Living Without the Bunnies

Singapore room

First impression: sweet mao this is huge!

At the door, I paused to take my shoes off, but the manager told me not to bother. That surprised me -- I thought all Asian cultures were very down on shoes inside -- but she's the boss.

My personal room is bigger than my old bedroom at home. It's over twice as big as my room in Victoria. This really surprises me -- I've heard so much about the density of cities in Asia, and I read somewhere that Singapore was either the densest (sp) or second-densest country in the world. But I guess that once you start going vertical in a big way, you get a lot of "extra" space. My room is on the 8th floor of 15, by the way.

In some ways the room (not just my bedroom, but also the dining area and living area) are too big. They look quite sparse. Sounds seem to echo a lot and I felt like I was being really noisy when I was moving around at 2am, but apparently it didn't wake up anybody.

Went to sleep at about 3am, woke up at 7am. That's 3pm in the afternoon by Vancouver time, which seems reasonable as a continuation of my 26-hour sleep cycle.

I think the room is facing east. There was certainly a lot of sun. Remember that Singapore is basically on the equator, so sunrise/sunset is pretty stable at 7am/7pm. There's a lot of traffic on the street outside -- maybe a bit more than Canada Way (at home). Maybe the idea of being up at 9am every day will be easy!

Looking out the window, I was struck by the first time I wanted to use the term "riot of colours". The railing on my private balcony is light blue -- I hadn't noticed that at night. There's massive amounts of green on the sides of the road and surrounding the lake. I've commented in the past that my (old) area in Victoria makes Vancouver look pathetic; this place gives Victoria a run for its money. There's areas of bright red bricks on the road. Admittedly the lake isn't a nice brilliant blue. I think I'd rather swim in Burnaby Lake than this one.

Now for the comparison with my parents:

• Bringing sheets: Dad was half-right. The mattress has a sheet (ground sheet? bed sheet? What are they called?), but no upper sheet. I got a blanket (as expected), but I'm not certain if I'd use it.
  When I arrived at the room, I was going to take off another mark from Dad on this one since I wouldn't need a sheet, but it felt too weird to try to go to sleep without any cover.
  I didn't think about what "30 degrees C" meant. Remember those days in the summer where you feel overdressed while naked? It's like that here all the time.
• Pillow: Mom was wrong, I got a pillow.
• Slippers: Dad was right, those were extremely useful on the flight, and I think I'll wear them around the apartment.
• Kimono (or whatever the male equivalent is, if that's the female one): my parents were right; my lack of one is distressing. Oh yeah, if anybody has suggestions for what type of Asian light wear I should get, please let me know. As you can tell, I don't know the basics of what the clothing is called or what gender they're for.
• Sweaters: Mom was wrong; I don't need any sweaters. The air-conditioned areas are still 21 - 23 C, which is emminently T-shirt conditions.

In summary, the room is much nicer than I expected.