at prices that can hardly be beat as long as you don’t mind the beer of choice here, Tiger.

The beautiful people – Ok, Asian women are very hot I’ll make no bones about it. Even still, Singapore does seem to attract a rather above average set of people, both male and female I note. I’m not counting myself in any of this statement but the journey to work is all the more easy on the eye than anywhere else in the world I’ve been lucky to work. Maybe it’s something in the water.

Exploring – Maybe it’s living in a new city after living in the old one for so long, but the weekends and holidays seem all the more exciting when there are new places to explore, new people to meet and new experiences to try out.
Getting up early on the weekend is all the more easy knowing that there is a whole new exotic world outside the door waiting for you.

Cycling to work by the beach – I’ve been a keen cyclist for quite a few years now and NOTHING beats cycling to work along the beach with the morning sun shining on the sand and the waves coming rippling in. Fair enough, I’m painting a picture of absolute paradise but whilst the sand is imported from Indonesia and the waves are laced with marine diesel, it’s still quite exhilarating to be able to wrap the start and end of the work day with a pootle down the promenade.
Changi may not be the most rip roaring of places to have an office on the island, but for the days that I am there it’s actually a pleasure to go to work that way.

Bonkers food names – Kang Kong, Kai Lan – the list goes on of foods that look familiar but of which I’ve no idea of what they actually are. It’s an education just trying to do the local shopping and lots of fun deciphering that some exotic word that you can’t pronounce just means garden peas.
Buying fish from the wet market is even more of a fun activity. All manner of fish types are on offer of varieties that I’ve never been able to buy before. I think I might sign up for a local cooking course to try and not only understand what I’m actually buying, but also to find out what on earth I'm to do with it as well.


Not floating the boat.

The lack of seasons – Singapore has two seasons. A hot one and and a really hot one. You never even know which one it’s going to be on any given day as well I’ve found. I’m not complaining at all and more than anything I’m not going to be a moaning Brit who bangs on about the weather all the time. What I do miss is the seasons and especially the changing of seasons. No more crisp crunchy frost on the way to work. No more kicking brown leaves down the pavement. No more seeing a cool mist on the Surrey downs whilst walking the dog before breakfast. Ok, I never lived in Surrey, and I don’t even have a dog, but it’s the thought that counts.
It's now Christmas here and seeing Orchard Road lit up in all it's glory, which is quite impressive actually is rather nice but it's not the same without roasted chestnuts, a cold crisp breeze and the excuse to warm yourself up with lashings of warm mulled wine as you traipse along.

Ants in my condo – I have very mild OCD. I like things to be in order. Ants do not have OCD. Ants like chaos, apart from that thing they do when they go in a nice neat line (which is quite nice to watch).

I don’t like ants. I have lots of ants in my condo. Therefore, it’s very annoying.

I don’t know if it’s just me but the general fumigation exercises I see every few weeks around the place does make me think that it’s more of a common thing than my taste in home furnishings being particularly desirable to the local ant population and making them want to move in with me.

Building noise - Singapore in places is one massive building site. Everywhere you look there are condos, malls, MRT stations and office buildings being built. Either nothing has been built in the last ten years and someone has been given the mandate of “Hey – We need to build a load of shit!” or there is a boom going on that I don’t know about. It’s a rush job though as building starts from 8am in the morning till 8pm in the evening and even over the weekends now outside my condo on the East Coast. The sound of the jack hammer and pile driving was not the dulcet tones I’d set myself to hearing on a Sunday morning over my breakfast noodles.

Having to change the bed sheets every week – Just to set this straight before the giggling at the back starts – this is nothing to do with my prowess but more that I sleep without the AC on when I can which can make it bloody hot and sweaty at night. This means that the sheets only last a week before they’re whisked off to be changed for another set. My two cats will think it’s an amusement park for them alone as they go mental whenever I change the sheets and they are around. Obviously the answer is just to sleep with the AC on, but maybe I’m just getting a bit green in my old age, or maybe I’m just a bit tight when it comes to paying bills.

Never being able to get a cab after 10pm on a Sunday, anywhere – For some reason all the cabs in Singapore enter the twilight zone at 10pm on Sunday. Now, there is obviously something going on at this time which likens the chance of hailing a cab to the same odds as the winning the lottery, twice. Where do they all go? Where tell me? If it starts to rain at this time, give up as all the taxis are made out of something that makes them dissolve in rain water and you’ve no chance at all of seeing one.

Being able to share it with someone – this is pretty self explanatory but half the fun of doing the kind of stuff I’m getting up to is precisely what it says. Half the fun. I’m a double the fun twice the laugh kind of person so it’d be all the more nicer to have a partner in crime to do some of the things I’m doing with. Besides it’d make the hotel bills half the price.

Singapore organisation – sometimes it’s good when things don’t work. Don’t pay your Electricity bill on time – they cut you off exactly at 9am the day after. Want to park your car overnight in the visitors spot and don’t have the green sticker but have the red one, forget it. Rules are rules I agree, but there is absolutely no chance of flexibility, bending, letting go or even trying to argue about anything as it simply won’t wash. “Cannot” is the answer if you try, which is a pretty infuriating word I can tell you. I’ll get on to the joys of Singlish another time when I’ve managed to get to 10 or more words that I can make out.

It’s not much of a list and the negatives are hardly very important. All in all, it’s hard not to love Singapore and coming here has been a real highlight of my life so far. Let's hope they let me stay a bit longer!
If the worst I can complain about is the amount of ants I have wandering around the place, whilst shirking away from the wider topical points such as discussions on oppression of freedom from a single party government for the people, then things aren't too bad I suppose.