March 17, 2008

Hello All-

Feel free to delete this if you don’t care…

Here is the update on things about/in Singapore:

We have moved into our new apartment—its on the 19th floor and has a view of the Singapore River. We have a great pool and room for visitors!

Siena is doing well in her school and takes the bus (mini van) home each day to her great delight. It has a bus “auntie” on it to take care of the kids and so she calls the bus “the auntie.” I don’t correct her—its too cute.

She starts up swim lessons again-and its right here at our pool, so it couldn’t be more convenient.

Here are some things of interest (to me anyway):
every outlet has a switch so you have to turn it on to get electricity to flow before you use an appliance or anything. It is so annoying at first, but does make us realize how much electricity we are using. It becomes second nature after a while
in the kitchen and bathrooms the floor is like ½ inch below the rest of the floors and there are drains in them. Its like a public bathroom, but they are finished our nicely—I think its maybe a hold-over from the days of just throwing water on the floor and scrapping it down the drain to wash it.
You can hear the water from the sinks (but not the toilets, thankfully,) running through those drains when you use the sinks. It is also annoying at first, but them becomes white noise—and also makes you realize how much water you use
We have to use our “ID” cards for way more things than you would think…its interesting that they want it on a warranty card for a cordless phone.
Everything is pretty much in a shopping mall. There are no free-standing buildings for retail or even services of any kind. The malls are all first rate and air conditioned. People love to shop here.
The banking system is either primitive or advanced. I can’t tell—I have to get a one-time PIN in addition to all my other PINs and access keywords to do anything in banking on line—and it takes every single thing—from an address change to a phone number addition—four days to go to the system and takes a person about 10 days (the longest I have been willing to wait) to return a call.
Text messages to phones are the way people communicate most things—instead of e-mail. This includes the banks—when they get around to calling you back.
Clubs—the American Club, the British Club, etc. are popular here—they are the social venues for most people—perhaps because they have all the pool and other facilities people do not have in their homes. Anyway, belonging to a club is quite important. All the condos (where expats and some rich Singaporeans live) have gyms and pools too.
There are food courts in the malls and in “hawker centers” (breezeways between malls generally) everywhere. Food is very cheap—can be S$3.00 for a full, good meal. Food without meat and seafood is nearly unheard of—like in Texas, its not “food” if there’s no meat. I do get a lot of delicious food though because they slip up and make stuff without meat or seafood by tradition.
The cabs are just plain odd—we cannot figure out the surcharges, we can not figure out why they will just not pick you up sometimes….they are generally cheap though when you get one
Some things you would not think are so expensive compared to the U.S.: sunblock is more than twice as expensive as in the U.S., all clothing is expensive versus the Targets, etc. of the U.S., all kinds of things that would be sold at a Target or Wal Mart are more here—I suspect is a volume thing. Books are outrageously expensive—your regular paperback is twice as expensive as in the U.S. and hard cover books are even more than that. I think its going to be cheaper to get it from Amazon and ship it here. Wine and beer are expensive, liquor is outrageous. The price in restaurants is about the same as NYC though—not the same kind of mark up I guess.

Okay, that’s the update. If you are coming here you’ll get a list of items to bring that includes wine, sunblock, books and chocolate-covered raisins from Fresh Direct. Luckily, Reuben just came over and brought a care package for us and my mom already sent the sunblock.

Faith