401 PSI (Its Not A Radio Station!)

I wake up this morning, in my otherwise dark bedroom and thank all that is holy that our landlord invested in some heavy curtains. However in a second my still sleep addled brain registers something else. At first it senses as hickory smoked bacon and my stomach growls, demanding such a delightful treat. Then it registered there is no bacon (A great act of heresy my stomach declares!) but instead just the smell of smoke.

Most people would wake with a start, screaming fire and desperately trying to discover the source of the smoke billowing into their room.

Instead my feeling is general annoyance, I know its the smell of haze that has invaded my bedroom, through a forgotten bathroom window left open the night before!

One step outside my front door and I can't see more than a hundred or so feet from my HDB flat, the towering cranes of Singapore Harbour are faint outlines in the clouds, the boats and ocean beyond them are lost in the white wash. Every second outside and my throat burns hots from the smoke and the sting irritates my eyes.

A step back in and I can see the faint flush of white between my front door and the kitchen, noticing with great annoyance that the shirts I hung to dry the night before now smell like ash, forcing me to invent several colourful curse words as I toss them back into the washer. I know its a waste but what is the point, even if I won't wear them until weeks after the haze is finally gone, they'll still smell of smoke and make everything else in my closet smell just as bad.

I grumble to myself on my way into work, finding that the streets are lost in this hot haze and everyone has adopted a surgical face mask as their fashion accessory of choice. Those that are not fortunate have taken to hold handkerchiefs over their faces, wrapped scarves about their heads, people have even fashioned palm leafs into woven masks to cover their nose and mouths.

I managed to snag a box from the pharmacy downstairs, though I note after my purchase that the price on the box is barely a third of what my wallet says was stolen out of it. But still I draw the mask over my face and instantly hate the feeling of my own hot breath blowing back into my face, making my cheeks and mouth literally sweat as the heat of the surrounding air seems to double in strength. Silently I thank all that is holy for a second time that morning that I went with my orange flavoured mouthwash instead of the piercing peppermint one. But it doesn't help as my hot breath keeps flushing up and out of the top of the mask, fogging my glasses and forcing me to walk nearly two avenues to work pinching the top of the cloth, trying to keep my spectacles clear.

Arriving at work, trying to work a paper napkin over my forehead to do away with the sweat that's gathered after my barely 10-minute walk to the office, I notice a few responses to my Facebook updates from the night before and have to stifle a groan at the responses some people have sent me:

• "What are you talking about? Haze?"
• "Has a volcano erupted in Asia?"
• "Why are all the pictures you post of fog? I love a foggy morning!"
• "Why does everyone in Asia wear those face masks?"

To cover all of them at once, here's the story and pardon me if I come off annoyed recounting it, but most people lost in the haze cloud are very perturbed. 

Last week, as the dry season (Summer for South-East Asia) began, farmers in nearby Sumatra, Indonesia, started to clear new land for growing. To do this they went with the cheapest and fastest way to get rid of the otherwise wall of plants and jungle, employing slash and burning tactics. Literally, they set a fire and wait as the dry air and nature's fury goes to work. It wouldn't hurt many other than the locals around the fire but Sumatra lays directly in an array of wind patterns that generally blow northward... into heavily populated Singapore. Worse, the wind patterns of the region tend to circle the island of Singapore, meaning that once the smoke has arrived, nature keeps the white burning clouds swirling around it like a suffocating hurricane. 

If it couldn't get worse, haze (the smoke ash cloud) actually traps heat and sucks up moisture, making the already tropical weather hotter and the air drier. Since the dry season entails a lack of rain, this is further exacerbated because relief from a storm is near impossible. 

The result, a hot, dry cloud of smoke has settled over the island, a fresh breeze now causes your eyes to sting, your throat to hurt and your cloths smell like smoke. 

Of course it makes people uncomfortable but one look at the Pollutant Standard Index (PSI) issued hourly by the government can make your eyes bug out. On average, Singapore enjoy's beautiful weather and has a PSI that sits on average below 50. Between 51 to 100 is considered moderate air quality, 101 to 200 is unhealthy air quality, 201 - 300 is considered very unhealthy air quality and above 300 is designated hazardous.

Today for the first in history, the Singapore PSI rating was 400!

Check out the PSI ratings for the last five days below. Hint: Black is considered BAD. 

What has Indonesia's response to a few of their farmers literally bringing the health of an entire country of five-million into question. To say it was callous and dismissive would be an understatement, insulting and pretentious is what I thought when I first read it. 

According to Channel New Asia, the Indonesia minister appointed to the crisis, Agung Laksono has publicly decried Singapore's outrage at the situation as almost laughable! 

"Singapore should not be behaving like a child and making all this noise," Laksono said, while his government concurrently blamed Singaporean and Malaysian palm oil companies (vegetable oil) who own or buy from those slash & burn farmers for allowing their suppliers to continue using the cheap practice of burning forests over the expensive practice of mechanically clearing them.

Laksono's dismissive remarks have of course sparked outrage in the country and the Singaporean government has angry rebuffed the remarks. They have both declared for decisive action to be taken while offer financial aid to help combat the fires, aid that Indonesia has refused, declaring it too small to make a difference and saying the country would handle the issue itself. An idea to use cloud seeding, dropping sodium shells into rain clouds to force them to rain, was floated about between both countries but again, we are in the first weeks of the dry season, a period of three months where rain is scarce... hence why the haze crisis is of even greater concern. 

The Minister's response is a very common one from Indonesia, who have a history of dismissing Singapore as nothing more than an island who's a little too full of itself and too prone to complaining about things. The response is also very common how Indonesia responds to most of Asia, that it can do what it wants... a disconcerting hold over attitude from 90s tenure of Indonesian President Suharto, which generally were marred by economic crisis, institutional corruption and a Western-backed invasion of East Timor, which was known for its brutal violence that led to 100,000 deaths! 

With the politicians point fingers and bicker, the people of Singapore are left to adapt however they can:

• Surgical face masks have nearly sold out, with stores refusing advance ordering to avoid hoarding. For those that are sold our, specially designed vitamin packs to help against the smoke. (Don't buy from people on the corner selling them unless your desperate, rumour has it they are just sewing cheap tissues together which are good for like an hour before they fall apart!)
• The Ministry of Manpower is considering a work stop for all individuals who work outside (construction workers, delivery men, truck drivers) because their health can not be guaranteed. Last time that happened in 1997, Singapore lost over S$6-billion in lost revenue, health claims and a slowed economy. 
• Planes at Changi Airport have been delayed as pilots are advised to take longer periods of time to land during the white-out. 
• Nurses are handing out face masks on public transit, where most transit stations are open air. 
• Malls and shopping centres have encouraged patrons to shut doors behind them, even posting security and reception to make sure none are left open to allow smoke inside. 
• Outdoor temples have begun to deploy overhead canvas, to protect their worshippers. 
• Offices have advised office workers to stay inside, if they need to go outside take a complimentary face mask to be safe. If you feel sick, stay home (Honestly the windows are better sealed in the office and the air conditioner is industrial size, I feel safer at work then at home!)
• Restaurants are selling winter melon soup by the gallon, claiming it will help battle the toxins in the air. It honestly tastes like pork broth, if you've ever had Wonton soup and you'll know the flavour! It's surprisingly invigorating. 

