People

There are so many people here. I love to people-watch and this place is amazing for that! Today we wandered around Ion Orchard and Wheelock, with the kids in the morning and then by myself in the afternoon. (Much better without the kids, thank you hubby!) Here are some 'field notes' from my outings today.
~ Walking through the shopping places on a Saturday, especially by the MRT (subway) exchanges, is insane! There are sooooo many people. It's a sea of faces. Thankfully, everyone is about the same height as me here; I feel like I can swim along instead of drowning.
~ Kids zip around on scooters if they aren't being pushed in a stroller. Cade now has a scooter.
~ Lifts (elevators) are very much like cans of sardines. Smaller sized cans of sardines. And of course the person at the very back is the one that needs to get off next. Today an elderly man didn't want to get into the lift with a group of people. A younger man made a comment that it was odd and perhaps the man was self-conscious. To which I commented something to the effect of "Singapore is the wrong place to have claustrophobia." According to the young man, Hong Kong and Japan are much worse. True but it's sure a heck of a lot more crowded here than it was in Illinois or Oregon.
~ I'm pretty sure that was not a girl in the tall bright red high heels and skirt walking down the street. I cannot confirm this suspicion though. She did go into the Orchard Towers.
~ There is an IISS Summit being held at the adjoining hotel this weekend. Every type of uniform, rank and high level person is in that lobby. Too bad I had to look like I knew where I was going instead of just looking around at all the dignitaries.
~ I'm starting to see the tourists among us. I'm not sure if I count as a tourist or an ex-pat. But I noticed the cameras, pointing and selfie-takers a lot more today.
~ I saw people holding hands! I thought PDA was strictly prohibited here so I was pleasantly surprised and a bit relieved.
~ The shopping centers, specifically the Ion, have aromatherapy piped through the air conditioning. It's fairly subtle but quite lovely.
~ A group of people are having a surprise party across the hall from our apartment. While I was feeding the baby tonight I heard "Happy birthday!" followed by singing. It's tempting to go join in. I think I'll just call it a night instead.

Day 2 Observations

Day 1 was spent in a haze of exhaustion so we might as well skip over it. My main observation yesterday: it's beautiful here! I'm especially obsessed with the building across from our apartment. It has large gaps in the building specifically for gardens and greenery. The picture I took with my phone does not do justice for the awesomeness of this building. I even think I read about it in a magazine one time.
Day 2 has been mostly spent hanging out around the apartment and running short errands. Here's what we have noticed so far:

• You push the light switch down to turn on the light.
• It's going to take a little bit to get used to the different way of saying the date (day then month), the temperature in Celsius, weights in kilograms and distance in kilometers. 
• The toilets, at least at the apartment, flush straight down -- no swirling toilet water here. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with being so close to the equator.
• I still don't know which side of the sidewalk to walk on; the cars drive on the left but people walk anywhere they want. Which reminds me, cars have the right away if you aren't crossing at a pedestrian light.
• There are no panhandlers.
• Groceries and food seem to be double the cost of what I'm used to or half the size. For example, my small frappuccino yesterday at Starbucks was $7 and the package of spaghetti noodles today was over $2.50. The supermarket I found does not carry milk in gallon size. We might have to get away from our cereal for breakfast every day.
• It's surprisingly easy to get dehydrated here given how incredibly humid it is.
• The food options are unlimited! We haven't even made it to the food hawker centers yet. We drove past one last night and it looks delicious. Kinda reminded me of the food aisles at the Fair, except cleaner.
• There are flowers and orchids everywhere! And lots of greenery. So beautiful!
• All the street signs, shop signs, etc. are in English. So helpful. 
• The city reminds me of a combination of Portland and San Fransisco. But that's my frame of reference for big cities. Luckily I'm a fan of both places so the reminder is a pleasant one. 
• Elevators are considerably smaller than I remember.

It's still pretty surreal that we are here and there's so much to take in.

In the Waiting

This post is for my friend Laura's blog (see it here). 

I don't consider myself a patient person. Oh sure, waiting in line to check out at the store or waiting for the light to change is fine. I can handle those. But waiting for the 'next big thing', that's hard for me to do! And the way my husband and I are, we always have a something in the works. Recently we've been thrown into the 'next big thing' and the swirling chaos of a big move. But before that all happened, it felt like I was waiting for-ev-er. 

