Date Night

One of neatest things about living in Singapore is learning about and mixing with so many different cultures. By law, you have to be tolerant of others religious beliefs. So, even though only about 15% of the population is Christian, they celebrate Christmas and I feel more comfortable and PC here saying Merry Christmas than I did working at Deer Valley Ski Resort in Utah.

The other major religions are Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. Besides celebrating and decorating for Christmas, Singapore celebrates something they call "One City, Three Festivals", which includes Hari Raya Aidilfitri for Muslims, the Mid-Autumn Festival for Buddhists, and Deepavali for Hindus. The festivals overlap and take place from August to October.

It starts with Hari Raya, which celebrates Ramadan, the month-long time of fasting for Muslims when they abstain from food and drink from dawn until dusk. Additionally, many Muslims abstain from other "pleasurable activities" during daylight hours (the song "Afternoon Delight" has no meaning during Ramadan--that's Ben's comment. I tried to tell him this is a family blog). This takes place in the Malay quarter or Kampong Glam, which we've visited before. Since we had babysitters available, I met Ben after work a couple weeks ago to head over there for the light-up festival and the start of Ramadan.

We started off the night by breaking our non-fast with some delicious grub. It was a middle-eastern restaurant. We enjoyed some humus and baba ganoush as well as a tasty egyptian salad and some fish and potatoes. Seeing as we permanently abstain from certain "pleasurable activities" we didn't take advantage of the hookah pipe to the right of Ben.

Below are a few pictures of the Sultan Mosque and the area to give you an idea of what it looks like in the evening compared to when we went before in broad daylight. It's quite beautiful. We are excited to attend some of the other activities that will be going on for the three festivals.

I really like the other building in this picture (above). I don't know what it is (hotel?), but it reminds me of the Spider-man movie for some reason.

It's lit up like this for the festival.

Fishy and Sticky Business

Our two oldest nieces, Suzanne and Sarah, are here visiting for the month of August. We're enjoying having them here and showing them around Singapore. I'll be catching up on posts over the next couple of weeks.

We have a fish farm that is just a 10-minute free shuttle ride away. We've never been so we decided it was worth a visit. Fish Spas, where the fish eat the dead skin off your feet, are really popular over here and when I discovered they had one at the fish farm for about 1/3 the price of a normal spa I thought I'd take the girls to see what all the fuss is about.

Samara didn't like it very much and only last about 30 seconds. It is insanely ticklish and we were all screaming when we first put our feet in. I wish we had a video of our screams. I think that is what really scared Samara.



There were also bigger fish that I couldn't stand. It felt like they were going to eat my feet off. Sarah liked them better though and braved both feet in the pool with the bigger fish. Suzanne gets the award for letting the small fish go at her feet for the longest. It was a fun experience, but I don't think I'll do it again too soon. It took me long time to build up the calluses on my feet that they gnawed away at.




There are all sorts of fish for sale at the farm. Take this guy, for example, who cost a mere $6,000. Seemed a bit pricy to me, which is perhaps why when the three girls ganged up on me they were able to talk me into spending $8 on these four little fish.



I must admit it wasn't too hard of a sell. They are pretty cute and it's relaxing to watch them swim around. I'm sure they'll promptly die once the girls leave and aren't here to take care of them. We each picked one out. From left to right their names are Kitty (mine), Flit (Sarah's), Lu lu (Samara's), Gordon (Suzanne's).

While I've been busy exploring Singapore culturally with the girls, Uncle Ben has been teaching them how to evade Singapore's criminal side. He took them up to Johor Bahru, Malaysia (Singapore's Tiajuana) to get all the Avatar DVDs (they brought me home Ugly Betty and I CAN'T WAIT TO watch everything I've missed) and some chewing gum. Problem was they got held up in customs, had to sign a chewing gum log and dispose of it in a special chewing gum garbage can. The DVDs they let slide as "you're allowed a certain number of pirated dvds per trip." We honestly thought you could bring chewing gum in for personal use but that you just couldn't import it or resell it. Apparently not. We've since learned a lot of interesting details about gum. Apparently, on the list given to a person when shipping things, chewing gum is in the same category as dangerous weapons. When we told someone else this they said that a local told them the reason. During the inaugural year of the MRT, someone put their gum in the wrong place on some mechanical/electrical equipment and it shut the whole system down for a day until they figured out what the problem was. It was after this incident they banned chewing gum.

Samara loves to talk. In fact there's rarely a moment when she's not talking, narrating what's going on, or asking a question just to ask a question. The other day in a taxi we had the following conversation:

S: Mimo, what's he (taxi driver) eating?
M: I don't know Samara.
S: No, mimo what's that guy eating?
M: Samara, I don't know. That's none of our business.
S: Mimo, the taxi driver is eating gum. Everyone including the driver laughs.
M: She caught you, sir. We'll have to turn you in for chewing that gum. Then I told him about getting our gum confiscated in customs. He then confirmed you aren't supposed to bring gum into the country but told us that you can buy it here if you go to a pharmacy and give them all your information including address and IC number (like a social-security number). It's so bizarre. Seriously, what are they going to do if a gum-related problem arises, track everyone down whose information they have and arrest them as suspects? When I have a bad day and want to blame Singapore or its citizens for it I totally chew gum and once I even spit it out on the street. Take that Mr. customs guy but please don't take my Ugly Betty from me.

Happy National Day!

Tomorrow marks 44 years from the day that Singapore seceded from Malaysia. It's a big celebration called National Day. They have a theme each year; this year's is "Come Together". It is amazing to think of how far Singapore has come since its secession from Malaysia and how different the two countries are. There are literally flags everywhere as you can see from the picture. Almost all the buildings are decorated with flags to some degree or another. Samara has been very keen on pointing them out to us and was delighted to have her own flags.

One of these little Buddhas is...

...not like the others.