Raining on my Parade

Marine Parade that is. Two days in a row that I have put off going to this place that I want to go 'cos the standard tropical 'afternoon' downpour has come in late morning or mid-day.

Okay, notes on two things; Firstly the AWARE thing, can't help but notice that as the dust settles and we finally get some more accurate information that it seems that the 'take over' was by somewhat more 'normal' women - as in not rabid man-hating lesbian feminists. That appears to be it, upset that AWARE was using their position and government funding to indoctrinate young girls at school that lesbianism was 'okay' and filling the heads of vulnerable women with anti-male propaganda, it appears that a bunch of 'normal' or 'real' women joined the organisation and took over. Yah! Good for them, says I. Let's have some more of that please. Secondly; the papers (online) are still full of 'Obama's first 100 days' but what has he done??? There are no specifics given, he has talked a lot but he has delivered nothing. This obviously sets the tone for his continued presidency.

Have applied for a few more jobs, but nothing has eventuated yet. Am getting seriously aware that end of May is the deadline for my work pass, so if I don't get something in the next few weeks then I will have to take my passport back to the Ministry of Manpower and get the PEP voided. Then, of course, back to Australia and at least twelve thousand a month until I have enough saved up to try Hong Kong.

Have found myself writing a fair bit lately. And writing comedy sketches I might add, crack me up some of them do. An interesting form of escapism or what?

Rant Time

I keep forgetting that Singapore is NOT an advanced developed nation.

You know, a place where so many people do not wash regularly, will drop their trousers and take a crap in an elevator, spit in the 'coridor' in apartment buildings (okay, HDBs), and leave parisites crawling around seats in public parks, cannot be called advanced. It's kind of like half the population is civilised, and the other half really belong in a dirt village in some jungle.

But also reinforcing this rant is the fact that so many shops here do not take credit cards. This is really hard to deal with. Even in Eastern Europe barely out of the dark age of socialism takes credit cards. No, not Singapura, "will that be cash or NETS?".

I just went to the Asus Service Centre, an official Asus Service Centre, not somebody else servicing Asus laptops, and they wanted cash or nets. Can you believe this? They could not take a credit card.

This is only millimetres away from clam shells. That is how backwards this is. Close to a thousans dollars and they want cash. A corner store or deli I can understand asking for cash, a computer centre no.

This is my fault, I acknowledge this, I just keep forgetting that this is NOT an advanced nation, it is still dragging itself into the late twentieth century, it has a long way before it can be considered in the twenty first.

Ponder This

It's a shop.

It sells fish.

It's called a fish shop.

...

How hard can it be?

Enlightenment

I have learnt something.

If you put your fist into the screen of your $3,000 laptop it goes funny and doesn't work anymore.

Fortunately I have this $2,000 laptop as backup; but the screen resolution, cpu, and graphics aren't as good, so it isn't as good for games. Okay for working though.

Why?

Partly 'cos it was after 7, as in pm, and I hadn't eaten all day.
Partly 'cos too many things had gone wrong in both IE and Firefox and my patience had worn out.

Now I am going to have to spend a heap to get the fucker fixed.
Pooh!
Total Pooh!

Now I am going to go for a walk along the beach park, after 9 now.
Have eaten a bowl of cereal, am typing too fast for this piece of shit to keep up with, it keeps thinking that I have hit key combos and want some system crap opened.

Oh well.
It is all perhaps part of (oh, dear, just smashed $100 gaming mouse into wall) my getting so stressed, worried about what is, or rather what the fuck is NOT, happening to me (and my life).

Wanted to go to one or two temples tomorrow.
Discover something about Chinese culture, religion, philosophy.
Start building some networks.

Now will have to go to Funan to take laptop to Asus.

It is one of those days where I would kill if I could.
Preferably a god if I could get my hands around one's throat!

A Time to Forget

This, in MSN.SG as I logged out of msgr:

FORGIVE AND FORGET
"This is a time for reflection, not retribution. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."
-- US President Barack Obama explaining why he granted immunity from prosecution to CIA officers accused of being involved in the torture of terror suspects under the former Bush administration.