Well until next time, AngMoh waiting out haze and wishing all of Singapore good health in the cloud skies.

White Walls of Singapore

Due to weather, all pictures courtesy of Channel NewsAsia.

Today's weather is a high of 90*F, rain showers in the evening... and a smoke haze all day. That's right, no matter where you are outside, a thin white fog seems to cover everything and the taste of burned ash stings your throat.

The reason for this smoky air is caused by forest fires in Indonesia and according to the weather channels, it is just one of several months to come where the smoke haze is expected to hang over the whole island.

Yep, we are getting hit by smoke from a fire that is 156-mile away (Fine, 251-kilometres!)

It all started Friday evening, I left work happy to sign the lease to our new HDB apartment when I stepped outside. At first I didn't notice it, I was in a rush to grab a nice cold lime juice (a local equivalent to lemonade) and then make the 10-minute walk to the boyfriend's office, then to walk south to our new apartment in the old but surprisingly modern neighbourhood of Tanjong Pagar. It was probably the cold beverage that buffered me a bit but half way into the first half of my excursion and I was noticing a burning smell in the air, a dry and raw feeling in my throat and a small sting in my eyes.

At first I thought it was a fire somewhere nearby, but when I craned an ear to listen, I didn't hear any emergency sirens. In the heart of Singapore known by the impressive and towering title of the Downtown Core (Walk through it once and you'll know the name is deserved), I can usually hear the sounds reverberating off the skyscrapers, the steel, concrete and glass walls like a sound chamber and sometimes when I walk the smaller roads meant for delivery and service vehicles that bisect between the behemoths I swear I can hear voices echoing in the distance.

But it was as I looked up at those glass spires above me, I noticed they seemed a little harder to see. You know when your at the beach and you look at a ship on the very edge of the horizon, it looks a little whited out, details are harder to make out. The intricate and varied towers of the Downtown Core and around Raffles were now harder to make out, like someone had dropped white mosquito netting in my way to blot them out.

I met my boyfriend and was going to voice my confusion that everything seemed 'off' this evening, but we were late and in a rush, he had more work to do and we still had to pack for our move (Hey, its was two suitcases each but in two-months, we've spread out!) so I kept my tongue to myself, instead asked about his day, as we speed walked to our destination.

We arrived on the middle floors of our 24-story HDB and made a beeline to our destination, our new apartment. But here the 'white wall' was all the more evident.

Most if not all HDB's have open air walkways that line the interior walls of their courtyards, causing a spiral maze to grow over your head that seems full of life. Along these walks people hang their laundry to dry in the air, grow plants of staggering exotic variety, line their shoes along the walls, the occasional child's toy or scooter are neatly against the concrete railing and with some homes, a tiny yet lovingly maintained Buddhist or Hindu idol with offerings of oranges or burning incense occupy the corners. But along this almost 200-foot walk (Fine, 50-meters!), I could see the white wall hanging at around the halfway point down the walk, the door of the last apartment on the walk at the far end was almost gone in the mist.

But beyond the white wall was one startling fact of the walkway that I found instantly concerning.

It was empty of all souls... anyone who has been in an HBD in the evening knows its common for windows and doors to be opened, for the sounds of people talking, televisions playing and even children racing up and down the halls while squealing in glee fill the air. It almost always sounds like a cul-de-sac back in the States on a hot summer evening after school's let out, children running free, neighbours chatting from across their porches, the occasional splash of an outdoor pool. You didn't have to see people, you could hear them clear as if they were all right in front of you... ah now I'm nostalgic.

Tonight however the doors were shut, the windows were shuddered, the sounds of those televisions muffled and not a body was outside.

One glance to my left as we walked through this haze, out towards the Port of Singapore, second busiest harbour in the world, I could barely make out the towering cargo cranes that could match our HDB in height. Out on the water, it was like the ocean and the hundreds of ships that floated atop it disappeared into white, not a detail beyond their shadows or silhouettes could be made out.

We signed out apartment lease, hashed out a few details with our landlord, shook hands with a very amicable deal and by the time we departed it was dark outside and though the lights of the harbour and surrounding buildings seemed... off... brighter then they should be... the white wall had vanished and we were heading back up to the Singapore parent's home for the last time.

Fast forward to the next morning and we were rushing about, trying to cram what we could into our four suit cases, two small roller bangs and two backpacks (All we had brought with us from America plus a few purchases), while trying to organize what appliances and extra goodies the Singaporean parent's had graciously gifted to us for our new apartment (Heads up, loving the espresso machine the Singaporean mother added to our pile... my caffeine addiction has been thoroughly quelled this morning!). Again I stepped outside, juggle a plastic hanging rack, an overburdened suitcase and three cooking pans under my arm... and instantly noticed the basketball court that lay atop the parking garage below us was lost in a haze.

The white wall was back, the burning smell of wood hung in the air and I instantly had to stifle a sneeze building in my chest.

Everything packed into the car, we headed out, absently turning on the radio to listen to some music as we made the 20-minute ride down to Tanjong Pagar from Tampines. The music is generally identical to home, Singapore's tastes in music tend to be very American (Western) with a greater preference towards Pop, Rock and Hip Hop... Country thankfully hasn't made a real dent here. But just as we were starting to pull onto the highway, the music ended as the broadcast switched to the local weather.

"All Singaporeans are reminded that due to forest fires in nearby Indonesia, smoke haze is expected for most of the next week. Please remain attentive to the Singaporean Air Quality Service and be appraised of government bulletins. Thank you."

Today's rating is 74, moderate. Anything over 100 is unhealthy to be outside without a face mask, over 200 dangerously unhealthy and over 300... well unless the fire is burning right next to Singapore I think we are safe for the time being.

For someone who has never been near a forest fire in his life, such a 'weather phenomenon' is weird to say the least. I lived in California for too short a time and at too young an age to register the yearly forest fires that plague the dry western states of America, the closest fire I've been to outside our home fireplace or an outdoor wood bonfire was a controlled burn of an abandoned house when I was 14. It was started, supervised and then doused by the local fire department who kept the crowd of curious onlookers upwind for the entire thing. We never were hit with the smoke head-on, we could feel the heat and smell the burning, but never we're we in the smoke path.

