The Zoo

Singapore knows how to do up it's tourist sites. For my week-end birthday adventures, I went to the zoo on Saturday and golfing ( where else?) on Sunday. Getting into and out of the zoo was a breeze in terms of flow of traffic, taxi stands and entrance booths. The walkways, river rafting and trams were clearly marked and it was amazing how they could carve this zoo out of the jungle. When you walked down the butterfly path or the "Australian outback" you just assumed you were there and were not connected to other areas of the zoo or for that matter,that you in a zoo altogether.

When I consider the zoo, bird park, night safari, China town, little India, river walks, from the tourist point of view, Singapore is a great little adventure. Things are easy to get to, you can imagine you are in the jungle one day and on 5th Avenue the next as you venture down

Orchard Boulevard, covered with Christmas lights and sleigh bells ringing coming from the stores.

I had quite a nice week-end. We had a staff party Friday night which was great. Christmas presents, lots of good western food like turkey and cranberry sauce and of course, lots to drink. It is amazing how much people can actually drink! In consideration of me...they had a case of ginger beer ( which was delicious). I wonder if we have such a thing in Canada?

Saturday the zoo and Sunday golf. As David remarked, do I ever get out of my golf shirt, shorts and sandals? The weather here, along the equator is supposedly hot ( 32 degrees) with lots of rain. I just went out for supper and actually felt cold. God knows what I am going to feel like a week from today when I am back in Toronto. Hopefully I will see you all soon.

Last night I kept trying to book my tickets home through the Internet and spent three hours getting knocked off, finding new sites, getting bounced again and so on. Surprisingly, every time I went back to some

old sites prices the itineraries changed, as people bought their ticket I supposes. Quite an interesting phenomenon. I ended up paying about $500 less then I was willing to pay the first go round. I guess there are some advantages of getting bumped off...the first time because I did not know my postal code, the second time because it would not accept my Singapore phone number and the third time, just because. I ended up talking with someone in Manila and doing it over the phone. That almost didn't work for the same reasons.

See you soon.

Singapore Museum and Mt. Faber

It seems to rain every afternoon so I decided to visit a museum to at least keep dry for one of the two week-end days. The Singapore museum is actually amazingly good. I was impressed. You buy one ticket which gets you into all of the galleries. This month, or few months, they had a Pompeii exhibit which is as close I guess as I will ever get to Pompeii. You remember Josh we almost got there a few years ago but never made it. Remember the porter in Naples?

Anyway the display was fabulous with good explanations, a 3D video where we had to wear the special glasses and mosaics, statues, jewelry and all kinds of artifacts. The Romans were amazingly developed for their period in history.

However, what impressed me even more was the Singapore history museum. You were given an audio player ( which, of course, I could not figure out) and walked through two floors of numbers exhibitions taking us through the colonial period to the past war era. It was really good and I especially loved the world war two section. Obviously Singapore fell like a deck of cards.

Today I went to Mount Faber which overlooks the bay and Indonesia, not too far away. There are many "loops" where you can wind your way down and I saw some really interesting traditional Singapore houses ( or the old colonial sort), forests and gardens and of course great bathrooms. There was also an elevated path rising over the forest floor, only in Singapore you say!

By the way, on another note I went to the infamous bar area last night off of Orchard road where the expats go to drink after work. The music was so loud I never made it inside any of the bars...the music was virtually an assault on my ears!

Now I have a week to figure out what to do next week-end.

Birds of a feather

Had some interesting stories this week, highlighted by the female teacher being locked in the toilet and screaming for help. We had to take the door off, no mean feat. That was closely followed by a two students fighting. When I asked one student what they would like to say to the other, the first boy obviously said: " Please accept my apology." The second boy said: " I hope you die" When I asked him to think about it and try again he said: " I hope you die a slow agonizing death!"

Man, I have to get out more. Today I went to Jurong Bird Park which frankly was terrific. I have been looking forward to it for a long time but only got around to it today. It seems when they do something in Singapore they do it well. They advertise that they have the largest man made waterfall in the world...( in a bird park) which they say fast!!! I was really captivated by the colour, range and sounds that all of the birds made. I could have done without the shows, mind you, but the birds themselves were fantastic. As much as possible they were out in the open and flying or walking around. I especially enjoyed it because I got in for half price ( old age). I guess there has to be some advantages to getting old.

To-night I am going to a colleague's birthday party but will not be staying late, I hope, because tomorrow we have a run for hope leaving the school at 6 am. Aren't we lucky. It is the old Terry Fox run but it is called Run for Hope over here.

Last week I went to Sentosa Island to see the Barclay open and followed some golfers around, presumably no-ones because there was only one old Sikh guy following them around. I said to him I really feel better after watching them putt. What do you mean, he said. I said, did you see the guy wearing red, he missed a 5 foot putt...I could have done better or at least missed equally well. He told me he was the best golfer in India and was HIS SON!!! Woops again.

