Number One
Singapore Flyer
18 August 2012
On both my
previous sabbaticals, I've written more or less weekly missives on our
explorations. If nothing else, I've enjoyed going back and reading them myself.
I suppose the modern approach would be to set up a blog, but that seems like a
fuss. I will collect these on my web site at some point. I'm sure many of you
are following Kaye's photos on Facebook.
For those of you
who missed the news, I began a sabbatical on 1 August in the computer science
department of the National University of Singapore (NUS). It could last up to a
year, but certainly through the academic year, here.
A quick geography
and history lesson. The Republic of Singapore is a city-state on an island at
the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, sitting about one degree north of the
equator. Days run a few minutes over 12 hours long (sunrise-sunset), though the
times of sunrise and sunset move around by about 1/2 hour during the year. It
is across the Straits of Malacca from the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
While there have
been settlements in Singapore dating back more than 1800 years, the Portuguese
burnt down the city in 1613. There wasn't much here after that until Thomas
Raffles showed up in the early nineteenth century, and negotiated a treaty with
the local Sultan to develop a British trading post here. It became part of the
British Straits Settlements in 1826, along with three other settlements on the
Malay peninsula, and was administered from British India, until 1867, when the
Settlements became its own colony. After WWII, Singapore became a separate
colony, gaining independence in 1965.
There are four
official languages in Singapore: English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. English is the "administrative
language" and the language of instruction in schools, while Malay is the
"national language". It's the language spoken in neighboring Malaysia
and Indonesia, and is used for military commands. There are several dialects of
Chinese in use, but usage is trending towards Mandarin. Tamil (spoken in
southern India and Sri Lanka) is the only official Indian language, but several
others are in use. Ethnically, Chinese are the largest group of residents,
followed by Malays and Indians. Around 25% of the population is non-residents currently.
Many foreign workers are in the construction trades--a lot from Bangladesh and
Pakistan--and domestic service--often from Indonesia and the Philippines.
(Interestingly, I am technically not a foreign worker but rather a
"foreign talent".)
----
We arrived in the
wee hours of 1 August, having lost 31 July in transit. We stayed for the first
couple weeks in a hotel near one end of Orchard Road, waiting for our apartment
to be ready. While it made for a long commute to work, it was a good to get to
know another part of town, and become adept at the transit system. Orchard Road
is the high-end shopping street, and if you just look at the ground-level
stores, it seems like the same luxury European and US brands that you'd find in
toney shopping areas worldwide. However, once you learn to explore the
different levels and side streets, you find food courts, grocery stores,
tailors, moneychangers and discount stores. (Kaye's favorite is the Japanese
chain Daiso, where everything is $2. No need for scanners at check-out -- you
just count!)
The first couple
days mostly concerned paperwork. We headed over to NUS to start getting me on
board. There was a nice office waiting for me, a staff ID card, and a couple
computer accounts. We took a taxi there, but decided to come back by public
transit, which consisted of a university shuttle bus followed by three
different MRT (subway) trains plus a short walk to our hotel. (Over the next
week or so, I managed to optimize the route to the shuttle, one MRT and a bus
that stopped across the street from the hotel.) The next day we went to an
office of the Ministry of Manpower to submit our paperwork to get an employment
pass and dependent card. We almost got everything right -- my photo was deemed
to have problems with shadows behind my neck. Fortunately, I could get a new
one taken next door for $6. (Currently S$1.25 = US$1.00.)
With so many
cultures meeting here, there is of course a great variety of things to eat.
There are restaurants and food courts everywhere, but the real deals are at the
food centres, also called hawker courts. There are a step beyond the food-cart
pods in Portland, being open air (but covered) collections of permanent food
stalls. They developed out of the government's efforts to deal with traffic and
hygiene problems with street hawkers. It
is possible to eat at these for under $3, and to eat well for $5. I'm still
learning to "parse" the offerings. Important words are
nasi = rice
roti = bread
mee = egg noodles
be hoon = rice noodles
I have been
trying to eat at least one new thing each day, which hasn't been difficult so
far. Some interesting items
- winter melon
soup, served in a cooked winter melon (at a welcome dinner with the families of
two NUS faculty at a nice Cantonese restaurant near our hotel)
- kiwi-soursop
juice (lots of freshly made fruit and vegetable juices here)
- satay broad
beans, a locally produced snack
- curry taro
chips
- Singapore-style
Peking duck -- you eat just the skin folded inside little pancakes, then pay to
have the meat made into another dish
- sauteed peanuts
with dried anchovies (a Malay dish)
- jasmine ice tea
- nata (coconut
water fermented by cellulose-creating bacteria)
- congee (rice
porridge) with ginkgo nuts
- roasted grams
(small chickpeas)
- ice-cream
sandwich
Wait a minute,
you say, you've never had an ice-cream sandwich before? Well, I've never had a
mango ice-cream sandwich made with actual (swirly pink) bread. Only a $1 -- my
favorite street treat so far.