Singapore is in the smoke path from an entire forest, not just one house. I wonder if I should invest in one of those sterile surgical masks I see some people walking around with.

Until next time, the AngMoh will be hiding inside from the smoke.

Registering for Employment Pass

Heads Up: This is a continuation on my blogging about applying for an S-Pass employment visa in Singapore. If you miss part one, scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the corresponding sequences! 

And now the moment of truth. I have all my paper work filled out, every document notarized by the proper professional and I've even put it in a nice purple folder for presentation... hey, purple is super professional looking so stop snickering!

It's time to register my employment pass and have it made official by the government.

So in most cases, if your company has any legitimate Human Resource department, they can make the appointment at the Ministry of Manpower for you. Those that don't... it can require some hunting through the usual bureaucratic nightmare that is a government website. I personally believe that instead of going this route it just easier to call the Ministry and wade through the hour of operators to get a real live person to confirm your appointment. I however lost charge on my battery and was thrown back to step one before my appointment was confirm.

But HR came to the rescue and got in my appointment situated.

Once your confirmation is in the system, they send you a email with all your details, along with a registration bar-code. Print off this paper and bring it along with all your other documents.

With that all nailed down it was just holding out the days until it was time. Now remember this is a bureaucracy... it doesn't mean being punctual, it means being early. Finding the front entrance to just the campus wasted at least 20-minutes and thankfully I was there nearly an hour early, so it wasn't a mad dash to the door.

Inside its crowded, but keep your eyes peeled because Ministry officers are moving through the cluster of confused and waylay people, helping to get you to your appointment as fast a possible. They will take you to a nearby electronic kiosk. This is where that confirmation paper you printed off comes in. A quick scan and all your information is confirmed along with your physical arrival and in response, it prints off what lettered queue you are suppose to head to (A, B or C).

Inside the queue you have to wait in another line, though this is so short it will barely take longer than a few minutes. A screen on the wall will chime when a interview desk has opened and the corresponding number of said desk. Within minutes you'll be ushered into a glass lined cubicle that is so small you'll feel as if one wrong move and you'll be in the interviewer's lap!

Here is where you'll be handing over all your important documents that you've been collecting since the beginning of your journey:

• Passport (Include multiple photo IDs and your social security card just to be safe).
• In-Principle Approval Letter (the letter you were sent when your application was approved).
• Disembarkation/Embarkation Card (basically the long-term visitor visa you were issued at Singapore customs when you arrived).
• Completed Medical Examination form.

Make sure to note if your American or European, that the sequence your name is in will not match the common naming sequence on naming documents in Asia. To clarify, in Asia it is common to first list your last name, any numeral relation (junior, senior, III, IV), your first name next, finalized with any middle names you have (its common in this region of the world to have none at all or more than one, hence going last). In the case of Americans, who go First, Middle, Last, Numeral, this means you'll have to be issued a name amendment so they don't completely spell your name on the card in a disorganized manner. I had to correct the interviewer twice that she listed my name out of order... interviewers don't like to be corrected.

Next is the picture for your card and lets be clear, make sure you look presentable and wear something that you won't be embarrassed to be seen in. For the Indian man in the ratty, stained and torn t-shirt with Michael Jackson on the cover... congratulations, every official document your picture will appear on in this country will also show your poor taste in fashion.

I will admit I looked damn good in my picture, though at 5-foot 8-inches, I still had to bend my knees to fit into the camera's frame. You get two takes and after that its picking the lesser of two evils. I very much approve of the black and white, high contrast picture of me... whoever the photographer is, I want her doing all future photo shots for me!

With this completed, all those documents you brought (save the official ones like your passport and social security card) are taken for your registration and now are all gone... never to be seen again... thank God!

Now its time to wait. In general, you or your company will get a call within the next four to five business days, confirming that your card is ready. If you work for a major company, generally they will send the card directly to your office by secure messenger. If not, then you'll have to go all the way back to the Ministry office and pick it up yourself. 

Until that day, I'll keep you posted but until then, the AngMoh is now a semi-registered American Expat in Singapore!

For those that missed it, here is the complete S-Pass Application Process. Click below for:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Forests Atop the Concrete Jungle

Disclaimer: Because I mention my job in this post I am enforcing the anonymity rule with comments. Do not mention my name, position, company or office location. Any comments that do will be deleted. Same applies to me, I will NEVER refer to my position, company, its location beyond country, refer to colleagues or anything they say. I will also never post pictures, taken of either colleagues or on the office premise. In general I will be as vague or broad as possible with details! Thank you.

So today I am walking out of my new office (I love saying that!) and into the lobby of sorts we share with the other branch offices of our lovable, multi-national corporation to notice two construction workers drilling green leaves into the wall. Yes, you read correctly, they were drilling holes in a newly added facade wall in the lobby and plugging a ranging selection of grasses and ferns into each hole.

According to the rumors circulating through the oddly always crowded and bustling lobby, it is our corporation's desire to go green and add some life to our always open air office.

Considering my last two offices were so sterile they could have doubles as surgical theaters, this was a sudden change of sorts.

I have to say without a doubt... I love urban gardening and quickly noticed I was spending too long staring at the construction workers as they went about their duties... earning a few perplexed stares back before I head back to my desk after my bit too long bathroom break.

This is one rising trend that is certainly not a fad or theme running through Singapore at the height of the laughably obvious global warming debate (seriously, if you don't think Human activity is not effecting our world, play a game called count the extinct animals for just the last decade... it stop's being a game real quick). Singapore is one the country is actively making an effort to incorporate the ideals and designs of urban gardening into itself.

Every day I head out in the plaza that lays before our office, I get a glance up at the oddest skyscraper you'd ever see. It has to be at least 50-stories but its missing chunks, like someone cut entire floors and cubes out of the structure. From down on the street you can't miss these sudden voids of space, where you can clearly see the sky beyond and long concrete stilts holding up an amazingly immense portion of the structure above it.

You can also see the tops of trees growing up and out of those voids.

Yep, from down on the ground I can clearly see the green of leaves swaying in the wind and from some of the better angles I can definitively see those are tree branches, not bushes. There is literally a forest of green several hundred feet in the air.

And it doesn't stop there, the floors that do have continuous domain over their section of the structure actually have balconies and even pods hanging off of them, each with a fully grown tree or garden to support it.

On the ground it is about the same, any space that is open seems to be bursting with plant-life. Buildings are covered in creeping vines, tall palms cluster every patch of ground and special care is used to maintain them, to make it appear during your ride down the highway that you've suddenly driven into the rainforest.

When polled, almost 80% of Singaporeans voted for more urban gardens, more parks, less restrictions on community gardens and more buildings that actively incorporated a common area dominated by nature.

