Laws of the Land

Yesterday I got taken around by someone who works in the Singapore offices here. We went to what he called the dirtiest/most dangerous part of Singapore. It is considered dirty because the roads are not in as good as shape as the rest of the roads, but they are comparable to most roads in Portland. I'm amazed at how clean and safe this place is.

The most dangerous part of Singapore for me is crossing the road. As a child I was taught to look both ways when crossing. Left then right, then left again. In Singapore if you look left first you're gonna get hit by the car coming at you from the right. (The drive on the left side of the road here)

The reason Singapore is so safe is because of how strict their rules are. When you get off the plane you are handed a customs form to fill out to enter the country. On the back of the customs form is a notice about drugs. The penalty for dealing drugs in any capacity in Singapore is death. DEATH! If you threaten harm with anything that can be used as a weapon during a robby...DEATH! So if you hit a guy over the head with a loaf of bread and take his gum, then get caught, you will be put to death.

That would never happen though because they don't sell gum in Singapore beacuse it is illegal to chew it. If you get caught chewing gum here you get a fine, if you get caught spitting the gum out, that is considered at least littering and you face a possible caning. It can be classified as vandalism wich carries a prison sentence and caning.

Caning is the fun one to talk about. Me and a couple of co-workers took the time yesterday to talk to the locals about caning. We really wanted to see one happen, but learned that they are done in private. The use a long bamboo rod that is sharpened to a point and then dipped in warm water. You drop your drawers to expose your bare bottom. They cover your kidneys and calfs with rubber pads, if they strike you in the kidney during the caning there is a likelihood of death.

After each strike of the cane a doctor has to inspect the area to be sure that you are fit to take another strike. If you are unable, you are returned to your cell to wait until you are able to take more strikes until your sentence is fulfilled. Those who get caned usually can't do anyhting but lay on their stomach for a month. It is safe to say that repeat crime in this country is almost zero.

Needless to say these people don't play around. To be honest I'm pretty fond of it. At home you got all these people freaking out over whether or not you should spank your kid with your bare hand.

Pictures below (not pertaining to caning)...

This is what visibility turns into when it rains here. You can comapre to the picture of downtown from my previous post. Being from the Northwest I thought I new rain. This is a completely different monster.

This is the Merlion. Half lion half Mer. On the trip over my co-workers kept telling me about the Merlion but I thought they were playing with me. Turns out Singapore means Lion City. When settlers first got to the area they encountered lions, since Singapore is an island they figured they must have first had the bottom half of a fish and the Merlion was born.

This is the canopy that goes over a mall about the size of Washington Square in Beaverton. Thing is while Washington Square is a mall of retail shops, this is a mall made up entirely of bars. And since there are so many bars next to each other the competition is super fierce and each bar tries to differentiate itself, the result is that every bar is a theme bar. One bar we passed you sat in a wheel chair and drank your drink from an IV bag. Believe it or not there was also a Hooters, counterintuative to have a Hooters in Asia if you ask me.

Sinapore

In case you didn't know, I'm in Singapore right now, and it is absolutely amazing! The flight over was slightly unpleasant. A little inside information about me and fears. Two things in particular that scare me are tight enclosed spaces, developed as a child when siblings would hide me in the dryer during hide and go seek, or brothers who would like to wrap me up in blankets so tight that I couldn't move me arms at all and then sit on me. The other is flying. I don't like it all that much. When I really think about it my problems with flying are exlcusive to three things. Take-off, landing, and turbulence. This can be a very small percentage of the flight, but I've been on flights where it was the majority.

My first leg of the trip to get over here in Singapore was Portland to Narita which is the airport just outside of Tokyo Japan. It was over ten hours long, and thankfully there was no turbulence what so ever. It was honestly probably the most peaceful plane ride I've ever been on. When I first boarded I noticed that there was a family of four across the aisle from me. The two children were young and I was highly concerned about their ability to keep it together for 10 hours. I was really impressed they did awesome, and the youngest only broke down once and it was only for a few minutes.

I was seated next to Ivan Drago the russian boxer from the Rocky movies who killed Apollo Creed and then Rocky handed him his lunch in Rocky IV. It wasn't really Ivan Drago from the movies but I took a picture of him so you can see for yourself how much he looked like him.------------------------------------------------->

Ok you got me, not really a picture of the actual guy I sat next to but serieously the guy looked exactly like this except he was wearing a turtle neck sweater. He said 5 words the entire 10 hours, and they were either yes or no. He didn't have a decernable accent, but he could have been German, or Russian, and not have been a strong english speaker.

