Such dark humor.

Dark humor, isn’t it? Well I think so.

Let me explain.

I was riding in an elevator in Singapore, when just to the right of the LED floor number sign my eye catches something.

First thing I think is that my mind is playing tricks on me, that my lack of constant submersion in American pop-culture has left me seeing things.

So I do a double take, and move my gaze back to the sign. And even then I do not believe it.

I was in the elevator with two other people, a local and another expat. The expat noticed my current dilemma, and decided to explain. (He was American as well.) What he said is that this is actually a major company in Singapore that engineers and produces elevators. And that many, many other expats have pointed out the obvious connection the name of the company has with a certain film.

For those of you that have been living in a hole (Or at least not anywhere near the US.) the “certain film” I refer to is Schindler’s List, starring a young(er) Liam Neeson. The best way to sum up this movie, without any spoilers, is in one word, holocaust.

So an elevator being branded by a company called “Schindler Lifts” evokes a very queer image. I mean come on, seriously. Move two letters around in the company name and you have one of the darkest heart wrenching movies of 90’s.

Even if this company was named BEFORE the movie became popular (And by popular I mean it won; 7 Academy Awards, 7 BAFTAs, 3 Golden Globes, Listed 8^th on AFI’s 100 Best American Movies of All Time list.) as the CEO there comes a time when you need to say to yourself, “Well damn, time to change our name.”

Oh bug where art thou?

Fun fact time!

Singapore has almost no insects.

It’s true. It’s not something you would notice right way but after a while you begin to wonder why you aren’t being attacked by swarms of flying nuisances.

Let’s break down why Singapore should have a metric shit ton (Yes that is a scientific term.) of insects.

1)      Near the equator. As far as I know every other place on Earth near the equator has insects.

2)      Rain. In Singapore it rains so very, very much. And where there is rain there is collected water, which is baby-making central for mosquitoes.

3)      Large amount of outdoor restaurants. Restaurants mean food garbage, and that means bugs.

4)      Relatively calm weather patterns. Singapore is protected from much of the destructive weather patterns that plague most other island nations due to its geographic position.

5)      Urban area means densely packed humans. Let’s face it humans are walking buffets for the bug populations of the world; we are messy and really easy to sneak up on and take a bite out of.

6)      Singapore remains relatively forested. That’s right forested. Even inside the city there is plenty of natural vegetation either lining the streets or within one of the numerous little parks that seem to be at the end of every street.

Why is it that still, in spite of all the potential for insect-overload, is there an almost eerie absence of insects?

Well one might be the recent campaign by the Singaporean government to combat dengue fever, which has billboards and posters on every street urging people to dump out free standing water.

Another might be the unique construction of Singapore. Instead of having drains into the sewer that are at street level like in the US, Singapore creates drainage ditches that are cement lined about a meter down on the sides of the roads. My best guess would be that these were originally dug to keep the streets water free in the rain, but also have a bonus of moving water off the streets faster preventing bugs from doing-the-dirty in it.

Overall Singapore is also a very regimented and clean place. Not only do they take pride in their restaurant food, but they like to look good too. So in general everything is regulated. All the restaurants need to pass health codes, even the hawker markets on the streets, and every building has codes to adhere to. All of this helps reduce insect invasion.

To be honest after a while you begin to miss the little annoyances.

Right side, wrong side

In the US there are many, many things that you just get used to like hot dogs, fireworks or driving on the right side of the road.

While I’ve seen hot dogs and fireworks, although very little of them, in Singapore I am terrified to see someone driving on the right hand side of the road. That is, in case you didn’t know, because the majority of the world operates its motor vehicles on the left side of the road.

Seeing as I am only in Singapore for a short time, and do not have a car like the majority of people living in Singapore, you would think this really wouldn’t affect me very much. But what the “average person” who has never been in a society where driving on the left side of the road is the norm doesn’t know is that it (driving on the left hand side of the road) has serious trickle down effects on daily living.

For example, if you live in America and you are walking down the street which side would you move to if someone was walking towards you in the opposite direction? Generally you would say to the right, because you are so used to that being how you would act driving a car, it becomes muscle memory to you. And if you said to the left you cheated, somehow.

