Touring Singapore

Some time ago, friend and I had a plan to tour Singapore and take gorgeous pictures of the things that are most distinctively her. Finally, armed with our trusty point-and-shoot cameras and true tourist mentality, we took the first step of our adventure last Saturday.

First stops: The Bras Basah, Selegie, Bencoolen, Fort Canning area.

This coming Saturday: Chinese Garden, Jurong Bird Park.

Don’t try to book me for anything on the coming Saturdays, I’ve got a country to explore.

All will documented at Singapore on Foot.

Home-building in Batam

Strictly speaking, it was more of soil-shifting and brick-moving. I laid a grand total of one senget (Malay for slanting) brick while a colleague laid another 2. Just to try it out. (I hope it won’t significantly affect the bricks to ba laid on top of ours, or they’ll have to knock down the bricks we laid.)

From the time I volunteered for this company CSR till the day of the event, I was worried about how inadequate I’ll be, building a house when I knew nothing about it, and doing it for (of all people), a construction worker. I thought, how funny it would be, for him to see us build a house for him when we don’t even know how to use a shovel properly. When we reached, we were assigned to another house, that of a local priest. So it wasn’t as awkward.

The learning curve was steep. We were constantly thinking of “process improvements” and looking for the “bottlenecks” in our “production chain”. Initially, we were quite proud of ourselves when we got the soil-shifting process quite smooth. But we didn’t realize how slow we were till we became much faster in the afternoon. And we probably will never know really how inefficient we were compared to the professionals. Plus the abnormal amount of wastage from the bricks we broke while shifting them from one place to another.

The most interesting conversation happened over lunch. While chatting with the person-in-charge from the non-profit organization that initiated such home-building schemes in Batam, a colleague asked, “So have you been to Singapore?”. The answer was most enlightening, “Yes. But Singapore is not like a city.”, he smiled, “It’s like a really big park!”.

Everyone laughed at his comment and told him how apt it was. He continued, “Everywhere I go in Singapore, everything I see is just so…”, he grinned and gave the thumbs up. 

“Of course,” I thought, “Everything has been well-planned.” It was a mixed feeling, somewhere between feeling proud of Singapore and feeling sad by the “not a city, but a park” comment, as though we are just a well-designed enclosure of sculpted plants and man-made water features.

At the end of the day, we were sweaty, dirty and sun-burnt, all exhausted and glad to leave. As we boarded the bus arranged to take us back to the ferry terminal, a group of construction workers watched us leaving in our comfortable air-conditioned bus with a painted exterior of the local resort. And I just felt sick.

We all complained about the hot sun, the hard work, the back aches and finger blisters. I thought how I wouldn’t want to do this for a living everyday. But we were such high-class workers. We had lunch specially prepared and brought in from the local hotel. We had bottled water kept cold in an ice box for us, anytime we needed it. We were transported to and from the work site in air conditioned buses, unlike what a colleague commented, “they should load us in the back of a lorry and dump us here.”

So 8 pampered Singaporeans spent a day in Batam moving soil and bricks. All we left behind at the end of the day was 2 rooms with leveled floors, a room filled with bricks and 3 senget bricks on a wall. We asked, “How long does it take to build a house?”. The person-in-charge replied, “3 months, with volunteers.”

It doesn’t take much to figure out that a house like that should take much less than 3 months to build. “But they don’t mind.”, the person-in-charge informed us, “In fact, they’re really proud that their house is built by foreigners. You know, sometimes there are the ang mohs (caucasians) from big foreign banks.”

That’s something new. I’ve always thought that such home-building activities truly benefit us more than the home owners and the place we visit. After all, if all the money put into getting us to the work site and providing us there could be spent hiring local workers, the job would be completed much faster and cheaper, and the benefit of providing jobs for the locals could be significant.

But between moving to a proper house earlier and having a house built by foreigners, there could be people who would gladly choose one built by the proud Singaporean and Caucasian tourists they serve. The ironies.

Korea, as it is

The Koreans have been very hospitable. They took us out to fancy Korean restaurants for meals and so I’ve tasted quite a few good Korean dishes.

Perhaps the most memorable conversation with a Korean on this trip,

Korean: “Do you eat ‘doug’?”

Me: “No! Dog?!” (OMG, I know Koreans eat Dogs, but don’t you think it’s too much to offer visitors?)

Korean: (shocked look) “I mean, D-U-C-K, ‘doug’.”

Me: “Oh, you mean ‘Duck’. Yes, I eat duck.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mocking their English. This Korean coworker’s English is quite good. I just found it a very amusing misunderstanding of language and culture.

In fact, the Koreans I’ve met are actively learning English. The middle-aged man I sat on the train was writing in an English workbook, doing an exercise of translating simple Korean sentences into English. On the subway, I stood beside a young man who was mumbling “restroom” to himself. I later noticed he seemed to be busy memorising vocabulary from a slip of paper he was holding in his hand. Koreans, I heard, spend years overseas just to learn English because English is increasingly essential for finding a good job.

I’ve been fortunate as this is a business trip and I work with professionals in a well-managed company. If I came to Korea alone, particularly the Cheonan area, which is largely rural with many farms and industries, I’ll be stucked with nowhere to go, nowhere to find good Korean food and no one to ask because I don’t know Korean. 

Korea, as it is, doesn’t look like anything in the Korean dramas. At least not the place I’m staying in and the places I passed by on my travels.

In big city Seoul, you’d see a lot of fashionable young people around. But the majority of people do not look like they walk straight out of a Korean drama. They are mostly uncouth and simple small town folks.

