On Languages

Even though technically english is the official language, and while generally you do get by easily knowing just english, I find that you’ll still hear a fair mix of english, malay and mandarin. In everyday conversation people would literally just throw in malay and chinese words here and there, mixed with english, as if it was nothing. Sometimes even street names are completely in Malay! fortunately Indonesian is very similar to Malay, so this is working to my advantage or i’d be SO lost.

Singaporeans are capable of speaking proper english, for the most part, but this mix of languages results in one entirely different language, called Singlish, which are used colloquially. Some people make fun of this but I find it totally endearing and very, very amusing. Please do refer to youtube for examples of Singlish.

Another thing I have to note is that I don’t speak chinese but I am/look chinese, so people INSIST on speaking mandarin to me. this mainly happens when i try to order food at the food court / hawker center. yes, even when I give them bewildered stare and answer all of their (i assume) questions with “i’m sorry, what?” they STILL try speak mandarin to me. as if i should understand.

On Food!

I’m happy to say I’m adjusting well with local food, especially since they are so yummy and really cheap! Singapore is seriously like food heaven for me.

There are a lot of food courts here that sells the same type of food all over singapore, which are referred to as “Hawker Center”. Chicken rice, Yong Tau Fu, some sort of Indian food, ban mian (noodles) and mixed veggie rice are the type of foods that are always present at these hawker centers. they’re pretty consistent in taste and price, so you wouldn’t be too surprised. A typical meal would set me back about SGD4-5 (which is about USD3.50) which is crazy cheap. Recently I’ve been introduced to Bak Kut Teh, and it’s my current obsession.

Random eating habits

I go to lunch with my coworkers a lot and we go to hawker centers / food courts around the office. on lunch hours these places are obviously PACKED, so you have to fight for a table. also it’s perfectly normal to share a table with strangers, so what people would do is “mark” their seat with a tissue packet or an umbrella while they’re off ordering their food. either that or you must have someone from your group sit back and guard your place. also even though you carry your food back to the table with a tray, most people would move their plates onto the table and return the tray… I assume to save space?

Going back to the tissue packet, if you happen to eat at a hawker center and an elderly person tries to sell you a pack of these tissue packets, please do buy from them.

Eating in proper restaurants are more or less the same as anywhere else. Singapore don’t really practice tipping, which I find fair as usually service is near non-existent, but also because they usually already add service charge to your bill.

You can’t buy gum, but…

You can drink alcohol freely in public – no need to conceal your bottles inside a brown paper bag! You can get contact lenses without prescription. Who cares about your eyes. Why, you can even legally participate in prostitution by the age of 16! That’s how old Justin Bieber was when he released “Baby”.

Singapore laws are a little weird like that.

Things I can’t / don’t want to get used to

• The goddamn british english. I vehemently refuse (though I think it’s slowly getting to me, working in advertising and all) to add “u” after an “o” on certain words. or use “s” instead of “z” and “tre” instead of “ter”. And why the hell would you spell chili with double L’s?
• The metric system. I’ve gotten used to translating celsius to fahrenheit at least, from describing how hot Singapore is to my LA friends.
• The DD/MM/YYYY date format. still gets me every time. I’ve resorted to always spelling out months to avoid confusion.
• $8-10 for a bottle of beer. Gone are the days of 50 cents pint nights in college.

Thankfully with Google maps and my blackberry I can pretty much map up my route from and to anywhere in the island. Of course this is doable in other smartphones as well that supports Google maps, including but not limited to iPhones and any phone with android OS.

without you my life would be so much harder…

Anyway, it surprises me how so many people are not aware of google maps for their phones yet. So I took a few screenshots the other day when I was bored. Mapping your way is very easy with the map application, just like their web Google maps.

Use their “get direction” option and fill in a start point and end point like usual. Don’t forget to change your “travel by” option to Public transit.

Google will then give you a few options to choose from and estimated travel time. keep in mind they will also take into account rush hour traffic so you can change the date and time option to get the closest travel time estimate.

It will also give you a step by step guide on how to get to your destination. They are ridiculously accurate most of the time, but of course take their walking direction with a grain of salt. don’t be like that woman who got hit by a car because she listened to google’s suggestion to cross the road without proper crossing place.

If you click “show on maps”, it will draw you the route. Singaporeans can probably guess where this is =P

One of the feature i LOVE the most is their real time GPS, which again is ridiculously accurate most of the time (unless your network is messing up and you get slow connection). From there you could see where you are and the direction you are traveling to. I find this useful when I travel to a place I’ve never been to and I don’t know when to get off the bus! It also works when you’re walking, so I never get lost!

Also if you hover any bus stop icon on the map…

A little pop up will come up and tell you the name of that stop. You can then click on it to view more info and select transits that are available in that stop:

Like so! It will even tell you the approximate time each line will get to that very stop. HOW AMAZING IS THAT!

THANK YOU for making my life so much easier, Google!!

There are two things you shouldn’t do when I’m hungry: 1) make me wait for food 2) let me order. because then i WILL order whatever looks good on the menu and say yes to any food/drinks offered, regardless whether or not I have the stomach capacity to actually finish it.