I have got to go and buy running shoes. 10 k run before the sun comes up.

Choices

There is a great Italian restaurant I go to across the street from my apartment that serves delicious food. My regular waitress, it turns out, dreams of becoming a teacher and does have her Master of Education from a Philippines university. Singapore, like everywhere else in the world, covets the limited professional spaces there are and limits the influx of immigrant professionals. Over the course of a few meals, I told the waitress I was in education and I could help get her a job. Where, she said. I told her I could get her a job with my old company in either Myanmar or Vietnam or perhaps even get her a job in a private school in Singapore. I went on to give her a number of other alternatives such as getting a teaching degree in Singapore since they are paying students to get a teaching degree, just like Ontario in the old days. Anyway, as I said, I gave her lots of options.

To-night, went I went for supper she was looking downright glum if not angry. I asked her what was wrong and she replied; “ you gave me too many choices?” What, I said. How could you have too many choices in life? She then explained that she was a Philippina, was lucky to have a job in Singapore and didn’t want to have to make any more decisions. Given the menu of choices I presented her with upset her equilibrium.

Daniel and Josh…you were so lucky to be born in a first world country where you constantly had a myriad of choices, from which school you wanted to attend to what kind of job you wanted. You also know, even now, if you tire of what you are doing there are literally lots of choices for different jobs. How lucky is that? Imagine being limited by only two choices in life? How would that change you as a person?

By the way, after dinner I went for an ice cream and waffle which was $5.50. I gave the teller $10.50 and told her to make the waffle and I would be back in ten minutes. As usual, I forgot to get the change and walked out the door for my walk. The teller rushed after me ( even though she knew I was coming back) and gave me my five dollars change! Only in Singapore.

Mahout for a day!

Having been there and done that, when I travel I really have to consider doing things other than the usual elephant show or posing with a long necked native. Maybe this time I went a little overboard, who knows. I signed up for a one day elephant trekking mahout training experience. What that means is I got picked up from the hotel, taken about an hour out of Chaing Mai and put in an elephant camp with a real mahout. The first thing he told me was to get up on the elephant and sit on its head. I am rather used to climbing a tall tower and gently lowering myself onto an elephant from about 10 feet high into a nice chair! Get up on the head? How do I do that pray tell?

You give the command in Thai to lift one

leg, which you stand on, then grab the top of the ear and a fatty part of the body and lift yourself up. Once there, you slide forward, take the poker stick and start giving commands and kicking in the appropriate spot that is, on the left side to go right and the right side to go left and then moving your body backwards to get the elephant to go backwards and so on. Somehow I survived that ordeal ( turning and standing in one spot) and was quite willing to walk down to the river beside the elephant to give him his bath. Unfortunately, the real mahout would not hear of it and he insisted on walking beside the elephant when I sat on the head and did my thing. It was a scary 10-15 minutes as I made my way down the path and engineered the elephant into the water where I proceeded to bath him before I took a raft down the river, or am I getting ahead of myself.

After the elephant ride, I took a bamboo raft down some river or other to a lunch spot, where I took a Thai cooking class…sure, this is now the area of fantasy. I did not take the Thai cooking class.

I had a long

week-end because Singapore celebrates every ethnic/religious day going and this was Depavali so Wednesday night I searched for a plane ticket out of Singapore and came up with Chiang Mai believe it or not. Having never been here before , I did the usual search thingy, found a hotel within the old city of Chaing Mai within the original walls and looked for an adventure. My area had a lot of travel guys suggesting this tour or other but I told them I wanted something different so they organized it all by telephone and I had a personal tour. The price was unbelievable, but this is Thailand remember. I did the Mahout training thing, a river rafting experience, lunch and then a visit to a local village for about $50 ( in a private car and tour leader who happened to be a mahout!)

To-day back to Singapore and school. We just finished a great Deepavali assembly Bollywood style and now have to prepare for the Moslem Haj production in about 2 weeks with November 11^th thrown in for good luck. Should be a busy two weeks before my next vacation.

The Bicycle

The other day I was coming home from school and saw a guy put his bike against the wall and go into a store. As I continued to walk home I was processing what I just saw and I knew something was not quite right but could not put my finger on it. By the time I got upstairs I had it. He did not lock his bike!

