Singapore Public Announcement Thursdays!

This is the inaugural post for my newest (And first.) weekly segment on my blog.

So the basic point is that Singapore has a tendency to point out the obvious, sometimes the blatantly obvious.

I had an earlier post that alluded to this phenomenon before, where a cardboard police officer was giving advice to observant customers at a mall. But now that I have been here longer I now realize this is an epidemic of extremely simple public announcements, normally accompanied by a cartoon character.

The above picture is pointing out the obvious; don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you. But it’s the nonchalant delivery of this information that makes it odd to me.

In America a poster providing the same information would say something similar to, “Under penalty of law do not remove personal property other than yours from the premises.” Or “Royce Kids Gym is not responsible for the loss of personal belongings while in use of our facilities.”

To me the way Royce Kids Gym seems to put it makes the act of stealing something like an accident, or if it was done on purpose then an act that is frowned upon and the punishment is going to bed without your diner.

From a country that has on its disembarkation ticket stub, “Warning death for all drug traffickers under Singapore law” this seems like a very lenient warning for the crime of theft.

But then I am reminded that this is a private business most likely run by a Singaporean family, and in Singapore courtesy is a very important virtue. So a demanding or overtly aggressive message just wouldn’t be culturally correct.

This is a country where people actually move over in the subway when other people need to get on and where people will still hold open doors for others (Chivalry isn’t dead, it just moved eastward.)

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.

That’s what’s for breakfast.

Boom. Singaporean breakfast, served up at Freshly Baked by Le Bijoux.

Check out my review of the place here ‘cause that’s not what this post is about.  Not in particular anyway.

What I intend to talk about is a little different than your traditional blog about food. So let’s see how this goes.

Singaporeans take great pride in their foods, but in a weird way I haven’t seen before. At least in my experience when someone says their culture takes pride in their food, you would normally associate this with a hunched over grandmother working in the kitchen all day serving up massive portions of food for every person who is even remotely connected to the family.

But in Singapore the culture is remarkably almost exclusively an eat-out society. Meaning for breakfast, lunch and dinner the average family has food made elsewhere besides their kitchen. It’s pretty obvious to any observer here in Singapore because every other shop or building is a restaurant and there are so very few grocery stores on the island.

Even when I was looking for room shares, there was a substantial amount of rooms that explicitly stated you aren’t allowed to cook in them.

Going out to eat (Or getting take out, as one of the first things you are asked at the counter of any restaurant is “Eat in? Or take out?”) is a very streamlined process. There are two types of places to eat.

The first is a “hawker” market, where generally there are a bunch of tables and chairs set up inside a large circle of food stations. Here you can go to anyone of these stations, order your food and then go sit down and they will deliver your food to your table. Eat all you want then get up and leave, they clear your table after you leave and the meal itself is generally under $5 SGD. That’s a pretty good freaking deal no matter where you are. And the food is good, actually really good and seeing as at every hawker market there are a ton of shops with a ton of different food items, you’d have to be inept to not find something you find palatable.

The second place to eat is a traditional restaurant, except here outside dining is pretty much standard. Although the restaurants cost a bit more than the hawker markets, you do have the option to eat in aircon. And they generally have smaller portions than the hawker stands do so you can get more than one dish to enjoy a whole bunch of flavors.

I personally have eaten out every day I have been here. (Except that one buffet debacle.) And I have not once had a bad meal, and considering that I really don’t know what I’m ordering 90% of the time that’s a pretty good success rate.

Evil, evil little robot boy.

I’m no fool, I knew coming to Asia that there would be significant cultural differences between my old life and what awaited me in Singapore. But nothing could have prepared me for this:

That right there is a demonic vampire Astro Boy, and he seems to be a little “too excited”.

I wasn’t ignorant to some of craziness of Asian culture, I had seen plenty of game shows from Japan and even been an avid anime fan as a child. (I’ll still watch a show of Pokemon given the chance, and think that The Last Airbender is one of the best shows to come out on Nickelodeon in a long, long time.) So I thought I was prepared for almost anything.

But given the conservative nature of Singapore I never would have thought that a poster like this would be around, at least not in public and certainly not in a major tourist hot spot. (One impression I have of Singapore so far is they take great pains to make the country look as good as possible, hence the no chewing gum laws)

I couldn’t get a picture of the whole poster but it was around a whole store, and on the other side it featured Kim Jong-il in shutter shades. So the entire thing was generally weird. So as it turns out the poster is for a Japanese beer company named Asahi, which is to be honest one of the best beers you can buy here in Singapore so maybe they have a little more leverage than the average advertiser.

I guess this is more of a cautionary tale in that you should always expect the unexpected and that although you might think a country is really strict, but everywhere has a little bit of a wild side.

Exotic, America

Maybe it’s just me but I feel that whenever you go to a new place or country the general idea is that you’re going someplace “exotic”. Somewhere you never thought you could go or would go. For me that place is Singapore, obviously. It’s literally half a world away from where I live in America. Go ahead check it.

So that would make America normal or ordinary. I wouldn’t go so far as to say average but it’s in the dictionary as the antonym of exotic so it’s possible.

Which is why this shocked me.

Spooky.

Yeah as ignorant as it seems I was shocked to see America being advertised by this travel agency as “exotic”. But then again this place where you get used to the humidity, the fast and easy MRT or the food here, I guess I can see how it might be a drastic change from the “ordinary” for the average Singaporean. Who am I to judge, here near the equator something as simple (to me at least) such as snow IS exotic. (Bold, italics and caps so you know I’m being super serious.)

Now saying all that, I have to admit I let out a giggle or two when I read this. Then after having embarrassed myself calmly walked away from the store front, circled around and quickly took this picture. As if I didn’t look like a tourist already I was doing laps around a small mini mall while giggling and taking pictures.