Downpour!

I'll be playing a little catch-up with my posts since I haven't had a chance to post in a few days. I've become accustomed to unexpected rain while in Singapore, but the other day was ridiculous!

We were at the Jurong Bird Park here and were getting set to head home when it started to a rain a bit. No worries since we were done with the whole park. As our monorail came to the main station we realized it was raining really hard. Again, not too bad since it always rains like this in Singapore. It rains really really heavy for 10 minutes then it dries up.

Little did we know that this rain would not let up for hours! Now this again isn't a huge problem, but we were in a unique situation of having just two small umbrellas between the 10 of us. We had to get from the monorail station to the bus stand somehow.

We made it to the entrance of the park okay since there were many covered walkways. But then we were stuck at the taxi stand near the entrance. The bus stand is on the main road more than 500 feet of heavy down pour away. So my wife and I shuttled everyone two by two to the bus shelter. The whole time, walking through ankle-deep flows of rain water. Forget about getting a little wet, we were soaked head to toe after five trips each!

After the second or third trip we could get any wetter so we just kept the rest of our party dry while we took the soaking of our lives. We dripped all the way home on the 45 minute train ride home. My shoes took 2 days to dry properly and will never be the same. Fun fun fun!

Remembrance

It's been a busy few days over here so I haven't had the chance to post. Rather than use this post to mention the goings-on over here, I'd like to take some space and remember the victims of last year's tsunami. It's been one year since we all bore witness the biggest devastation any of us have seen. Being so close to where this all happened, there are many commemorations going on in this area.

Rather than give a few links to stories about these ceremonies, let me comment about the recent South Asian earthquake. While I've been here, I've seen a lot more of the suffering the people affected by the earthquake have been through. It's amazing how little attention the earthquake has gotten considering that just as many people have been devastated by the quake as by the tsunami. Not only are these people out of home, they are facing the bitter cold besetting the region now. BBC has provided good coverage of this while I've been here, noting how many villages have seen no aid since the first few days and weeks right after the quake. Just as with the tsunami victims, these quake survivors are going to need years of help to get back on their feet.

So if you haven't done so already, please spend a moment of your time and a few of your dollars to donate to some worthy causes:
International Red Cross/Red Crescent: http://donate.ifrc.org/

UN High Commission for Refugees: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/earthquake

Tropical Bruin

One of the recurring mysteries for me every time I visit Singapore is the UCLA line of clothing.

I've seen this line of clothing in the same section of the same department store every year I come to Singapore! I haven't seen this stuff any where else in the world, but here it is to perplex me every year. And it's definitely not the stuff you find in Ackerman on campus. This stuff is "fashion" as opposed to college memorabilia. My first question is: Why UCLA? It's not a historically world famous school like Harvard or Cambridge. As far as I know, there is no Singaporean extension campus. So what's the deal? I guess I should be proud to see the UCLA logo half way across the world, but seriously, the clothing kinda sucks. I wouldn't buy it. Is this just some way for the UC Regents to make a little extra money by licensing school names? If so, where's the Cal clothing line? How about a little Banana Slug or Anteater action? Knowing the odd clothing some people wear here, I'd expect a UC Santa Cruz or Irvine line to sell well. But the odd thing is that the UCLA logo appears no where on the outside of this clothing...it's just on the labels inside the clothes. So it's not like the school name spreads worldwide. Do Singaporeans even know that this UCLA refers to a college? The way it's labeled and marketed within the store, it's treated just like some other fashion line, like Polo, Calvin Klein, or somesuch. Very odd. Very odd indeed.

I need to solve this mystery!

No English, Lah

Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Tamil, and Mandarin. You hear these four languages every day in both official and non-official capacities.

The other day we were going to a friend's new house for a pooja. They offered to pick us up since it was on the way from picking up the priest who would conduct the prayer. So we're sitting in the back next to the priest and he and the uncle up front start speaking in a language I couldn't recognize.

It didn't sound like Tamil since I figured that might be a common language. It also didn't sound like anything else. So I asked my wife what language they were speaking. Turns out they were speaking in Malay. I had to ask a follow-up question to my wife: Why?

So here's the kicker: The priest is Tamil and his native tongue is obviously Tamil, but he also speaks Malay. The uncle is Gujarati, but grew up in Singapore. He's fluent in Gujarati, English, and Malay. The only common language between the two was Malay so they conversed in Malay.

Amazing.

In all my life, English tends to be common language between random Indians.