In fact, the idea is so popular the new EDITT Tower being built in the heart of the city will be the first of its kind, a paragon of “Ecological Design In The Tropics”. Read more here.

I will also admit I've noticed the animal life is missing and tragically I know that even these tiny patches of green are not enough to sustain Singapore's larger fauna. Birds are prevalent, a particular black bird with yellow cheeks seems to fill the niche of Pigeons or Red-Breasted Robins out here... the little buggers also squawk, not sing, so they're all the more noticeable.

But still, anyone who has lived in New York City will note the only real place where you can be considered in a forest is in Central Park, out in Brooklyn's Prospect Park or lost in the horrifying suburban twilight zone that is Staten Island. But these are all finely kept, with lawns that never grow thick and always look like they have been trampled flat into artificial astro-turf. Even the lakes and waterfalls in Central Park are fake, maintained by complex pipes and pumps that keep the waters nearly clear and always flowing.

Yet take one hour to walk around Singapore and you'll notice the residences themselves will install gardens anywhere they can, they will literally cast aside the well manicured lawns in some areas to establish gardens entirely planted in clay pots sitting on the aforementioned lawns, expanding these all the way up to the open air walk-ways in the HBD apartments you'll find the corridors lined with fruit plants and ferns. Plastic trash-cans are left out to collect rain water, which falls amply, and none are ever fenced in or vandalized. Most carry a greater variety of fruits and vegetables than any normal supermarket could conceivably hold either.

There are actually dangers to this type of gardening, as it adds some clutter to the hallway, making movements a restrictive when you stumble in from work or God forbid fire-fighters must rush in to put out a blaze. It can be fatal too, as reports of heavy clay pots absently placed on window ledges, balconies or too close to stairs have fallen, in one case a 12-year old girl was tragically killed instantly while walking home when a clay pot slipped from the window it sat in and struck her in the head.

But this is act of gardening in an urban landscape is a necessity I believe, Singapore's population continues to swell daily but the amount of land is less than New York City and more or less consumed by concrete. Atop this is the fact that Singapore is a single country by itself, New York has the whole of the United States to turn to for economy, work force, population overflow, disaster support and military/police protection. While economically successful, commercial agriculture is near impossible on this island, which hit almost completely urban only a decade or so ago, now speeding on to become a mega-metropolis.

You can really understand why Singaporeans make an effort to grow their own food, to return as much nature as they can when they have to build housing units, to keep their plants maintained with care and to avoid harm when possible, why they try to be as conservative as possible when they use water (Seriously if you shower longer than 15-minutes they start knocking to see that you are okay!). They are a nation that has to import so much from the outside world, including a far chunk of their workforce, while actively trying to be as independent as possible from the same world.

It certainly is a concentrated effort to maintain the semblance of nature in this otherwise city island, one that I wish every single American city would take seriously and begin to encourage their citizens to undertake. Support solar and wind energy, support community or personal gardens, support the usual of local plants in landscaping and to avoid plants that only grow to be beautiful for one season before they wilt in winter.

Be like Singapore, where a forest can be grown on a skyscraper, where a lobby wall can become a pasture, where even the hallway of an apartment can be a garden.

Champagne, Midnight Stroller Walks & Plastic Fish Don't Mix

A bus has driven us through the downtown areas of Tampines, into neighboring Simei. From there its a train through to Outram Park on the East West Line that slowly drops below ground as we speed along, and from there to HarbourFront on the North East Line never seeing the rising skyscrapers above us, before finally riding the Circle Line train to Telok Blangah, an out of the way station that drops us right next to a strip mall and a highway walkway overpass.

The time between changing trains has been wisely spent playing a boggle word search type game on my boyfriend's iPhone, to mild success of distraction. The man standing beside us with too much Old Spice helped a bit as a diversion from our traveling, I'll remember to thank him if I ever see him again... yes, I do expect strange, somewhat affronted facial expressions when I do.

Its taken us over an hour but finally we've arrive... time to get smashed at our first night at Singaporean clubbing!

We arrive at our friends and quickly have to sign a permission slip to enter the building at the parking garage guard station, a bulky Indian man and his much older Asian companion who doesn't move from his chair. Both smell of sour sweat, having to sit so long in full gear and uniform, I can't fault their hygiene. After all, two men walking up to the post with a case of beer at the sundown could sound like a bad, Die Hard-esque movie just waiting to happen.

Upon collecting our friends, its now another vehicle hauling along our group, a cab driving us to... a club called the Buttery Factory... don't ask me why the hell its called that... I asked everyone but not a single one could offer me anything but a giggling shrug of confusion.

While still trying to wrap my head around this oddly named club, I nearly trip over my feet when I realize we've arrived in Marina Sands, the most iconic place in all of Singapore. What does this water-front boardwalk have that makes it possibly the most recognizable place in all of Singapore, possibly the world... that would be the grand Marin Bay Sands.

This 55-story casino is three giant towers rising into the air, holding up the Sands SkyPark, a hectare of open air land known for holding the largest elevated swinging pool in the world, well known for its infinity edge, the pool literally pours into oblivion.

My view however is blocked as we queued up to the club, or as all the signs say in Singapore "Please Q-Up" and to add to our confusion of the Butter Factory it appears tonight's theme is under the sea. It has to be one of the few places where Halloween is taken seriously. From bouncers to hostesses to organizers are dressed up as fish, mermaids and everything under the waves. It's always fascinating to see an organizer check your group into its table while trying to balance a full fish-head costume on his shoulders.

Inside the... Butter Factory's Undersea-themed party... the music is both an odd mix of American pop, a sprinkling of K-Pop and even a few remixed... including "Surfin' Bird" or as most people know it thanks to Family Guy's Peter Griffin "The Bird is the Word"... Google that I'll wait... fine, your now distracted by a kitten wearing sunglasses... we will have to continue on without you then.

Waiters serve drinks dressed as sharks, a merman in a skin suit (or a green S&M outfit, couldn't tell it was dark) welcomed guests at the door and foam masks are being handed out like candy to the club goers, a few of the more inebriated ones gleefully wearing them over their fashionable club going outfits.

The clothes worn are no different then what you'd see in New York, though even in the hot weather of Singapore you still see people out in jeans, knee-length dresses and long-sleeve shirts. Its as if the heat doesn't even register. Though a mid-afternoon storm did help to cool down the air, I can still feel the pricking sweat running down the back of my knees and that sticky feeling of your shirt getting stuck to your lower back.

