Gym stuff, health stuff, fast food stuff

So every time the gym hires a new trainer (which is about every two months) I get one of these babies done for free. It’s called a “Body Composition Analysis” and essentially you stand on two metal sensors and hold two other sensors in  your hands and it literally tells you everything about your body. I am still in awe at how that might work. Aside from the misaligned print this is an amazing machine.

But enough of that.
Essentially, I have lost 2% of my body fat. The rest however seems to have shifted to maintain a nice cushion for any lady who would want to lay her head on my stomach. So when the dude asked me “you have a six-pack right? If the body fat is single digit there is a high chance that you have abs” I could merely admit that it was starting to show. But whatever, it does look like the 85 bucks a month are worthwhile. What is even more important is the conclusion that my parents, teachers, and the media have lied to me. Continuously maintaining Carl’s Jr. as the main source of food intake obviously does not make one fat. Instead, the increase in Basal Metabolic Rate shows an even higher tolerance to the upsize the cute lady always manages to sell me.

Period.

Sleeping

Ever since I moved to a new place lately sleeping isn’t all that easy. I stay up way late until 3 or 4am, only to lie awake for another seeming eternity. Then I sleep a few hours only to start up again, resulting in me definitely not being in good shape in general.  Even though I am leading a quite active lifestyle – walking a lot, working, going to the gym, and I am sufficiently tired when I get home at night – I just can’t go to sleep, for whatever reason. Then eventually when the moment comes that I force myself to call it a night I turn off my laptop, I switch off the power supplies, the aircon and the light. Then I lie down – and then there is this odd moment of complete silence…

I can consider myself lucky; my room is completely dark at night and the only sound I can hear – if I listen very closely – is the traffic from the expressway a few blocks away and across the river. It’s a really nice place to sleep actually.

Maybe it’s the coping with the new environment. After all my last room for nine months was always flooded with light from the adjacent car park and the fan was so loud my friends couldn’t even hear me on Skype; the house I lived in for five years before that was built directly next to the town’s main street. If it was just that though I would only have a problem with falling asleep. But actually, something seems to be keeping me up and away from even trying to sleep this long.
So maybe it is a little more than that – this moment of complete emptiness, of literally nothing, is something I dread. As long as there is light, the laptop, a book, there is always something to do, something to live for, people to interact with. As soon as everything is off there is just nothing – just you, alone with checking the balance  of the day – what came out of all these hours in the end? Anything useful? Anything to be proud of? Anything you will be remembered for?
It is in these moments of complete silence that you become truly aware of who you are, and I guess lately I am not quite the person future me will be proud of, or past me (that is, even a few weeks back) strove to be.

So I guess the way to better sleeping will be to refuel my energy with Coke and then getting my ass out there to do something meaningful and accomplish something, even though my current environment is doing its best to clip my wings in that matter. Just have to alter the environment then. That shall be my first task.

Abusing hospitality vs. restricting free speech – Singapore and it’s foreigners in 2012

With regard to that poor Chinese fella (second in a few months) who gets in trouble for speaking his mind, blowing off steam on his weibo – which honestly got me so scared I might delete my twitter account – let me just say the following:

