Things You Don't Care About Living Here

Since it's Thanksgiving back in the USA right now, I've been reading a lot of "I'm so thankful for this and that and blahblahblah" posts. They're nice and all, but they've reminded me of things we don't have here (and don't care about). 

1. Local Food. It's great in America that you can get local farm foods and whatnot, but that doesn't really exist here. I think you can get eggs and some green leafy vegetables grown here, and that's it. Everything is imported, and quite frankly, Singapore likes it that way. Why eat Malaysian stuff when you can get European cheese, Japanese or Thai rice, or New Zealand milk? I used to care about eating local in America, but it's just not possible now. 
2. Eating Organically. There's some organic food here for sure, but it's super expensive. The only things we eat organically are generally the stuff we can't find in general, like almond milk or something. There's organic peanut butter that's pretty good, but other than that... you just can't care about eating organic unless you want to pay an arm and a leg. Singapore isn't quite there yet in the organic movement- mostly because of the first point above, and also because Singaporeans just can't pay for it. 
3. Mosquito fogging. In America I know it's rather controversial because of pesticides and harm to children and whatever else they want to fuss about. Here it's normal, get over it. It's that or dengue, and dengue sucks way worse. 
4. Super divided rich-poor gap based on race. It's so deeply engrained into the culture here that you don't really think about it. The Tamil Indian men are construction workers, the Indonesian women are helpers, etc. White people are normally expats or tourists-- and always considered rich. 
5. Escalator safety. In America most people stand forwards and hold onto the railing, right? Well in Singapore couples face each other and talk/kiss. It's just a thing. 
6. "Other people". When I lived in America I remember a very strong mentality of worrying about what "other people" are doing. There was this constant threat of "other people" stealing this or that, or harming you in general. While this mentality does exist amongst some, it's not as prominent here. This one is hard to explain, but basically people don't walk around thinking others are out to get them. There aren't super-locks or weird "keep strangers away" machines here.

Well, that seems pretty accurate. Hope my readers in the USA had an awesome Thanksgiving and ate lots of turkey and pie. Before you ask, yes, you can find turkeys here, but your oven may not be big enough to hold your typical thousand-pound saline-pumped American bird. The American club and a few hotels do a pretty nice spread, but personally I'm a fan of chilli crab!

Singaporean Taxis

Well, here's a topic I haven't covered that really should have been done ages ago. Singaporean taxis are a spectrum. There are different varieties and situations that come up, and some are better than others.
For example, getting home from East Coast Seafood was complicated. The taxi driver was coughing something awful and only picked up "River Valley Road" from the whole darn conversation. Only after I started talking, changed my accent,  and said "lah" did we actually get home. So that was pretty special.

Here are the basic types of taxis:

1. The chatty ones. There are a few subcategories to this one. 
1. Interviewers ones want to know where you are from, what you do with your life, why you are here, where you go to school, etc. They might as well ask your social security number. 
2. Tour guides. They think you're new to Singapore and some actually offer helpful tips.
3. Nostalgic missing-old-Singapore-ones. Some are okay, some are not.
4. Ranting about stuff ones. THE WORST OF THE CHATTY
2. The silent ones Does this taxi drive itself?
3. The smelly taxis. What the heck does this thing smell of? Pandan? Vomit? Food? Cigarette? Do I even want to know?
4. The lost one. Seriously, when did you start driving taxis again? Half the time they don't even know how to use their GPS systems. 
5. The sneaky ones. They try to take the long routes until you tell them otherwise. 
6. The creepy ones. I don't appreciate you glancing back at me all the time. Eyes on the road, please. 
7. The good ones. The nice, friendly driver who takes you where you want to go and engages in small talk until you are clearly both done talking. 

Also, it's Thanksgiving! I had chilli and pepper crab ^.^

Great World City

I've been talking about GWC a lot lately, so I figured a post about it would be appropriate. 

Great World City is a shopping centre not terribly far away from where I live that I go to almost every day. My bus drops me off outside of it and I walk for a while... and that's all the detail you get about where I live (though in all honesty diligent readers of this blog could probably find roughly where I live within a few kilometre radius). Anyways, I've been there a TON lately getting snacks and dinner lately, so I figured I'd talk about the place. 

There are a lot of different shops at GWC from shoes to clothes, and the upstairs area has a movie theatre (that I don't go to very often, I head to Plaza Singapura for that) and general children's activities. While it doesn't have high end brands, it has pretty much everything else you would ever need. Banks, bubble tea, Breadtalk, Fond, a nice steak place called Pepper... you name it, it's probably there. One notable weird thing about it though is to get into it from the second entrance walking you have to go through a bar called the Pump Room, which I've never been able to figure out because that seems like a total mood killer. Also, why are there always people there drinking, every single day of the week? I go there enough to know this to be true. 

Thank goodness they redid the bathrooms in GWC. Each floor is vaguely country themed, hence the name of the mall, but the Egypt floor used to really creep me out. Like, go-to-another-floor type of creeped out. 

