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I’ve taken many photos over the past few days, but almost all of them were taken at night and are terrible. I’m sure that my camera can take good long-exposure shots but I have to dig up the manual and figure out what I’m doing wrong.

I’ve spent the last week working, and looking for places to work. When I’m in Minneapolis I forget that the coffeehouse culture there is fairly unique — every corner in uptown has a cafe full of freelancers sitting in front of laptops, so no one looks twice at me if I park in a booth for hours on end.

In order to avoid going crazy in my tiny room at Novena, I’ve been looking for an out-of-the-house place to work here, with limited success. Today I was on my way to an expat bar that might fit the bill but it started pouring, so I ducked into the nearest building, which turned out be the public library.

Like all public space in Singapore, there’s a fair bit of propaganda to weed through. For instance, a moment ago there was a quite loud announcement over the public address system, encouraging parents to keep their children quiet. And, there are banners all over the place promoting ‘Kindness Week,’ whatever that is.

I’ve worked an exceptionally long week this week, in large part because there was a big breakthrough with our Japanese product (it hasn’t worked since the new Apple operating system came out.). The breakthrough happened while I was sitting in a gaming cafe, so I wound up pinned to a not-very-comfortable chair for 8 hours while we put a release together. Of course, no one thought sitting /there/ for eight hours was strange.

I’m on Orchard Road in order to visit an Apple store, which is in this building, here:

Orchard Road is the ‘nice’ part of Singapore, which means the expensive, vaguely European part.  I just had a not-very-good breakfast in the above-featured coffee shop — eggs and sausage and toast.  In order to accommodate Hindus and Muslims alike, the ‘ground beef or pork’ role in the US is typically filled here by chicken.  Which means British-style chicken & breadcrumb sausage.  Squish.

In the pastry case in front of me:

• Orange muffin

• US style Cranberry muffin

• Cinnamon apple muffin

• Blueberry muffin

• My Mum’s Scones

• Double chocolate chip muffin

• Grandpa Mel’s tuna puff

And, also, this coffee house is playing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” over and over and over.  I’m on the 12th rotation now.  20 minutes until the Apple store opens…  and here it comes around again!

I passed these dumpling-makers on my way to the train station this morning.  They seemed baffled when I wanted to take their picture, but they were working behind a big plate-glass window which was clearly installed in their kitchen expressly so they could be gawked at.

I spent most of the morning and early afternoon searching for a reported “Backpacker style cafe with chill-out lounge” and I circled the neighborhood several times looking, but all I found was SNACKS SNACKS SNACKS.  I’m not anti snack, but it got kind of ridiculous.

Later on, I made a (doomed-to-failure) attempt to buy a GPS system at Sim Lim center:

It turns out my 2-year-old Treo is way too obsolete for anyone to deal with.  They sure do have some neat-o looking phones here, but I’m not really tempted to buy one that won’t work back in the US.

It is incredibly nice to be in a place with infrastructure!

A few hours after arriving I ducked into a 7-11 and bought a sim card for my cell phone — it cost about US$10 and took 5 minutes or so to get local service.

Now I’m sitting in a coffee shop, and I’ve discovered that Singapore just set up Island-wide municipal wifi — free half-meg service until 2009.  So I filled out a form online, gave them my mobile number and immediately received an SMS with a login and password.

So, this is probably socially inappropriate, but I’m now working while enjoying my kaya toast and ice milk tea.  There’s outdoor seating at the other end of this mall — with luck I’ll get service there as well.

The downside to this… I well, I did have to provide my passport at each step along the way.  Lots of technology here, but not so much privacy.

Just now, T threw a combination Deepavali/birthday party with a bunch of his relatives.  It was very nice, and there was an excellent home-cooked meal (including, if I understand correctly, some dried, steamed shark).

Everyone made me feel most welcome.  I must’ve looked uncomfortable, because several of T’s siblings encouraged me repeatedly to ‘not be shy’ and to eat lots of food and to make myself at home.  And I must’ve had the shifty eyes, ‘cause a couple of times one sister told me “Stay out here!  Your room won’t go anywhere.”  The truth is that I had a very nice time, but was watching everyone like a hawk trying to figure out proper table manners.

(Mostly people did the eat-with-fingers-of-right-hand thing, except for a few who used a fork and a spoon.  So, in retrospect, I don’t think I was in much danger of causing offense.)

The highlight (besides the food which was mostly cooked by T and which I can’t speak of highly enough) was the cutting of the cake.  There were many posed photos during the cutting, and afterwards the siblings lined up and each in turn forked some cake into the birthday boy while photographers called out blocking suggestions.  I was invited to pose but not, mercifully, to feed.

Also, earlier in the evening everyone pulled up chairs to watch a show featuring Indian Singaporean pop singers.  I can’t get enough of Indian pop music!  I’ll have to locate a record store sometime soon.

I spent last night in a hostel (and froze under an overzealous air conditioner) and then immediately bolted for a room in Novena. It’s very nice, and the owner, T, is quite friendly and helpful. Also self- and home-employed, so he’s very sympathetic to my work habits.