Here in Singapore, it's just as likely for the two to end up speaking in Malay or Mandarin!

Makes me feel inadquete with my grasp of just two languages. When we first got married, I asked my wife to teach me Malay (she knows enough of it along with Mandarin to get by), but here I am still dealing with my dual-language life. I think it's time she starts teaching me the basics.

BTW, the title has the word "Lah" in it. It's the most common word spoken here in Singapore. It's a Singlish word used at the end of sentences for various reasons. I just think Singaporeans like the word so much they need to use it as much as possible.

Botanic Gardens

A quick with a few photos from our walk through the Singapore Botanic Gardens. I think my first impression about SGP on my first trip here was that it's a lot more green than I thought it would be. I always thought of the country as this totally industrialized place with hardly any room for nature. In fact, SGP is more lush than just about anywhere I've seen. Granted, this lushness is by design, it's still very inviting. The Botanic Gardens is one of those spots. It's actually just around the corner from a very busy shopping district, but you wouldn't know it while there.

On to the photos!

The first thing I thought of when I saw this fern frond (it'll open up soon to develop into a fern leaf) was high school bio class. We learned so much about the lifecycle of various living things that I immediately knew what this was. Can I just say that I'm glad I brought a good lens with me??

You'd think I was hunting down that boy under the peepal tree I wrote about a week back. I just love the way the branches of this tree have taken root and intertwined with each other. Tropical plants just have a certain quality to them that can't be matched elsewere. BTW, apparently Singapore is not in a tropical climate. They fooled me. I'll have to look up the definition of tropical since in my book it says hot, rainy, humid.


The Botanic Gardens have an Orchid Garden inside which has an amazng array of orchids. This is one of the more simply ones.


These may look like bamboo shoots, but they're actually tree branches which have grown down into the ground. I suppose they'll eventually thicken up and start to look like the shot you saw earlier.

Okay, this actually is a bamboo shoot and not a tree trunk. I love the bright orange/red of this shoot. And don't think I've boosted the color...this is actually how it looked! So this type of bamboo has part red shoot, part green shoot. Really striking against the green leaves.


Just to remind you that I wasn't walking in some jungle...evidence that this is all a planned garden with lights strategically placed to look nice in the background.


Given how small this garden was, there was a large number of waterfalls here. I'm not complaining since I love to take time lapse shots of waterfalls. This was taken with a 1/4 second exposure to blur out the water.

Master Planning

My last post may have seemed like I'm very down on Singapore. I should clarify, I actually think the SGP government has done an amazing job with the infrastructure - both physical and economic.

I must say, the country is not for everyone, especially those looking for true free speech, but in terms of the average family living a suburban life, it's not bad. In fact, my mom loves the place since it's so orderly and clean and friendly for families. Isn't that why the American suburbs developed in the first place?

The physical infrastucture really is amazing. The train system, called the MRT, is extensive, on-time, and very convenient. Not to mention cheap. Same goes for the bus lines. This is clearly by master plan. The SGP has made it so exceedingly expensive to own a car in this country, that most people really don't have any choice but to take public transport. And with the critical mass that results because of this, the SGP public transport system is heavily used and the resulting funds and pumped back into the system to make it better and extend lines, etc. It seems like there's a debate about BART every year. I'm sure if it cost $50000 to own a Honda Civic and thousands in annual registration fees, more people would take BART and the local governments would be left no choice but to expand and improve the system. Instead, we've got a shitty excuse for a train system that's too expensive to use and very inconvienent unless you live in very specific spots.

Anyways, more later...

Diversity and Singapore

I've written about this before, but somehow, I always come back to the subject when I visit Singapore. This morning's Straits Times has an editorial imploring Singaporeans to Embrace Otherhood and the diverse population which lives in SGP. There's always this pseudo-propagandist type of stuff in the paper. I say "pseudo" since I believe there's a portion of the population which really wants to live a more liberal, PC lifestyle. I also think the SGP government would love nothing more than if its citizens embraced each other in brother & sisterhood.

The thing is though, this ain't happening in the everyday SGP I see. While there is certainly mixing of races, it's hardly commonplace. Not to say the Bay Area is the bastion of racial mixing either. But then again, we don't have the daily paper asking us to shake hands with the person sitting next to us on the train.

Very odd, this type of encouragement coming from seemingly on high. I've written before about how the SGP gov't takes a sort of parental attitude towards its citizens, trying to get people to act a certain way, not just because, but because there's a sense that the entire country will benefit from the various programmes & nationalism being put forth.

