I am American. I moved to Singapore in October 2008. Here’s a post with some general information about Singapore.
My husband and I went with his brother and his brother’s wife to The Loft on Smith Street for coffee and to Tiong Bahru Boneless Chicken Rice, also on Smith Street, for lunch. We also strolled around the area a little.
All the stalls are selling red and gold things with a rooster theme, since fairly soon Singapore will be celebrating the start of the Year of the Rooster.
I don’t have any photos of the rooster lanterns on New Bridge Road. The day was a bit rainy!
I bought the 20 books shown above and listed below for S$2 each at a sale hosted by the United Square branch of the Singapore bookstore chain Popular. Two Singapore dollars is a tough price to beat, even for used books in the US! These books were new but remaindered or noticeably shopworn in some cases.
I think the one I was most excited about finding was China in Ten Words, which was on my Amazon wishlist. If I’d bought it new on Amazon, it would have cost what ten of these books cost me.
Windhaven by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle
I already have an old mass-market paperback but I wanted a trade paperback version.
Find Your Strongest Life by Marcus Buckingham
I wanted a trade paperback version to replace the bulky hardcover I already have.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
I wanted this 50th anniversary edition for the cover. I have lots of different editions with different covers.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
I have already read it, but I didn’t own a copy.
Literary Singapore by The Literary Arts Team of the National Arts Council
As a member of the Singapore Writers’ Group, I wanted to learn more about other Singapore Writers.
Things That Suck by Jason Kaplan
So funny!
10,000 Extraordinary and Puzzling Words by Robert H. Hill
When I saw the word ‘coelacanth’ on the back cover, I had to have it.
We Love Toa Payoh by Urban Sketchers Singapore
I’ve admired these sketchbooks for a while but been unwilling to fork over the full price.
H Plus by Edward de Bono
As stated previously, this guy is a master of the short-but-expensive book, so I grab cheap copies when I can.
China in Ten Words by Yu Hua
I have wanted to read this for a while!
Stylized by Mark Garvey
This is a book about that much praised and maligned touchstone of writing manuals, Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Tiger Babies Strike Back by Kim Wong Keltner
This book is an answer to Tiger Mother Amy Chua.
A Good Talk by Daniel Menaker
This is a book on an intriguing pop-psychology self-improvement topic.
How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
I have one of their other books.
The One Thing You Need to Know by Marcus Buckingham
This is another strengths-based management book.
The Truth about You by Marcus Buckingham
This is another strengths-based management book.
Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Learn by John C. Maxwell
Learning from mistakes is perhaps not just the best way to learn; maybe it’s really the only way to learn.
Bright Side Up by Amy Spencer
Positive psychology strikes again.
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I have his other books.
Bounce by Matthew Syed
This is an attractive green hardcover about competition, success, the importance of practice, or the myth of talent. Or something. Could be a rehash of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers but with even less science.
I tend to think of blue and white as reserved for Hanukkah in the US, which thus mostly sticks to red, green, and gold for Christmas, but there aren’t many (any?) Jewish holiday decorations in Singapore. Upshot: decorations such as these green, blue, and white reindeer, are fair game. So to speak.
Although Shang Antique only moved into this unit at the front of Tanglin Shopping Centre sometime within the last year or so, I am willing to believe that the business has existed from 1984 until now. However, they should use “Established” or “Since” and not both!
More below on why the sign is wrong.
I bought these four books at Velocity in the hallway, where Junior Page had set up a bunch of tables offering discounted books for both children and adults.
When the price is “3 for $20 (or 1 for $10)”, buying four books is not optimal. Nevertheless, I wanted these four books, and only these four books.
Chinese Whispers by Ben Chu
I know a lot more about China than I used to, but in a lot of ways it’s still a black box. This book (which when I first saw it I thought was a novel) is devoted to busting some common myths that circulate in the way that the message does in the game of ‘telephone’—or, as the game is sometimes known, ‘Chinese whispers’.
No One Understands You and What to Do about It by Heidi Grant Halvorson
Reading First, Break All the Rules might make you think that people are so unique that we’re all somehow fundamentally unknowable. But according to this book, there are ways to mitigate this feeling of isolation.
Six Frames by Edward de Bono
I read and loved Six Thinking Hats. This is another of the many, many “creative thinking” books by a true master of the short-but-expensive book, Edward de Bono.
