Joanna's Singapore adventures

This is a documentary about Singapore produced in 1938, while Singapore was still a British colony and before much of its modernization. It is fascinating how much things have changed.



Video found at angryangmo.com

With Singapore's myriad of languages, dialects and accents plus much distinctive slang of its own, there is plenty of opportunity for things to get a bit lost in translation here!

Despite the fact that I am very obviously not Chinese, that doesn't seem to register with everyone. Often shop keepers will tell me prices in Mandarin. I just try to hand them what i think should be enough money and hope i get it right! Sometimes they have actually told me the price in English but their accents are too thick to work out what they are saying!

Many of my friends are comfortable in 2 or 3 languages so think nothing of dropping a few words of another one of their languages into a conversation otherwise in English. Sometimes this is because English doesn't have a suitable equivalent to the word or saying they'd like to use. Puzzlingly, sometimes even when English has an acceptable equivalent people will use another language anyway. My friends seem to particularly like the Mandarin word máfɑn (麻烦) which means troublesome or problematic. People are always gracious about translating but it can still be a bit awkward!

The other way things can get lost in translation is words that mean different things in Singaporean English to Australian English. One such word is mug/mugging. In Australia a mugging is a violent robbery. In Singapore mugging is to study obsessively, often by rote memorization. Needless to say it is a topic of conversation that comes up a lot at this time of semester. Of course when I stop to think about what they are saying, I know what they mean. However, my first response to hearing a statement like "So much mugging going on at the airport lah!" is to wonder when the airport because ridden with violent crime, not to ponder why on earth people would want to study there.

To say the climate is different here to back home would be quite an understatement. I got quite a shock arriving here out of the middle of Australian winter. There isn’t really such a thing as winter here. The coldest ever recorded temperature in Singapore (19. degrees C recorded in 1934) is much warmer than the majority of winter days in Australia. Nether is there such a summer extreme- the highest ever recorded temperature is 36 degrees C. The average daily maximum is around 30-32 degrees C depending on the time of year. The only noticeable seasonal difference is that some parts of the year it rains a bit more than others. I very rarely check the weather forecasts here because it is pretty safe to assume that it will be quite warm, humid and will probably rain. The frequency of thunderstorms does change a bit throughout the year peaking at an average of 18.6 days with thunder and 23.6 days with lightening in November. I thought thunder and lightening tended to come together but apparently not. The storms can be very spectacular, although it is someone unnerving to get woken up by thunder that sounds like bombs going off.

When I first arrived I found the outdoor conditions hard to deal with. Now it’s the inside conditions I find the hardest. Singaporeans love their air-conditioning. Sometimes it is really nice. Often it is a bit over the top. Despite environmental campaigns encouraging people not to use more electricity than they need, air conditioners tend to be turned up way too high. It sometimes gets so insanely cold that people bring blankets or jackets with them to lectures. I often find myself wanting to get back out of the air-conditioning into the heat outside. It is absurd that I would feel the need to do that in a tropical climate The worst is having to sit under freezing air-conditioning after getting wet in a rainstorm.



Weather data from National Environment Agency

This took place a few weeks ago (during Halloween) in one of my lectures. I only just found the footage of it another class member took. I'd been too surprised to take out my own camera.

I'm about to say something that will make my Melbourne readers very jealous.
Such a thing exists as a public transport system where the fares are cheap, the trains and buses are clean, train services run every few minutes and the stored value card system works. That system is here in Singapore and I get to use it.

Coming from Melbourne where the public transport system is best described as an epic fail, the Singapore system is a refreshing change. Even late in the evening there is often only a 6 minute or less wait for a train. This is even the case on weekends. The buses aren’t usually quite as frequent but still regular enough. The only thing Melbourne does better in regards to public transport is that for stations with multiple lines running through them, the different platforms are close together. Not always so here, some interchange stations require a ridiculous long walk through the underground passageways (well a few minutes walk at least).

A common sight on the streets all around Singapore is these little icecream carts. They serve slabs of icecream between bits of wafer or bread. Icecream in wafer can cost as little as S$1 (AU$0.78, US$0.72), sometimes they cost a little more. These carts also sometimes sell cold drinks. It is really nice being able to get cheap icecream on a hot day but i haven't yet managed to learn the art of eating it before it ends up melted all over me!

It is one of those commonly held bits of wisdom that McDonald’s restaurants and McDonald’s food are exactly the same regardless of where in the world you are. That’s not entirely true. There’s a few quite noticeable differences between McDonald’s in Australia and in Singapore.

The food does taste a bit different. I think one of the reasons is that here in Singapore it is halal which means it contains no pig products and is therefore suitable for Muslims to eat. The food is also different because McDonald’s in Singapore seems to have made little effort to make their food healthier. I think some of the items are even greasier than in other countries. There is also a few items you don't find in other countries like a spicy chicken burger and cups of corn. They certainly seem to like the food over here- Singapore has one of the highest per-capita rates of McDonald's burger consumption of anywhere in the world.

Another big difference is the kind of people you see in McDonald’s. Here many of the front counter staff are older. They are sometimes known as McAunties and McUncles. There’s also very often students using McDonald’s as a place to study. I even saw some study in the McDonald’s at Changi airport at 4 in the morning! McDonald’s is a popular place to study because many students don’t have much space to study at home and McDonald’s is air-conditioned. I don’t think most Australian students would dare be seen studying in public!

Unfortunately I've been unable to post much over the last couple of weeks. I'd love to be out taking more photos for you all but it has come to that time of semester again: Essay time! I'm not sure if lecturers conspire together in their staff rooms about it but they do a great job at all making major pieces of assessment due together. I had two due late last week and one due in a few days time. In the midst of all of it i got sick- both a pretty bad cold AND conjunctivitis! Needless to say by late last week i was a stressed out mess! The campus coffee stalls were certainly doing well out of me! Hopefully the essays came out well despite it- I need them to because despite studying a lot my international relations midterm results weren't that good. I'm trying to push on with the one due this week but i'm really tired so it isn't moving forward very quickly. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be more awake so will actually make some progress.