(1) There is a stereotype that Asians are bad drivers. Except for the fact that Singapore tries to regulate the existence of traffic jams (see the previous post from today), Singaporeans do not do help this stereotype. I'm in a car zooming around Singapore attempting to understand the rules of the road. Everyone drives on the left side (this is probably the only rule that is followed). So, slower traffic should be in the left most lane, while the right lanes ought to be passing lanes. Rather, everything is a shifting free-for-all. It's kinda like a roller-coaster...with your LIFE!
(2) You really know you're in another country when the "squirrel" animals are all different. What do I mean? Well, you know you're in Australia when you see kangaroos. In Singapore, there are these awesome black birds with yellow beaks and white tips on their wings. They're like pigeons only cooler, although a little creepy. Why creepy? Because these bastards stare at you.
Think about it: Pigeon, "Dum dee dum dee dum! I'm a pigeon, blah blah blah. I'm gonna hop around and fly away and crap on crap."
Creepy Bird, "I'm watching you. Creeeeeeeeeepily waaaaatching you." It's like Big Brother, only bird-style.
(3) Durian! So, they warn you about this before you come. South East Asians love this smelly fruit called Durian and they will try to get you to eat it. We all talk about cultural acceptance, but there are lines and durian is a LINE!
If you cut open the fruit, it smells from a football field away. But they pretend they like it. Ice cream durian, cake durian, durian in the supermarket, durian, durian, durian.
I say pretend, you know why, because they ban it on the subways. They ban it on the buses, and they'll ban it from being brought into many public spaces. Oh, they'll tell you that it's only cause they don't want to scare the foreigners, but it smells to high heaven, and God was like, "get me some Febreeze".
(4) Speaking of food. There are some great foods here. You can get mango in anything for example. I had a wonderful mango ice cream sundae-ish thing today. They have this stuff called "kaya", which is awesome. It's apparently coconut butter.
HOWEVER, fish is everywhere. Everything smells like fish. You know why, because it's 34C outside (around 90F) and the fish just goes everywhere. Now, I'm a little picky in that I don't eat anything that lives under a wave except ahi tuna, cod, and tilapia (sometimes shark and other cartilaginous fish). So, I know I'm coming from a negative position already, but honestly. It's an open air market and there's NO air conditioning.
(5) By the way, Cat would eat NOTHING here. Asians might be renowned for their artistic style, but, when it comes to food, it couldn't be any uglier. The signs in these open markets tend to look dilapidated. I'm sure the health of most of these places is fine, but that's more based on faith than on evidence. The evidence is that these places look like they wouldn't pass the mildest of health inspections. This is why I don't worry about Asians taking over the world economy. They still haven't learned Marketing 101: Presentation matters!
So, there's good and there's bad, but that's almost a tautology, n'est-ce pas?
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