Some Wednesday thoughts.

It feels strange to watch the US going through the virus paranoia from half a world away. Mostly it’s heartbreaking to watch what looks like a country unprepared from top to bottom. What felt harsh in the beginning here in Singapore now feels like a relief. We have had “social distancing” measures implemented for almost 2 months now. Our kids (or us) have not had any sports games, assemblies, or group activities larger than 40 people in that time. The kids teachers aren’t allowed to touch the kids (both Avery and Mrs Sapna are saddened by this rule). It seems only Americans still shake hands… But despite all that, the government has made a concerted effort to keep the economy functioning here. School is still in session and work still continues. Base line life is still normal. Grocery stores are fully stocked (including toilet paper). How do they do it? People follow the rules here. Yes, there are strict repercussions for people who violate orders here (expulsion from the country, fines and imprisonment). Beyond that though, there is communication. At any time I can log onto the ministry of health website and see exactly how many cases Singapore has. I can see where they live and what “cluster” they are a part of. We currently have no cases that are considered “community spread” or that are untraceable. The government here goes to Herculean lengths to trace every case. We had one school have a case (thankfully not ours). They closed for a long weekend, disinfected and reopened. To me what’s most important is I can also see exactly what I should do if I am concerned I have Covid 19 (you plug in your address and they tell you exactly what clinic to go to, I tried it out, and it gave me 35 options within 2km). That alone is heartening. Luckily we haven’t had to try that out, and hopefully we never will. This communication, led from the top, is what gives a feeling of safety. Sadly, the top in the US is such a mess, I don’t see how this could be possible. How can a government so at war with itself come together in our time of need? I guess prayers are all that’s left.

Singapore’s info:

https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19

Contrasted with the US:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

On a happier note, if I can give any advice, if your spring break plans get canceled, make the best of it and enjoy things closer to home. Beach? Safe! Hiking? Awesome! There really are a lot of things to do if you think about it.

What’s happening here? Regular life. I met up with a group of women yesterday for a bike ride on the paths in the east coast park. It was so fun and easy to rent bikes! I will definitely take the kids back soon!

Our bike riding crew! A lot of the ladies had cool folding bikes I was a little jealous of..

This morning we had Avery’s parent-teacher-child conference. What a lovely format! We all spoke together about her strengths and what she wants to work on moving forward. We continue to love Mrs Sapna and are so proud of Avery. This move has been very hard for her, but she’s working very hard and we couldn’t be more proud!

To leave on a “funny” note, I’ll discuss squat toilets in more detail. As an American, we sometimes forget there’s a larger world out there that doesn’t live as we do. For many people sanitation is not something to be taken for granted (if you are quarantined, can I recommend the Netflix show, “inside bill’s brain”? It’s about Bill Gates, but also about his foundation and they explain the sanitation issues better than I would). Anyway, for millions of people, they only have access to pit latrines or squat toilets. When they travel to more “first world” locations it’s possible for them to not know how to use a “regular” toilet. Hence, why we see signs like this many places:

Yesterday at the hawker, I took some pics to demonstrate.

If you see a sign on the door like this, walk away, this one is not for you!

But if you miss the sign, this is the infamous squat toilet. Now if you don’t wait to queue for the regular toilet, by all means, squat! But for the rest of us, we’ll wait for the regular toilet..

As I said before, to date only Avery’s squatted. Another new thing for us in Asia is paying to go to the bathroom. We’ve not encountered this in Singapore, but in langkawi we did multiple times. You have to go? 1.50 ringitt. Want toilet paper? Another ringitt. After our mangrove tour, Avery had to pee, so we paid her 1.50 and off she went (not sure if we paid for toilet paper, she probably dripped dry). She came back out and casually informed us, she couldn’t find the regular potty so she used the squat. She didn’t seem wet or any worse for the wear. All those camping trips coming in handy now! Bad parenting on my part not going into the bathroom with her, but I didn’t have to go and it was 1.50!

That’s all I have for today. Keep washing those hands and stay healthy!!! 💕💕💕

Wednesday Feb 12th

Today I went on my first AWA walk with women. I took the bus to the MRT to Telok Pagar which is down in the business district. I haven’t really been down to that area too much, it was nice to see some of the buildings we can see the tops of from our building. I had to snap my pics quickly as the walking group has a strict no pictures rule.

Singapore is full of temples, this is a Hindu temple.

This building is one of the largest and nicest HDB (housing development board) complexes in Singapore. Basically government housing. But most HDBs here are actually pretty nice and desirable places to live. You have to be married to qualify to buy a condo (I think if you are under 35, after that they loosen the restrictions). Social engineering?

