Differences

So there has been minimal talk of food - we've been exploring, but due to the morning sickness, my choices have remained fairly bland and safe - my current fave is sliced fish bee hoon soup - basically a broth with noodles, sliced fish, and a bit of vegies - yummy, but not overly exciting.  There are a lot of differences in food here - even 'western' food tastes quite different - and a million other things that are different from back in Australia of course- so here is the start of a loooooong list of things that immediately struck me as 'different'.

FOOD

Bread - If you buy a standard sandwich loaf bread here, it is sweet.  Not sweet enough to be classed out of savoury, but sweet enough to make it taste disgusting with vegemite (or in my opinion, with anything).  The kids of course love it.  I'm left buying the $6 fancy loaf : (

Kaya - Coconut jam - have it on (expensive $6 a loaf) toast - yumola.  Will be searching this out in the Asian food stores when we go back to Australia.

Rice crackers - Seem kinda Asian right? They all have Asian names, Asian flavours like Wasabi and Teriyaki Chicken? Can't buy them over here unless you buy the ones made in Australia at the super-expensive-mart (Cold Storage).

Weetbix - Here they claim to be NEW ZEALAND'S favourite breakfast cereal on the pack.  Now I know you aren't buying Australian unless you buy Dick Smith branded products or something, but C'MON... you can't get a more Aussie breakfast than Weetbix, SURELY??

TRANSPORT

Public transport for kids - This seems fairly unfair (as a breeder of rather tall children) - kids are free when they are under 90cm - over that height, and they have to pay.   There are quite a few extremely tall Europeans over here too... they're probably suffering more than us.

Not walking is OK - People like to take a taxi - fair enough, it can get pretty hot.  What we found surprising when we went to Singapore Zoo though was the number of young, able bodied people who hired out motorized scooters just for convenience.  They'd zoom down to an exhibit, jump off and walk around, then hop back on and zoom over to the next one.  Weird.  But after walking around in the heat for a while, definitely began to see the appeal!

Taxi Drivers - Most of the drivers are a) polite, b) don't seem to mind my screaming toddler in the back, and c) know where almost every road in Singapore is.  The cabs are also clean, cool, and don't stink (Australian's will know what particular stench I am talking about here).  It is a rare novelty, and an absolute pleasure.  Oh, and they come within 5-7 minutes (when available...), and are cheap - delightful!

REAL ESTATE

Agents - You find a real estate agent to represent you as a tenant (well, you don't HAVE to, but it makes things easier, especially for newbies unaware of the whole process).  So the landlord hires an agent, and then the tenants find an agent who takes them around various properties and organises everything - the tenants agent is free, with their commission paid by the landlord.  So the landlord has to pay commission to two agents - quite different to back home.

Condition report - When you rent in Singapore, you and the two agents get together to go over the condition report, agree on the details, and then sign it off.  In Australia, the landlord does one copy, then they give it the tenant who has three days to write passive agressive comments and put capital letters and exclamation marks all over their comments (as we received from our tenant in Australia - joy!)  The whole process is much more civilised over here.... just some slight disagreements between the agents over what warranted a 'photo of damage' - the landlords agent would say ' is ok, I've written down', then my agent would go 'oh, I'll just take a quick photo', 'no, no need, I know it's there', 'oh, well, just in case you forget in two years', ' I'll take a photo when you leave then' (at which stage my agent would whip out her mobile and grab a furtive snap and move on...

The maid's room - yup, pretty tiny.

The maid's room - or in our case, the bomb shelter!  There was a ruling for a while (not sure if is still in effect - but this was within the last 10 years, we're not talking the 50's), that all new apartments built had to include a bomb shelter.  Should our massive apartment building get bombed, whether you are on the top floor, or on the bottom, I'm not sure the bomb shelter would help you out much.  So they are generally used as the maid's room. If you choose to get one. Which we're not.  So our empty luggage will be well protected should the building collapse around us. 