There are, though, a couple of caveats, either of which might be a deal-breaker. First, T seems to burn a lot of incense. A lot, like, if I had no sense of smell I could still tell because I could see it in the air — not so good for asthma. Also, the current system for getting past the security door is that I’m to punch in a code on the door panel, and the ring is forwarded to T’s cellphone, who will in buzz me in. This, he offers to do anytime, day or night. But what if he’s in the shower, or in a coma? He doesn’t anticipate this being a problem.

Both times I’ve flown here there’ve been a few minutes of panic as I leave the airplane.  The flyer says that prohibited items are prohibited, but it doesn’t enumerate them!  It says that chewing gum, tobacco, and endangered animals may not be imported… do I have any of that?  And what if I have something that’s prohibited but not on the list?  Or what if someone slipped a fake camera full of heroin into my backpack on the airplane?  And I just wrote on this form that I’m a ‘tourist’ and that I’m staying for 60 days… who does that?

But, then I see the signs, and remember — Changi airport has two clearly marked customs lanes, a red one and a green one.  If you don’t want your bags searched, you just take the green one.

I had a very bad time immediately after taking the above photo.

I was dragging my enormous roller-bag towards the subway station, and realized that I was in no mood to ka-bump, ka-bump, ka-bump, ka-bump it down 4 flights of stairs.  Every station has an elevator, but they’re typically well hidden.  So I located a beat cop and asked him how I could get to the Asakusa line.

There was a bit of comedic half-understood conversation.  Where do you want to go?  Asakusa station.  But where are you going?  Narita.  Narita?  Narita.  To Narita?  Yes, Narita.  You want Narita, right?  Yes.

At this point, the cop whipped out a collapsible pointers and smacked it against the map above his head.  (Do they all carry those?  I guess so.)  A bit of pointing and gesturing and broken english convinced me that I wanted the ‘Express line to Narita’ and that I had to go to ‘Asakusa station’ which was half-way across the neighborhood.

Why did I listen?  I knew exactly what subway line to take, which train to get on, etc.  But he was so compelling with his uniform and map and pointer, and he kept saying Express!  Express!  and I though, I want express!  Express is good!  So, off I went, dragging my bag.

20 minutes and one backache later I located the Asukusa express station (as promised, totally different from Asakusa metro station, and servicing a different train line entirely).  I stuck me head in the station and asked an attendant which train went to Narita.

Oh, she said, you want the Asukusa metro line.  And she pulled out a map, and started giving me directions.

In retrospect, I know what happened:  She was giving me directions back to exactly where I’d started.  But, her map had a reverse orientation from the last map I’d looked at.  (North is not necessarily up on Japanese maps, they try instead to orient them the way you’re facing, which works great if they’re attached to a plaque but not so well for fold-up paper maps of which this was one.)

So, that sent me another 20 minutes in the wrong direction… or would’ve except I finally figured out what was happening 15 minutes later, resolved never again ask directions in Tokyo, and made a beeline back to the station which I had intended to use in the first place — and took the damn stairs.  Kabump, kabump, kabump.

The upshot of all this is that I arrived at Narita airport at 5:10 for an international flight that departed at 5:45.  Many thanks are owed to the staff of Narita airport whose heroic efforts got me on the plane anyway — with a row to myself, no less.

I’m editing these pages on my laptop, on an Airbus.  And the Airbus is equipped with music-on-demand, so I’m listening to a Who album while I type.  So, already I’m immersed in all kinds of crazy sci-fi technology.

Still, nothing has made me as excited for the coming future as using one of these Japanese toilets.  I will not fear old age, knowing that the Japanese have been there first.

The first time I played pachinko (as a 5-year-old) the owner of the machine explained to me that it cost 1 yen per ball, which meant you got 200 balls for a dollar.

In addition to normal inflation, the slumping dollar is also against me. A dollar is worth a measly 105 yen this week, and I’m pretty sure I got 100 balls for my 1000 yen this morning. The machine I played was rigged with the same weird probabilities as the one in my basement — about 50% of the time two out of the three reels match, but all three match next-to-never. I’m no good at probability, but I’m sure that those facts can’t both be true in a random distribution. (The artificial-near-miss is a tried-and-true technique to keep gamblers playing — but in pachinko it is cranked up to absurd proportions.)

Pachinko parlors are the loudest place I’ve ever been — louder than a rock concert, by far. And it’s just the sound of thousands of little steel balls rattling, rattling, rattling.

Note the special display which, best I can tell, displays statistics on your play. Just in case you had any illusions about the odds.

In a video arcade I watched some guys play a MMPORPG which includes a flat surface with an RFID reader. You buy collectible trading cards (a la Yugioh or Pokemon) from a vending machine, and then feed coins into the video terminal to play online. The terminal scans your cards (and where on the surface you place them) in order to control your play and/or equip your avatar.

Which is to say, the makers of this game charge players money _and_ print their own.

The other notable arcade fact is that when a player gets a high score (I was watching someone play Tekken 6) their score and name are recored and displayed on ALL the machines throughout the country.  Serious bragging rights!

(Disclosure:  I haven’t been in a US arcade for about a year, so maybe they have all this stuff at home now to.  But I doubt it.)