I love Singapore. I love Singaporeans, too. Yes, they get obnoxious and they drive you nuts often. But I guess that impression is more owed to the fact that this little island is terribly overcrowded. (the government’s fault, not the people’s) If you meet Singaporeans, they are always very nice and friendly people. Highly educated, open-minded, with a western mindset. The obnoxiousness is just a phenomenon that occurs if you look at the masses from the distance, and one that occurs whenever too many people of whatever nationality are in too little space. This city is far more welcoming than many others, and, yes, even though I get furious when people ignore the “give way to alighting passengers before boarding” and literally shove me back into the train, I enjoy living among them. It could be far worse; there are cities in this world where a white man can’t even take a train without having to fear being robbed and murdered. Aunties and Uncles here are much more friendly towards young people than anywhere in Europe, where they don’t hide their feeling that they would rather see every young person dead. Singapore is very peaceful, and the people are generally open to foreigners – after all they need us to survive. Recently though, there is an open hostility towards Chinese nationals. So no wonder that the Chinese do not regard the Singaporeans very highly, right? If you want to be respected, show respect yourself. And don’t say “if they don’t like us they shouldn’t have come here.” They came here because they were told Singapore was very welcoming and friendly, with limitless opportunities for everyone; but the country doesn’t live up to its promises. The recent case seems to me like a classic overreaction by a kiasu bunch.
As an Ang Mo, I am widely exempted from this hidden xenophobia, but even I get a look every once in a while that says “get off my island!” It doesn’t feel good when you come to a country, inject a lot of foreign exchange into its economy (especially as a student in a private school) and are treated this way.

As for me, in terms of ‘offensive remarks,’ I like to blow off steam. Living and working in a big city is very stressful and tiresome, especially if it is as overcrowded as SG. Drivers almost run you over on a daily basis (but not half as much as in Bangkok or Beijing); the MRT is overcrowded, if it runs at all; every public space has lots of people and noise. A trip to the mall and back can get me very angry due to people just blocking the way for no reason (frankly, a typically Singaporean problem although also very common in Germany) or bumping into me because they are preoccupied with their smartphones rather than watching where they walk.
Life here is good. It could be much more crowded and even in the biggest crowd you can rest assured nobody will pickpocket you. This is a major strong point of this city, among hundreds of other strong points that made me choose Singapore as my place to live.

Yet, when I/we foreigners get enraged, the people should regard it as just blowing off steam, at best as criticism, and process it constructively. There is always room for improvement, and the government and people should welcome a foreigner’s perspective on how the city is perceived. After all, we see it with tourist’s eyes. And tourists are what this city wants to have more than anything in the world. Instead of bashing on everybody who opens his mouth about anything, locals and foreigners alike should reflect on their behavior:
Singaporeans, if you don’t want us to talk bad about you then find out what you can do to avoid upsetting foreigners. Two ideas are (1) creating a more welcoming atmosphere, especially to PRC nationals and (2) stick to the rules you yourself made, such as standing on the left of the escalator or letting passengers alight the MRT first before pushing in.
For us foreigners it would be (1) just accept that Singaporeans are kiasu and easily offended, so we must be careful of how we voice our criticism and concern, so that they will engage in dialogue with us instead of getting angry all over the media, and (2) always behave in a way so that they will want to welcome us. Stick to their rules, no matter if they do it or not. I always follow the arrows at the MRT doors and I always stand on the left of the escalator only. If we all did that, maybe this whole lingering feud would not exist. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to talk about ‘us’ and ‘them,’ which by the way feels repelling to me. We all live in the same city, we occupy the same space, we take the same buses, we eat at the same places and we depend on each other.

Singapore is a city where foreigners and locals blend very well, but I see how this harmony is in danger of becoming corrupted and destroyed – especially when a Chinese fella gets in big trouble for saying something that is wrong but really not that big a deal, while locals have whole websites like Stomp and Temasek Review used for nothing else but badmouthing foreigners without any punishment whatsoever. When you see the regulations for student pass and work permit holders, for anyone below a PR, then you already see that Singapore is actually a place of two classes of people: protectionist locals, and foreigners who are welcome to bring foreign exchange and cheap labor but are otherwise merely tolerated on the premises. I have a hunch that this crack between the people might carry on to split the whole nation. With the number of foreigners ranking somewhere in the millions, this split in society could get the country into extreme unrest and trouble.

So let’s all work together so that we can all live together. And stop messing up the sandbox with your fighting over a shovel!

Carl’s Jr. – my secret lover

When I grabbed my dinner at my local watering hole tonight the two counter dudes were smiling wide as they keyed in my order not asking me what I wanted but merely whether they had guessed right. They did, as I had my usual. They shared a look, one of them said “I knew it”, and the other said something to me that left me smirking:

“We all know you here; you are famous sir!”

