First trip - Day 2

Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 4:22 AM

Subject: Asia - Day 2 (or maybe 3 - whole international date line thing has me messed up)

Or maybe just a lack of sleep…

Singapore is undoubtedly the cleanest city I have seen.  It is an island of about 250 square miles, only about 20 miles wide, and inhabited by 4,000,000 people.  I have yet to see so much as single piece of litter anywhere.  Much has been said about the harsh penalties for littering, but there were only 3000 arrests all of last year.  It is also very, very, VERY humid.  We are 130 miles from the equator, although it is really not that hot, in the upper 80’s.  Beautiful trees lining the roads.  Lots of new construction, mostly high rises. 

I had coffee and a croissant at the hotel for breakfast.  Leo met me in the lobby at 8:30 and took me to our Singapore office.  Leo is a native of Singapore and of Portuguese descent.  Our office is in a very high tech building – all lights are operated by motion sensors and turn on and off automatically, even in the parking garage.  In the conference room they have given me to use for the day, if I hold fairly still for about 30 seconds the lights go off.  I had to make frequent exaggerated motions to keep from sitting in the dark.  Anyone watching probably thought I had some nervous system disorder.  Which reminds me, when I got to my room in the hotel last night, I turned on the light switch inside the door, went inside, and the lights turned off 10 seconds later.  I turned them on again, and sure enough 10 seconds later they shut off again.  I tried one of the lamps and the same thing happened.  Then I discovered the slot in the light switch by the door.  On a hunch I inserted the room key card into the slot and the lights behaved themselves.  Presumably, when you leave the room and take your key card, all the lights will go out, saving electricity.  Pretty neat system once I figured it out.

They have toll highways here that only charge a toll at peak times, and the closer to peak, the more they charge.  This encourages people to adjust their driving times to avoid peaks and reduce congestion.  Everyone has a box in their car similar to the I-Pass in Illinois to handle the payments.

A very heavy rain storm moved through around 10:00 this morning.  According to Yusoff, another person I have been working with, this is not unusual this time of year.  They have two monsoon seasons here, May through June and November through December.  They don’t get the whole it rains for two months non-stop thing, but they do get these intermittent torrential showers.  Yusoff is also a native, and is half Scottish, his father married a Malay woman. He looks completely Asian

Had lunch with Steven and Achim.  Steven is a Brit from Leister who has been here for 4 years.  Achim is a German who has been here for 11 years.  Nobody wants to leave.  Steven suggested a local sandwich shop or a food court in one of the high rise towers near by that has a variety of Indian, Malay, Chinese, and other Asian foods.  I suggested that there was no sense in going to Singapore and eating western food.  That seemed to please them.  I had Laksa, a Malay spicy noodle dish with prawns which I managed to eat with chop sticks.  Really good! 

The jet lag is really catching up with me now.  I only slept about 1 hour last night.  I was dead tired after I got my e-mails working around 3:00 AM local time.  I laid down but could not sleep until around 5:00.  The alarm woke me up at 6:00.  I know I have to keep myself up until at least 10:00 this evening if I am going to get on local time.

I may be altering my schedule slightly.  Because this is my first visit to China, they may not grant me a multiple entry visa, which is what I would need if I were to stay in Hong Kong until Sunday.  Hong Kong is officially part of China, but maintains some independence in many areas, immigration is one of those areas.  You don’t need a visa to enter Hong Kong, but you cannot cross to mainland China without one.  I will likely spend Friday night in Shenzhen and travel Saturday to Shanghai and spend the weekend there.

I am going to dinner this evening with Yusoff and another.  More later perhaps.  Below is the view from my hotel