So, Obama has finished his first 100 days, which yanks make such a big deal out of, meant to show what sort of president they got. He did nothing of note, made a lot of minor screw ups, started nothing new or good, but has now done this; in one pen stroke set forever free from prosecution (except by international tribunal) hundreds of torturers, criminals, murderers. Were they too inconvenient? Now we know what Obama is.

We also know what his wife is; far too plebeian when mixing with her betters, needs a social coach in her retinue, rather than a personal make-up artiste.


I haven't blogged for a while. Tough titty, I am not a professional blogger, so there is no requirement on me that I do this regularly. Now if some young SGirl that made her living from this were to go nine days without blogging you would have reason to stop reading her site, advertisers and sponsors would have reason to withdraw their contracts. But with me, there is only me, and only when I want it to be so.

Went out to lunch with Ivy and a friend of hers yesterday. I think that maybe I should be circumspect and not enter her name across the ether. She is single, so don't jump to any conclusions, it is just that Chinese names are probably more identifiable than Anglo ones. She and I went on to have a drink and a looonnggg chat together afterwards. Very pretty woman, very feminine, soft, quiet, seemed quite personable. At start of our time alone she told me that she would have to leave soon to collect her niece, but when I reminded her of this an hour later she shrugged it off saying that there was still some time. Sweet.

My Russian girl was never heard from again. Sound typical? Certainly sounds familiar to me. Oh well, my AFF account runs out in a week. It has never delivered anything but head games, so no guessing what I will do with it, hey?

Bitch next door is getting loud again. The problem with the inconsiderate is that their inconsideracy is ingrained and they have difficulty getting out of the habit of not considering others when they make trouble.

A Change in the Air

For two nights my neighbour has been reasonably quiet.

She is somewhat noisy, but not excessively like she used to be, prior to midnight, but only far more gentle noise after midnight.

What happened?

Well the last noisy night I woke up an hour or so after her bedtime, which is 3, and moved my bed about a bit. That is, dragged it this way a bit, then that way a bit, then back again, then around again. Only for a few minutes, just to let her know what it felt like.

It was so unbelievably noisy!
I couldn't believe it. (Hence the unbelievableness of it...)
Maybe amplified by the stillness that generally prevails at that time of night.

The unstated threat was that if you keep me awake in my sleep time, then I shall retaliate and deny you your sleep.

I am guessing that she understood.

Romantic Moon

I got out of bed to write about things that I love about Singapore, and whilst my computer has been booting my neighbour has been stomping around, slamming doors, and repeatedly opening and closing her bathroom sliding door. It is going on midnight, apparently the law for noisiness kicks in at 11. She is spoiling my mood.

I wanted to visit a Taoist society on Guilemard Road; they were closed, go upstairs to find a locked metal gate. So I hoped back on the next 197 to visit the Hong San See Temple - it is dedicated to Cai Shen, see my interest? It was all fenced off for repairs. I mean it is good that they are restoring things around here, but why is everything I have tried doing lately been a total waste of time?

So I went back towards Chinatown and lunch (it was about 6:30 by the time I ate). Then I chose to walk back to Marine Parade, took a few hours, got a little concerned I might be lost after crossing the river, got sore feet and am very tired, but the walk was good for me. There were so many people out running, like half the city was practising for a marathon. Cute girls trying to stay cute, buff guys trying to get buffer, serious runners carrying loaded backpacks. I stopped to sit and watch the moon. It was so romantic, nearly full, fully visible but shining through thin cloud like a beautiful woman naked under a see-through shift.

Then along East Coast Park. There were so many truly gorgeous girls out hand-in-hand with fat, rather unattractive guys who were obviously not that well off either. This is another thing that I love about Singers; that so many girls make their relationship decisions based upon what a man is like inside. They chose men for their character, their dependability, their trust-worthiness, their personality. Obviously I do not fall into this classification yet, but it is a goal to strive for. Beautiful, beautiful girls; as gorgeous as the moon shining through thin clouds.

People just out, living, enjoying life. I honestly believe that most Singaporeans are good people. I will miss them.

