F&G: First few days in Singapore

We’ve been in Singapore now for almost a week and feel pretty well settled in already. Our place is fantastic and very conveniently located. We found a great grocery store and a very nice park to walk in. Everything here is so well run and efficient that it feels very easy to live here (aside from the cost of living…). We haven’t yet found a pool that meets our standards but think we won’t find one here. All of the pools are outdoors and most are uncovered, which means that the water temperature is very, very warm. We’ve been swimming a few times in a public pool that’s about a 20-minute trip away. It’s very cheap but it’s like swimming open water since we swim in a 50-meter pool with no lane lines and lots of elderly people bobbing around and moving in random directions.

We’ve taken up running a bit since swimming’s not so great. The temperature here is definitely much cooler than Manila but the humidity is much higher. When I went for a run at 6:40am the other day the temp was only 79 degrees but the humidity was up to 94%. There’s much less sun in the morning, though, since, for some reason, Singapore is still in the same time zone as Manila. The sun doesn’t rise until around 7:00, so the whole city wakes up about two hours later than Manila.

It’s really fun being in such a diverse place. According to Wikipedia, the make-up of Singapore is 74% Chinese descent, 13% Malay descent, 9% Indian descent, 3% Eurasian. There are lots of variations even within these groups, not to mention inter-mixing. Add in the tourists from all over and you end up with a place where you can easily hear 6 to 10 different languages on any train ride. Those include near-by languages, such as Tagalog or Indonesian, or European languages, such as French or Dutch. This mixture also means lots of delicious types of food from all over. We’ve really been enjoying some delicious Indian food the few times we’ve eaten out.

Grace found a Spanish conversation partner online and has been meeting up with her most days. The two of them are getting a chance to explore Singapore a bit while working on their language skills (Grace is helping her with her English).

I’ve been going through the Oral History collection in the Singapore National Archives and have gone by the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore a few times.

Since Singapore is pretty well protected from tsunamis and wasn’t destroyed during WWII, there are lots of old colonial buildings still around. I’ve been enjoying walking around and finding some of the sites where musicians would perform back in the 1920s. Some of the buildings, such as the Europe Hotel and the Adelphi Hotel, were destroyed, and the Victoria Memorial Hall is under re-construction, but buildings such as the Raffles Hotel and the Goodwood Park Hotel are in pristine condition. There are also lots of smaller colonial-era buildings scattered throughout the city.