A few months ago the cute Filipina girl had used “you always get the Super Star, it’s good right?” as an ice breaker to flirt with her regular customer.

When I moved to Serangoon almost seven months ago I moved to a place only 2.5km away from a Carl’s Jr. I had had their food maybe once or twice before, on my visits to California. I remembered it was good, and the two burger chains we have in Germany – McDonald’s and Burger King – were no match for it. But then again McDonald’s is much better in the states, and in general I didn’t have any special feelings for CJ. While settling in in Singapore I frequented places that sold chicken rice or mixed veggie rice at first. I was determined to adjust to the lifestyle of the foreign country I lived in.
Now, people tend to be drawn to food they are familiar with. And that is why after a while I did not get rice and noodles every day, no, instead I started a strange ritual: walking 2.5km every day just to have some “real” food, with carbs and meat and TASTE. I started eating that stuff every day. Burger every day! Things like our parents and Supersize Me have warned all of us from doing that. But what could I do, I was hungry, craving western food and Carl’s Jr. is just way too damn good! Nevertheless, I kept losing weight constantly which continued to astonish me.

For a brief period in November last year I remembered that burgers are bad for your health – or at least are supposed to be bad for your health – and stopped eating Carl’s Jr. every day. A week later I looked at myself in the mirror and realized I had gained weight. I, more as a joke, blamed my weight gain on not having my CJ anymore, and started going again. Sure enough, my body fat decreased. At another occasion I reminisced about trans fats, fats in general, glutamine, artificial flavors etc. in another attempt to get me off my addiction. The result of my considerations however was that Hawker Center food is probably much worse for your health – hawkers are no experts in sanitation (just look at one and you see what I mean), nobody knows who their suppliers for ingredients are, how they store their ingredients and how often they wash their hands. The international food franchise outlet has the A label for sanitation and world-class know-how. So health is not really an argument to go to a dirty, cockroach-infested

Super Star, photo by Carl's Jr.

hawker center instead of Carl’s Jr.
And talk about a balanced diet, yes I have even considered that, you still can’t win the argument. At the hawker center I sometimes go to, I always get the chicken cutlet that comes with fries and ketchup – not very healthy either. At least a good burger has nice fresh bread, salad, tomatoes, cheese and onions on it. Just get Iced Lemon Tea instead of Coke at the drink fountain and who is eating unhealthy? Of course Carl’s Jr. has a burger for when you feel you need something worthy of a real man as well – Bread, bacon, beef, cheese, BBQ sauce. Called  the Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger – the name alone makes me melt. Suck on that, McDonald’s with your line of salads.

Then there is price – towards the end of last month I ran out of money big time. I could simply not buy anything from Carl’s Jr. anymore. Sometimes I treated myself to McDonald’s or Wendy’s. Both sell combos at about 8 dollars, while Carl’s Jr is around 12. But, when you are used to CJ and then open the box of your “Big”-Mac, you know who gives you value for money. The Big Mac, the by name largest thing McDonald’s sells, is just ridiculously small compared to ANY burger at Carl’s Jr. On top of that it tastes like a stack of cardboard with a little, but careful not too much, sauce. And Wendy’s, let’s not talk about that. It is nice around two times in your life, but it quickly wears off and just tastes cheap. So I am back, back to my routine at my local place, and nothing can drag me away from there. And hell yeah I like it.

Singapore, sometimes you can drive a strong man NUTS!

