Well I made it. The flight from Hong Kong to Singapore is about 4 hours. I couldn't find any 'Welcome to Singapore' sign in the airport, maybe that is some sort of sign. The first thing you have to do when you get off the plane is go through immigration. It really is much simpler than I thought it would be. You just walk up to an official looking booth with guards looking on. You present your passport and a form you had to fill out on the plan with your name, address, etc. If you make it past the first guy then you get your luggage and most people are free to go. The customs guys randomly select people and then look through all of their luggage. If you are lucky they just pass it through a big x ray machine but if anything looks suspicious then you are in for a much longer search. I was one of the lucky guys to get some extra attention. I guess everything looked ok in my bags because they didn't ask me to drop my trousers or anything. Going through Immigration and Customs always makes me nervous though. Not that I have anything to hide but I really just want to get my stuff an go.
I am staying in a pretty nice hotel called the Goodwood Park Hotel. It was built in 1900 by some German guy. Because I am staying a little longer they set the instructors up in more of an extended stay type of room. It is really like an apartment. I could definitely live full time in a place like this if it was just me. The lady checking me in told me that they have had people that stay in the room for years. It is actually kind of like a split level with the bedroom upstairs and downstairs there is a living room with a small dining table and a desk. There is also a full kitchen with everything you would need to cook a meal.
After I got into my room I had a quick video chat with the family. I was in dire need of a shower after spending all that time on the plane it was wonderful. It is hot and humid here. I think people who live here get used to the humidity. I on the other hand, just sweat like a pig doing normal things like walking down the street. After my shower the hunter gatherer instinct kicked in and it was time to find a grocery store and get some stuff in my fridge. My hotel this time is in a much more populated area. It is near one of the biggest shopping area's in Singapore called Orchard Road. They love their malls here and there are about 6 of the all next door to each other on Orchard Road. Several of the are pretty upscale establishments and had lots of name brand stores. I passed a Nike store and popped in to see how the prices compared. The first pair I picked up were $25o singapore dollars. That works out to about $183 US. I also looked a Ralph Lauren store and shirts that were $75 at Macy's were$110 here. I guess you aren't gonna find any deals!
Anyway, the bell hop told were the closest supermarket was (they have no idea what a grocery store is). It is called the Isetan Supermarket and it's a Japanese chain store. Now another strange thing about Singapore is there are really any strip malls. Land is precious here so all the malls are 5 or 6 stories tall, kinda reminds me of the Embarcadero in SF. The grocery stores are usually inside of these malls. It is a pain in the ass if you are on foot. Probably even a pain if you have a car because it is not like you can park close to the front door. Apparently people grocery shop on Sunday's here. The store was PACKED, I was having a Disneyland flashback. There were a lot of weird things in this store. I would say about 25% of the store had things I recognized though. The US food was pricey. A 1 liter bottle of Coke was $2.50 which works out to $1.83 US. I got the basics so I could at least make some breakfast in my room. The crappy part was carting all those bags back about 5 blocks to my hotel. I was sweating walking down to the store and I was practically soaked to the bone after the walk back. So much for that shower!
I did stumbling across an interesting fellow in the store, Mr. Scallop. I guess he was promoting a product in the store but I really couldn't figure out how his costume was supposed to look like a scallop.
So anyway I guess I should wrap this up. It is just about 6pm here and I starting to fade pretty fast. The TV pretty much sucks here. You have about 20 channels or so. Discovery, Stars Movie Channel and ESPN are about the only ones with shows I recognize. You would think I would be happy with ESPN but it isn't the normal one. It is something like ESPN Asia and has had soccer on all day. I brought a DVD player and some DVD's but I think I might not have brought the right cables to hook it up, Doh! I can still play DVD's on my laptop so I might have to make do with that. Tomorrow I am going to attempt to take public transportation to work. They have a system kind of like BART called the MRT. It is set up pretty well since most people here don't have cars. I have to change trains twice though so I hope I don't get lost. The MRT is dirt cheap and the highest fare is $1.60 each way. A Taxi will cost me about $22 each way so that would burn through my per diem pretty quick. The main thing I am worried about is just getting sweaty on the way to work. Ok, starting to ramble. I am gonna get my ironing done and try to make it until 8 or so before I crash.
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