Singapore Business Trip

I went on a business trip to Singapore last week. I didn't have much time for sight seeing, but I did get a few photos. But before you look at the photos, you need some cultural indoctrination: Singlish. This video will give you an introduction into the Singaporean way of speaking English (yes, English is the official language of Singapore. See if you can understand it.).



Get that? Me neither. Though I was happy to see and hear all the Malay around - it's the only time I've gotten to exercise my Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) since I was a student in Yogyakarta. At any rate, here are some photos. Everyone understands the language of images...

The view from my hotel of the harbor and downtown:


And at night:


Some scenes from Purvis St., near my hotel:


Chicken Rice from Yut Can (a place that my Singaporean co-worker recommended)

Gado Gado from one of the Hawker Centers (a Hawker Center is like an outdoor food court where they sell street food). I haven't had Gado Gado since, you guessed it, I was a student in Yogyakarta. It was like seeing an old friend. Those colored flower-looking things are krupuk (shrimp crackers).


I kept running into German stuff. Here is a creamer from Northern Germany that came with the coffee I ordered at a cafe in a mall (there are a lot of malls in Singapore - it's kind of a way of life there as far as I can tell).


Lunch with co-workers at a canteen in an industrial part of the city.
I ate a lot of eggs while I was there since it was an identifiable form of protein (as opposed to non-identifiable protein which often turned out to be parts of animals that I didn't care to consume). Also, you'll notice that bottle of cloudy looking water - that's "Bali Water". I didn't know what it was when I got it, but had just followed my co-worker's lead in the drink line and picked up the same thing to drink that he did. When we got back to the table and he found out, he was horrified: "You got Bali Water??!! Do you LIKE Bali Water???". Fortunately it turns out I do. It was like a homemade kind of Gatorade.


Random street scene:

Typical apartment building complex. Most people live in buildings like this. The apartments inside are actually quite roomy - more so than apartments I've seen in Tokyo at least.

And the obligatory shot in front of the famous Raffles Hotel:
I hope to someday go back to Singapore and explore the city a little more.