We sit down to our table, said to seat twenty but after getting six of us on it, all the cushions have been filled and we've physically squeezed together in a way no friend should. I find the music a bit predictable and the drinks are not exotic or surprising, so I guess that's what causes my eyes to start wandering and observing the surroundings. Don't roll your eyes! I may not appear so now but I've been tempered and jaded to clubs and party life. I went through my clubbing phase, with such gusto and insanity that it would make the Jersey Shore's collective stomachs flip. Imagine the combination of an MTV Spring Break Special, mixed with the a splash of the raunchier bits of Showtime's Queer as Folk and toss in some cursing and nudity, plus a bit of random and confusing plots courtesy of HBO. Now compress all this into the span of only two years with no breaks, pauses or rehab and you can wonder why I'm barely on speaking terms with my liver anymore.

I'm trying to find something to catch my attention, save for attempting to hear my friends talk over the sound of the music, though our conversations quickly devolve into shouting spit into each other's ears. It's then that I look outside, maybe to catch another glance at the architectural wonder of Marina Sands Casino (so sue me, I'm an amateur architecture buff). Our table is right at the angle where the corner of the building blocks our view. Disappointed I let my eyes wander and then I notice the sidewalks... the sidewalks and broadwalks that aren't crowded with club goers and bar hoppers, but everyday people, predominately people pushing strollers or walking hand in hand with tiny, waddling children.

It's almost midnight and parent's are out taking their kids for a stroll.

I comment at this, more to myself because it is so unbelievable that someone would be out and about at this hour, the usual time that drunken stumbles and falls dominate the sidewalks. A friend happens to overhear me, I'm a bit buzzed on watered down beer so I can barely remember who it was, or even if she was in our group of friends.

"It's too hot in the day to go out," she said, splashing her drink a bit on me but I'm as bad so I don't notice. "When the sun goes down, that's when people come out to play."

And she's right. The sun in Singapore is glaring, usually in a cloudless sky that is only marred by the blitzing fast thunder storms. When walking down the street you last only minutes before the heat or the humidity has you in its talons and your sweating buckets. Its normal to see people detouring the long way around a park, just to stay in the shade, as if they are playing a game of 'Hot Lava' like we did when we were kids. If they are skirting around the edges of a tree's shadow, its normal to see people (mostly women but I've seen a few older men too) to carry an umbrella as a shield against the hot ball of roaring hydrogen in the sky.

The experience is somewhat surreal in itself, though that feeling could be from the combination of beer, whiskey and champagne... which at one point is being all consumed together in the same glass. The end result is a laughing stumble home and my great approval of my first night out clubbing in Singapore.

Update: I've established that my boyfriend's father is an evil genius in the morning, after he started playing country yodeling at stereo-surround sound levels... to the great horror of my hang-over stricken brain.

Homesickness & Pizza Hut Pasta Hurts!

Day two has arrived and this one came in with a crashing boom, a flash of light and me nearly falling out of bed thinking the North Koreans had finally grown a pair and done attacked. Nope, its just the early morning thunder storm, arrived just on time to scare the crap out of my jet lagged brain.

That's the norm here for this week, rain so heavy you swear Noah's Ark is going to be floating down the street any second... then snap, not a cloud in the sky and the sun so hot you swear birds in flight will burst into flames... leaving delicious roasted meat to fall from the sky! Thankfully the rain seems to drive the humidity into submission for a few hours... before it returns with a vengeance I doubt few could conceive! I have established that I can no longer wear any dark colors or heavy fabrics because its ability to suck in every ounce of heat in the room... which is cause for concern considering my wardrobe tends towards Earth-tones... well its not totally black! I do have a few blue and green shirts so we can call it Earth-tones instead of Gothic!

Whatever fashionista! Onto the news from the Ang Moh!

Well yesterday I finally got my SIM card to start making some local calls. I'm not going to hand it out here, learned my lesson after I left it in a truck stop bathroom once... it was a JOKE! How was I suppose to know that old joke was 100% true! Beside Jim Joe sounded very nice on the phone...

Anyways, in Singapore there are three major phone companies, the biggest apparently is SingTel, next and almost as common is StarHub and finally little M1 bringing up the rear.

I ended up going with M1 because it was the cheapest one with the best data plan, SingTel was a bit too expensive when I tallied up all the charges. Altogether it came out to be S$45 or $36 in America. Now for those foreigners that don't know, you need to bring two things to the store when you are buying a prepaid phone card:

• Passport (all cards have to be registered with the government with federal level ID)
• Unlocked Phone (You have to get your current service provider to unlock it before you leave, not after!)

Now to unlock you phone its just the matter of calling your phone company before you leave the country. Most of the new smartphones unlock instantly when their contracts go over a year but if you are sporting that brand new phone and going abroad like I was, a simple call to your phone company can get them to unlock it. Just say you are traveling abroad and if that company doesn't have a branch or affiliate in the country of your destination, they almost always sigh in annoyance, quibble for a few sentences, then unlock your phone. Some even (Verizon and AT&T do) will explain how to go about getting a new card for your benefit and give you some tips and suggested Apps to use when calling abroad.

Once you have the card... and in my case get a free umbrella for spending over S$30, its the simple matter of popping out the new SIM card (they come attached in little plastic cards) and inserting it into your old phone. I don't know about most other phones but for the iPhone 5, just look on the right side and you'll see a little pin hole at the midpoint. Just press a needle or a paperclip in and a little draw will drop out and you can then insert your new SIM card. KEEP THE OLD ONE! If you ever go back home getting a new one will just be a waste of money!

Now I have a working phone and a new umbrella... and not one of those cheap compact ones that you can get at the drug store and then lose in your car. This is the old style kind, the ones that can double as a cane for walking... or a cane for hitting! Now I know most people just roll their eyes at these relics, when the smaller pop up kind can be tossed in a backpack or back seat and forgotten about until your caught in a storm and its 50-miles away but in Singapore, after the first rain storm started, you realize how necessary these massive radar dishes can be.

Rain in Singapore doesn't come down in a light dustings, in more clouds of heavy mist than rain. It comes down in boulders, more like being hit by a wave of water then a fleet of droplets. Those little pop up umbrellas may be economical to buy and efficient when you store them in a purse or backpack but against this weather, mother nature shall laugh maniacally as this polyester shield collapses under her harsh hand.

But their necessity doesn't stop there. Most people I've seen here continue to use them throughout the day, to shield themselves from the powerful sun that glares down all day. It's common to see mothers walking strollers with one hand steering and another holding up a massive umbrella, in an attempt to shield both herself and her young ward from any UV contact.

Thankfully I have yet to experience the Singaporean mosquito population, which from what I hear is a plague on everyone... but for which most Singaporeans seem immune to! Oh that doesn't mean I haven't gotten a few stares of confusion when I've gone outside, as if I were covered in tiny red bites. I guess here when compared to New York or Philadelphia, I am a very obvious minority. I mean I'm Caucasian but on top of that I have traditional Irish skin... meaning that I'm the white people of the white people. We don't tan, we just turn into tomatoes with freckles!

