Sentosa Island Songs of the Sea and Vivo

What can I say about Sentosa Island? It's a "tourist attraction." Here's me along with all the other video cameras. We're sitting on benches looking at toward the beach. There are live performers singing and dancing on the beach. Out across the water a short ways is a mock fishing village up on stilts.



Then we took the train one stop to Vivo City and had a snack.



Vivo City is one of the giant shopping malls with all the expensive international brand names. The food court was cutesy new, but made to look old food stalls. I tried Laksa, a Malay coconut curry with noodles dish.






I learned a little more about taxis. On the top of the cabs it says "For Hire," "On Call," or "Hired." If the queue is long, as it was here, and there aren't many taxis, you can call one. You pay an extra S$2.50 to $4. You get the taxi number. It shows up with "On Call" in the little taxi sign on the roof, and the taxi number flsshing. So when it arrives people know you aren't jumping ahead of them in the line and you know which cab is yours. They dropped me off and went home.

Meeting WX's Parents and Sons

Monday morning, April 28, 2008 Singapore.

After lunch yesterday, WX and I got a cab to his flat at the National University of Singapore where he's a professor. We originally met in 1990 in Beijing (I think) where he was a lecturer at People's University and I was visiting with a group of students from Hong Kong where I was teaching for a year. Eventually, he made it to Anchorage to get his MPA at UAA and then he went on to the University of North Carolina to get his PhD. Then he got a job in Singapore.


He and his wife XR, who also studied in Anchorage, now have two sons. Most exciting was finally getting to meet WX's parents who are living with them here in Singapore.




He and his wife XR, who also studied in Anchorage, now have two sons. Most exciting was finally getting to meet WX's parents who are living with them here in Singapore. We took a group picture, but I think all the squirming and fussing before hand makes for a better picture.
Then XR and WX and I went to Sentosa Island, an artificial island that is now a tourist attraction, with beaches, a water and light show, cable cars, golf courses, private residential plots, etc. We had a snack at one of the beach restaurants and then went to the water and light show. Kind of touristy, but it was nice to sit and talk in the evening along the water.


I got to swim this morning before breakfast and now I'm headed for lunch with WX and some other faculty at the University. J has his exam at 2, then later we'll have dinner with some of his classmates.

Sending Death Certificates to the Election Commission

I noted recently that it appeared there were more registered voters than voting age people in Anchorage. Here's a short piece in today's Straits Times from the The Star/Asia News Network:

Kuala Lumpur: The Election Commission has appealed to family members of registered voters who have died to submit death certificates of their deceased kin to help in the "clean up" of the electoral roll.
The commission said that the updating of the roll was a continuous and ongoing exercise, which required assistance from the public.

This is also an issue in Alaska. Given that everything is electronic these days, and much of it online, it would seem the computer folks at the State of Alaska should be able to figure a way to check the death certificates against the voter roles and purge them without asking people to notify them.

Also in the paper was a piece on how people try to get public housing in areas they most desire in Singapore. You have to register with the Straits Times to read it, but you can also read it here.

I realize that in these days of the geographically challenged, not everyone knows where Kuala Lumpur is. So, if you know what country KL is the capital of, please post it in a comment. Your prize will be knowing that you helped others gain knowledge. (The Straits Times is a Singapore Newspaper)

Busy Day in Singapore

Sunday, April 27, 2008, almost midnight. Up today early to beat the heat. Yeah, right. We were up early, but we didn't beat the heat.

View from J's apartment.

We left about 8am for what turned out to be about a 3 hour walk. J. lives in an affluent section of town. Although most of Singapore lives in public housing, there is also private housing. Since J was going to school, but had a dog with him, he had to live in private housing which is considerably more expensive. He's in a building scheduled to be demolished and replaced with more high end stuff. So the three bedroom apartment has been divided into three different apartments. He and his roommate are still spending 10 times what we paid for our much smaller and less fancy apartment in Chiang Mai.

It was Sunday morning early, so not many people out yet.

I could hear some church sounding music up ahead and sure enough, there in the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd set up in 1849 or so were people at Sunday morning service.

This is old Raffles Hotel, one of the few things I really remember from my last trip to Singapore (in 1968 or 69), but this is now an arcade and not what it used to look like.

Cricket practice was going on not far away.

Singapore has become a very phallic city since I was here last.

The statue of Sir Thomas Raffles reminded me a lot of Anchorage's Captain Cook statue. But there were four signs - one in English, one in Chinese, one in Malay, and one in an Indian subcontinent language.

The Singapore River, a center for tourists. These boats ply the river in the tourist trade.

Kona entertaining a Chinese tourist.

Despite the spiritual dominance of money here, there are still people who hedge their bets with offerings to other gods.



I stepped into a super market to see how much more the mangoes were than in Thailand. I couldn't quite figure it out.
Then we had breakfast in an old little coffee shop that had various kinds of foods. We chose the Indian Roti Prahtas.
All the cars coming into the downtown section of Singapore, if I got this right, have to have one of these meters in their cars because driving into downtown is restricted.
The ERP sign has readers on it, as you can see in the picture below, to record in the car meters every time the enter and exit the city,






When we got back to the apartment there were phone messages from WX, a former student of mine, who now teaches here in Singapore. So we met him for lunch in a giant mall and then he and I got in line for a taxi here while J went back to study for tomorrow's, (well, it's now today's ) final exam.

First Views of Singapore

My son met with me a Singapore packet including some money, guidebook, maps, transit pass with S$25 (about US$20), and a chocolate chip cookie. Here we're changing trains.
Just out of the Somerset train station onto Orchard Road. Then we walked up a street that has 1920's style houses still on it to J's apartment - on the seventh floor in a much more Western modern apartment than we had in Chiang Mai.
Among other things on the bulletin board in the lobby is this wanted poster for Singapore's Bin Laden who aparently escaped from prison while on a toilet break.

These two pictures are the view from the balcony of the apartment building across the road.
We dropped stuff off and then took Kona, the dog, for a walk. It was about 10:30pm (I lost an hour coming from Thailand) on the big shopping street Orchard Road on Saturday night. Here's a girl band in front of a mall.


And J and Kona in front of the visitors center that was still open. We went in and I got some advice on things to do while J's taking final exams.