So we got nachos to share as appetizer. To my surprise the portion was HUGE:

… and oh so yummy with generous amount of shredded beef, guacamole and sour cream! i’m pleased with the thin tortilla chips since I haven’t had that in sooooo long.

Also got a jug of strawberry margarita to share.

Will got the cha cha cha combo, which I forgot what (I think a bit of everthing?)

I got chicken enchiladas, which was nothing to write home about. I dunno if I’m just spoiled because I lived in LA (where we have GOOD mexican food) but the chicken was a bit bland and aside of the melted cheese and salsa on top, there was no flavor at all! At least the nachos and margarita were good, otherwise I wouldn’t come back to this place. Next time that’s all I’m ordering because by the time our main orders came out we were basically already really full.

Afterwards we made our way to Harbourfront and met up with Parissa. While waiting for her, we hung around the promenade area, enjoyed the evening breeze and shared a jug of vodka cran.

At Timbre Substation, we were lucky enough to get a good table despite not making any reservation. It was supposed to be dinner and drinks, but me and Will were just VERY full from the lunch so we each had drinks while Parissa had pizza.

We sat around drinking and talking for awhile, waiting for the entertainment of the night to show up. We were expecting them to start playing at 9+ PM, but they actually didn’t start until 10+. Doesn’t matter though because the band that was playing that night (Goodfellas) was very, very good. They did a bunch of covers, including Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and it was very well done!

See, this is why Timbre is one of my favorite places to hang out in Singapore. Their food is yummy and their bands are always very good :D (My other favorite band is 53A, whom i also first saw when I was hanging out at Timbre)

It failed to authenticate. “Odd”, i thought, and pulled out my ATM card to double check.

It turns out that I got the first 4 digit wrong. However the number I punched in still rings a bell somewhere, in a cloudy distant memory. Then i had an idea and thought to check my old ATM card, which I hadn’t used or even looked at since over a year ago after I left the states but still kept b/c it has a cute hello kitty design that I’m rather fond of.

And sure enough, the four digit I got wrong was the first four digit of my old ATM card. I wonder how that works? If you had asked me randomly what my old ATM card number was, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

I wonder… do we assign memories and label them as “to be forgotten” and store them somewhere? (don’t kill me if that’s scientifically incorrect). during that tiny split second when i tried to log in to my online banking, my brain must have had a slight error and accessed a part of my brain where I store old memories…

How long would it be before our brain permanently discard the said memory?

My favorite internet celeb? That’s a tough one, but I can tell you I definitely always look forward to updates from (in no particular order) Michelle Phan aka Ricebunny, Justine Ezarik aka iJustine, and Wendy Chen aka Xiaxue.

Michelle Phan started out posting simple make up tutorials on xanga back in maybe 2007-ish. I (and the rest of the internet) first noticed her when her video post was featured in Xanga’s front page. ever since then i’ve been following her and watch her grow from an average art student to a young entrepreneur with her own beauty line. What makes Michelle one of my favorites is that her videos are always so elegantly done. Instead of speaking straight to the camera like most other make up gurus, she uses voice overs, background music that are carefully thought out, and simple video captions to get her point across. all these makes her videos a complete eye candy and keeps people coming back for more. I for one never actually tried out any of her tips (since I don’t really even use make up on daily.. no, weekly basis) but I watch her videos religiously.

I don’t remember when I first heard of iJustine, but I’m going to be honest and say that she didn’t quite catch my attention at first other than the fact that she’s hot and blonde. However, when I saw her at MTV VMA this year I decided to see what she has up her sleeves. turns out this girl is not just hot, but also multi-talented and down-right hilarious!! it’s easy to see why she has so many people subscribed to her youtube channel! she post up videos on weekly basis, which are usually humorous rants, song parodies and random lifecast… and get this, they’re all done 100% by her! starting from concept ideas, filming and all the way down to editing. watch her video making process here (hilarious video.. “which is fine, you can throw money at me all day but not now! i’m busy!”). she’s also not afraid to do crazy things like dance in an apple store and making a complete fool of herself. i love her!!

Xiaxue is undeniably the most famous blogger in Singapore, if not all of asia. I also don’t remember when I first started reading her blog, but I was still in the states at that time and I hadn’t even though about moving to Singapore at the time (so maybe back in 2007 ish). Xiaxue hasn’t had the best reputation due to her tendencies to blog on the most highly controversial topics. She is known to be quite blunt and isn’t afraid to voice her opinion at all, and that’s what sets her apart from other bloggers. I don’t always agree with her opinion and her ways, but I do find her hard to dismiss as she can be quite convincing and when she makes a point, it’s usually backed by a lot of research and proof. Most definitely i’m talking about her blackberry entries, which really did prompt me to get a blackberry myself, despite always wanting an iPhone.

So that’s three of my favorite internet celebs. Another one I’ve started following recently is Jen (From Head to Toe) since I recently developed obsession with nail polishes and she has a whole bunch reviews on them. I also enjoy her tutorials and clothing tips, plus she’s just so cute as a button! :D