Ashley's in Asia: Singapore Sunrise

I just watched the sunrise on my second day in Singapore and realized - I live in Singapore now!

On my first night I went with a huge group from the office, including the entire Thai language team, to their favorite Thai restaurant in Singapore. I love how multi-cultural Singapore is - our table had people from Singapore, China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, New Zealand, Lebanon, Japan, and the US. I sat next to a girl from Thaliand named Mook and a guy from Chennai named Chandra. Chandra and I talked about India and we played a word game with Charif (another friend from the office - see Singapore blog entry from May) and his fiancee Tomoko (from Japan), where we would hold a conversation and each person had to answer their part in a different language. We went through about 10 languages including English, Hindi, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, French, Russian, Malay and Tamil.

I think all of Singapore has a college dorm/camp atmosphere where there are so many foreigners and visitors all the time that everyone is always out to meet new people - a great way to make lots of fun and interesting friends! Oh, and the Thai restaurant had a framed headshot of Keanu Reeves next to a picture of the Thai royal family. I love Singapore.

I bought my easypass for the MRT (subway) - I love how efficient Singapore is. You buy one card that you can keep in your wallet and just add money to whenever. You don't even have to put it in a machine, you just need to beep it. And lucky for me, my Kate Spade wallet that I bought in Hong Kong last year at Pacific Place has a little place for your public transport card because it was specially marketed for Hong Kong, which uses a similar public transport system (but they call theirs the much cooler "Octopus"). I think I'm officially Singaporean now that I have my permanent MRT pass :)

I chatted up the taxi driver again. I love talking to taxi drivers and started to make it a pattern in Sydney. They're always really interesting, and almost always immigrants from all over the world. I'm going to start a series in my blog wherein I talk to every taxi driver for the length of my journey and report back.

Last night's driver was caucasian but had a singlish accent! I asked him where he was from and he said "I get to ask you those questions" (!) So I played along and he told me how international Singapore is, and I told him that I moved to Singapore today. He told me he speaks Malay and Chinese, and I told him I speak English, French, Italian, Russian and Hindi. Then he told me I was very smart and we talked about how I studied music and how Singapore will be a great place to learn more languages. Then when we got to my place he wished me luck, said "god bless you" and handed me a pamphlet about Christianity called "good news..." I didn't catch his name which is too bad because it could have given me a clue as to his origin - is he one of the rare 'native' caucasian Singaporeans whose ancestors moved here 200 years ago as traders? Either way, the cartoon Christianity pamphlet, featuring an eskimo, a boy in a sumbraro, a boy in a fez, a boy in a chinese straw hat, a boy in ancient egyptian (?) clothes, and a girl in a german beer-garden outfit in English and Chinese was totally worth it.

I then enjoyed my first experience grocery shopping in Singapore at a Japanese grocery chain called 'Meidi-ya." Half the store was also occupied with freezer containers of non-descript packaged items with labeling in Japanese. Walking around I just thought "Wow, I'm finally in Asia!" The other half of the store was made up of a hodge-podge of imported items from around the world. My favorite items for sale were "silky tofu," "pickled leeks" and "gourmet Doritos." I wonder if gourmet Doritos come with gourmet bean dip? Perhaps I should host a party and offer my guests gourmet Doritos as an entree - they are, after all, imported...

Off to try to find my way to the MRT station for work now!

Dinner at 'First Thai'