Things I Miss and Things I Don't

Most of the grocery stores here are in large part owned by some branch of the government. One very annoying aspect of that is that there may be a product there one week and not there the next. It does not mean—as it would in the U.S.—that 1) they are getting ready to stock the shelves and you happened to be unlucky as to when you arrived, or 2) they are no longer going to carry the product. It means that they have sold out and the other stores in the entire country (of all names and types) will sell out of that product too before they reorder it. Honey Nut Cheerios will be on the shelves for months, then it disappears from one store after the other until there are none left. Then, 3 months later, every store has them again.

Before you think that I am making too grand an interpretation of this, I can tell you it has happened with about 10 things—only 7 of which are back now. A couple other expat women have told me that this is the case—many of them have been here for years—4 to 6 years and say that it has always been thus.

I got a note from the Rotary Club I attend the other day. Here it is in its entirety:

Dear Fellow Rotarians:

As you are aware, our Rotary Meetings are now conducted every Wednesday, at 12.30pm at The Tanglin Club, 5 Stevens Road.

The Tanglin Club has requested that we inform our members of their following club by-laws:
- Mobile telephones are not permitted at air-conditioned areas.
- No domestic servants shall be allowed in the club premises.

We kindly request members to comply with the above terms and the Tanglin Club's by-laws.

I guess you can figure out the sentence I was surprised about. I’m not sure if I am offended that domestic servants are less welcome than other non-members or if I am offended because it needs stating that they are not covered in a membership or if it is because some members would not think that domestic servants rate as separate people to be considered as not members or whether it is just the term “domestic servant.” In any case, I was offended by the sentence. It is for me as I read in a book once, “give me long enough and the jet stream will personally offend me.”

Siena and I saw three police men in the mall the other day. Those are the first police officers I have seen that are not on tv or in the airport. It is the highest number of them together that I have ever seen other than when they showed the whole police force looking for the escaped terrorist –whom they never found.

Number of out-of-wedlock births in Singapore: 481 in 2005, 495 in 2006 and 561 in 2007. I only bring this up to once again revel in the exactitude of the numbers that are printed in the newspaper. The story was about how many women were not even putting father’s names on the birth certificates because it is too much trouble to find them later to register a kid for school and so on. I think they are so keen for any births in this country that they even forgot to say that they would prefer to have marriages with the kids.

The English fluency of the service personnel (like waiters) here is remarkably bad for people who went to school for 15 years in English. Every school is in English. It is shocking. Its not just the accent-which is dreadful, but has an explanation. It’s the fact that any sentence that one has not heard before cannot be interpreted!! They had better ratchet up that Speak Good English program—and add the addendum Try to Realize that People Actually Expect You to Understand it Too.

Things I Miss:
Fresh Direct (if you don’t know what this is, don’t find out—you’ll miss it too, even if you never had it)
Food (restaurant delivery
Dark chocolate covered raisins (you may have heard that before)
Inexpensive wine
Our friends and family
Battery Park City
People complaining about things
Target / Wal Mart
Grocery stores that consistently have stock of the same thing
People making jokes
Cab drivers who know the roads
Actual online shopping and directions and information
Real opinion in newspapers
Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Funny television shows
Net flix
Instant-on hot water
Central AC (not that we had that in NYC)
Mailing things from my own mail box
Sensible login policies and convenient online banking
Wheat Thins

Things I Don’t Miss:
Dirty public bathrooms (really, the filthy ones here are cleaner than the ones that are clean in the U.S.)
Ugly scenery
Litter
Any airport other than Changi
People complaining about things (its complicated)
Crime
Reality tv and the weird voyeurism that it shows me about other people
NY state and City taxes
Catalogs in the mail (well, maybe I miss some of them, but you get NONE here, basically no junk mail)
Colder weather coming…
Unironed clothes (and sheets and pajamas)
Going to the doctor and then a pharmacy instead of getting it all in one place
Horns and sirens

Time to go for now.


Faith