What's culture shock to you for those who live(d) in Singapore?

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 3:40 pm

During the several visits I have made to Singapore in which I have been in and out of the country I haven't got any complaints about the MRT. As much as I don't like crowds I don't find people anywhere near as rude, aggressive or as needlessly provocative as they are here in London.

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 3:44 pm

lost_canuck wrote:now for something totally different, WTF is it with like 1 electric outlet per room? Is this just my flat???? for fecks sake people, do singaporeans only own 1 light? and live on their own? I have spent a fortune on extension cords and we won't get into the nightmare of using a vacuum

Hazarding a guess the population spends more time outdoors than us and maybe doesn't have as many gadgets, on the other hand maybe things haven't been updated yet. Either way you are not alone despite having three sockets in my living room here in the UK I have ten way extention sockets plugged into both!

huggybear · Post by **huggybear** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 3:47 pm

lost_canuck wrote:WTF is it with like 1 electric outlet per room? Is this just my flat???? for fecks sake people, do singaporeans only own 1 light? and live on their own? I have spent a fortune on extension cords

i have three outlets in my BR. which is still not enough...

currently need outlets in my BR for: blackberry charger, Alarm clock radio, modem, wireless router, computer, sony PSP charger, lamp, external hard drive power cord, cell phone charger.

hm...so i have three outlets but need about ten. nice thinking!! dropped some cashish for two power strips.

Plavt · Post by **Plavt** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 3:57 pm

huggybear wrote: hm...so i have three outlets but need about ten. nice thinking!! dropped some cashish for two power strips.

Can you not get the ten way surge protectors that I have mentioned in my post above?

lost_canuck · Post by **lost_canuck** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 4:24 pm

huggybear wrote:
i have three outlets in my BR. which is still not enough...

currently need outlets in my BR for: blackberry charger, Alarm clock radio, modem, wireless router, computer, sony PSP charger, lamp, external hard drive power cord, cell phone charger.

hm...so i have three outlets but need about ten. nice thinking!! dropped some cashish for two power strips.

good lord I thought I was heavy on the electrical items, in my bedroom I have two outlets, opposite walls, so how the heck is the other person suppose to read at night? then again maybe they don't read?

But we did break down and buy a 10 way power surge protected giant freaking BRICK for the computer room, like you said, internet, computer, monitor, printer, extra disk, phone charger, speakers... good lord! cost 36 dinero (dollars) and that was a steal, they can be offered for like $60! :O hello? are you crazy?

but in my bedroom I cannae even plug my lamp and my radio in pffft, opposite wall has two outlets so they planned for a tv, useless!

anyway I think I am sort of over it for now.

ScoobyDoes · Post by **ScoobyDoes** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 5:36 pm

I got around that a little by buying speakers where they have a neat little socket that fits between the power supply on the PC and incoming power cable.

Then i bought a "Y" power cable that plugs into the PC and Monitor.

I have three outlets in my main room so phone charger goes there, although 99% of my charging is done via USB on the PC

huggybear · Post by **huggybear** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:50 pm

Plavt wrote:Can you not get the ten way surge protectors that I have mentioned in my post above?

got two of them. ten way. think i'm going to need another two if i move my audio equipment here from the U S A.

think i paid 40 each @ sim lim square.

huggybear · Post by **huggybear** » Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:52 pm

couple more things back on topic...
no toilet seat covers...anywhere....

non existant normal q tips...not these thin plastic confabs.

a hot shower that lasts longer then five minutes would be nice....

chixchix · Post by **chixchix** » Thu, 08 Mar 2007 4:11 pm

Ohhh I have never seen that happen in Singapore .. he must be a pervert ahahaha

sourisso · Post by **sourisso** » Tue, 13 Mar 2007 4:27 pm

hello everyone...

spent time to read this topic, it's interesting....

Im french, my girlfriend is a chinese born in malaysia and living in Singapore.
So i went to Singapore for the first time last september, went again in february, just came back last week, and i'll go there again in june to see her... i have lot of positive impressions on that city/country, it's kinda easy, lots of cabs, public transport, u can eat a lot for a few dollars, diversity of people, and i don't know about you, but i feel kinda "free" there because i don't see much people like me and france seems really far. (yeah i know, it IS very far.)

yet i agree with lot of comments, sometimes some people here can look selfish, not polite etc. Yeah i know, Paris people might be worse on that point but well im not from Paris and i wouldn't live there.

Before coming here i knew a bit about asian culture, i saw a lot of japanese, korean, HK, etc movies so i wasnt surprised when i saw people eating noisily, or walking the lazy way without knowing the purpose of their knees (btw each time i see this im asking myself, is it really easier to walk to this way ?).

What was new, was things like snoring, weird sounds coming from throat, people not giving way, people walking and stopping suddenly, etc, well, nothing new for you..
I don't complain much, my gf is walking next to me and i respect where she's coming from of course. Yet sometimes she's able to see that im angry

.