About 5 hours in I offered him a chocolate chip cookie so as to loosen him up a bit. I wanted to know how it felt to kill a man with your bare hands. He looked at me shook his head and gave a grunt and looked staright ahead and did nothing. He wouldn't make eye contact with me for the rest of the trip. I decided I didn't like him all that much after he kept pushing my arm off the arm rest when I was asleep.

Posted below are a few other pictures I took when I first arrived at the hotel. First; the hotel is the Ritz-Carlton and it is incredible. Second; I wish you could feel the humidity in these photos. I landed at 12:30am on Wednesday (Asia time) That is Tuesday morning for you American readers. It was 86 degrees with about 85 percent humidity. I took a bunch more last night when I got to get out and see the city some more but I haven't been able to load them onto the puter yet. I will share them later on during the trip. For now please enjoy this humble offering.

This is the view from my room. It is the downtown proper of Singapore, but really the whole city, which is also a nation, is urbanized. If you go to the Zoo in Singapore they have horses, cows, and chickens there because seeing such an animal in this place is impossible.

This is directly across the street from the hotel. It is the temporarly national stadium while they renovate the old one. The soccer field floats on the harbor. I thought that was really really cool. Also this was a very overcast day, but it was 90 degrees out that day. Its so wierd seeing that color of sky and sweating profusly.

Christmas Tree

Growing up in our family was a pleasant experience.

The exception being the cruelties that my brother put me through. Like dressing me in full football gear-pads and helmet-and him and his friends taking turns blowing me up! I thought it was so cool that I got to play with my big brother, looking back I think I got suckered! He got his though; his son looks exactly like me! Who's the sucker now!

During the holiday season I've been reflecting on Christmases past. My younger older sister reminded me of one the other day about the Christmas tree. Throughout my childhood my mother always went through the trouble of decorating the house. Looking back it has become clear to me that she did it for the kids more than herself. Now that we have all grown up the decorations are much more low key...and they match, very little matches when you have kids I think.

Whenever it came time to decorate the tree she would get out the hundreds of ornaments; so many ornaments. When we got done with the tree it looked like over worked mule. A few that still stand out in my memory; disco ball, candy canes made out of beads that I think we might have made in Sunday school (?), teddy bears sitting on blocks with the first letter of our names on them, a spider made from pipe cleaner, and all of the kids "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments.

Tradition had always been that we would take turns putting an ornament on the tree. This had been more difficult during my middle school years due to my two oldest siblings being in college. So the Christmas of my freshman year of High School the tradition changed drastically. We did not take turns putting ornaments on the tree. My mother had always wanted a "pretty" tree like what you see in the magazines. Her wanting that didn't bother me all that much, would have been nice to maybe put one ornament on the tree, but whatever I got over it.

She decided to flock the tree and only put silver and gold ornaments on the tree, meaning no bears on blocks, or spiders made out of pipe cleaner allowed; all of which had become synonymous with Christmas. It all looked very nice, very professional, like it belonged on the glossy pages of a magazine, but it also felt odd. What was tragic was that I had a better chance of touching that Christmas tree in the magazine than the one in the living room of where I lived.

It was only a year before that my sister and I assisted in placing hundreds of ornaments on the tree. Now the tree had become what my mother called a "no no" (or is it "no-no"? Freaking hyphens! When do I use you?) To a small extent it felt like Christmas had almost passed me by that first year of the new tree. In my life it had been a stable occurrence, and there was no warning of a change on the horizon. It just happened one day. Compounding the issue was the rule that under no circumstances was anybody allowed to touch the tree.

10 years later(<--holy crap!) and at 24 years old I still couldn't touch that tree and get away with it. The tree has become an extension of my mother. She can be on the other side of town and if you touched it she would know. You may be thinking that the "no touch" rule is soft, and mainly used as a scare tactic. To those I would challenge you to go to my mother's house and touch her tree. I would bet money that she would be very polite and not mention anything about it but you could sense that something was bothering her. You would never think it was because you touched the tree. I guess it all turned out to be a good lesson because I learned that the only time the Christmas tree belongs to the guy is when it is still connected to the roots.

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One little random slightly weird thing to think about. How much more difficult and complicated would Christmas become if trees pooped? Watering the tree is enough of a hassle, throw in having to clean up its poop and that is a deal breaker for me!