Musings

Part II of Global Village is written on a Northwest Airlines flight flying between San Francisco International Airport and Narita International.:)

Everything’s big. Think: every meal you have is the upsized version. No need to tell the server you want the mega version of the meal. It’s the norm by default.

Tons of 1 cent coins. And no clue what to do with them. The BART rail system ticket vending machine wouldn’t accept them. Part of the problem I think lies in that price tags for every thing you want to buy is the item price before tax is included in. So, a fridge magnet with a price tag that says USD3.99 isn’t USD3.99. You’ll need to crank out the actual amount with sales tax added in because that’s what you need to pay. Which means that calculator function on your mobile finally gets some use.

If you want to be a lemming, buy an Apple. In Singapore, owning one of those fruit handphones is making a fashion statement. In the US, not having one is a fashion statement. Just about everyone who isn’t a tourist has them. I board a cable car from Market Street to The Embarcadero and I’ll count at least ten persons fiddling with their iPhones. I saw a couple of LGs, and a few Nokia E71s. But precious few Sony-Ericssons, one or two Samsungs, no other Nokia models, and hell no Motorolas. That’s smart marketing for you: partner with AT&T where you sell the iPhone for USD299 but bury each buyer with a 2 year contract. No wonder Apple doesn’t care a hoot about sales in Singapore – they don’t need to when they’re already flooded the US market with their overpriced yet under-featured toys.

The grid like street layout. Which was a great thing as it’s easy to find your way around. Roads invariably run straight and often in perpendicular angles to other roads. So, if you want to find any place, the only thing you really need to know is which roads intersect at this place. Chinatown Southern Gate? The intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue. Moscone Center South Hall? Intersection between 3rd Street and Howard Street. In comparison, street layout in Singapore is non-intuitive and if not utterly stupid. The roads at home wind, turn around, split, merge.

Australians are friendly. I’m now convinced that the Australians are some of the most friendly people around. I was always greeted with ‘hellos’ and ‘how’s it going?” whenever I was making payments for my groceries at Coles or Woolsworth supermarkets, or boarding a bus to get somewhere. I’d return the favor by waving the drivers thank you’s and goodbyes when deboarding. In San Francisco, service providers can just ignore you, and on occasion, just display nonchalant service attitudes. I was making a purchase on Friday evening for stuff that my manager had asked me to pick up, and when I inquired if it’d be possible to claim tax refunds at the airport, I got a shrug and a couldn’t-care-less “You can always try.”

At night the city wakes up. And not in the good sense. Every 15 minutes past midnight, I’d hear sirens in the distance. Either the cops are responding to yet another shooting somewhere, or an ambulance is racing to ferry an injured person to the hospital. On the day I arrived in the city, four Oakland city police officers were killed by the same felon totting an AK-47 in two separate shooting incidents. And two of the officers were SWAT – i.e. bad ass highly trained elite operatives – when they were attempting to take down the shooter. And yesterday, two women in a vehicle were shot dead in their car as they were leaving a department store. All those people whining about Singapore repressive laws, well, just try living in one of these places.

Every biker owns a designer motorcycle. There weren’t a lot of motorcyclists in the city, but the few who are all owned hyper-powered bikes that make a huge din when they go.

There’re still places I didn’t visit in this trip of course, and certainly enough for a return visit if there’s another opportunity again. But next stop in this country: hopefully it’ll be an East coast city instead then.:)

I’m writing this at the San Francisco International Airport. I arrived 2.5 hours early, got through baggage check quickly enough (though I had to remove shoes and belt), and now I’ve got 2 hours to kill before my flight to Narita International in Tokyo takes off.

Here’s a thought: after having spent 8 days in San Francisco and visited quite a few places – including all five of the city’s main attractions covered under the City Pass admission – these sights weren’t for me the true eye openers.

Running off my head: The Exploratorium had all the interactive exhibits, but the experience wasn’t refreshing. The Palace of Fine Arts just outside it had the neo-Roman-inspired architecture, but I’ve seen them in photographs before. The natural sciences museum, the California Academy of Sciences, and Aquarium of the Bay, was very well done-up, new, and had beautiful animal and marine life exhibits, but you can see the same at any done up marine aquarium exhibit. And the SF Museum of Modern Arts – well, let’s just say it takes a bit of effort for me to properly enjoy drawn art. And the Golden Gate Bridge… well, it’s just a big orange bridge, impressive as it was cruising underneath it.

The most indelible memory I’ll have of my stay here is the flock of seagulls that flew with us (blogged here). As for the other memorable experiences of the trip, here’s a list:

Listening to black dudes chat. You’ve seen and heard them on TV, but until this point I’d always thought their colloquialisms were exaggerated just for entertainment. But they *do* talk that way, especially the way in which this phrase is appended to every statement:

“You know what I’m saying?”

So if I were to transcribe a local conversation I have with the bak chor noodles seller at Hougang Mall into black dude style, it’d go like this:

“Hey brutha; give me one of those bowls of bak chor noodles. You know what I’m saying?” (Must be said with elaborate hand gestures)

“You want chili with it? You know what I’m saying?” (add more hand gestures)

“Na dawg. Just leave the chili out of the bowl. You know what I’m saying?”

“Ok, $3 then. You know what I’m saying?”

etc.

No kidding. It’s fun hearing them chat. They really are a unique culture unto themselves. And all the black dudes I met seemed friendly, though I’m sure Matt has a more informed opinion.

Italian-Americans mafiasos talk just like in The Sopranos. Like the above, I’d thought that the Italian-Americans in the show talk only that way in the show. But boy was I wrong. No wonder the TV show had no issues offing characters each episode. There’re easy replacements for characters everywhere. You could take for example any of the Italian-American limousine drivers outside my hotel, given them a few lines and a gun, and they could be the newest member of the Soprano family just released from jail and inserted into the latest episode. No speech training or makeup required. They already look and talk the part.

Crazy people everywhere. On the street, I ran into street protesters of one issue or another, doomsday soothsayers, people who’d yell at the top of their voices talking to themselves, people preaching their take of Christ to passer-bys.

Then there’s the spitting culture. People spit. They’ll collect a huge amount of whatever that’s in the throat and in a huge din, ptui out it goes.

Then the other night, while I was walking along Market Street back to my hotel at 9 pm after a networking event, the dude in front of me veered to the right, plonked himself in front of the closed entrance of a department store, and let out a steady stream at its door step.

Then this early Saturday morning when I had two hours before checking out of my hotel, I went out on a morning walk and saw three piles of clearly human shit beside a post box 50 metres from my hotel. There must had been three guys huddling together each taking a dump. Or just one guy doing a huge dump, but shifted the weight of his legs twice.

Continued in the next post!