Today I really got the full load of Singapore. How unfortunate…

After last week’s three MRT breakdowns, SMRT Corporation has still not been able to return to normal service. So when I had to go to my school today, I decided to take the bus instead of the North-South Line. However, going on from there I took the train from Toa Payoh to Bugis. Side note: it was far off from any peak hours. During peak hours, trains don’t operate at all lately.
I waited more than five minutes for my train, which was unbearably packed and moved ridiculously slow (this is because the operator still hasn’t found the reason for the breakdown so they are carrying on with care) taking more than three minutes for the <1km journey from Orchard to Somerset. I transferred at City Hall interchange, where I had to wait another six minutes for my Green Line train to arrive, which was equally slow and packed already and now became a squeezing nightmare because in the meantime another red line train had spat out lots of people who wanted to transfer. I got in last, and got off at the next station, Bugis, where the doors open on the opposite site as where I had gotten in – Jackpot! So I had to squeeze past all the usual retards who cling to the pole in the middle of the doorway like Mufasa clung to that tree, and who look at you like nothing pisses them off as much as you getting off while they refuse to ‘move to the center of the train’.

Getting out of that horrible train was only  part one for my destination was Bugis Street – which is actually not a good place to be if you are pissed off by crowds. I squeezed along through the fare gates with what felt like half the population of Singapore, squeezed past the Downtown Line construction site (which I can remember being there unchanged since 2008, by the way) and across the always-crowded traffic light crossing to get to Bugis Street. In there, the light suddenly went out and someone grabbed my ass (Mi Scusi!) before shortly later I queued for food and a whole bunch of – I won’t say the nationality, Ch..se – people cut the line in front of me.

Eventually having bought my food and met up with my friend I took a short stroll through Bugis Junction where my 7-Eleven umbrella broke literally to pieces only 24 hours after I had bought it before I headed back home. Naturally, I didn’t want to take an SMRT train anymore, which from Bugis to Serangoon is unavoidable. So I went to the bus stop which was crowded like shit as well and the last thing I could bear with now was crowded bus stops or crowded buses. So I opted to walk over to Little India station in the rain (refer to ‘broken umbrella’ above.) Except for the walk home from Serangoon station being even more rainy, nothing bad happened from there on. Luckily…

I am a very patient man who to enrage is extremely difficult and who can control his anger to a wide extent. But today this city drove me so nuts I was short of just punching someone in the face.

Why I can’t leave Singapore, or: finish what you started

It has been a while since my last I-love-Singapore post. A lot has changed since then, and the place that was so full of adventures to be experienced lost its touristy shine and has acquired the dullness of home.

Not that I think this is worse than my old home – no way – but it has become a home, and a home is never as good as a travel destination. When you see a city with a tourist’s eyes everything is exciting, new, foreign, virgin. But after a while the landmarks and sites become the turf you tread on safely. You start avoiding the ‘touristy’ places because you happen to know some side road that leads you around the crowd. The giant towers that are the home to banks and trading corporations, standing tall against the tropical sky and shining bright in the darkness, they have become a familar background. What is the world’s largest ferris wheel but a big blue circle in the background while you roam the streets at night on very un-touristy missions? What is Marina Bay Sands but three very familar sisters the sight of which does not excite but reassure you – yes, I am still home, I am still me, I am still alive. What does Orchard Road mean to you other than a place that has some nice restaurants and movie theaters, a place you can go to hang out every once in a while while thousands of others gaze in wonder on the luxury this place is full of. But it’s more than just being familiar with the things others travel so far to see. It is the way every corner suddenly holds significance, how you can’t go anywhere without thinking of some long-forgotten incident when you happened to come by here before. When I come to Clarke Quay these days I think of how I spent my first club  night with my school friends here, and how our bags were locked in a locker the key to which somebody had taken home. I go here, I go there, all these places I knew after having been to Singapore a few times but which were just places, just corners. Now they are silent witnesses of times gone by, of the people you went with. This is where I waited for my date this one night, that is where we studied for our exams back then, and there I threw up after getting roaring drunk one night. Here we went on a study trip, there we ate and let me tell you about the food they serve there…Stories. It is what makes a place your home. It is like the whole place gets loaded with stories, with memories, and thus with significance. After a while you can’t turn a stone without finding some memory. This is what made me leave my little hometown after 21 years there, coming to Singapore. But then I didn’t think about how Singapore itself might become loaded with significance.

