Culture shock in Singapore

Imagine a Singaporean feeling culture shock in his homeland after three years away.



The first impression I got was an overwhelm of Chinese since Baltimore has a majority of African Americans.



Most of the youngsters I spotted had dyed hair with funky hairdos. I found it irritating to have my vision obscured by strands of hair!



While waiting at City Hall Mass Rapid Transit Station during evening rush hour for my polytechnic friends, waves of commuters just kept 'pouring' out and in through fare gates. I felt claustrophobic. Foreigners were aplenty.



Another change I noticed was while hunting local dishes at hawker centers, there was an increased number of Chinese nationals working behind the stalls or clearing the tables. Formerly, these were taken by Singaporeans and the elderly. I had to see who were mending the stalls first before speaking Hokkien or Teochew. At one hardware store, I asked the stall helper in Chinese and he replied that he spoke English.



I also saw a surge in the number of cars on roads. New taxi companies were established. Cars here are parked facing out while in USA, they are often parked facing in. I was also confused with traffic direction. A few times, I looked in the opposite direction from the oncoming traffic.

Things are changing fast and I felt out-of-place.

A new beginning of 2009

Since my last posting on my NYC Christmas trip, I had been busy preparing to go back to Singapore for a holiday after two years away.




By shifting my flight date from Jan 5 to Jan 10, I saved USD$240 and I had more time to settle administration for the period that I would be away.


Fortunately, my flight from Baltimore to Detroit was smooth with no delay due to bad weather. However, it was snowing at Detroit and we had to wait one hour in the plane for ground staff to spray anti-freeze chemicals on the exterior of the plane. Thereafter, it was a long 13-hour flight to Narita, Japan.




As we were delayed for one hour at Detroit, I had little time left for the connecting flight to Singapore. Worse, we had to go through security screening again. I wondered why since we had passed security. Anyway, I managed to get on the connecting flight in the nick of time and it was another 7-hour flight. I tried to adjust my biological clock 13-hour ahead by staying awake watching three movies.



The plane touched down at 12.35am on Jan 12, Mon and I was surprised to see Debbie and her family waiting for me. We had arranged that I would take a cab to her place to sleep for the night since I wanted to surprise my mum in the day. I managed to recover one of two checked-in luggage at the carousel and reported the other as missing.

When we were about to drive off from the airport car park, I got a call informing me that there was a black bag with my luggage tag. I was puzzled since mine was a blue nylon bag. Upon claiming it, it was torn and wrapped up inside a black garbage bag which explained why I could not recognise it.

We had seafood hor fun and fish soup from Tian Tian Seafood Store for supper and I slept at 3am plus. I woke up at 7.30am and was hungry. Luckily, there was a key left in the door for me to get back in. I ate wanton mee, four zui chuay (rice cake), one you tiao and two cups of coffee. This habit of eating various dishes at one meal was repeated till today. I had gained 3 kg (6.5 lb) within nine days.

As for the surprise, I lied to my family that I would arrive on Jan 19 instead of Jan 10. In the afternoon, I called up my mum to chat with her, giving her the impression that I was still in USA. After hanging up, I immediately went to the door and took the candid shot of her surprised look. She was speechless and only said, "You, you, you ...." (in Teochew). Haha... I also got to see my nephew, Maximus who could recognise me since I last saw him at age two.

In summary, I had ate a lot of local dishes, drank lots of concentrated coffee-o and caught up with friends. My daily schedule included swimming at least 40 x 50m laps in the morning and running for 30 minutes in the evening to slow down my weight increase. I have three more weeks of eating and basking under the sun before I head back to the cold bitter winter. Till then, I am just enjoying myself back home.

Look out for River Hong Bao pictures soon.