Love, Hate, Name Something You Ate VII by jima

• One thing I love about living in Singapore is...
  ...all the great ready-made friends in the expat community. Singapore boasts expatriates from around the world, and we have new friends from Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, the UK, ... the list goes on and on and on. Being new and alone in Singapore makes us all happy for any chance to make a new friend. Here you're willing to go to a party thrown by a couple you only met briefly through a mutual friend; to go out for a beer with a new co-worker "fresh off the boat"; to have dinner with folks you've never met, yet know intimately through their blog.
  
  I haven't had this many long and involved conversations with this many new and interesting people since my first year in college. While this can be a bit overwhelming and exhausting, especially to an introvert like Venitha, to me it's great fun and one of the biggest attractions of life in Singapore.
  
  
• One thing I hate about living in Singapore is...
  …the time difference from the US. 7:30am calls, 10:00pm calls, staying up late to sit on hold on my health insurance company's support-line, getting up early to catch someone in the office in Ft Collins before the end of his work day. At any time, I can tell you the time in any US time zone without a second's thought, and man, am I sick of it.
  
  
• A new thing I ate recently is...
  …Lo Hei. This Chinese New Year dish is a "tossed salad" - literally. The plate is placed in the center of the table, and everyone digs in with chopsticks to lift part of the salad high into the air, calling out wishes for the new year while letting it fall. It's fun and a tad messy, or at least it was with my co-workers.
  
• Something I recently bought is...
  …orchids. One bonus to living in Singapore is the low cost and easy availability of tropical flowers that you'd pay a small fortune for back home. Two large bunches of orchids ran me SGD $10, about USD $6. US readers are now thinking, "Six dollars! That's awesome!" Singaporean readers are now thinking, "Wah! Ang moh, he got Ali Baba, lah!"
  
  
• Singlish o' the day:
  Ali Baba: to steal or cheat.
  
  

jima