After almost five months I have experienced a lot. Barely one of the common places I can go without thinking of somebody, of one moment out of those five exciting months, of the feelings it gave me. Here I sat with Wylie, outside Dhoby Ghaut station, waiting for our friend to arrive because we were going to study together. The sight of her coming up the escalator, a beautiful angel in a white shirt ascending out of nowhere smiling radiantly when she saw us, is a vivid memory that comes back every time I myself pass by. Just across the street, months later, three of us sat in the pouring rain waiting for our friend to finish his doctor’s appointment. Right next to it is the staircase I just recently walked up with a good buddy talking about the significant things in life. Shortly before I had walked the same staircase while showing a German friend around the city, and later with my two oldest local friends on the way to a concert together. That is only Dhoby Ghaut. There is Toa Payoh, there is Novena, there is Raffles Place. Marina Mandarin Hotel will always be the place I returned to to pick up the student pass my friend had lost there during a party night. And of course Clarke Quay and Geylang are full of – fragmented – memories of good times and bad times. Ever showed you the spot where the Lamborghini was parked that I considered to be my little yellow car? I can show you, it’s right here…

So yes, Singapore has become my home. I hadn’t considered that possibility. I actually came here thinking that I could just do six months, an experience similar to the year in Australia every German who is too lazy to sign up for university already does. But this is more than a ‘work and travel’ program or gap year. I study here. I immersed. Sure, every experience abroad is fun and exciting, every time you travel brings you home with more experiences than you can ever share in your lifetime. But if you study abroad something else happens: you become a part of it. Your classmates become your friends, they become your wingmen, they become your lovers, some become your enemies. You are a part of something, something that would not be the same without you and of which you can not just drop out like that. Because this is home. And leaving home ain’t ever easy.
Yes, I thought I could just wing some six months in a tropical island paradise, maybe get some girls on the side – nothing too serious – and then leave with some nice stories to tell and some new facebook contacts but without much regret. I thought it would be a vacation. But what I found is much more than that. It is a home, and it is an existence, a life. What I found was not acquaintances and facebook contacts – what I found was real friends and bros. What I found was not ‘some girls on the side’ and conquests to boast about – what I found was what looks like it has potential to turn into something way serious.

Thus, thinking about leaving in little more than one month time places a deep sorrow, sadness and pain in my heart. It all turned into more than I ever expected or wanted it to be. I underestimated everything, and most importantly: I have never been more happy than here, now, with those people. We all started university year one (which only lasts six months here) together, we have walked a big chunk of the way together. They will all continue to the degree. And if I leave, less than one third of the way through, it will feel like dropping out too early. It will feel like not having completed the mission, even though the mission was only to do year one and get the Diploma. And it will feel like leaving my friends behind, dropping out of a functioning group. What would the class be like without me? Will Wylie be able to manage the work group all by himself? Who will he go to that German pub with once a week? How about all of them, how would their lives be different without me, would they even miss me? Probably they would, but they would carry on, I would read on facebook about all the things they did in all the places I am familiar with and I would sit some ten thousand kilometers away with that nostalgic sorrow in my heart.
You know what? I experienced the very same thing just one year ago, when I had to quit my Air Force service way early, leaving my comrades behind at the base. It didn’t feel good. To this day I hate having had to leave, I still hate missing out on completing the mission. We had started that together, and we were supposed to finish it together. I couldn’t finish it with them and it will make me feel bad for the rest of my life. That was missing out on four of six months – now we are talking about missing out on two out of two and a half years! One day they will all graduate, step up there to receive their Bachelor’s certificates, proud and happy. And I would not be there, and if I was then only as a spectator. Just like last year, when I drove all the way to Berlin to stand at the side watching my comrades pledge to protect the country. At that time I was a dropout, not part of it anymore. My comrades were happy to see me but we could not finish the mission together. Knowing me, I would probably fly down to Singapore to attend my classmates’ graduation in two years time, but only as a spectator. Watch the team finish the mission we had set out to finish together. I do not want to have this feeling.