Born Liars by Ian Leslie
I was worried I’d already bought and read this book because it looked familiar. That was just because it has been on my wishlist, however. Glad to have bumped into it at a good price!
Terrible photo, great advice. In four languages.
Value Life. Act Responsibly.
In context, the message means: do not jump in front of the MRT train.
The sign has no doubt been there a while. It used to be that the above-ground MRT stations had exposed tracks; now they have these gates that only open when the train arrives.
Still, we are reminded that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Update (22 Nov 2017): Here’s a more cheerful looking photo:
I’ve posted about errors in signs declaring business hours before. A giant European home furnishings company you may have heard of is among the businesses that have gotten it wrong.
Why should the phrase be “open daily” and not “opens daily”? Because one is idiomatic and one isn’t; or if you prefer, “open daily” has been idiomatic longer, since the sign is, itself, evidence that “opens daily” has become idiomatic in Singlish.
The best I can do for a usage citation is a couple of dictionary entries for “daily”, which give “open daily” as an example, suggesting that this is the most natural and intuitive phrase, as far as dictionary writers are concerned.
Then there’s the fact that the phrase “opens daily” gets Google 253,000 hits whereas “open daily” gets 10,800,000. The images for “opens daily”, in comparison to the images for “open daily”, are telling, too.
(New can of worms: I see that there are signs for “open everyday”, which should be “every day” because “everyday” is an adjective…)
Leaving aside calls to authority and statistics, the syntactic difference is interesting. “Open daily” uses “open” as an adjective, and “opens daily” uses “open” as a verb. We want to know when the business is open. We do not care when the door of the business is opened by some employee with a key. The emphasis is misplaced.
There is a further confusion lurking under the surface, which is that when we do use “open” as a verb for a business, we sometimes mean it in the sense of “to launch” or “to open for the first time”. So the phrase “opens daily” makes it sound like maybe the business is having a grand opening every day, which is ridiculous. Grand openings are not everyday occurrences.
You can use “open” as a verb if you really want, especially in a sentence rather than as a notice on a sign. But I think the verb needs a strong contextual justification.
Example Business
Opens at 9:00 a.m.
Closes at 5:00 p.m. Monday to Thursday
Closes at 3:00 p.m. on Friday
The Ikea sign is particularly bad because of the colon.
Opens Daily: 10am to 11pm
The text suggests that the door is opening (and closing) continuously from ten in the morning to eleven at night! Why? Because there are two adverbs modifying the verb “opens”: the word “[once] daily” and the phrase “[from] 10am to 11pm”. The first can legitimately indicate when the business opens; but the second is meant to say when the business is open.
This is what I think the sign should say:
Open Daily
10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Dear Starbucks,
We need to talk.
I’ve been buying your expensive but delicious lattes since they were S$6.10. I stayed with you when you increased the price. In the scheme of things, an increase of a dime seemed reasonable.
But last month, on the 14th of October, I walked in and what did I find? You’d started celebrating Christmas. In mid-October. That’s not okay with me.
Then, to add injury to insult, when I paid for my drink, I found you’d increased the price of my latte. It was no longer S$6.20. Nor was the price increase just a dime.
We’ve been together a long time, but S$6.40 seems like too much for me to pay for my coffee.
I enjoyed that last coffee, though it seemed more bittersweet than usual. Then, as you know, I took some time to think. And I’ve decided to start buying my coffee elsewhere.
There are a lot of other coffee shops out there, you know? It’s not like I even have to go out of my way. It’s time for me to try something new. A coffee shop that doesn’t jump the gun on holidays or ask too much from me.
I have no doubt that others will still be lining up to buy your coffee, and I wish you all the best.
Sincerely,
The newest fan of Toast Box
Being an expat.
Disadvantage: Just when you get to know them, your friends and neighbors move to some other country thousands of miles away.
Advantage: They sell off their stuff cheap.
Upshot: I have way more movies than friends.
Georgia-Pacific is a paper company headquartered in my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia. The Georgia-Pacific Tower, a pink granite building shaped like three tiers of steps, came into being about the same time I did. It’s my favorite skyscraper in the city. I was in it once, way up high, for a job interview.
Now. The sticker that says “Please tear sideway”, spotted on a Georgia-Pacific paper towel dispenser in a restroom in the Singapore General Hospital complex, did not come from where I came from. I don’t know where it came from, but it did not come from Georgia.