Anyways, they have a decent food court in the basement (and other yummy things) that I'm really tired of because I feel like I eat there at least once a week. Regarding eating, eating dinner alone is stupidly lonely and pathetic. It always seems like everyone else has someone to talk to or really cute kids to mind, while I sit there with my bags and food just shovelling it in my mouth so I can go home. Meep. They used to have an awesome noodle place, but it shut down. However they do have a Taiyaki shop (its days are probably limited, like the soya milk place next door and the prata place that already closed) which is kind of interesting. GWC also has a Jollibean (The peanut stuff from there is great, everything else is thoroughly underwhelming), Sharetea (they recognise me), and a pie place that doesn't sell anything but chicken pies. It's really weird. 

So, that's actually a decent insight into life here in Singapore. Random stuff that normally has its own building, like a bank or post office (though I don't think there's one in GWC) are in shopping centres. The doors blast you with Arctic wind when you walk in, which is really annoying when it's raining out. You see people of all walks of life there all the time, and there's often a really, really lost tourist. 

Well, I should do homework now. This was a good little distraction from the fact that the first show of Alice is tomorrow! AH!

Sleepy Dormouse and Other Things

I think I'm becoming my character in Alice. See, I'm the dormouse, which basically means I sleep at every opportunity possible. Thankfully I don't snore or hibernate because that would be pretty inconvenient. Anyways, show week is always incredibly tiring. I'm stressed and life has taken a backseat to dance, which isn't too bad except I'm really sore. Also, I showed my dance teacher my audition piece for IASAS dance (which is basically our varsity team), which was nerve-racking. The other day I performed for little children, and thought that was scary. Nope! An empty studio, an iPod that has a mind of its own, and a dance teacher is a much scarier situation. It worked out though, and I know the thing will work out at the end of the day.

I've noticed a couple of weird things about living here lately. The first is that Singapore's cool-and-muggy temperature might actually be more miserable the blazing heat. See, humidity is nasty, while heat is avoidable. Second, bugs. There was a cockroach in the dressing room yesterday (there was lots of screaming), indicating that people were bringing food down there. Bugs are out to get you and your belongings here. Don't hide snacks in your desk or you'll get ants. Throw everything in plastic bags, seal everything off, and be careful about things being left out. The third thing I've really noticed is that there is a rhyme and reason as to when people are in shopping centres, but I still haven't figured out exactly why. I go to Great World City a lot after school, and there always seem to be various families, old people and business people there. Sundays are family days, Saturday is shopping day, Sunday any time at Tanglin is pregnant women day, and the weekdays are seemingly more random. Yup, sounds like Singapore.

*yawn* I'm tired. Time for Tea!

Tasty Things I've Eaten Lately

A-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom~

I've been eating loads of tasty things lately, for whatever reason. Part of the reason is because I've been eating out a lot lately since people have been away, but that's alright.

• Japanese rice. I made this at home. While I've actually been eating this stuff for a while, I realised that washing it three or four times really makes a difference in texture and taste. It's very yummy~
• Sushi. Ichiban Boshi sushi is tasty, and I don't eat it very often. You get to pick out what you want and put it in a box. The cucumber roll is $0.60 per two, which is pretty darn nice. 
• Sticky rice. My history teacher just gave us some. Nothing to complain about. 
• Strawberry fruit bubble tea. Not healthy, but sweet and delicious. I love this stuff. 
• Japanese style fish. Not totally sure how they make it so good.
• Chicken rice at Far East Plaza. It's on the top floor and always has a queue. DELICIOUS
• Kway Teow at my school. I've mentioned it before, but so tasty~ I like the chicken-veggie type
• Carrots and Peanut butter. Just try it. 
• Watermelon. Had some at breakfast and it was really good. 
• In Thailand... Thai tea! I've never had anything quite like it. Super tasty and pretty coloured. 
• Taiyaki at Great World City. The new place in the food court actually puts red bean throughout the whole thing, not just a dot in the middle. 

Crap, now I'm hungry in social studies!

I Went to Bangkok!

Whoops, sorry it's been a while since I last posted. Anyways, I went to Bangkok on Monday and got back on Thursday. My mom and I had fun exploring the city. Not somewhere I'd want to live, but for sure an awesome place to visit.

Welcome fruit

Me and yummy apple crumble stuff

Thing that means this particular temple had royal patronage

Bell

Symbolic of something

This photo freaked my dad out

Mom and alms bowls

Wat Arun, Temple of Dawn. Darn cool. I climbed up to the top, Mom went 2/3 of the way up. 

Shadow puppets!

It wasn't a super busy trip, which I really appreciated. Actually, it was pretty relaxing. We only went to two major temples, which was nice because it's really easy to get templed out here in SEA (gee, don't I sound spoiled). Did some shopping, went on a dodgy boat (Dad would have never thought the thing was seaworthy), a cool boat, a ferry boat and a tourist boat. Successfully did not fall in the brown water. Also, ate mangoes, drank Thai tea, and did not get run over. What more can you ask for?