And don’t talk about the personal side of it. Friendships, still young but strong, left behind. People you had so many laughs with you will probably never see again in your life. And then that serious thing – it is just a notion but it feels like it’s bigger than words, for sure bigger than a fling. Leave that, before it has even really started? How? Tell me how could I ever do that!

Yes, Singapore has become my home, and it will never be the same. When I visited three times between 2008 and 2010, even when I first moved here in June, it was pretty much the same. But after five months here, it will never, ever be the same. If I leave and only come back in twenty years time all the places will still remind me. I will walk the old streets and wonder what has become of ‘my’ Singapore (because they keep changing stuff). I will go to our old hangouts and remember, remember the ‘good old times’. The time we took a cab from Clarke Quay to Balestier and back to get the key for the locker our bags were in. Time time I wondered what my yellow car was doing in Singapore and why it was so flat all of a sudden. The time my friend ascended like an angel out of nowhere. The time my new years resolution of not puking from alcohol  was broken in the wee morning hours of August 28, 2011, in a coffee shop washroom in Geylang. The many times Wylie and I went for Erdinger in Holland Village. Then time when this, the time when that…
I hated home. My old home. Because there were too many stories. My life was not always awesome – and it still isn’t, btw, even though it improved a lot since my father threatened to kill me and my first love left me at the same time – and there was just way too much. Too many stories on every corner, and it is a much smaller town than Singapore. So i had to get out of there, after 21 years. Plus, it was a crossroads in life where my high school friends and I went different ways anyway. The old life had been over, and so it was easy to come to Singapore. But my purpose in Singapore is not served. I need more time, I need to stay, I need to finish what I started. Given, what I started was much smaller than what I need to finish now, but that is no concern for me. I love it. I love my life. I love having Singapore as my home.

Our year one, and therefore my initial mission, will be finished soon. I have applied for bursary because if I stay, I can not pay the school fees. All my savings went into paying the school fees for the six months tropical island adventure. Now it has turned into a whole new life. But I can not finance it. Still no answer about the bursary, but I need one soon. My deadline for deciding to leave if there was no answer by then was originally in early November. Then it was late November. Now it is Christmas. I keep postponing the deadline because I dread, I absolutely dread the idea of having to leave. But soon, very soon, I will be facing the student contract for year two. If I don’t face a scholarship or bursary at the same time I will have to do the hardest thing I had to do since putting my old dog to rest – get up and leave without a signature. And I will leave more than just a school. I will leave friends, very good friends. I will leave love, or what is supposed to turn into love. I will leave the body I am a part of and which will continue living without me, with a scar left but clearly without me. And I will be facing a new beginning yet again. Returning to Europe does not mean returning to my old life. My old life has been gone since my old friends scattered all over Germany to universities, starting new lives just like I did in Singapore. I will have to start over again, most likely the way I planned, by attending a pilot school in Austria. I can’t wait to start flying already, which I have known is my purpose in life for so many years. But now I feel it has time. Time until I finish my purpose in Singapore.

And I hope to god I will be able to finish it.

I think I am getting the hang of it

According to my wingman – who is always right when it comes to Chinese girls – I am over the hump and the worst part is over. That would be just lovely because the past months have been quite exhausting.

What initially happened is that due to a chain of events I managed to score lots of sympathy points with this one special girl.  Of course this has nothing to do with me getting the hang of the original problem, but that happened at the same time.