I just felt that there are so many things that I really love about Singapore. I will be so sad if I do have to go in the next couple of weeks.

Noisy Neighbours and Marble Dropping

Okay, I have been doing some research and some thinking and I think I have solved one of the mysteries of HDB life; namely the neighbour dropping something like a ball late at night. It seems to be a wide-spread HDB phenomenon and is usually described as 'marbles'.

Some official comment blames water-hammer, but some independent commentators blame old aircons.

So after considering my situation I think it is the neighbours old aircon. It didn't happen for the month and a half before she moved in, and it doesn't explain the stamping and door slamming at 3am. But the 'ball dropping' would appear to be the old aircon 'relaxing' late at night, even though it is usually still turned on. With the cooling of the outside air at night the aircon has less work to do to get the same cooling effect, and as it makes adjustments accordingly the older ones can propagate pressure waves that flow back along the coolant pipes.

Apparently complaints about neighbours above dragging furniture across the floor can often be traced to the sound of lift doors travelling through the concrete. I don't know how that explains my neighbours dragging of furniture as it didn't happen before she moved in and it reduces in volume when I bash loudly on the wall.

And neither of these deals with her stamping loudly, continually opening and closing her (sliding) bathroom/toilet door, and slamming her bedroom doors. Nor does it explain the issue of the neighbour on the other side singing loudly at 2 or 3 in the morning.

But it does answer one question that was puzzling me, and that makes life a little easier.

Somewhere

Not here, not there.

I must be in some kind of in-between point. Too old, yet not old enough.

I have just been perusing groups, as in discussion groups, on Adult Friend Finder; white guy / Asian girl, young girls for older men, so on. Firstly most of the women in most of the young femmes / old guys groups were near or post menopausal age, and weirdly those girls that were young, when I check their profiles, don't like my age. When I got into some girls for guys over 50 group there were some drop dead gorgeous babes - but they only wanted guys OLDER than me! So most young femmes younger than 40 think I am too old, but for some I am not old enough. There are sweet FA that think I am just right.

(Can you explain to me why there are so many Asian guys in the group called White guys Asian girls? Let alone why most women in a group called younger women for older guys are in fact older women themselves.)

(This dead dead dead hot babe in Dubai, total honey, 'Caucasian' not that there were any face shots to show her eyes. Married, huh? would you even let her outside she is so beautiful? let alone to play with other guys! Takes all kinds I guess.)

This young girl, American, dark eyes, winked me. Normally I ignore; write to me if you want my attention, but she was cute (very girly expression on her face), so I write back and say hello. Then I notice that she blogs, so I read a bit, she complains that no one likes her but some guy was saying 'what's your issue? I say hello and you ignore me yet you say no one is being friendly' - guess what? she (who winked me) never responded to my 'mail. Go figure.

So, I have mostly found AFF to be head games. But since the account runs out in a couple of weeks I thought I'd get more experimental with it.

Oh, my Russian girl has moved our comm to private email, and sent me a couple more pics (nothing explicit). Still, I am wondering if the sixth letter will be the "I have fallen in love with you!" and the next one asks for two thousand dollars so she can fly to be with me as I have come to expect from Russian contacts outside of good agencies. And even in good agencies most of the girls just want to be taken out to dinners that would cost them a months salary - I know; been there, done that.


I have been again seriously considering that I will now probably be heading back to Oz sooner or later. My bid to build a life in Singers seems to have failed the start point. I am so sad. Seriously! This makes me really unhappy.


On to the subject of blood-suckers.
But firstly a little side note; strange, maybe funny, or just stupid? that Singapore (as in the government) is so hot on mosquito control and yet the HDBs that house 85% of the population are built without insect screens on the windows. Again, go figure.

I may have mentioned a post or two ago that I had been bitten, or rather feasted upon, by something. Initially I thought mozzies, but then the bites got too itchy, with a sharpness to them that was more like flea bites. I thought that maybe when walking the beach at night I had rested at some bench where some flea-bitten feral moggie had lay and thus collected some. No, I sprayed the place out with mozzie spray, that usually kills fleas, but I kept getting bitten. So I pulled my bed apart, all of the sheets off, all of the cases off pillows, the covers off quilts, and shook each vigorously (notice 'vigour' versus 'vigorously'?). Result? Bugs!

