It’s 1 am, and I still can’t fall asleep. I’m still hyper since I went to Sim Lim in Little India today and bought a wireless router (S$85) and a PCMCIA (S$53) card for my laptop, along with an Imation 512mb flashdrive (S$65), headphones with mic (S$6) and a webcam (S$30). Everything cost S$283, or roughly close to Php 7,000. Not bad, I think, considering the router goes for around Php5,000 in the Philippines. I think I got a pretty good deal. SimLim is a gadget freak’s heaven, it’s 4 floors of electronics: cameras, computers, video games, phones, you name it, they have it! I bet Sam could stay there a whole day and I’d have to drag him out at closing time. Speaking of which, I am damned proud of myself because I installed the wireless router and everything else all by myself without any help! I didn’t even cause a short! I predicted that I was going to call Sam in the middle of everything and wail at him to please help me. But NO! I figured it all out by myself! So in about an hour and a half, I had everything installed, including the webcam and earphones and mic! This is a very big deal for someone who is scared of the vending machine because it might eat up the coins! Hahahahaha!
My sister, who is based in Bangkok and I talked via Skype for like 20 minutes and later, Sam for more than an hour. The connection was pretty clear, and of course, the webcam was a wonderful bonus! Ahhhhh, the wonders of technology! I was thinking it must have been really horrible for the OFW’s ten years ago to have to rely on snail mail and ridiculously expensive phone calls to contact their families. Now, with email, cellphones and the PC to PC calling, super tipid na! Eew, I sound like an ad!Anyway, it was finally great to be able to surf in the sala while watching TV , and to be able to access internet even here in my bedroom.
It’s pretty good here in Singapore. Everything is so obssessive compulsive—it’s all so organized! The buses, trains, the streets, everything! It’s really clean, and everything is just so ayos! The people are really disciplined (or maybe just scared of being fined). And walang police sa kalye, ha! It’s a huge change from Manila which is dirty and unsafe. Here, kahit you go out walking at ten PM, you won’t get scared of being mugged. And the lingua franca is pretty much English, though sometimes, you have to listen carefully because they talk very rapidly, and they have some expressions, like "So how?" (Pa’no na yan?) and "Can! Can! Can!" (Pwede!) and others. Patients often ask if I am Filipina, and when I ask why they said that, they say it’s because I have a twang. I think our English is American, theirs is British. We speak more clearly, and we enunciate our syllables more.
More often, too, you can’t tell a Malaysian or Indonesian from a Filipino until they speak. Sometimes, I get mistaken for a Singaporean, and the patient speaks in rapid-fire Mandarin! Yikes!Problema lang here, there’s always a smell. Yup, bad smell! I don’t think I’ve ever ridden a bus/train where I didn’t catch a whiff of something stinky! My housemate is right, our country is Third World, but you will rarely encounter really bad body odor! And the restaurants have a smell. I still can’t figure out what herb that gives that odor.
The training’s pretty good too, a mix of clinical and research work (which is clinical rin naman), and it’s great that I got a temporary license to operate. And, my boss will always be with us at the OR! I’m learning how to use the ultrasound biomicroscope and the OCT, which are now both important in the diagnosis of Glaucoma.
And don’t get me started on the food! Singaporean food deserves, like, ten paragraphs on its own.
With all of this, I miss my family terribly. With Peew in Bangkok and me here, it’s just Takwe in Manila, and he isn’t even based at home. I’m just glad my parents aren’t sickly, and that I am just three hours away. I miss Sam too. At first, I was crying everytime he called, that he was saying, "Honey, don’t cry na when I call, after nalang, it’s mahal e!" The jerk! :) After seeing him everyday, it was like quitting smoking cold turkey not seeing him at all! Suddenly, no Sam na! But he’s been great, and really supportive with me being away. He said that he purposedly proposed before I left para I knew he had every intention of marrying me. I look at my ring all the time, and just smile thinking about our future :)
Well, so that’s how it’s been for me in my first ten days in Singapore. I haven’t had the craving for Mama’s sinigang and callos, and Razon’s halo halo yet pa naman. I’m just absorbing and enjoying everything that comes my way in the meantime. Yup, embracing Singapore and plowing through my one year, head on.