For months, my wingman kept telling me to play it slow, be patient. “Talk to her a little every day,” he kept saying, “until she is comfortable enough to go out with you.” My western mind didn’t really understand what that meant or how this could possibly lead to positive results though. After all, a few times in the past I played it slow with a girl until someone else snapped her away in front of my eyes. Ever since then I have been trying to forge the iron while it’s hot. But in Asia, many things work differently. In Asia, nobody does one-night stands (at least nobody I have ever met…) which lets me conclude that relationships are taken much more seriously. Only natural that a girl will not make it easy for you then. You have to earn her, even if you are the handsome white guy. You have to earn her, and it’s not easy.
So, while trying to forge the iron while it was hot I kind of burned myself two weeks ago, leading to a cooling in my relations with that particular girl. Apparently my insisting on the date she had practically said yes to threw her off a little, and threw me back a few weeks. I already deemed it the newest addition to my Failbook when last weekend those random events came in motion which brought the game back to my home turf – truly caring for a girl, being helpful, trustworthy and nice. I took her home that night, I took her out the next day, I took her out once again, all because of that little thing I managed to react to accordingly, of course not without big help from my wingman. Bingo.

However, I am still far from truly understanding what goes on inside a Chinese brain, but at least I have been gaining knowledge, experience and a feel for how to handle it. It is going well. And all of a sudden Chinese girls do not seem to be a pain in the ass anymore but rather a big challenge.

What do they do? Well, most of the time they say no. Or maybe, which also means no. Reasons for that may be shyness and misunderstanding. I learned that Asian guys only ask a girl out on a date if they are really serious with her – we Westerners ask a girl out casually because we want to get to know her. Trying to find a middle ground between those two completely different approaches is not easy.
Even if they like you, they will not take the slightest step towards you. You have to observe them closely and find out how they feel about you, and then carefully (not, like me at first, with a Blitzkrieg mentality) feel your way towards her heart. She will not talk, that is a lesson my wingman keeps repeating; she will not talk, but she is waiting for you to talk to her. Not really being a man of the spoken word, this alone is a challenging task for me. With basically non-existent Mandarin skills on my side and little confidence in her own English skills on her side, communication is not necessarily so easy either. That is why the Chinese prefer sticking with other Chinese, inside a little Chinese parallel universe where they don’t have to face any cultural challenges like we other foreigners do. They have a piece of China away from home in which they comfortably live. Speaking to someone in English means leaving that comfort zone, and thus for me it is rather difficult to get them to be comfortable with me. Recently someone even told me that many Chinese were scared to talk to foreigners, and for sure I have noticed they are shy. That includes the guys, too. A while ago I ran into a male classmate on the way to school and we walked alongside each other for the rest of the way. It took him quite a while to find the guts to ask a simple question and start a conversation with me, while at the same time I could see he would not have been comfortable if I had started to talk. With girls it’s even worse. I have yet to develop a golden way to overcome all these problems. But my wingman’s suggestions are definitely part of it: keep it slow, make them comfortable around you, take the right opportunity to score beyond friendship.
We’ll see how it goes.

Little project to gain perspective

I grew up in a very rural area, and now I live in an extremely urban one. Sometimes it is difficult to get the right perspective, and so I did a simple little project – I cropped the shape of Singapore from the map at Ecosia.org and pasted it onto the map of my homelands – in the same scale, of course. This is the result which honestly surprises me myself, but which maybe helps my friends from either of the two worlds gain some insight.

The village with the name underlined in blue is my former town of residence, where I lived all my life. According to Wikipedia it now has a population of 4,908. The town underlined in red is where I was born (because it has the closest hospital) and where I went to high school for nine years, population: 28,217. If by some freak space-wormhole accident these two places overlapped I would have gone to school in Sembawang and lived near Vivo City, with my family on my dad’s side living near Queenstown (village name not in map) and on my mom’s side in Jurong (indicated by green underlining.)
Not that this map almost exclusively shows one county, my county of Rendsburg-Eckernförde is actually three times the size of the nation of Singapore.

My commute to school (and to my friends, the cinema or any leisure activity) for nine years spanned between these points. In Singapore, this would mean taking the bus from Vivo City to Sembawang every day. My commute to school in Singapore is indicated by the red line, which in this map would span between two neighboring forests, bypassing only two villages. The funny thing is: getting to school in Singapore takes me as long as it used to in Germany.
On a side note, a few times I cycled to school back then and during the summer I would cycle a quick round equalling a Vivo City-Bugis-Orchard turn every other day for fun.