I'll chalk that up to the fact that when I left the United States, winter was just starting the long and agonizing break into spring, so my skin is so white right now I'm verging on albino. Maybe its best to ignore the stares, possibly that small Malay lady who nearly walked into a wall while staring at me in the mall was just distracted by the glare of my porcelain skin... like staring into the sun for too long!

Get your giggles out of that because now I have a confession to make... I had some western food yesterday.

Worse yet, I had pizza!

I know, shame on me, but my excuse was that I was looking for something cold to eat. Do you realize in this country how hard it is to find something to eat that's not already steaming hot? I mean its a tropical country on the equator, you'd think there would be a lunch dish that didn't automatically come with steam pouring from it. Hey, ice cream doesn't count! I guess after searching and failing for two hours I was starting to feel the pangs of homesickness, for something... anything that I could eat that didn't require me to blow on.

And that excuse loses all its weight when I end up walking into the Pizza Hut at Tampines Mall. Fine, hiss at me, call me out but at that point I just wanted to eat some food I knew against trying to figure out how to pronounce the names on the menu at the 34 ramen shops down stairs.

I guess my excuse for when this happens is that I also was curious to see what western food in other countries tasted like.

Now everyone who has been to a Pizza Hut in America knows them for their greasy foods, in poor attempts to mass produce the basic Italian meals. I mean if it wasn't for their thick, crispy crusts (my personal favorite), they'd have been an epic failure decades ago. But here in Singapore, Pizza Hut wasn't some take out place with a few tables, the whole place smelling like grease and plastic. Instead it was like a real restaurant  with three different menus (appetizers, specials and the mains), with waitresses dressed in fine vests to seat you and a full bar to grab a cocktail with your greasy pizza. The only difference I guess at dining here was the waitresses don't take your order per say, instead you fill out a check-off card with what you want and at what quantities and then pass it off to the waitress who then will return with your dishes. I got a nice personal pepperoni pizza, garlic bread and a orange mirinda (orange soda) while my boyfriend went with the shrimp pasta, salad and root beer.

The pizza tasted a lot like at home, a lot less cheese but all the same. The pasta however was the surprise, it came with the Aglio Olio sauce, bits of basil and even shrimp... along with hot peppers all over the place. I guess in Singapore, if you can't psychically make it hotter, then you should make it taste hotter. My boyfriend nearly couldn't finish and chugged his entire root beer almost half way through. A single fork for me of the spiraled noodles and I nearly choked it was so spicy!

That's another hallmark of Singapore food I've noted. If a food doesn't look hot (i.e. red and steaming) that means it's going to be far, far more worse for your soon to be burn victim of a tongue!

The day ended somewhat early, after getting my phone setup, lunch and a key to get into the apartment we are sharing with the boyfriend's parents, jet lag took its toll and by 6:00 PM (6:00 AM back home) I was passed out in the bed at home and snoring as loud as the storm that would eventually wake me up in 8-hours... which by the way has now died down enough that the sun has begun to shine through the overcast sky.

Plans today are nothing other than some job hunting but I'll keep you posted!

Sparks fly on the First Day... Seriously They Did!

So its my first official day in Singapore and what trouble have I gotten into in this new land you may ask?

First things first, all those warnings about the humidity were lies... bold face lies I tell you... cause the reality is far... far... far worse than you could image.

Within 20-minutes of arriving at our new home in Tampines, 10-minutes drive from Changi Airport, I had sweated through my t-shirt, jeans and everything underneath. I looked as if I had been out in the morning storm and it wasn't that comfortable kind of wetness that you get after jumping into a pool with all your clothes on. Its that sticky kind of feeling, where your clothes feel like the weigh a ton and are clinging to you like chain-mail.

A quick remedy to this, take the coldest shower of your life and that causes all your sweaty pores to close right up. By the time you've dried and gotten into a nice t-shirt and shorts, the unbearable heat actually feels as if it drops to a more acceptable range. I would definitely recommend avoiding heavy fabrics like knits, denim or wool, they are fashionable death traps! If you are not going to be inside and air conditioned, completely abandon socks unless totally necessary! Believe me, your nose will thank you at the end of the first hour in Singapore!

Next up after unpacking all our clothes was setting up some of our electronics. Now this is the one thing I should mention with EXTREME WARMING! Never plug a surge protector from North America into an outlet in Asia. Even with a voltage converter it will not work! A surge protector is literally designed to dissipate sudden spikes of electricity and it completely bypasses the converter.

The end result is your boyfriend suddenly jumping back from a sparking surge protector, a whine of an electronic origin and then smoke rising from the eight power outlets on the surge protectors face... and then you have one very dead surge protector that will never work again! Just go buy a local one and a few more converters, it will save you from having to toss out a melted piece of smoking plastic.

About two-hours after arriving and one 'almost' fire it was off to the stores for a new SIM phone card, a key to be made and grocery shopping. Driving on the other-side of the road wasn't too much of a surprise, I've been in Europe before and even driven a bit so its not that odd to me. But in Singapore, the traffic is so much faster and more congested that your mind that has been trained to drive on the right side of the street keeps screaming every car is going to collide with you head on! It was like ducking in and out in a crowd and I quickly declared mentally to myself I would never... and I mean NEVER drive in this country.

However watching the motor bikes and scooters snake in and out of the traffic congestion was fun, they were like fish in those Shark Week documentaries, darting around those much bigger bodies without fear of being crushed and seeming to know where every short cut existed on these ever changing streets.

I quickly announced that the moment I had a job and enough money to afford an apartment, I would love to drive one of those bikes. My boyfriend was quick to point out the last time I had just a regular street bike in Philadelphia during college I had been hit by cars no less than three times in a year, with a motor bike he felt as if I was just going to double that number. I was quick to point out that only one of those impacts was with a moving car, the other two had been a parked car and a pedestrian... but that didn't help my case one bit and I conceded... for now.

Back to the shops, malls here are not like the one's back home, where going from one to another to shop means driving in the car for a few miles. In Singapore, its walking across the street! The only distinction between one to another is the fact they lay only a few hundred feet apart, the stores in each are different enough you won't even notice the transition.

We had lunch in a food court like place called East Link. This was no hawker center that I have heard all about, more like something you'd find back home with row table seating. The only difference was that they served only Asian food and my stomach was desperately hankering for a hoagie... for you none East Coast natives that a cold, lunch meat sandwich.

