Culture Shock - Arriving in singapore

[JR8]

'Observations' from your culture shock/observations post, and just numerous small jabs made at Americans or the US in other posts. You don't really need me to point it out do you?

If you want to go down this road, could you at least link your 'allegations'?

[katbh]

What happened to the original topic?

[ScoobyDoes]

- A motorcyclist wearing his rain jacket back-to-front (this is very SGn! )

That's all over Asia so their jacket doesn't blow up like a balloon when the wind rockets up the sleeves with nowhere to escape. At least turned around it rockets out the unzipped back. And let's face it, with the little engines on these scooters, a drag coefficient relating to a ballooned jacket will surely cut their speed by half.

Surprisingly, it took me a while to work that one out

I love the way, going up the N-S highway, how some of the guys on their bikes are so crouched over their petrol tanks they almost need a hole in the top of their helmet to see, yet still only manage 50kph.

[zzm9980]

'Observations' from your culture shock/observations post, and just numerous small jabs made at Americans or the US in other posts. You don't really need me to point it out do you?

If you want to go down this road, could you at least link your 'allegations'?

Didn't you get the memo? The horse is freak dead, quit beating on it. I'm not going to waste time doing searches to find old posts. But if you'd like to look yourself, there are a few comments in this very topic you made, implying Americans are loud and fat and obnoxious, for one.

[JR8]

- A motorcyclist wearing his rain jacket back-to-front (this is very SGn! )

That's all over Asia so their jacket doesn't blow up like a balloon when the wind rockets up the sleeves with nowhere to escape. At least turned around it rockets out the unzipped back. And let's face it, with the little engines on these scooters, a drag coefficient relating to a ballooned jacket will surely cut their speed by half.

Surprisingly, it took me a while to work that one out

I love the way, going up the N-S highway, how some of the guys on their bikes are so crouched over their petrol tanks they almost need a hole in the top of their helmet to see, yet still only manage 50kph.

I know why they do it the backward jacket thing. I'm totally fine with all of these things, they are merely clinical notes of trans-cultural 'differences'.

Like motorcyclists stopping in the slow lane or under bridges to get their rain-jacket out. These are just things I don't see in the west. They make me smile. It's like 'home again - welcome to Singapore'... idiosyncrasies. Same same with tray-aunties at the food court, the neighbourhood otak otak, or karun goonie man, and so on.


p.s. Last time I moved back home. I made similar such observations (beginning on the taxi ride into town from Heathrow). Not because as some suggest it's borne of unhappiness, it's not, I want to capture an impression, an adjustment...

[JR8]

An old man, 50 yards away, reclines on a balcony.

Three floors beneath him an identical man does identically.

On the floor beneath, two Pinay maids (FDWs) lean around a balcony wall to chat with each other.


- just a feeling of distance, and yet close-ness.

[Brah]

Robert Frost, move over....

[JR8]

If you live here for say a year+, do you start taking observations as personal attacks?*

- At which point when does this 'becoming the state' happen?


-- Can I say beer is expensive in Singapore, or will some randomer whose been here a week go for my jugular?


* I'm starting to think you do. You adopt the ways of your adopted home, and fight to 'protect it'.

[JR8]

An e-mail (shock, such technology) from my mother, saying she hopes we're 'surviving the smog'.

This is insightful (she must have got this from the BBC news or something as we've said nothing about weather/conditions and haven't chatted for weeks), but kinda scary that it's such common knowledge [For foreigners - whereas residents seem to actively deny it (The longer they've lived here, the more they deny it)]

Even an 85 year old British granny knows more than me...

[Brah]

If you live here for say a year+, do you start taking observations as personal attacks

-- Can I say beer is expensive in Singapore, or will some randomer whose been here a week go for my jugular

Dunno about any of that, but you might get some $h!t for wussing out last night......


...just sayin'


as they say

[x9200]

+1
Especially that the league of the landlords was badly underrepresented.

[sundaymorningstaple]

I wasn't gonna jump on the bandwagon, but this did come to mind.....

[Hannieroo]

You missed out.

The haze gas been all over the UK news and papers. Strange to have read it to know what's happening here. Better today though.

[JR8]

Apologies for 'flaking', I'm not the kind of person who likes saying I'm going to do something, and then not doing it.

My health/mobility varies day to day (rather like the smog), it can be hard to predict! This w/e has not been too great, and I haven't been out at all. I'm under-orders (Mrs JR8) that we both *have* to go out for dinner tonight, and I am NOT looking forward to the challenge one bit...

It'll be simpler when we're more settled in, and I look forward to finally meeting y'all then

[Sooner8]

You missed out.

The haze gas been all over the UK news and papers. Strange to have read it to know what's happening here. Better today though.

Been all over here stateside as well. Just heard about water bombing by planes to put down the fires after SG govt's response

The chief of Singapore's National Environment Agency, Andrew Tan, was heading to an emergency haze meeting convened in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, he said.

"We will insist on definitive action."