unspecified

Mom and Dad are just about to arrive at the airport here.  In order to meet them, I just arrived at the airport too.  I took the train which has its last stop at the terminal.

Except… there’s a brand new terminal (new last week!) and now the train stops there instead of at the old terminal.  So when the train arrived I stumbled off with quite a few other baffled passengers and we all ricocheted around the giant empty building trying to figure out how to reach familiar ground.

The new terminal is vast and shiny.  So much so that your tiny monitor can’t possibly convey it properly.

And, this escalator holds still when no one is on it — and then detects when people climb on and starts moving!

This presents a classic example of iterative design.  If an escalator is stopped, no one can tell if it’s an ‘up’ or a ‘down’ escalator.  When I approached one from the wrong direction, it buzzed to alert me of my mistake.  Sooner or later they’ll be running the place.

A few times in the last month I’ve heard baus referred to as ‘a kind of dumpling’ but I was able to shake it off.  Today, though, I was served the above item in a Taiwanese restaurant.  It was described on the menu as a ‘bun’ and, indeed, its presentation was identical (steamer, waxed paper, bowl of vinegar with ginger) to that of many other buns I’ve encountered in other taiwanese restaurants.  Except this ‘bun’ was completely unleavened… in any other context I would’ve called it a ‘dumpling’.

This has resulted in a small-sized epiphany for me.  I’m no longer trapped in a dualist mindset where I must distinguish between pastas and breads — now there is an unbroken line from couscous to baguette, with the bau-as-dumpling and the dumpling-as-bun playing the roles of Piltdown.

The question that remains:  Is filling necessary to midwife the transition between leavened and unleavened?  My guess is ‘no’ but I’m too sleepy to start drawing charts.

I’ve been in bed with a fever for the last couple of days.  In order to maximize my feelings of isolation, our home internet service has been offline all week.

My landlord brought me a peanut butter sandwich somewhere in there, and eating it was a mixed experience overall.  But, now I’m out of the house, and giving food another try.  So far, so good…

In yet another ticket-buying snafu, I tried to reserve tickets online for Mom and Dad and I to travel to Kuala Lumpur next week.  The e-ticket system was completely incomprehensible, so finally I just emailed them and made reservations that way.  That worked OK but, again, I would have to go to the station and pay for the tickets in person.

I’m pretty sure that I have my facts right, here:  the railway system long pre-dates the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, and as a result of some weird political compromise the train station and the actual train tracks leading away from it are still technically regarded as ‘in Malaysia’ even though they are entirely surrounded by Singapore.

And… immediately after separation, Singapore Dollars and Malaysian Ringgits were at parity and used interchangeably.  Nowadays, a Singapore Dollar is worth about twice as much as a Ringgit, but the Malayan railway steadfastly denies this national affront.  This means that when I reserve a ticket, the price is quoted without units:  a first-class ticket from KL to Butterworth costs 30.  30 what?  Well, if I pay for the ticket in Singapore, it’s SG30 (US $20).  If I pay for the ticket in KL, it’s MYR30. (US $9).  What about if I pay for the ticket online?  Well, then the website makes a guess about where I’m probably located:  If I buy a Singapore-KL ticket, it bills me in Singapore dollars.  If I buy a KL-Singapore ticket, it bills me in ringgit.  This means that if I want to travel one way from Singapore to KL, it is dramatically cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket KL-singapore-KL and just discard the first leg.

Last year, in fact, when I wanted to buy a one-way ticket from KL to Singapore, the Singaporean ticket agent helpfully provided me with phone number and a dime and pointed me to the adjacent pay-phone so that I could call his counterpart in Malaysia and buy my ticket at the reduced rate.

But, anyway — today I’m baffled by the website, nervous about stranding us without tickets, and generally feeling that the dollars involved are unimportantly few, so I’m just heading for the Singapore counter and leaving with an honest-to-god paper ticket.

First I have to frogger across this scary busy road because of the weird positioning of the bus stop and the (not in Singapore and therefore willfully oblivious to Singaporean street layout) train station.

I enter the train station, and, *ding* I’m in Malaysia.  Apparently Malaysia is not air-conditioned.

There are complications.  I don’t have an actual print-out of my emailed reservation, so it may as well not exist.  Strangely, since I don’t have an emailed reservation, there suddenly are first-class tickets available (although there were none, when emailing.)  So, that’s good!  And, they take credit-cards, which I was counting on.  But, only American Express, for some reason.  Which I was not counting on.

So, I’m turned back out into the street in search of cash.  And that’s when I discover that the train station is in an inconvenient part of town.

Lots of big scary noisy trucks, since I’m right by the port.  Big, generic, run-down looking office buildings.  And… no cash machines.  I flagged down a cab and asked him to take me to a cash machine, and he asked me, “Where is there a cash machine?”  So, that strategy didn’t help much.

I’m starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable.  I need cash!  And, I’m hungry, but the only food stand within view is closed.  And, why isn’t there Wifi service here?  And, what if I need a foot massage, or dental implants, or an overnight tailor?  Where /is/ everyone?  And why is it so hot all of a sudden?

(Later, I discover that it’s so hot because my laptop has chosen that moment to turn itself on in my bag.  Time to get that switch replaced again.)

