Singapore snippets

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<a name="_GoBack"></a>Life is busy with cooking, friends, travels, books, movies (we have a cable at home) etc. So finally I have a life. Drinking a lot of water, reduced my salt and sugar content so much so the food seems tasteless without the accompanying chicken curry! My flatmate installed flat screen TV and set up the cable network in the house. My duty in the morning is to clear the bins and deposit in the big bin while on my way to office. It has been raining cats and dogs making the mornings lazy. Found a library close by. There are some wonderful beaches just 500ms from my house. It is a long stretch with barbecue pits, restaurants, picnic spots, cycling, skating, jogging, running and all sorts of facilities. So try to spend mornings there and less now because I am watching TV at home. There is a nice supermarket with a wide range of fresh fruits, sausages etc. I now sleep on a brand new queen size bed and so sleep really well after the broken mattress of my previous room. So life is getting better in Singapore. If you ask for more ( For eg more rice in a restaurant, the response could be in Singlish (Singaporean English)- “No more” instead of ‘finished’ or it would be “ No top -up la “. I imagine I am topping up my prepaid card and not really eating! Here people use ‘la’ like ‘ji” in north and ‘da’ in south India. We had our annual dinner at the PMI Singapore chapter. In main course, we were served raita and papad first. Followed 10 mins later by cauliflower peas, then half an hour later rice and then dal. Actually, the Chinese eat one after the other and forget that Indian have everything together. All of us at the table had a great laugh.

This country is strict about a lot of things including jay walking or crossing in the middle of the road. My friend and I caught a taxi in the middle of the road as we had to go to a party. The driver was surprised but understood the urgency. Government urges people to jog and exercise so that it can save on health costs but I must appreciate it also builds parks, jogging grounds, swimming pools, exercise areas so that people can do it freely. Here, if I ask if I can do something, people respond “Can” instead of “yes” colloquially. Dogs are considered unclean but people can keep cats. Chinese do not tend to disagree in public so that the other person can keep up his face. It means that often there are no decisions taken in public. People do not express happiness or sorrow perhaps because they follow the middle path of neither being happy or sad. The life expectancy is 81 years. There are a lot of old people and they use the public system freely. You have ushers in the MRT (Mass Rapid Transport)/Tube where they make sure we go into the trains and they direct us to the coaches which are empty.

Another beautiful place in Singapore is ECP (East Coast Park) which is a 11.4 km stretch near the sea made into a park with different recreational features. It is a mere few hundred meters from my house. Saturday, it is a spectacle to watch. While on one side, a group of elderlies are doing tai-chi, on the other hand a group of French girls play full blast music, walking up and down the road with not a care of the world! There are children making sand castles while their parents are surely making castles in the air. The young are cycling, roller skating or running on designated lanes with such sheer enthusiasm that I do start a sprint too out of shame and then return to walking when comfort supersedes. In Singapore, people twice my age jog passionately. Then there are dogs of different shapes and sizes. The dogs are more friendly than the people, appear to smile to me and perhaps they make up for their sober owners. I saw a dog wearing cloth shoes too. Some owners tie the lead around their waist and even better tie it to their bicycles. Road side stalls spring up selling ice creams on a hot day. You can rent cycles and family cycles too where 6 people can sit at one go. It is a spectacle to see colorful flags blowing with the wind. Since there are barbecue pits, families enjoy time together too. There is a place for lonely travelers also. I have seen solitary souls sitting on the embankments by the sea in deep meditation like modern Vivekananda. Some couples do yoga together. Some do exercises as if they are trying to catch something in the air from different angles most carefully. Some children splash in the waters. One evening, I took the newspaper to read by the sea, hoping that the news will improve because of the location. There are some fast food joints like Burger King by the side of the road. Way up, there are busy food courts famous for chilli crabs, prawns and different types of sea food too. Indeed, walking down the road is pleasant with all the aromas but the sweetest aroma is that of the sweet sea breeze blowing on your face from land unknown. Someone is calling me..

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