My orthodontist would have been around Bedok Reservoir, the nearest bus interchange (if you want to call it like that) along the banks of MacRitchie Reservoir, the nearest party locations (both do not deserve the name club) would be in Bukit Timah and Sembawang. Sembawang would generally be the place to go to for specialist doctors and the hospital, the movie theater, nice restaurants, the closest McDonald’s or higher secondary education.

Buses would generally only operate along the line between VivoCity and Sembawang, with diversions from the trunk via Toa Payoh and Little India, and with branches from MacRitchie via Bukit Timah to Jurong and via Queenstown to West Coast Park. Other than that, there would only be a handful of scarcely operated bus services throughout the island.
Rail transportation would be virtually nonexistent. My hometown does have a railway station, but the train would run out all the way into the sea before connecting to the trunk line running through Bedok towards Sembawang.
The only expressways available would be in Tuas and in Tampines/Changi.
The next airport, Hamburg, would be located on the Indonesian island of Batam.

The only similarity: the northwest of the island being deserted wasteland nobody ever goes to.

I hope my urban and especially my Singaporean friends will find this quite interesting and understand why I don’t mind walking the 1.5km to Nex to catch a train, and why I am the only one around who does not consider Serangoon being far from school.
I hope my friends and family back home gained some insight into the dimensions of Singapore, and how densely packed the six million people and x-million opportunities for adventure are packed here.
Actually, the area covered in this map holds less restaurants and venues than the greater Serangoon area, or any quarter of Singapore.

Mini ice age

This morning I was actually freezing a little, a sensation I had almost forgotten if it wasn’t for the crazy A/C habits some store and building owners in Singapore have.

I don’t have A/C at home, and so I always sleep with my window wide open hoping for at least some entropy to go away when the temperature drops a little over night. But last night it was raining. Every once in a while it rains so hard that the sound wakes me up, and the raindrops bounce back from the ground and into my window (which itself is under a little roof.) I moved the slide elements of the window a little to block out the raindrops and continued to sleep to the somewhat soothing sound of heavy rain outside. However, this morning when I stepped out of the shower I was shivering quite a lot.

My digital alarm clock has a thermometer built in, thanks to which I can state precisely and correctly that the temperature in my room never exceeds 29.6°C and never drops below 28.5°C. Of course the unexpected and uncommon sensation of shivering after a shower made me look at my clock immediately, which revealed that the temperature was down to 27.2°C!

What does this mean though? First of all, it means that rain can have a big cooling effect on the air around, which is nothing new. What is further to be taken home from this event is that stepping out of the shower and not shivering is a privilege that should never be taken for granted. But most importantly, the events of this morning reveal that I am turning into a little sissy. I am 99% sure that back at my house in Germany there was never one incident of me coming out of the shower and stepping into air that was warmer than 27.2°C, in fact the days when the temperature exceeds this are rare in the year. Furthermore, back there I always opened the window when showering to let the steam get out (and make the air colder), even in winter when outside temperatures are below zero. I never complained, in fact I never noticed a difference. And now I shiver at 27 degrees. Makes me wonder…

Gatsby Moment – freedom of the neighborhood

“Do you know where Arab Street is?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

- freely adapted from Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”

The original quote can be found very early in the first chapter of the book, in which Nick talks about the time when he was new to West Egg. He was a lonely stranger, new to town. But once he gets asked for the way by a stranger, he is accepted as a local. Last week I was waiting for my friends inside Bugis MRT when a young British lad walked up to me asking the above mentioned question. I told him and I felt the same way as Nick – no longer am I the one who gets asked how many days he is staying in Singapore, but obviously I have blended so well into the local fauna that strangers – the true tourists – ask me for guidance.

I feel at home.