Joanna's Singapore adventures

Singapore is connected by bridge to the south end of peninsular Malaysia. Crossing the border into Malaysia is quite a different experience of international travel than what I’m used to. The Singaporean public bus network doesn’t just cover Singapore, it also extends several kilometres into Malaysia. A trip from a train station in northern Singapore a bus terminal a few kilometres into Malaysia costs S$1.21 (AU$0.95, US$0.87). Coming from Australia where it takes hundreds of dollars and at least several hours on a plane or days on a boat to get overseas, the idea of travelling internationally at that price and on a city bus is a little mindblowing. I don’t think you could get 2 bus stops down the street in most Australian cities for that price.

Unfortunately Singapore and Malaysia did not co-operate by putting their customs and immigration centres together. That means you have to get off the bus at the customs centre for the country you are leaving, get back on the bus to cross the bridge, get off again at the customs centre for the country you are entering and then reboard the bus for wherever it is you are bound for. I must look like a shady character because both going into Malaysia and leaving Malaysia I was pulled over for bag checks. Coming from Malaysia to Singapore after you’ve cleared Malaysian customs and are just about to get on the bus there is a convenience store. I suspect they get a lot of business selling chewing gum. Chewing gum remains illegal to buy, sell and import in Singapore (with the exception of gum prescribed by a doctor for medical purposes) so some Singaporeans bring it back with them from Malaysia. Chewing gum takes on a whole new level of rebelliousness here!


Wikipedia article on the Singaporean chewing gum ban

Of course I've missed people from home while I've been overseas but it is strange all the other things I miss. Some of them have been.....

• Foods- (Burritos, Tacos, Australian McDonalds, meat pies...). I don't eat those things very often in Australia but I've often been craving them here. There is a few Mexican restaurants here but Mexican food is not common. The McDonald's food here tastes different and not for the better. While there is plenty of food involving pastry, I haven't seen much that looks like an Australian meat pie.
• Television- Trying to watch grainy ripped versions on youtube several days after the original broadcast is just not quite the same as watching reality shows live in TV.
• Book shopping and reading- I've had to be very restrained about buying books while here because I ether have to give them away when I leave or pay excess baggage fees to get them home
• My pets- I keep seeing stray cats that look a lot like my own. Unfortunately many of the cats here aren't very friendly (but some are)

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

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).

View from the central courtyard


The common room for my building. These rooms are airconditioned unlike most of the hall so they are a nice place to relax.


This is one of the more popular food places in the residence. It stays open to 2 am every night. Even after midnight it is often still quite crowded.

If studying in the library gets too boring, here studying on the beach is a viable option too!

I was absent mindedly walking along one of the streets near City Hall MRT station and got quite a surprise to see a huge banner in a window promoting my home university, Monash.  The part of the sign that is a bit hard to read in this photo says "the world is your campus". Seems like a very appropriate sign to see while overseas on an exchange program!  Monash doesn't have a campus here so i'm thinking the sign may have something to do with Monash's partnerships with local institutions.

One thing that has happened repeatedly here is people incorrectly guessing my nationality on the basis of my accent. When people meet me they often guess from my accent that I'm Canadian, British, Kiwi or occasionally American. I even had a Canadian think i sounded kinda Canadian. Having grown up in a quite mono-cultural town it is not as though i had many chances to pick up a foreign accent from anyone. Maybe it was my years of singing in a choir that messed with my accent.

Then there is actually understanding what I'm saying. Despite me trying to speak clearly some people just still don't understand. This leads to some awkward moments. One of these was when coming out of a concert i tried to ask the security guard where the bus stop was. He thought i was trying to get more free drinks passes and got a bit annoyed. When i had swine flu it was especially bad because my accent was getting muffled by a facemask.

The other issue with being understood is that some words that are quite common in Australian English just aren't used here. Sometimes it is because a different word would be used here, sometimes it is because the cultural concept just doesn't exist in Singapore. One such one that doesn't exist here is bogan. I have asked Singaporeans here and Singaporeans living in Australia, none of them can come up with a suitable Singaporean equivalent word. I can't explain it with the aid of Australian movie or TV characters because unlike many places, Australian TV shows featuring bogans have not made it here. Sometimes people understand the American term "redneck" but even that doesn't quite capture it. It feels really weird to have to make a long winded explanation to communicate a concept that takes one word back home.


Wikipedia article explaining the word bogan

After all the hype about swine flu, I was relived not have any flu like symptoms when i was travelling to Singapore. Such things aren’t looked upon kindly in airports. Unfortunately my good health did not last long. Within 5 days of arriving I developed a cough. At first I explained it away as asthma triggered by something in the air. 24 hours later, the other major flu symptoms (fever, sore throat ect) started to make their appearance. Just what I needed having just arrived alone into a new country.