Having been here every year for the past five years, I don't think it's just the gov't which wants this, but there's also a small, but visibile portion of the citizenry which wants this. This group of people all seem to be leaders in way or the other: either in some position of political power or something like a writer for the paper. It's sort of like collage campus. The provost wants the student body to better themselves and the people running the college paper have strong opinions about how students could act for the betterment of all.

Now that I think about it, the Daily Bruin was something like that. Not that they always presented a single side of the story, but there was certainly a level of preaching which the editorial staff imparted on us lowly student readers.

Anyways, I might write a bit more later about the two undercurrents which sort of flow in the paper. One is about the rightness of the Singaporean way of government - economics, policy, etc. The other is about how the Singapore way of life is a farce when it comes to multi-culturalism and personal actions. Very odd how these two collide in the paper. It essentially produces a feeling that the govt has the right plan for its citizens, but that people need to better themselves also to lead a more enriched life and take advantage of all the govt has put forth.

Travel Blogging

Hello from Southeast Asia! We just got to Singapore this morning for a little holiday during the holidays. We end up coming here every December to visit my wife's family, so here's the latest installment. Since there's always interesting things I do and see while travelling, this blog will cover that stuff for the next few weeks. Better than doing an extended recap sometime in January, right?


Anyways, we've been here less than 8 hours and I've already had two meals. That's the strategy when here. There's so much good food, you've gotta keep eating. Otherwise there's not enough time to taste everything. And since I've already got favorites, I'm trying to hit those up a few times while here.

And to make this more interesting for all of you, I'm posting photos! What better way to ensure I blog consistently than to take photos of everything I eat and write about it? Well, okay, that doesn't sound too interesting, but I'll try to make it so.

So here goes...

First off, let me say that the best food in Singapore comes from Food Courts. Whether they be the traditinal Hawker Center or food courts in malls, the dishes are really authentic, varied, and quick. I wish American food courts could come even a little close to Singaporean food courts. I've only been to a couple restaurants during the many times I've come here and that only for specific dishes which take extra time to make and are best had in a quieter restaurant (like Pepper Crab)

Carrot Cake
This stuff has neither carrot, nor cake in it, but it's good stuff. It's actually made from daikon which has been congealed/gelatinized into slabs which are then cut up and wok fried with various sauces. I'm guessing the name comes from the fact that daikon is a root vegetable sort of like a white carrot and it's mashed up into cakes of congealed stuff. I first tried this dish with skepticism since the name and visual of the food are miles apart. I ended up liking it so much, I'm up for this item just about any time of the day. This is the "black" style since it uses a sweet soy sauce. Combined with spices, green onions, and the crunchiness of the corners of the diced bits, it's really tasty and satisfying. There's also a white style which is basically the same except without the sweet soy sauce.

This is obviously Diet Coke, but in the rest of the world, it's named Coke Light. I remember reading something a few yrs back about the introduction of Diet food and drink items in India and they didn't sell well. Not because they weren't good, but because of the stigma attached to being on a diet. Whereas Americans always seem to be on a diet, people in the rest of the world don't like to admit they're trying to reduce caloric intake, whether they need to or not. I think they started naming things "light" in India for this reason and I assume they do the same throughout the rest of the world. Anyways, just thought I'd mention it.

Oh, by the way, I had Brazilian Diet Pepsi while on the place (again, named Pepsi Light). I don't generally like Pepsi in either it's full sugar or diet versions, but United Airlines doesn't carry Coke products and I needed a soda (the carbonation is somehow very satisfying sometimes). So this Brazilian version had a distinct mediciny after taste. Quite nasty. Made me wish I had just stuck with water and wine. Even though I don't like Diet Pepsi in the States, it's because it's got a wierd sweetness to it, not because of a medeciny flavor. My conclusion was that the Brazilian Diet Pepsi is tuned to the Brazlian palette and I assume they like the taste of cough syrup. Whenever visiting other countries, I always find it interesting to notice differences in things which are nominally the same on the outside. For example, Coke in India tastes different from American Coke.

Mee Siam
Soupy Rice Noodles seem to be a common item across Asian cultures. This version has a peanutty gravy which is soured up with this local variety of lime which is great in Asian food. The greatest thing about this dish? We get it from this little stall by the subway station down the block from my in-laws house. Isn't great when you can get great food from hole in the wall places? Isn't even better when you don't have to drive forever just to get to the food? Okay, we flew 6000+ miles to get this food, but still...

More later people...