Daniel asked me how Singapore was different or what is Singapore, can’t quite remember how he worded the question. He said he could not quite get a handle on it. As we went out every night to the downtown core ( Orchard Street) to the river, Clark Quay and Boat Quay, as well as the Esplanade and Little India we kept talking about this question..When I think about it, the bicycle incident is Singapore. Whenever I ask Singaporeans and visitors how they can put up with the right wing approach to life, i.e. the lack of freedoms, one newspaper with no dissident view tolerated, citizens waiting for the light to change for fear of getting a ticket, they say they willing give up certain freedoms in return for safety. No matter where you

go, they constantly tell me, you can walk in the middle of the night alone without fear of attack and everything seems to work from the traffic lights, to the roadways to the water taps. Singapore is also a very materialistic city, like Hong Kong, where the size of your handbag or the cut of your suit is valued above all, it seems.

In thinking about Daniel’s question some more though, I am not sure it is a fair question. What is Toronto? Is it Yonge Street

and Yorkville or the various multicultural areas such as Greektown or Little Italy or is it the composite of all things Toronto. You are essentially left with a “feeling” of Toronto which

I am sure would encompass multiculturalism and diversity above all, I would think.

Maybe it is the bicycle incident that says all there is to say about Singapore in a nutshell. As usual, even though I have been here I guess two months now, Daniel showed me around. All of the subways seem to end up in malls which I find impossible to navigate. Miraculously Daniel knew exactly where and when to turn, as well as find the stores he was looking for and the exits! Luckily, some things never change.

The Differences between Singapore and Thailand

I am presently sitting in the airport with a bunch of Singaporeans waiting to leave Thailand after their Bangkok sojourn. Listening to them talk makes my teeth grate. I hate the way they sound. They absolutely butcher English. For example, every night the janitor that cleans my office asks me if I want him to “off” the lights. “Isn’t it,” when said by a teacher at the end of a sentence,means do you understand no matter what tense the teacher happens to be talking? The Thais butcher English but at least they do not purport to speak English, whereas the Singaporeans pride themselves on their ability to speak English. Yuk!

Other than their terrible grammar, actually some of the words they use are quite interesting. For example, they use the word spectacles instead of glasses. I presume it is because they were a British colony and although the British have left many years ago, they are still using what used to be British English, like some Italians in Toronto speaking a dialect thatwas used in the 1950’s in Italy that is not used anywhere else in the world today.

How could a comparison be made about Singapore and Bangkok without mentioning food? In Singapore, I suppose, there are loads of fantastic expensive restaurants as well as what they call hawker stands where you can buy cheap food. Having said that, there is absolutely no comparison between street food in Bangkok and street food in Singapore. I forgot how delicious Bangkok food is. I love the” Som Tum” which you can get anywhere and is made for you as the woman grounds the papaya and adds the peanuts, chilies and sauce. I also love the fruit you can buy at any street corner or the guy who comes around on his bicycle with his cooking equipment and makes you a fantast banana pancake or mango and sticky rice. The food in Singapore pales in comparison. When I got back to Canada after living in Thailand for two years I know my good cholesterol was up and my bad cholesterol was down and I was generally in good shape. This is, I am sure, because of the food. I don’t think I will be so lucky when I get checked out in Toronto this su

As I watch passengers walk down the steps to the waiting area there is no doubt who is who. The Singaporeans are the drab ones. The Thais take so much care in how they dress and present themselves. It is hard not to stare. Taking the subway in Bangkok is like attending a fashion show in some upscale dress store on fifth avenue in New York. Getting on the subway or bus in Thailand is like attending a fashion show.

Needless to say, I am sure I will notice more differences when I get back to Singapore. I will have no fear of breaking my ankle in some hole in the sidewalk or in fact falling off the sidewalk as I did in Pattaya today because the pavement is so uneven. Thank God I do not drink! Thailand cities also have dirty garbage bags everywhere, rats running around the street, water run-off everywhere, which is a polite way of saying human waste and traffic that you could not believe unless you experienced it.

Singapore on the other hand will be perfect. I will be out of the airport in literally five minutes as I will just scan my finger print and walk through. I will wait in a polite line for a cab in designated spots, will not haveto negotiate with the driver who will put on his meter immediately and drive me where I want to go. There is a one pricing policy and I will pay the same as the Singaporean taking the next cab. I will be

whisked home on a virtually empty highway, the cost will be about $25 and there will be nothing but politeness. In Bangkok, the same distance would cost be $5, I would have to try to speak a little Thai with the driver to get him to leave me alone and give me the right price and then we would have a great conversation about Thaskin, the Reds versus the yellows and so on. They will apologize for trying to rip me off and there will be a lot of smiling after that.

Bangkok is filthy, the infrastructure is almost unworkable, the traffic is in constant snarl mode and it is difficult to breath. Singapore is clean ( immaculate actually), everything works and traffic flows. Ask me where I would rather be?

I know my good friend Michael used to read these blog entries religiously every Sunday night and have a comment in my inbox Monday morning. He may have been my only reader and I will certainly miss him. If there is anyone else reading this, drop me a line sometime and say hello.