We move a lot together, going to different places, orchard, china town, esplanade, then back to tanjong katong, then out again to east coast, then city hall, etc... at the end of the day, all those MRT sessions can make me kinda pissed off sometimes, well it's not only about not giving way, it's funny to see people getting in the MRT...
i don't know if it's really possible to get used to it, sometimes when someone kick me and rush to a seat, i will look at that person for a while, she (yeah it's often a chinese woman) will act like im not here... it couldn't be less polite... but i won't mind much. it's more funny than anything else.

but ! the annoying thing, for me, is standing in the MRT, walking in the streets, sitting in the bus, having food, with people staring at me like crazy.
Ok im white, ok my gf is not white, but damn this is really getting on my nerves sometimes.

A day, we walk out the flat, it was on tanjong katong road, walking to MRT station, maybe they don't see much white people around there, but it was like every single person i cross in the street staring at me, at us, for several seconds.. and as people walk slowly, it takes a few seconds to cross someone lol. It's ok, when im fine, energetic, im confident so i won't care, but when it happens on bad days, when im tired, i gonna turn paranoid and angry...

to stare at me is really something that makes me uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, most of people been friendly to me, and i love being in singapore, i forget those little annoying things quickly.
it's when im in the plane back to france, surrounded by french people, that i realise i will miss singapore :p.
Well of course, the one i love is living there, so it counts.

sourisso · Post by **sourisso** » Tue, 13 Mar 2007 4:48 pm

also... my gf is living in a flat with three girls, each girl has her room, and they share the living room (wich is not really alive) and the kitchen... most of the time we are out, but sometimes we cook at home, and eat in the living room...
the other girls will never come out of their rooms, sometimes they even open the door a bit, realise we are there, and close the door back, without saying anything, then the girl will wait for us to leave to come out...
and my gf never really speaks to those girls, they barely communicate wich each other, and when they do, it's with a SMS sent to my gf "hello can you please clean the fridge, lot of food inside" (my gf never eats at home, she barely have something in the fridge).
I find it kind of weird... there is 3 young girls, and they never talk to each other... i don't wait for them to be friends but at least, they could avoid to skip each other and communicate by SMS.

something completely different, i've noticed youngsters here are not very demanding on humour... we went for "Epic Movie" with my gf, and all the room were laughing out loud (they even clap their hands while they laugh) while i was forcing myself to just smile. (that made me asked myself about the culture of youngsters here.)
Hopefully my gf didn't laugh out loud clapping her hands. lol.
After that i deciced to "test" her, we watched Monthy Python's Holy Grail together. I was glad, she laughed a lot.

sleepcake · Post by **sleepcake** » Tue, 15 Jul 2008 6:15 pm

born in malaysia, grew up in singapore, fled to the states for 7 years, came back to singapore/malaysia in 2002. its 2008 and i still have culture shock everyday...

great place for the short-term but not for the long-term.....bloody crowded and people here walk around with blank expressions of being overworked...they're like the dementors from harry potter as if something or someone sucked the happiness from their lives....and sense of humour is er, well below zero....i've yet to still find a good connection here....

malaysia's much better...i moved to jb and currently live here and commute to singapore daily and it's tough i know but i'd rather recuperate and maintain my sanity here with all the 'life' that's around me than to have to live in a cooped up flat and suffer claustrophobia up in the sky...hardee-har-har-harrrr

sleepers-creepers-jeepers!

frenzal · Post by **frenzal** » Tue, 15 Jul 2008 8:23 pm

huggybear wrote:couple more things back on topic...
no toilet seat covers...anywhere....

non existant normal q tips...not these thin plastic confabs.

a hot shower that lasts longer then five minutes would be nice....

You'll find that toilet seat covers are pointless. There are less germs on a toilet seat than there are on your own face. Germs/bacteria can't survive on a toilet seat. Also the skin around our arses has practically no bacteria.

sleepcake · Post by **sleepcake** » Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:38 pm

oooh arse talk!

Blue Sapphire · Post by **Blue Sapphire** » Tue, 22 Jul 2008 2:15 am

Made a trip to Bangkok this year where we decided to try the train there (MRT sort) and it was terrible. The ticketing system and machines are not are great as spore's. People were like sardines, and by this I mean everyone's juices mixing with each other! It was so full there was no way you can prevent skin contact.

I never have any complains about the MRT here. Its nice and modern enough. Maybe people arent that courteous but there's worst sorts of people in the world. When I was pregnant alot of people offered me seats - ok maybe they were mostly indians and malays.

I'm expat of mixed race but not 'white' so I feel I get a taste of obvious discrimination. My complaint however goes to the local chinese - generally! Especially the aunties, they are rude and discriminating.

Also I notice here that they judge people here by the clothes you wear. I once stepped into a shop that sold dresses for about $1000 and the salesgirls were making bad comments about me. Saying that I must have gotten lost! I can afford such dresses but I didnt see any reason to dress up to go shopping when I live just across the road.

I also hate it when you ask how much is something and they tell you instead that 'its very expensive'. Its all just so insulting and makes me so mad!

And mind you that the way they treat you being an expat depends where you are from.

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What's culture shock to you for those who live(d) in Singapore?

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