I do not recommend eating duck in front of people, yes the salted and roasted meat is among the most delicious thing I have ever had the chance to sink my teeth into but the bones... that is my one complaint about duck, the bones are browned to the point its almost unnoticeable from the meat and biting into it means chewing about to get rid of them. Don't even think of ordering this dish if you want to present yourself as an articulate and savvy Human being because eating this dish is going to make you look like a dog with a chew toy, all teeth, gnawing and gross, pained faces. Best tip, use a fork to hold down your slice of juicy meat and spoon to tear the bone free. Oh and there are no dinner knives! Cooking knives yes for slicing and dicing, meal-time knives are a nope as far as I saw in this place.

I adore a nice roasted duck with some white rice below it... but never will I again eat it in public!

Once we were done our meal it was back into the crowds of the mall. Now if the streets of Singapore are congested and crowded, the crowds in the malls were worse. But instead here the people were like the motor bikes, the fish darting in and out between the sharks, minus the sharks. In three hours walking about I only bumped into two people, emphasis on bumped, no epic impacts, no landing on my butt, nothing. I even apologized for the hits, they were my fault after all because I kept trying to read every sign but not a person paid it any attention. In NYC, you'd be cursed at, called an idiot, something unsavory about your mother would be uttered and then with a flip of the middle finger before the stranger would disappear down the street. In Singapore, it didn't even register as worth a glance back.

I attempted to buy a SIM card, in order to get a number in Singapore to use in my job hunting. SingTel is the one I'd recommend, they are the most numerous I've seen so far (I've only been around the airport and the east side of Singapore so take my words with a grain of salt) but you can top off your phone card at any drug store like 7-Eleven... Yes, they have those here too! Overall you can get around a card for S$30 (Singaporean Dollars) and every minute costs around S$0.16. Number one thing to bring is your passport. All disposable phones, data plans and/or calling cards have to be registered with the government and a United States drivers license is not enough. Took 30-minutes of hashing out the best phone plan for me only to find out I couldn't even buy it. Well now we have an new errand to run tomorrow!

The last activity of the day was some grocery shopping. Now other than a few things, the grocery store in Singapore is mostly the same as it is at home. Produce section, deli counter, heck most of the items save a few Asian additions is almost the same. There are even a lot of Western brands among the items, I even got a nice slab of Virginia Peppered Ham for lunch sandwiches tomorrow! Of course the one aspect to take quick note of it that some of the prices really swing from the high to low points. A lot of the meats in the deli section seemed very cheap compared to at home... but the confectionary treats... like Ben & Jerry's ice cream... was outright highway robbery!

S$23.00 for one pint... a PINT of ice cream. Don't believe me, here's a picture to back up my outlandish claims!

And now for what you've all been waiting for, I have met the boyfriend's Singaporean parents and they seemed to have welcomed me. I know the concept of two men being in a relationship in this country is probably new verging on alien. Singapore is just around where the USA was in the 1980s and 1990s when people were just starting to come to the conclusion that homosexuality wasn't truly a mental condition or a life choice but something your born with. Now Singapore is a bit of a conservative society and has a long way to go but they have embraced the world of modern media and information with a zeal that would make some people's head spin and they know for a fact the LGBT community exists. I honestly do expect they will go through the evolution of LGBT rights a lot fast than most of Asia, almost certainly at a rate that will make the United States feel some degree of shame over how it's dragged it feet on the issue. Change and evolution is coming and Singapore definitely is a place where it seems to be the fabric of the very society itself.

I will admit I was anticipating some reservation on the parent's part, maybe not outright confrontation or fighting but more of uncertainty at entering into a new situation you have no previous experience with. After all our level of interaction over the last three-years has been limited to a few sporadic Skype video sessions and one totally unplanned encounter in Macy's two-years ago (don't ask, just know irony and confusion were the themes of that meeting).

Perhaps I'll save our interactions for a later post, I want to spend some time getting to know them, to integrate into the family as much as I can before I allow any opinions to formulate.

Well jet lag is setting in and it is probably best I pass out soon, I'm going 38-hours no sleep and must be presentable to the family.

Good night and best wishes from the Ang Moh newly arrived in the Far East!

Mother Nature's Slap Goodbye

I'm from New England, no matter where I've lived or worked I've always felt an affinity for the weather of north eastern coast of the United States. And like a parting wave, New England has decided to bid me farewell with its usual sweet nostalgic grace... and for those that are not native to this area such grace appears as freezing rain coupled with howling wind that can make trees snap like toothpicks and flood warnings inundating the nightly news.

Its my last weekend in Philadelphia, trapped inside due to the storm and left with my family, which leaves me with a twinge of sorrow coupled with a growing desire to throttle my younger siblings. Now I know, that's a terrible thing to say about one's siblings but all in all their attempts to understand my move to another country are often colored by the usual American preconceptions.

My brother asks me "So is Singapore a democracy or is it like China?" So I answer that "Yep, just like America", Singapore is a democracy with a Parliament, President and Prime Minster. But when I get to the fact that for most of its history independent of the United Kingdom it has been dominated by a single large party, the People's Action Party, his response is that knowing smirk that so many Americans love to gleam when they suddenly come to their own conclusion that their country is better than someone else's. "So its not really a 'democracy' then."

You can hear my growl of frustration, can't you?

My sister on the other hand, she's more hung up on the fact that gum is technically illegal in Singapore. We've told her about the culture, the food, the history and even though she's a teacher herself, she keeps erupting with new schemes to smuggle in tons or the sticky, bubble blowing goodness with startling originality and my growing concern.

My father treats it a bit like an adventure, he listens and says he wants to visit which is a good thing. My mother... she tends to get weepy as our flight date arrives and shamefully I try to change the subject to anything but us leaving when she's in the room.

But the one person that actually surprised me, who really made an effort that while carrying a tiny twinkle of disapproval but a startling interest to learn everything she could about my future home was my grandmother. When I arrived last Thursday for lunch at her house with vegetable lasagna on the table (I gag, I hate the stuff but will never tell her that!) and instead of giving me the usual topics of conversation most of my family has brought up when I tell them we are moving... "Do they have cell phones and the internet?"... "Can they speak English?"... "Is the food weird?"... she actually had spent the day at the local library (Yes, they still have those) finding every book she could on Singapore. Well a local town library only had three books but by God she had read them all and prepared talking points and questions she wanted to ask me. We ended up spending nearly three hours Googling pictures and videos of Singapore so she could see the island as much as possible without having to leave her warm, well lived in town house and garden she swears that without here attention daily just seems to fall apart.

Too say I was proud of the woman is a absolute failure of words to describe what I felt at that point.

But that about sums up my two weeks home in Philadelphia with my family, running left and right trying to convince them that Singapore is no different than here, that yes it is thousands of miles away but I have always been fascinated by the number of similarities, paralleled and quirks our two countries share.

I guess right now, as I've laid out my travel books the same way I did with my text books in college, with biggest in the middle, smallest on the outside, highlighter in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, I've been trying hour over hour... fine its been 20-minutes... to immerse myself in all things Singapore before I leave.