The fever started to get pretty bad so I decided I should get it checked out by a doctor. Only problem with that was the university health centre doesn’t open on weekends. That meant I had to go to the hospital emergency ward. I was seen impressively quickly- I waited only 5-10 minutes. Back home you wouldn’t get seen anywhere near as quickly (probably not even if you were dying). It wasn’t all such smooth sailing. Despite the fact that both myself and the doctors/nurses/admin staff all spoke English, I had a lot of communication difficulties. I had an Australian accent and a sore throat. They had Singaporean accents. Both of us were muffled by surgical masks. I had to repeat myself a lot (as did they). I gave up trying to explain that I was an Australian, not a local so just handed them my passport instead. Eventually we managed to sufficiently communicate and I got sent home with multiple medications.

The medicines were a bit of a problematic experience. I have trouble swallowing tablets and tried various ways to get them down. I ended up grinding up the panadol tablets and mixing them with mashed banana. A lot of effort but at least it meant I got the panadol down. If I didn’t take them the fever would get worse. Fever is bad at the best of times. The heat and humidity of a tropical country made it so much worse. I don’t think I have ever sweated so much. No matter how much water I drank, I would still end up dehydrated. Then there was the cough syrup. They weren’t kidding when they said it may cause drowsiness. Only problem was this was not “send you quickly into a deep, restful sleep” kind of drowsiness, more of a “keep you unable to sleep but way too out of it to complete even basic tasks. I tried to stay in my (often kinda warm) room so that I wouldn’t infect anyone else but sometimes I had no choice than to venture out for food or other necessities. That required a facemask. Those can get rather stuffy in hot & humid weather. They also make eating and drinking in public remarkably difficult. You don’t wanna be seen taking it off public because it then looks like you don’t care about whether others get what you have but you can’t eat or drink easily with it on.

Thankfully I am a lot better now. The fever is totally gone and the cough is nowhere near as bad as it was. Hopefully it isn’t an experience I am gonna have to repeat while I am here.

I’ve been in Singapore for a few days now. I’ve been busy with registration, orientation, settling in and shopping.

Hall is probably a bit too small of a term to describe where I am staying as the hall I was at last semester had around 80 people. With over 2500 people, small suburb would probably be a more apt description of where I am now. And that’s just my hall/residence- The university has several more (although most are much smaller). Underneath/between the buildings are 2 hawkers centres (that’s the local name for a type of food court), 2 cafes, a supermarket and assorted sporting facilities. I’ll write about the food sometime later. I’m guessing it is going to be somewhat of a different living environment to halls in Australia. Consuming alcohol on the premises and having someone of the opposite gender in your room with the door closed can both attract fines of several hundred dollars or termination of residence. I’m not bothered by ether rule because I don’t engage in ether activity. I bet it would freak out a lot of Australian students I know though given it would curtail some of their favourite activities!

While it is nice to get a change from winter, the climate here takes a bit of getting used to. It’s not so much that it is hot, since it gets hotter than this for days or weeks at a time in Australian summers. The bigger problem is the humidity which is quite high most of the time. While you can help with the temperature by turning on a fan, it doesn’t really help with the humidity. Thankfully some of the common areas are air-conditioned so there are places to go. In the evenings a lot of people bring their laptops down to the common rooms. In this kind of weather you can only get one or two wears out of a piece of clothing before you have to wash it again. It also makes exercise quite a bit harder, even if you are drinking lots of water.

Obviously given the heat, walking is not a practical way to go very far. The hills in some parts of the area don’t help much ether. Thankfully there are plenty of good transport options. Around the campus there are free air-conditioned buses with very comfortable seats that run every few minutes. For trips outside the campus there is cheap and efficient public busses and trains. Unlike Melbourne, they even manage to have a rechargeable cash-card system for ticketing. The mode of transport I have used the most so far is taxi. Here the taxis are very affordable. A trip of a few kilometres will often cost under S$6 (AU$5/US$4.15). When you are travelling with friends it is often not worth the effort to catch a bus at that price, especially given taxi ranks are everywhere. The downside to catching taxis and public buses is the “creative” interpretation of the road rules or of common sense I have seen on a number of occasions by drivers sharing the road with the vehicle I’m in. It seems that here no gap is too small to overtake or merge lanes in and that it is perfectly acceptable to drive fast while you have half a dozen people sitting unrestrained in the back of your ute.