Jeju Island is an expensive vacation place reserved for honeymoons. People don’t spend all their free time walking around on scenic beaches. Developed places seem pretty much confined to big cities like Seoul. For the majority of the places I’ve seen, agriculture and industries dominate. The roads are dirty, there is little urban planning and there are small plots of land with crops along the main roads in the city.

Next week, I’ll see the scenic side of Korea and experience staying in a pretentiously luxurious hotel on Jeju Island.

Enjoying Tokyo

I can really live in Tokyo, once I know the language and get used to the food. But tonight, I managed to get by without saying much.

I woke up from my nap feeling hungry. With the knowledge that the shops here close by 9pm, I plowed through the hotel’s restaurants and even contemplated room service. All were overpriced and none looked appetizing.

All I wanted was a simple bowl of noodles. Steaming hot noodles. With egg. Definitely with egg. I had this incredible craving for egg. I even thought of getting fresh eggs from the convenience store and boiling it in my hotel room’s electric kettle.

Although this is the land of instant noodles, I know I really shouldn’t resort to getting cup noodles from the convenience store in the hotel. (Or egg for that matter.) So I dragged my sorry ass out of the hotel flushing like a drunken idiot.

It was the best decision I made in a long while.

I found a noodle house the size of its kitchen, with less than 20 seats on a counter surrounding the kitchen. Not knowing anything in Japanese, I ordered my food with a single alphabet of the English language, according to the tag on the pictures outside the restaurant. I ate sitting shoulder to shoulder with local men drinking Asahi and finally paid and asked for a receipt by pointing to the print-out slot on the cashier. I knew I had it when the cashier responded with “Oh! Receipt-to!”.

Dinner was completed with a grand total of 1alphabet.

Satisfied with my steaming hot bowl of noodles, I left the store and decided to take a stroll around the area.

Passed by an ancient shrine along a row of restaurants and bars. Saw Yoshinoya in the land it is from. Counted 3 convenience stores in the half a km area near the hotel. Got surprised by a talking traffic light. Cheapest vending machine sells coffee for 80 yen. Passed by many men-in-suits reeking of alcohol. Passed by many men in suits and ties riding bicycles. Got surprised by a music playing vending machine. Bought Meiji milk without saying a single word.

The shops close by 9pm? Well, just a few of the department stores around. This place is still bustling with activity way past 11pm.

I thought Japan was a place I’ll never like. I don’t enjoy the food and I’ve no interest in their culture, TV shows and anime. But I really like Japan, if for nothing else I like the Japanese. They’re gentle, gracious and extremely polite. It is a very comfortable city to be in.

First trip to Tokyo

It’s only 7.30pm.

I’m in the hotel, eating expensive hotel lobby bread and drinking brought-from-Singapore 3-in-1 Milo.

I’m burning a fever and I can’t understand the Japanese instructions on the cooling pads I bought from the hotel’s convenience store.

If only the Tokyo view outside the window will stop calling out to me.

Miserable. I can’t stay another minute anywhere.

Random traveling

Somehow, I didn’t feel like taking the usual long bus ride route to training today.

I flipped through the bus guide hoping to find an alternative but couldn’t. So I gave up and went to the usual bus stop, but the bus left as I was reaching it.

Might as well! I boarded the next bus that went in the general direction of Bukit Batok.

The entire trip today was made up of alighting when I felt like and taking another bus in the direction of where I was heading to.

Time was not an issue. Since I was the only one going to training I didn’t care about being late. After a morning A+ presentation on motivation, I have ironically no idea how to and no confidence in motivating the members to go for training. Tired and frustrated, and still receiving smses informing me of their absence from training while on the buses.

I alighted when I happened to be standing near the bus exit.
I boarded the first bus that came.
I alighted when the bus got too crowded with sweaty JC students after a run.
I boarded the first bus to Bukit Batok that came.

That bus took me through the Hillview condominium estates, then it went past the long forgotten swimming complex I used to go to. After which I alighted absolutely sure that I was lost.

But lucky me happened to have alighted at the bus stop with the bus that will take me to the range – The usual one I take.

So 4 buses, a tour of old places and 1.5 hours later, I reached the range with lanes booked for SMU students, but no SMU student in sight. In fact, the range officers are so used to it they have conveniently given those lanes away to others.

Travel the world? Go China.

Since my trip to ShenZhen’s 世界之窗, a themepark with miniature places of interest from all over the world, I’ve half dropped the idea of traveling the world. (For those who have not been effectively confused by me with the MSN display pictures of me and backdrops many suspect was photoshoped on, I went to Paris, London, Italy, India, Australia, US… in a day. The photos were genuine.)

So anyway, I recently met up with Weiping who just came back from his one month trip in Australia to “exercise”, and he has thoughtfully brought back souvenirs for us.

A cute little keychain.

Sweet. It’s clearly from Australia, with cute little koalas on it (can’t see from the photo).
But being me, I wasn’t going to tear through the covering to get it out before effectively investigating the packaging.

I turned it around and laughed right out.

Taken with a VGA camera, but the words on the gold sticker can still be vaguely made out. It says, “Made in China”.

I would have laugh harder if I were in China when I got it. Just as how I anticipated my dad’s reaction would have been had I bought him a gift and brought it to China where he was at. Because the tab on the shirt says exactly the same thing as that on the keychain.

World’s factory. More like the world has somehow converged at China. And with my previous entry on China, I mentioned the supermarkets with every fruit and food in the world (Yes, durians too and other fruits I’ve not even seen in local supermarkets). So now, with a few hundred bucks, I can make a trip to China, travel the world, eat delicacies from all over the world, take pictures at world landmarks and buy back souvenirs. All the activities of an average tourist done at one spot. Around the world in 80 days? Hah!

I told Weiping I’ll buy back keychains from every place in the world the next time I go to China.