This is a bad picture of the old rickshaw carriage house. I think it’s now a museum. Need to come back and check it out.

I learned today that this ground covering that’s everywhere in Singapore is edible! But, I can’t remember what it’s called… hmmmm.

While graffiti is illegal in Singapore. The city is filled with beautiful street art that tells the story of the neighborhood.

The AWA walking with women ladies. Fun and nice group!

We ended in Telok Ayer (which wasn’t too far). A few of the women and I walked from there to catch the red MRT together. I ended up meeting 3 other women who have kids at the same school as ours so that was nice too!

Following up on yesterday’s rain post. These are our gutters here. They look insane until you see it rain. Then they make perfect sense. It rains buckets here.

I also had a nice lunch with Karen, one of Liam’s friend’s mom. She’s originally from Houston. She was nice to spend some time with. She’s been here since the summer, so well ahead of me and has some good advice.

Just packing for our weekend trip tomorrow. Excited to get our first travel weekend in!

Tuesday 11-Feb

Still being new here, each day brings new adventures. Today was no different. This morning after the kids got on the bus, I decided instead of going to the gym, to take a walk in the botanic garden. This was partly because I slipped at the water park on Sunday and my back is a little sore. I didn’t think a Peloton boot camp was the best plan.

I hopped on bus 75 to Tanglin then switched to the 174. The second bus took forever to come. Upon reflection, I probably should have just walked. The bus was a double decker and Avery would have been happy, I sat up top. I got off in Bukit Timah, walked over to the gardens. It was packed! Tons of people walking, doing yoga, Thai chi, boot camps, anything you could think of! I might need to find one of these groups!

It was baby bird morning at the botanic gardens!

Baby black swans

Baby jungle fowl

It was a beautiful, sweaty morning. I walked all the way back down to the Tanglin gate, including a little back track into the rainforest, which I had never been able to do before because of weather. It was very beautiful in there and so many ENORMOUS trees. They have so many special trees in the garden. Many are donated by other nations and some are preserved by the government because they are rare and endangered. You could come to the gardens 100 times and see something new each time. I love that about it. It was about 9:30 at this point and since I hadn’t had breakfast I stopped at a cafe we had been to in the garden near the tanglin gate

Map of the gardens. Started walking in the upper right and ended in the lower left.

I love this little cafe. I got the kaya toast set and an avocado milk. Kaya toast is a Singaporean thing. It’s toast with butter and kaya spread (made of coconut and pandan). I love it. Typically you have it with a Kopi (Singaporean coffee, strong coffee with condensed milk) and soft boiled eggs which you dip the toast into. They don’t offer the eggs here which is too bad as I love that. Yummy special treat.

After breakfast, I planned to walk home, but I wanted to try a new way. I walked through the neighborhood instead of the main roads. First this I discovered was the Chinese embassy. I hustled quickly by that. Lots of masked people walking in and out.

I was about to turn on the road to head home, when I noticed a big green space across the street. I decided to investigate.

I followed along the path (saying a silent prayer there are no critters). After passing tons of beautiful homes, I came out in a parking lot and when I looked back I could just see the top of our condo

I followed the road for a bit and ended up in a neighborhood called Dempsey hill

Dempsey hill is filled with cute restaurants and shops. I wandered around a bit and got a little lost. Somehow I ended up behind a restaurant on a boardwalk. Then it happened. I have no pictorial evidence but there was a long, thin, bright green snake slithering out of the jungle onto the boardwalk. Obviously I screamed and ran. Then there was not one but two lizards on the boardwalk. After I collected myself and got out of there, I looked up my snake friend.

Only mildly venomous 😳

Well I got that out of the way.

After that I checked out a few more shops and saw a antique Chinese cabinet I might be interested in for the condo. Have to think on that one.

It was noon at this point. I hopped on a bus home (bus 75!) To change for my American women’s association tennis evaluation. But, just then the sky’s opened up. No tennis today. I puttered around the condo for the afternoon until the kids came home.

Rain waiting for Avery’s bus. It REALLY rains here. The gutters are about 3 feet deep and they fill right up when it rains. Luckily it cleared up before I had to walk to get Liam off the late bus. The kids took a rainy swim but had to get out when the thunder and lightening came back.

We wrapped up the day by locking ourself out of the condo. I knew it would happen. Unfortunately they are replacing our intercoms, So we couldn’t get in that way. Luckily Ryan was on his way home so we only had to wait about a half hour.

Since I’m keeping this blog partly as a journal for our lives here, I might try to do more of these daily updates. We’ll see if I can maintain 😉