Gas Dryers - who ever heard of a gas tumble dryer?  I scoffed at first, but MY GOD THEY ARE AMAZING.  Dry your clothes in half the time, and gas is cheaper than electricity, so win-win.  When our current drier in Australia dies, I'll be checking out to see if any gas models are available - gotta be worth the extra plumbing costs.

POLITENESS

Paying by credit card - I knew about the two-handed business card gesture (when handing out your business card in Singapore, you should offer it with two hands - which feels very respectful and makes you feel like you are honoured to have this person's contact details - all nice : )  The weird thing is when paying by credit card, the cashier will take your credit card and hand it back with two hands - I always feel like bowing my head slightly when receiving my own credit card back - and it is quite an odd feeling compared to the old slap it through the machine we'd do back home.

People call you when they say they will - i.e. people you don't know - people in shops, or people representing services like internet.  We had a problem with our internet, and they actually called us back several times to see if the problem was fixed.  If that was Telstra, we'd be back on the phone, on hold for 40 minutes AGAIN to try and speak to someone who would have no idea what we were talking about.  Highly refreshing.  I probably shouldn't get used to it - will make service back in Australia seem all the more sour.

In general, Singaporeans are just friendly, polite, and helpful - which makes being a newbie a lot easier : )

Alright, I'm off to lie around feeling sick for a bit more now... really exciting stuff will happen when the morning sickness buggers off.  Promise.  There will even be quilting.  EXCITING QUILTING - I guarantee it.

I leave you with a snap of the kids in front of our massive pool just to make you jealous back home!

x Amelia

Out and about with the kids...

The toys are yet to arrive by boat, there are only so many swims you can take in one day... so we've been exploring and trying to keep cool at the same time.

Underwater World and Sentosa

For my birthday on our 2nd day in Singapore, I picked Underwater World on Sentosa - my main wish for the day was the kids NOT WHINE - I hoped this would keep them happy.  The exciting thing about getting there? Monorail!  Kids were duly unimpressed. 

But it's a monorail!!

What's that mean?

It only has one track!

So?

Haven't you seen that Simpson's episode?

No.

OKaayyyyy then.... Just look out the window and be quiet.

We purchased a Subrmarine Package which gets you entry in twice for the year, plus discounts for friends, a crappy keyring, and 10% off at Food and Gift outlets for a year.  But seriously, pack your own lunch, or eat around Sentosa before going in.  Given the overly fried nature of the menu there, I didn't have high hopes, but this was possibly the worst thing ever eaten.  I felt kinda bad eating a fish burger at an aquarium, but I'm not sure this was ever really fish.... and if it was it was fried a few days ago, dyed bright orange, and then microwaved.  Inedible.

Although not a huge aquarium, there are lots of different things - touching and feeding the stingrays near the entry was a highlight, and the travelator fish tunnel was a nice cool escape.  The best bit is of course the dolphin show though!  Touted as pink dolphins, they are a kind of mottled grey-pink - but very sweet, and great performers - almost outshone by the seals who were just show-offs.  Most seats have a good view of the action, they blast the fans just as the show is about to start to keep you cool, and it was entertaining enough to even keep Frankie captivated for the entire show, which goes for about 20 minutes I think.

After that we had a little walk back along the beach at Sentosa - not crystal clear waters, and quite strange seeing all the ships so close - feels vaguely wartime, an odd impending sense of doom looking out over the ocean -  but you soon get used to them. 

The strange thing was people found Frankie exceptionally cute in her swimmers.  Sure, I think she is cute, but there were people trying to take photos of her (which makes her rather grumpy), and the biggest admirers were 20-something guys who would coochy-coo her - maybe the guys in Singapore are the clucky ones....?  Photo evidence below - look at them turning around for another look!!

