Category: Singapore

I am American. I moved to Singapore in October 2008. Here’s a post with some general information about Singapore.

Buildables

This morning on the AYE I saw a yellow truck belonging to a company called Buildables (not to be confused with Build-a-Bear). On the side, the truck said:

We build walls and ceilings faster than the speed of this truck.

I wanted to take a photo, but of course it was gone too fast.

Just now I did a Google search and found the Buildables website. I have no idea whether their products and services are any good, and I’m not in the market for walls or ceilings at the moment, but the design and content of the website was better than I was perhaps expecting.

I’m always fascinated to see products and slogans on vehicles rather than just the company name. Maybe someday I’ll get a photo of one of the trucks that advertises those purple Japanese sweet potatoes or a truck from that moving company whose bee mascot is cross-eyed (!).

2016 Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinatown

That’s Chang’e, the goddess associated with the moon and the full moon harvest festival of Chinese culture. Every year, though there’s no autumn to speak of in Singapore, Chinatown is decorated with lanterns, and all the shops (including Starbucks) start selling mooncakes.

(Mooncakes are kind of like the Chinese equivalent of fruitcakes—their purpose is to be given as gifts, not necessarily to be happily consumed. I like mooncakes, though, except for the fancy ones that have egg yolks baked into them. Whose brilliant idea was it to make a treat that’s sweet and savory at the same time? For Pete’s sake, pick one or the other!)

This year’s decorations seem to be quite specific in how they tie into the legend. I see suns, the archer who shot them down, the moon rabbit, and the magic herb needed for the elixir of life. The flowers might be cassia tree flowers, from the tree on the moon in the legend, but I’m not sure. (Cassia bark is cinnamon.)

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The view from Shabestan

I’m at Robertson Quay eating lunch outside with a friend at Shabestan, and that’s the Singapore “River”.

It’s a little hot, but okay in the shade with a breeze. And yes, it is the end of September and the leaves are not only still on the trees but also green. They’re always green. Usually that annoys me, but today it’s kinda nice.

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Indocafe Coffeemix

This is the advertisement on the back of the JetStar inflight magazine.

Some people would never drink instant coffee at any time, but I am fairly confident that even people who really like instant coffee would never drink it while inline skating.

Congratulations, nameless graphic designer. The ad is certainly eye-catching. Baffling, but also definitely eye-catching.

Singapore Changi Airport T1 Cactus Garden

When you think of Singapore, you don’t think of cacti, and an airport is pretty much the opposite of a garden, right? Yet Changi Airport boasts a cactus garden.

How do cacti even survive outdoors in Singapore? My guess is they’ve worked out the right kind of soil to drain water away from the plants, but what do I know. My thumbs are about as green as a fire engine.

Below are 10 photos I took of the cactus garden at Changi Terminal 1 while waiting for the gate to open for our flight to Phnom Penh.

Don’t make fun of the “wildlife” tag on this post. Obviously, this garden is the opposite of wild. I guess I’m just using the tag as shorthand for “plants and animals (and mushrooms, which aren’t even plants)”.

Continue reading Singapore Changi Airport T1 Cactus Garden

Mobile phones make the wait more bearable

at Westgate in Jurong East
at Westgate in Jurong East

When I first saw five people sitting on a bench in a mall staring intently at their mobile phones, totally oblivious to their surroundings, I thought: Aha! Here’s an opportunity for me to comment about the idiocy of mobile phone culture—with phones in their hands, people seem incapable of paying attention to anything else.

And then I realized: They’re all men.

Presumably they’re all waiting for their womenfolk to emerge from some nearby store. They’d be bored to tears, or they’d not have come along in the first place, if they didn’t have mobile phones to help them pass the time.

Mobile phones may make people rude in some ways, but here, they’re making these men very, very patient.

Every icloud has a silver lining?