In October of 2012, we decided it was time for us to move. What had started out as a quick 2-year stop to get our foot in the employment door had turned into an eventful, yet overextended 9-year stay. We had never intended to be in Klamath that long. The hard drive through mountains to get to a mall and the lack of family support started to wear on us. I had been laid off, twice, and we worried about the future for our children. The employment opportunities, education options and general health of the basin made us nervous.

So I interviewed for jobs in the Portland area. (We had honeymooned there and I have a soft spot for that area.) We anxiously put our house on the market. We set our sights on moving and waited to see if anything would happen. Well, nothing did. A few showings, one offer that wasn't serious, but no luck. It was frustrating! We had blinders focused on moving and I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t happening NOW. That's when God decided it was the perfect time for us to have a baby (that's a story about waiting all itself.) That’s not moving! Looking back, of course it's easy to see that moving then was our idea and not what God had in mind.

After a year of having the house on the market, we decided to let the listing expire and enjoy our holiday season with a little less stress. After all, we just had a baby so wasn't that big enough? We also decided that I would stay at home with our daughter instead of paying for two kids in daycare. When our very independent son was a baby, I had a pretty great job doing marketing. Now that the economy had down-turned, it wasn’t quite so great. I took a deep breath and let go of moving and a career, for now. I struggled to accept that I wasn't going to be a working mom any more. I struggled with what that meant to my identity.

Our little girl, it turns out, is much more content to cuddle at home with mom or go out shopping, even if just for groceries. She was easily overwhelmed by situations and needed the security of being home. So I joined the mommy's group and started reading blogs and books about being a homemaker. I was going to accept this shift in thinking and embrace it.

But still I was waiting.

We needed the ‘next big thing’. It wasn’t until I learned about creative prayer in late January, that I really started to talk to God about His timing. I’ll be the first to tell you that I think his timing is terribly inconvenient. Can’t he just tell me what is going on so I can make plans?! And then the figurative dominoes God had put into place started to fall. I made a vow to myself to “pray about it more than I talk about it.” But it was so hard to wait even while God was doing something. But He was making things happen! My husband found a job to apply for, he got an interview, he got the job! Our house sold and everything came together.

This move is beyond my wildest imagination. I had ‘thrown it out there’ in my prayers about living in another country (done!), living by the ocean (done!), having better educational opportunities for my children (done!), experiencing the bigger world out there and so much more. Had things happened on our time frame, we would probably be struggling to make ends meet in a town that might not be quite the best fit for our family with very little support from family or employers.

It’s easier now for me to say “It’s ok to wait—God’s working on something bigger and better.”

Found on Pinterest (of course)!

Q & A about Singapore

Here are some questions you have asked us about Singapore. Special thanks to my husband and Google/Wikipedia for help with the answers. Worth noting: we have not actually been there yet. I will update this after we've had a chance to experience the country first hand.

Q) Where is Singapore?

A) Singapore is in Southeast Asia off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula and 137 kilometres (85 miles) north of the equator. 

Q) What type of political system do they have?

A) It's a unitary multiparty parliamentary republic with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government. Translation: It's similar to the British system and their Prime Minister is very important.

Q) What language do most people speak?

A) There is no real standard for the language. The official language is English but many are of mandarin decent and speak a form of mandarin. We will be attempting to learn mandarin. Everyone has their own dialect though and the mix of everything is commonly called Singlish. The English they do speak is British influenced for spelling, grammar and choice of words.

Q) Are their special limits to women like dress code?

A) Not that we know of but I may have an update for this one later. There does not really seem to be a dress code. The people Ross met last week seemed really big into name brands and "magazine fashion". A lot of people dress for their religion/beliefs. The Indians, for example, wear beards and head wraps. Ross said "Imagine my surprise when I looked at a jet and saw a guy with a beard and turban sitting in the seat."

Q) Are there nice beach areas with snorkeling and diving?

A) Not really much diving and snorkeling. We will investigate this one and provided a 

better answer first hand in a few weeks. 

Q) Beach bungalow or city high-rise?