Amazonia

I let the kids pick this one - they'd seen an ad for Amazonia in a magazine.  Looked good from the pics - but then I looked up the prices on the website - $30 for Oscar, $20 for Frankie.  OUCH.  From what I gather, playcentres are a bit more expensive here, but this one seems to be extra pricey.  But they wanted air-conditioned fun and were missing home... and it's only money, right??  To add insult to injury, this only gets you 2 hours play - if you spend extra time, you get charged.  Maybe on a weekend I can understand this to stop people staying all day and avoid overcrowding, but there were 4-5 other kids there the whole time we were there on a weekday- so it just makes them seem mean.  They have cool stuff like glow-in-the-dark mini-golf, and some ball shooting cage, but these were extra - I figured for $50, there better already be enough stuff to keep them entertained for 2 hours.  The good thing I can say is their ball pits are very full, and the balls are very clean - the whole place was clean, and nicely decorated.  They had a cool floor piano in the toddler area, but it wasn't working : (

Overall, the whole centre is fairly small (compared to Australian centres), and the toddler area doesn't have enough to keep a 2.5 year old entertained for 2 hours (so I broke the rules and let her on the big kids climbing bit) - but Oscar was ready to go after 1.5 hours as there was no-one there to play with, and not much to do apart from the large climbing structure with slides etc.  I made him stay and ENJOY EVERY CENT until our two hours were up.

We got lunch in the playcentre as it was inside a rather chi-chi shopping centre, with not many other cheap food options around.  The food was reasonably priced, not overly unhealthy but still kid-friendly - my only gripe is that they had 4-5 staff working in the cafe, we were the only people eating, and yet all our meals came out 5 minutes apart - not cool with hungry kids!!

So we won't be going again... but will be on the lookout for some cheaper / more interesting playcentres around Singapore!

Singapore Zoo

Amazing zoo - similar to Australia Zoo with a very open and natural layout, where you get to be up-close with all the animals.  Elephant rides were available at $8 per person (BARGAIN - an icy drink will cost you about that much there!), which we will definitely be taking up next time.  And there will be a next time, because the kids were being their absolute brattiest and Andy got a migraine - we only really saw about 1/4 of it, so more details when I feel we have visited PROPERLY.

 If anyone has any recommendations of kid friendly places to visit in Singapore, please leave a comment!  The Science Centre is next on our list.. I want to play in the outdoor water area!

We're here!

So we've been here over a week now.  Still all sinking in...

Godsend # 1 - My friend Susan

The last day was awwfffffuul.  I spent 8 hours cleaning the hours, at break neck speed.  Stressed. And hot. And sweaty.  Thank god my amazing wonderful friend Susan took both the kids from 7am, and even brought me around a hot lunch - it felt rather fitting to have a roast as my last proper meal in Australia, as I doubt I'll get one over here!  Frankie had been rather fretful the day before and all that morning, so getting an MMS of her all happy smiles with Susan was a relief.

Godsend #2 - Good coffee at the airport

If only I'd known there was a Movida run cafe once you get past immigration, I would have skipped breakfast at Hudsons.  They had amazing looking custard donuts, and yummy proper fare too - but as it was, I wasn't hungry, so had a coffee which was made at a snnnaaaiils pace - but was worth it as my last proper coffee for a while.  Also a Cafe Vue opening up here soon too...


Godsend #3 - Plane Activities

Bit of false advertising there.  There were none.  My only advice when traveling with a 2 and 6 year old is to sit next to the 6 year old.  Andy and Oscar in front of us spent the whole time watching DVD's.  I spent 6 out of the 8 hours of the flight trying to explain to Frankie why she couldn't get of the plane quite yet even though I knew she really REALLY wanted to.  The food only lasted so long....she had no interest in the books or felt shapes I brought with us.  Leslie had recommended iphone games - her daughter is younger than Frankie, and lasted a flight to Canada on them - but it seems Frankie is technologically retarted, as she just can't get the hang of it and keeps trying to use her thumb which limits movement.

But in the end we arrived, as did all our luggage.  We even managed to fit our 10 cases onto two trolleys - tetris skills to the max.  And here is our beautiful home for a few weeks in Joo Chiat....

x Amelia