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.:)
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