Observations: Singapore Edition Part Dos

More notes on my Singapore experience.

1. Singapore is like a big Chinatown. Officially, the national language is English however most "native" S'poreans are Chinese. So Chinese is most common. You know how every Chinatown gets more Chinese the closer to the center? Singapore is the opposite. The center is the business district, which is very Western. This is where English is the primary language. The further you get from there, the more Chinese it gets. I saw a sign that read (this is not a joke): "Learn to talk good English."

2. Apparently, the day to day dangers for the average Singaporean are much different than elsewhere. When walking back from the store, I was informed that I should be careful due to "Frequent Peacock Attacks". A sign informed me of this. It said "Danger!: Frequent Peacock Attacks". I never thought that I would see the words "Danger", "Attack" and "Peacock" in the same sentence.

3. They have 7-11s in Singapore. I don't know why this strikes me as odd, but it does. They're everywhere. It's not as scary as the abundance of KFCs there. I bet they eat the hell out of some "flavored pieces".

4. When you arrive in Singapore, your little immigration card notifies you that drug possession is punishable by death. Death? Damn. I actually stopped to make sure that I wasn't carrying. I wasn't, and I knew that, but when threatened with death, I just needed to make sure.

5. For some reason, I read a lot of signs in other countries.

6. In the movie "Predator", there is a famous line that goes something like "If it bleeds, we can kill it." In Singapore, this has been translated to "If it bleeds, we can eat it." A friend took me to a street market where you could get such delicacies as sea horse, jellyfish, lizard, insects, and various other things that I'll not describe here. It made me long for the Egg McBurger.

7. While most people would say I was lucky to leave Chicago and go someplace warm, there is a limit. When you arrive at 2 am and its 86 degrees and 93% humidity........that's just not good.

8. Singapore is a very major shipping hub. I went to a beach on the resort island of Sentosa. There were people there, more on the way, everyone was having a good time....but when you looked out into the water, there were dozens of huge cargo ships and oil tankers. It seemed really weird. I've never been to a beach-beach with that many tankers there. One of the beaches was closed because "There has been some oil in the water"...really? Ya think? Maybe has something to do with the 48 tankers about 200 meters away?