Panicked, I pick an arbitrary direction and start walking.  Moments later I’m in a dessert-themed shopping center, buying a brownie from a muffin-bakery next to the cream-puff shop which is next to the patisserie.  The muffin baker points out that there’s an off-track betting center 30 feet away from me, and that there are (of course) lots of ATMs next to the betting counters.  As well as a donut shop called “Donut and Donuts.”

So, that crisis averted, I headed back to the train station and bought my tickets, no problems.  I jumped on the first bus to roll up, and a few minutes later a transit cop got on and started checking proof of fare.  This he accomplished not by looking at tickets but by poking people’s wallets and handbags with a little RFID reader that he carries in a holster.  Very convenient!

I wanted to buy airplane tickets from Langkawi to Singapore but for some reason SilkAir’s website would only sell me tickets traveling the other direction.  So, I called up, paid the additional phone-reservation fee, and booked three tickets that way.  They were, though, unable to receive payment over the phone.  I had to go to the ticket counter, in person, to pay and pick them up.

So, a couple of days ago I visited a nondescript office building downtown (GPS proved useful this time around), traded my ID for a visitor pass and rode a high-speed elevator to the ticket counter on the 25th floor.

Their computer didn’t have a way to look up my reservation, so there was a bit of back-and-forth while we figured out where my seats were.  Then the agent advised me to sit down as this would probably take a few minutes.  Mercifully they didn’t ask me to provide ID, which would’ve been impossible anyway.

20 minutes and 2 additional ticket agents later, he waved me back to the counter.  There I discovered one of the back-up agents manufacturing an official-looking document for me using scissors and glue-stick because, apparently, their printer was broken.  There was some more shuffling of papers and at last I was presented with the tickets, and a word of advice that I should arrive at the airport 2 hours before the flight leaves.

“2 hours in advance for a 1 hour flight?”

The agents looked at each other, and nodded sadly.  “Yes — at that airport they do everything by hand so things are very slow.”

I don’t know all that much about Singapore’s political system, and I suspect that while I’m here, at least, I’m better off keeping it that way.

Here’s an example of a hard-hitting local news story:  On Wednesday night there were investigative reports on two different channels about a pet shelter in the suburbs where anonymous tipsters were alleging that for several days a large number of cats had gone unfed.  There was a lot of footage of cats, and lots of interview footage of the woman who runs the shelter shrilly defending herself.  “Sure, times are tough, but I fed the cats this morning!  I skipped lunch so I could afford to feed them!”  Last night, there was a follow-up report:  Animal welfare officers have visited the shelter, examined the cats, and declare them to be just fine.

The one thing that’s abundantly clear here is that a large amount of the government’s political power is wielded in obsessive pursuit of convenience.  Escalators, footbridges, maps, and timetables abound.  “We apologize for any inconvenience caused” might as well be the national motto — I see it on 10 signs a day.

Pictured above:  Temporary concrete sidewalk installed (in the absolute middle of nowhere) to avoid the danger of muddy shoes.  Below:  Elaborate street-crossing and rain-avoidance systems, plus fancy MRT station photos.

As soon as I overcame my prejudice against American coffee franchises (right now I’m in a “Spinelli’s”) I found lots of places where it’s normal to sit for hours in front of a laptop.

Indeed, the only hard part is finding somewhere to plug in — lots of people here have these 1-kilo subnotebooks which seem to last all day on a single charge.

This place has the rare feature of having electrical outlets outdoors, plus a canopy that keeps my laptop dry in all but the fiercest rainstorms.  And it’s next to a train station, so there’s an endless parade of people to look at while I’m waiting for compiles.

Several times a week I’ve been going to a ‘Wellness Club’ across the street from my apartment to use the weight machines. It’s in Revenue House which is the office of the Singapore tax authority.

To get to the club I walk past lots and lots of tax-filing terminals and lines of people waiting to fill out paperwork, then past a bunch of cash machines (we can guess what they’re for) and then I go up to the second floor and catch the freight elevator (because I don’t have a passcard to use the ‘normal’ elevators since I’m not a tax official). The freight elevator inevitably takes 10 or 15 minutes to travel 4 floors up because Singapore is in a constant state of renovation so there are always giant palettes of girders and equipment being loaded and unloaded.

The club itself is very cozy. It’s about 50% exercise area and 50% lounges, pool and ping-pong tables, and outdoor barbecues. During lunch time the place fills up with office workers from the building coming to have a bite or a nap, but at other times in the day I pretty much have the place to myself.

There are not leather wing-back chairs, cigar smoke, or men with waxed mustaches lamenting the decline of the Empire. I must be in the wrong part of town for that.

Hoping to try out the macro features of my camera, I visited the shop above.  That’s right, it’s a store that sells only 3/4” pets and tiny, tiny aquariums to house them.  I feel almost normal in this town.

The address of the shop is 477 Tampines Street 43, #01-158A.  You know your store is small when it requires an additional address specifier because the space is located in part of a barbershop.

The owner (and his mom) were very friendly and patient with my close-up photo-taking.  Nothing much turned out, though — I have a lot to learn about depth-of-field.

After helping Scott move we took a bus to Clark Quay to have a burger.  Clark Quay turns out to be under a city-block-sized glass umbrella.

There was a very heavy rain shower while we were eating.  The noise was deafening — but the food stayed dry.