A) We're thinking a neighborhood between both. There are lots of little houses just north of east coast beach park and to the east of city center. If you live in a high-rise it will take 20 minutes just to get in and out of the parking areas (if you even can get parking). We've been told that the beaches get a little touristy for every day living.

Q) How bad is the pollution?

A) There’s not too much auto pollution, the main pollution comes from when other countries close by do burns and it carries over.

Q) How does the cost of living compare to here?

A) Cost of living is 38% higher on average than in the U.S. I'll be able to give a better update once we are in the country. We are prepared for the fact that it's very expensive to live there. 

Q) How much acid rain do they get per year?

A) Google says none. No one has mentioned this being an issue. 

Q) I'd love to know more about holidays celebrated there.

A) Click Here for the official list of holidays I found. I'm excited to celebrate National Day in August. From what I've read, it's like the US Independence Day. I might need a post just for holidays, after we've been there to experience a few. Ross says they are equally concerned with milestones like 5 years at Mountain Home (he was there for the celebration last week) or this year is their Air Force's 50th anniversary so that will be a huge event.

Q) I'd love to know what the schools and education is like!

A) The public schools are good. They teach math a little different. Not base 10, but not really the American way either. We've been told the American private schools are the best. Grade school teachers make about $110,000 a year and there is a waiting list for locals to get spots for their kids. Americans get first dibs. Most American private schools say the majority of their students get bumped up two grades when they repat to America. This is the school we are considering from our kids.

Q) If I was a local, born and raised, what might I do for hobbies/entertainment?

A) The locals Ross met last week really love food. They love making it, eating it and trying new flavors and foods. (I'm signing up for cooking classes!) Their favorite sports are soccer (football) and basketball. Cade'll be in heaven.

Q) Is there a vast difference between in the city and other areas?

A) Not really, just different demographics of neighborhoods. For example you've got the Americans in the north east, Indians in little India, etc. Rule of thumb, the more west you go, the cheaper it is and more industrial and lower class people.

Q) What insights did Ross get?

A) Insights . . . a lot of the Singaporeans feel like the draw of expats there is getting out of control. A common thought is that ‘Expats are first class citizens, Singapore nationals are second class citizens’. But as a whole, they are very proud of their culture. They can be stubborn and tend to over analyze things that don’t need to be thought too deeply in. (Sounds familiar! I'm so guilty of that.) It also seems that systems over there force separation of classes, for instance: to buy a basic car it will cost a local about S$130,000. (Just the ‘Certificate of Entitlement’ which allows the person to have one is S$60,000-70,000. Then the car is S$50,000.) This puts a car way out of reach for many middle class on down. Then they see expats like me driving a new Mazda and get frustrated.

Q) Is Ross going to get caned?

A) No, he most likely will not get caned. He will probably get fined for some stuff as every small deviation from law is caught and fined. (Think traffic ticket.) Canning is only to make examples of serious stuff they don’t want to have happen again. Selling any amount of drugs is life in prison and they are quick to export people who are disrespectful (recently a guy on a motorcycle threw something at a car, apparently he's out).

Q) What kind of animals can you find there in the wild?

A) They do have a lot of tropical animals like snakes, but with such a high population there aren’t a lot of animals running around. The zoo and safari are supposed to be incredible though. Singapore imports beef and meats from neighboring countries.

Q) Why is gum outlawed?

A) Gum is outlawed because it started becoming a nuisance (on streets, chairs etc.) then people started using it to stick on the sensors of the buses to keep the back doors open so people could sneak on, then some people got killed because of that and the government said 'no more'.

Q Is there a type of alcohol/drink they are recognized for and a must try for visitors?

A) About alcohol: they don’t really like the Singapore Sling...it is a tourist drink. They really are passionate about their 'Tiger Beer'.  It is unregulated and used to contain formaldehyde which gave you a distinct buzz. It is potent so you don’t beer bong or pong with it. With liquor they seem big into name brands; they like Jack Daniels and Bacardi. They ask for drinks by brand, not just 'rum and coke'.

Comment with other questions and we'll do our best to answer them. I'm very excited to be able to see what the answers really are and experience for myself. Singapore here we come!