Week 6 - It's time to settle in

Hi everyone,

I am finally connected now. I have my cable TV at home and broadband too. :-) And haha...all you poor guys in Australia, you get your pissy little 512kbps download speeds. The slowest package here that I can subscribe to is 4Mbps. And they go all the way to 6.5Mbps (which is what I'm on) to 15Mbps. The only problem is the rest of the world don't run at this kind of speed. Maybe I should start some sort of local content website.

Hmm...I just noticed my last post was way back on October 23rd. That's what happens when work starts ramping up. Didn't even realise it's been almost two weeks! Well, between then and now, I've got my laptop computer so I can at least start downloading photos from my phone via IR and also type my blogs at home.

That's right...I was a bit bored on Hari Raya a couple of Tuesdays ago and decided to take in the famous Singapore Night Safari zoo. Apologies for the crappy quality but it's the best I can do with my phone camera. And since I had time to burn (Hari Raya is a public holiday), I went the long way on the MRT which entails about 14 stations and 1 bus ride rather than the standard 9 stations and 1 bus ride or a cab! I thought I might check out the local scenery and see what the rest of the island is like rather than just where I stay and work. There are a lot of very high density areas in Singapore. Blocks of thousands of apartments nestled within each other. It must be a very different experience living in one of these places. Needless to say, it took forrrrever to get to the zoo the long way. I started at 5.30pm and got there at 7pm.

The zoo is nice but being a night safari and me with my pissy little phone camera, sorry folks, no pictures for you. I saw animals I've never seen in real life like the black rhinoceros which was big and armour plated, three big hippos who were fortunately dozing, small elephants and BIG elephants complete with big giant tusk, crying otters, etc. etc. The one thing that really spoilt the entire experience was a bunch of Korean tourists.

Can't say I like Koreans that much but their whole demeanour in the zoo was atrocious. They cut queues, they push you, they try and disturb the animals, they use the camera flash even though they've been reminded umpteen times and in THEIR language too! What is it about them and Japanese tourists (from previous experiences) that they behave so well in their own countries yet treat the rest of the world so shabbily! The worst case was this guy who was trying to spit at some small shy deer to try and provoke a reaction. When it didn't work, he tried hurling things at the poor thing. You try and think the positives but there isn't any. The worse bit is the rest of the group thinks it's funny. Grrr....when I went "Oi!" he pretended he didn't understand English and walked off laughing with his friends. Bastards...

Hey, I found a stack of Singapore's version of FHM in the apartment's magazine rack - think the owner must be a fan. Heh heh heh...I was flipping through the mag and some of the model's names in there really crack me up. Some examples:
-Ryn Cheng
-Esnor'aire
-Alvernia Xu
-Pearlyn Koh
-Klowyn Ng

I have this funny urge to call the last model a "clown". :-)

I've moved into my new place now. It's great and it was big with lots of space until yesterday when they delivered my container from Australia. Now I have no more second bedroom as I unpack (18 boxes down, 55 to go) - how on earth did I end up with so much stuff??? I'm not really happy with the state of the apartment though. When I asked for it to be left clean, the owner sent his maid over to clean up the place. She didn't mop the floor, didn't really clean all the cupboards, etc. and there's stack of small rubbish all over the place. Grr...more work for me. I have signed up a cleaning service though. They come once a week to clean my place and also iron my clothes. I can't complain. :-) It costs more than I thought at SGD$268 a month. And of course I have to pay some sort of deposit. Very trusting society here. The other bill I have to worry about is electricity. I have my air conditioner on all the time and I can only pray that the gods be kind with my bill at the end of the month. This bill is going to be expensive because it includes, you guessed it, a deposit of SGD$500!

Going to work is easier then I thought. I've found the right bus line that takes me to Suntec city which is where my office is. I live next to the train station too but the train is always packed to the brim, costs more and it's a 15-20 min walk from City Hall station to my office. The bus? Well, it's a 5 min walk to the stop, 15 min ride in peak hour and 5 min walk to the office and it costs SGD$0.87 (the train is SGD$1.30). I can get from my place to work in 25 mins. That's pretty good. I did some measurements on Google Earth the other day and I'm only 4.5kms or so from work. It's a lot closer than I thought!

I had 'chee cheong fun' for breakfast the other day. For those of you who know the dish, I'm one of the rare few guys who actually hate the sweet sauce and chilli sauce that is a feature of the dish. Give me good 'ol soya sauce and oil anytime. :-)



Complete change of topic - I need to apply for a local credit card soon. All this charging back to Australia can't be good!(double forex conversions) I don't think it'll be hard getting one here because all the banks seem to push it left, right and centre. There isn't a shopping centre in town where you don't see a credit card booth with people peddling their credit card. It's annoying sometimes especially the ones who don't give up. This is like the ones I really hate in Australian airports. "Sir, can I interest you in an American Express card?" "No, I already have one". "Well, why don't you sign on for another one? Surely one card is not enough". What the heck is that suppose to mean??

I was sick as a dog on Thursday. Ironic thing is I had a cold in this warm, warm country. I haven't got a fan yet so I sleep with the air conditioner on all night and since my stuff didn't arrive until yesterday, my one and only blanket was one of my spare towels that I packed with me. When I woke up in the morning, it felt like someone had hit me on the had with a hammer. I learned my lesson though - next few nights I slept with my jacket on. Some things are hard to change though. Even though I was sick and didn't eat the night before, I had to go out Geylang Road and try this famous claypot chicken rice place. For $7, it was good food but not fantastic. The Chinese sausage and "ham yee" (salted fish) were very tasty. What they do is cook the rice in a claypot and serve it to you steaming hot. On the table there'll be a bottle of dark soya sauce (the thick variety) and a jar of lard. You squeeze some dark soya sauce and scoop some lard into the claypot rice, mix it all up and then eat. Yummy. Hmmm...I might just go back for that again tonight. :-)

On the way back from the claypot chicken rice, there was a little shop lot with loads of customers. I got curious and went to check out what they sold. They sell "tau-foo-fa". Gee wheez....how do you translate that. Err....a soya bean jelly thing-a-magic. I was too sick to try but I bought their "leong fan" (grass jelly) and that was really nice.

By the way, I can't remember if I mentioned it before but I can now download a whole bunch of photos from my phone via infrared. I'll put them up in the next posting so you folks out there can salivate over the food that I get here (this one's for you Kev and Sharon!) Heh heh...

Well, it's time to go back to unpacking again. I only have a few days to finish unpacking as almost my whole month of November will be spent travelling. Gotta remember to eat dinner tonight. For some reason my whole body clock has been thrown out of whack recently. I don't feel hungry when it's dinner time and I don't feel hungry when it's breakfast time. Perhaps it's reacting to too much good food?? I wish!!

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