Day 1

After 21 hours in the air, I finally made it to Singapore. I even managed to sneak in a pack of Big Red. I reached my swanky ass hotel around 2am on Thursday (which is around lunch time in Chicago.) The first thing I did was text my family that I had arrived safely and got on IM and chatted with all my buddies for a couple hours. Honestly, if it weren’t for technology and Steve Jobs, I wouldn’t of moved here.

I slept until the sun came up because my mother wouldn’t approve of me wandering around in the dark in a foreign country. Then I sat off on my first adventure – currency exchange. The sweet receptionist in the hotel lobby directed me down the street and told me to look for a place next to the Baskin Robbins. Yes, that’s right Baskin Robbins. How exotic. I found the place easily, just used my superior senses to sniff out frozen fatty treats. (or the map feature on my iphone.) I handed them 80 bucks and got back 92 and some change. Not shabby.

Then, with Singaporean dollars in hand, I headed for the bus stop to catch a ride downtown to find the BBDO office. This experience made me very anxious. It took me 5 years in Chicago before I was brave enough to ride the bus. 2 years before I road  the train. Public transportation intimidated me. I also had the luxury of owning a car and living within 2 blocks of an older brother who dropped me off at work every day. I don’t have either here, unfortunately. Anyway, a nice older lady helped me figure out how to pay cash & get on the bus, Steve Jobs helped me know when to get off.

After exiting the second bravest bus ride I’ve ever taken (the first being the pink party bus in Newton) i followed the blue dot on my phone to my new office. Actually, I relied a bit too much on the blue dot, and not my common sense and it ended up taking me much longer than it should of. But I found it. Here’s the view, from both sides.

Then I found Fort Canning Park (suspiciously very close to the word caning, right?) and wandered aimlessly around looking for monkeys.

I didn’t find any monkeys, which was surprising because if you were a monkey wouldn’t you want to live in this tree?

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Or this tree. It’s called a heritage tree. Notice the orange bulb thingies…

I never gave up looking for primates, I’m guessing they were all behind this fence. But, I was too scared to look. 

I was delighted by the other things I found. This building here is called a Keramat which means “Sacred Place” in Malay. It’s a traditional burial ground for a revered leader. No one knows who is actually buried here, but there were lots of shoeless people inside paying their respects. Pretty cool.

And this is The Fort Gate, the only thing remaining from the fortress the occupied the park from 1861 to 1926. I wish I were a better photographer.

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After the park I found a grocery store and spent a lot of money on shampoo and toothpaste. Then I wandered aimlessly around the city, constantly looking at my phone to make sure I didn’t get lost. My head was down so much I’m probably lucky I didn’t fall in the ocean. I found a red line train and remembered that there was a stop closed to my hotel. So I ventured down into the tunnel, bought a train pass and hoped on. I got off on the Newton stop, which just seemed right and walked back to my place, had a swim, made dinner, drank wine and went to bed.

I dunno what I’ll do today. Apparently not sleeping in. I think I might head over to Little India during the day and take the train downtown tonight to check out the weekend scene. Another update to come. I promise to try and make it shorter.