Now moving to the right instead of the left isn’t all that big of a faux pas (Wow. That’s a fancy word.) but this becomes more of an issue when other factors are involved. For me personally this happened when I was walking one afternoon and a grandmother bringing her granddaughter home from school was coming from the opposite direction. (This little girl couldn’t have been more than four or 5 years old.) And I was faced with a decision; move to the left or to the right.

Unfortunately I was mid-way through a text before I saw them, and by that time I didn’t have the time to mentally make the connection that this was Singapore and not America. So my decision was instinctual, jump to the right to avoid hitting them. Unfortunately the grandmother had move to her left to avoid me. When this happened it aligned the granddaughters face perfectly with my knee cap, which would not have ended well so I continued on my awkward jumping motion further to the right and eventually right onto my ass. Making myself look like a jerk, but also very uncoordinated.

Literally running away from the scene probably didn’t help either.

Heat

First thing I thing that comes to mind when I try to verbalize what it is that defines Singapore is heat.

That’s right, heat. Getting off the airplane is all fine and dandy, you have nice aircon (that’s the colloquial term for air conditioning, yes air conditioning here is so important and used SO often in everyday speech that Sinaporeans have to abbreviate it) right in the lobby and by baggage claim. And then you walk outside and you get hit with a wall of humidity.

I’ve been to humid places before, but this is like walking in the rain humidity. Walking in the rain if the sun was out and blasting every square inch of your un-shaded body with what I can only assume is a toned down version of Superman’s laser vision.

It’s like the hottest day in NJ, but every day of the year. That’s because Singapore rests 200km (that’s about 120 or so miles, they use the metric system here) above the equator.

See right there, wish I had seen that before I left, then I would have packed some sunscreen. Or a hat.

Another tricky thing here that I’m slowly learning is that you’re going to get sunburned, learn to deal with it. I wear long khaki pants and a long sleeve button down shirt to work every day, only stay out in the sun for at most 10 minutes at a time (you learn to love the shade and the MRT or subway) and still I have god awful sunburn on my back and shoulders. I’m as pale as they come so I’m not too surprised about sunburn in general, just the fact that it can bake me through my shirt.

On the bright side I’ve only been here for a week now and I am almost completely used to the heat, or atleast I have learned ways to stay out of its ways. Trick is to learn from the locals. For the first two days I was amazed that no one in Singapore was sweating, and I was walking around looking like a gang of six year olds had attacked me with super soakers. But after a lot of trial and error I found out the system.

1)      To stay in the shade when you need to walk outside.

2)      Take the subway

3)      Always find a reason to go inside a store.

The shade seems obvious but the trick is simple there are shaded walkways on each side of the road next to the shops, these all have fans going full blast.

Explaining the subway is a little trickier. While normally you wouldn’t think the subway is a great place to cool off you would be wrong. The subway or MRT in Singapore is the best system of public transport I have ever seen, plain and simple. There are stops everywhere. And it’s not confusing to use at all, everything is in English (actually everything here is in English, normally anything government related is translated into the four major languages here and English in one of them) and the system is really easy to get, as long as you can read (it’s also color coded, directed with arrows and they even have verbal cues in all four languages… yeah it’s hard to not know where to go)

That last one is a mixed bag because sometimes you just need a break from the sun (For me it’s more of an issue that I might burst into flames like a pasty vampire). If you get lucky you can get into one of the many mixed shopping centers, which have restaurants and shops galore and not look like a total fool while you cool off. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case and sometimes you get stuck wandering around like a fool in a hawker market. A Hawker market is a place where you can go to get extremely delicious food for outrageously low prices (normally a good price is anything below $5 SGD which is about $4 US). So you look kinda weird sweating and out of breath, and not buying any food.

I’m sure there are better ways to avoid the heat, but when you need to wear business casual clothes there’s not really too many options out there. Nothing better than going to an unknown climate completely unprepared, but then again learn from our mistakes. Our sweaty, sunburned mistakes.