One of those in particular I've found to be the most informative is not the travel books, the reports I read on the US Embassy website for Singapore. It actually was a children's book my boyfriend and I got in a care bag during the 2012 Singapore Day in New York.

Yes it is a little on the heavy-handed side trying to entice people to come back to Singapore (the country has a concerning brain-drain going on against a influx of foreign immigrants) but seriously, it was the easy book a found that detailed out some really interesting facts about the history and culture of Singapore.

Did you know the Samsui women of China held a special place in the history of the construction, largely coming from China in the late 1930s to work in construction and were best known for the distinctive red hats and black scarfs they always wore. A woman construction worker, that was unheard of in that era and the Samsui ladies actually had to take a vow never to marry in order to work abroad and almost all of them actually kept it! Could you image having to leave your homeland to work abroad in order to support your family at home, but the catch was you could never marry or even fall in love. You can see the ironic parallels in my own reason to move to Singapore, leaving to follow the the guy I love but with the hope of a job to accompany that once I arrive.

Packing Up Painful Perplexities

In the wee hours of the morning (fine, it was 11:00 AM but I'm not working so its fine to sleep late!) I finally and officially booked my plane ticket on Vayama. It was with astute research, a keen eye and a whole ton of blind luck I managed to find a fairly cheap flight on Singapore Airlines.

But now it's hit me, I've set my path in motion, by actually booking my travel there, my future in a foreign country as an expatriate becomes all the more real.

Worries and fear start to set in the instant the elation is passed.

First question that springs into my mind is "Is my mom going to get all weepy once I tell her everything is set to go?" No mother wants to see her child move more than a car ride away and the last time I nearly left the country a nuclear detonation had less fire and energy than her reaction. The worries of a dissatisfied parent plagues every child. I've been reading ExpatFocus.com, and their section on the guilt of leaving your family really hits home!

Second question becomes "How am I going to fit 25-years of my life into two suitcases?" Seriously, do you remember when we were kids and someone asked "If you were stranded on a desert island and could have only one thing, what would it be?" This is the situation you face when moving abroad, without the luxury of a moving truck, packing becomes a balancing act of the cost of shipping the item against the item's cost. Instantly I know my desktop computer I've spent so long tweaking and modifying to my approval can't come, along with that amazing flat-screen television we got for the living room. I'm actually calculating how much suitcase space I'll lose in order to find some room for my Xbox 360, Kinect and assorted games and still have space left for my all time favorite books (I have like 30 favorites and I can only have 5). You can read up on some shipping tips from US to Singapore here.

Third comes down to "What clothes do I bring, what do you leave?" I've lived in six different major cities in my life (Philadelphia, Raleigh, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Detroit, New York City) and other than San Francisco, every one of them have been in temperate climates and under the swinging pendulum from snowy winter to hot sun of summer. You know how you have that one outfit you look damn good in without any real effort, that's me with a thermal sweater, jeans and some converse. None of those will do in a country that is 85-miles north of the equator, that's less than the distance from Philadelphia to New York City! Now I have to transition my wardrobe to a country where 80F is the norm regardless if its December or July. Seriously check out this week's forecast.

Now these are just my three biggest worries, tiny and trivial ones continue to crop in occasionally. An hour ago, going through kitchen appliances that we're being boxed for storage at my parents, I actually was upset for half a second that I'd have to leave behind my coffee maker. Yes, Singapore has coffee, even 70 Starbucks locations, but still it's those tiny things that spring into your mind at the oddest moments that really catch you off guard.

So in order to placate some of my worries I've decided to take a stab at the two travel books that my boyfriend has provided to me, Neil Humphrey's "Notes From an Even Smaller Island" and his sequel a decade later, "Return to a Sexy Island". I know I am fortunate to have a personal guide to hold my hand as I enter not only Singapore for the first time but Asia itself, but still, maybe reading about someone else who has been through a similar experience could give me some perspective.

A trek through the wilderness

A chilly gust of wind caressed my cheeks, as if to bid farewell to an extended winter. The rays of sunlight that streamed through the still bare branches above my head provided a little comfort. I wrapped my jacket tighter around me and hurried after Ang Moh and his golden retriever Bailey. As we walked in the backwoods of Cork Creek Park I heard a rustling in the distance and spied five white-tailed deer prancing through the long grass about 10 m away.

My mind wandered to Singapore, and I imagined that I was trekking along the unpaved paths at Bukit Timah Hill, and through the secondary rainforests at Mandai. As I imagined the mosquitoes buzzing in my ears trying to break through my defenses, and the rivers of sweat pouring down my face, I remembered why I never took leisurely strolls like this in the Singapore jungles.

Of the top things that I would miss the most about the U.S., the great outdoors would rank fourth (after burgers, Mexican food and Netflix). The open expanses that stretch as far as the eye can see, fields not earmarked for new condo developments, and animals that roam free – like the five deer I saw in the woods. Okay, maybe Cork Creek Park is not the wilderness, and as I’m constantly reminded by Ang Moh and his family, Yardley, Pennsylvania is not the country… It’s apparently a suburb of Philadelphia. But to a city-boy like me, being in proximity to farms, cows and horses is as country as the Magnificent Seven, West Virginia and the Blue Ridge mountains.

In an attempt to see as much of the U.S. of A. as I can in the next 3 weeks, yesterday, Ang Moh, HTC (a Singaporean friend living in New York City who had come to the suburbs for a visit) and I explored Peddler’s Village and New Hope – a collection of quaint artisanal shops. Peddler’s Village seemed a little more planned-out and reminded me a little of Singapore and the deliberate urban planning that goes into developing cultural enclaves like Chinatown, and Little India. New Hope, seemed like a more organic settlement (the first settlers arrived in the 18^th century), and vaguely reminded me of Haji Lane and Arab Street with its vintage clothing and artisanal shops. Most of the shops were closed – it was a Tuesday afternoon and still chilly out, but I could imagine the town coming to life in the summer with families picnicking on the banks of the Delaware River and groups of teenagers piling into the ice cream parlors.

As I make my rounds to bid a fond farewell to the country that I’ve called home for 4 years, I look forward to re-discovering the new and sexy Singapore 2.0 as described in this WSJ article. I’ve always been a glass-half-full type of guy and am excited to return to the motherland and be part of its continued transformation. We don’t have the suburbs in Singapore but we have our heartlands. And I truly believe that as a society, Singapore is on the cusp of a cultural awakening, and at a critical existential moment in our journey as a nation. Where blind trust was once placed in the hands of the ruling government party, there is a palpable shift in the winds as more courageous Singaporeans take on the unfamiliar burden of ownership and responsibility for the future of our country.