----
Our first weekend
here we did some exploring, which gave us a chance to figure out the bus
system. Paying the fare is easy -- the same EZ-Link card you use on the MRT
works on the buses. You scan it when you get on, and again when you get off,
and it deducts the correct fare (which is often under a dollar). Figuring out
where the buses go is a bit more of a challenge. There are over a hundred bus
lines. There is an on-line map where you can ask to see the route of a bus, but
it's extremely slow to refresh. Kaye bought a little transit atlas, which shows
each bus stop. Some of the bus stops have a list of numbers by them, which are
the buses that stop there. Some stops had no numbers -- I eventually figured
out that a dashed red line between stops meant they have the same buses.
(Except of course for a red number.) So the process for navigation is to scan
the bus stops around where you are starting and the ones around where you want
to go, and see if you can find a number in common (a join, if you will). Having
found the bus number, then you need to figure out what side of the street to
board the bus on. It's not always obvious -- for example, the bus that runs
from downtown to near the NUS campus first runs southeast before turning west.
So I've become adept at tracing bus routes by tracking their consecutive stops
on the map. OK -- now I know which stop to board at, and the stop where I want
to get off. How do I recognize the stop? The bus stops have numbers, such as
B08 and B17. Except the bus might go past 2 or 3 stops with the number B08. I
finally figured out that the stop numbers start over each time the bus turns
onto a new road. (And even numbers are on one side of the road and odd numbers
on the other.) So if you sit where you can see out the window, the bus shelters
have the name and number on the edge, and you can recognize your stop. (I later
figured out that there is a listing of stops for each bus line in most bus
shelters, with the distance away each is. The ticket-scanning machines show the
total distance the bus has traveled from its terminus. Thus, with a little
arithmetic, you can figure what the reading will be when you get near your
stop.)
So, anyway, we
used a bus to go see a special exhibit sponsored by Hermes, called "The
Gift of Time." The exhibit was as eclectic as the designs on Hermes
scarves, with a series of installations by Hilton McConnico playfully featuring items from the Hermes
collection, some that dated back 80 years or more. My three favorite things:
- A watch that
goes to an "impossible" time when you press a button -- for example
little hand exactly on 11, but the big hand points at 7. If you don't want to
worry about time during lunch. Another press and it goes back to the correct
time.
- An
"exploded" jumping saddle, showing the titanium and carbon-fiber bits
inside.
- A serving set
for port that holds 2 bottles and 8 glasses, and keeps everything right-side up
no matter how you turn and tip it.
Probably more
interesting than the exhibit was the venue.
It was held in the Tanjong Pagar railway station, near the the south
harborfront. Until last year, this 1930's Art Deco building was the southern
terminus of the KTM, the main railway operator in Malaysia. It has some great
tile "paintings" inside with scenes of Malaysia and Singapore. The
platform area was used for some pop-up cafes during the exhibit. You could
clamber down onto the tracks, and a lot of people were having their pictures
taken on them. The station and the roadway for the tracks were held by KTM on a
999-year lease, and at one point the station had a sign saying "Welcome to
Malaysia". The location of the station probably made a lot of sense when
most people arrived in Singapore by boat. A land swap between Malaysia and
Singapore ended up with a new train station on the north side of the island,
where the tracks cross into Malaysia.
The other weekend
outing was to the Botanic Garden, which is really impressive. The garden, which
is really a group of gardens, was started in 1862, and is continually being
revised and extended. I liked the Ginger Garden a lot, and the area with a
bunch of bonsai trees (mostly not firs or pines). Other parts, such as the
Spice Garden, seemed to be works in progress. The showpiece is the National
Orchid Garden, which is the only portion you have to pay to see. The variety is
colors, shapes and sizes is stunning. If you are foreign dignitary or celebrity
and pay an official visit to the orchid garden, they might name a new variety
after you. We saw Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher and Vandaenopsis Nelson Mandela,
along with Dendrobium Jackie Chan and Vandaenopsis Andrea Bocelli.
Bits of usage I'm
figuring out.
- "on"
and "off" are verbs. "Please off the lights when you
leave." "Here, I will on the A/C for you."
- UP in a store =
"usual price"
- "set"
at a restaurant or food stall means a combo meal
- I am
"Proaf Maier". If you think about it, "Proaf" is a more
logically way of pronouncing "Prof." then the "Proff" we
use in the states.
- DND = do not
disturb, indicated in our hotel by turning on a switch that turns on a red
light outside the room.
- D/O =
"daughter of" Used in names to
indicate the patronymic, such as Radhika D/O Girish.
- a restaurant
price with '++' after means it does not include service or GST.