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Published: August 9th 2011
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Hey all!
The last week and a half or so have been pretty ram-packed, but every moment has been fantastic. I'm getting to learn more and more about Singapore every day and the more I do see, the more I love it!
One of the things I've become more familiar with is that there's just so much to see and do. Sure you've got your super modern shopping malls, awesome cinemas, a fantastic selection of restaurants and indoor activities, but there's a whole host of amazing stuff to do outdoors - some of which I've been exploring the last few days or so.
Last Sunday saw us hiking more or less to the other side of Singapore to the Singapore National Zoo and "luckily" it was overcast and raining! Sounds bizarre, but how glad I am it was. We got up early-ish on Sunday and took a bus to the MRT station and from there it was a good 45 minutes journey to the other side of the country from where we got another bus to the zoo itself.
It was pretty cool seeing all the animals they've got there - they've got a hell of a
Cheetah!
Cheetah rolling over! lot of monkeys and some pretty rare ones too. There was actually this massive indoor area where you could actually get close enough to touch one of the ring-tailed Lemurs (pictured).
I don't think I remember a zoo where you could actually get so close to the animals - even if it was between a piece of glass. That said, it was pretty awesome seeing one of the big cheetahs rolling over like one of our cats at home on the lounge carpet! I did feel as ever being in a zoo that the animals just don't belong there and some of them, like tigers which are supposed to roam hundreds of miles, were even adopted by various companies here: "Ellie the Elephant was adopted by HSBC", for example.
Anyway....moving swiftly on! I finally got around to getting my new phone which I am totally smitten with! It's probably one of the coolest gadgets I've ever owned, and I'm probably more proud than anything else to have bought it with hard-earned money! The phone is the HTC Sensation and it's one of the newest smartphones (touch-screen internet devices you can hold in the palm of your hand, for
Ships
Busy Singapore coastline. those non-technical minded people reading!) on the market right now.
You can pretty much do anything you can think of and it was pretty cool to be snapping pictures of some of the animals on Sunday and uploading them to Twitter minutes later! (By the way, for those of you who are interested my Twitter is: http://twitter.com/#!/drew7uk and I usually update with a variety of work-related stuff and also quite often upload pictures from my travels around Singapore while I'm on the go, so well worth following!)
Today is National Day in Singapore which basically celebrates the birth of Singapore as a country and its independence from Malaysia (I think?!), which above anything else means that I get a day off work! It's pretty nice having a day off on a Tuesday as it breaks the week up very nicely indeed!
So to enjoy the day off my flatmate and his girlfriend invited me to go to the East Coast with them and rent out some bikes to cycle along the sea-front. We paid $10 (£5) for two hours and there was plenty of flat cycle track to enjoy and it was really nice to be out
Beach
East Coast Park - busy busy! and about by the sea since I hadn't seen it in so long. It was incredibly busy with a lot of children around and loads of people having BBQs but the atmosphere was nice. One thing you definitely can't miss are the amount of tankers and ships out at sea...wow! Had wonton noodles and prawn dumpling soup for lunch followed by black glutinous rice and red bean pudding with coconut milk in it! All in all came to about £4!
Anyway, besides all the fun and excitement I'm having, work is going very well also and there's still a hell of a lot of work to get done during the day. I never thought I'd say this but 9-6 just isn't enough time in the day, haha! It is a very long day, but it's also very productive and I've felt I've really settled well into how things work and really starting to get into my stride. The most exciting thing is to be working as part of a global team and working alongside the marketing department in the US the one day and the Sales team in Korea the next. Amazing.
Anyway, that's probably enough for now but there'll be lots more updates coming soon as we bought the "Zoo Hopper" ticket which also included the Bird Park as well as the Night Safari which, at a stab in the dark, probably isn't even a whisper of what we were used to in South Africa but it will be fun nonetheless!
Enjoy and hope everything in the UK and elsewhere is well!
P.S. Risked a haircut from a local place today (paid £4, compared to the £12 in Witney!!) and it seems to be not too bad, considering there was an obvious breakdown in communication! Haha.
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