As in bed bugs, or something like that. Much smaller than the kind you get in Western countries. Squished three of them. So then I put all the manchester in the washer and have sprayed room and mattress with surface spray.

So, my theory now is that this bench upon which I sat to gaze at the sea was slept upon by some itinerant who put his bag where I put my feet. This is how they move, they travel in back packs and bags put next to beds, then some stay in the bed and some return to the bag. So next person that uses this bed and puts his bag next to it will not only get fed upon during the night, but will also take some with him. Also, the reason that they are in the bed is because cheap hostels don't change the sheets, they just remake the bed.

So yeah, this guy had long enough before the police moved him on to make the beach park unsafe for the rest of us.

Kind of makes me think twice about going back. Brings home that Singapore is not that clean a place, sure, lots of places look clean, but East Coast Park is meant to be clean, instead it is infested with parasites care of the local hobos.

Yech

Now I am paranoid; keep thinking every twich is a bug crawling on me and every itch a new bite.


Got to see my noisy neighbour today. I was expecting a Chinese woman, since I was expecting it to be the owner of the chemist downstairs. Instead it was a Muslim woman, Malay. So my noisy neighbour on one side is a Malay Muslim and my noisy neighbours on the other side are Malay Muslims. So much is clear now.

I didn't speak to her. What was I going to say? "Excuse me, are you the bitch that keeps me awake until 3 every morning?" I wasn't exactly in the mood for it. Maybe sometime when I am totally ropable.


So you see, all in all, not a happy few days.

Why Does This Need a Title?

Ho hum. I am going to get bored soon.

I have a mosquito (or something) that is feasting on my blood every night and leaving me with itchy spots. I have totally sprayed out the entire flat and there is a plug-in mozzie poisoner thing near the foot of my bed. What's going on? Apart from that there were no Baygon refills at the Giant store so I got Mortein - their refills fit each others plug-in devices.

I have just done another round-up of Singer blogs. Honestly, most of the ones by guys are so dull (as undoubtedly mine is as well). Most of them only post four or five lines every few days, and they are about bicycle riding, or marathon running. Yawn! Half of the female blogs in Singers seem to either be man-hating lesbians or man-hating feminists.

Did I tell you that every game I bought in the last six months has been crap?
F.E.A.R. 2, Dawn of War 2, Red Alert 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 (bad code, but otherwise fun game); even UT3 is a letdown - it might boast better graphics, but the game play is essentially the same and where are all of my favourite mutators??? Also, why are the UT3 maps taking so long to come out? Only dribs and drabs. Everybody is going for improved graphics and totally ignoring gameplay (except Stalker 2, that was same graphics, just mega-buggy).

I don't know about you, but I keep getting girls trying to post testimonials to my Adult Friend Finder profile. They are just waffle with their yahoo or msngr address, these people don't know me. Why would I approve such crap? Why do they think that anybody would be their vehicle for free advertising? Seriously, these prostitutes need to be a bit more realistic. Also, I have had a rash of young girls (early twenties) winking me, and I have written back to a few and guess what? Nothing! Uhhh??? What's with this? Why comm me (communicate with me) if you are not going to talk? Imagine standing at a bar and a pretty young girl walks by and says "hello" and winks at you then keeps walking on. Maybe you follow her and smile and say "hi" and then she screams and calls the cops. I acknowledge that I truly do not understand bitches.

I was reading some Dilbert cartoons online and one was about no-work guy wearing noise cancelling headphones to a meeting. Noise cancelling headphones - that's what I need to deal with the bitch next door! I had been thinking about getting a mike and a speaker and programming in a counter-noise routine myself, but how much hassle would that be. So I did some looking; huh??? They are all something like $500!!!! So I try eBay, wooh hoo! Can get them for less than a hundred including postage, but good brands are less than two hundred. Most of them only cancel out between 75% and 85% of background noise, some claim 90%, Denon claims up to 99%, but then Denon is probably the best audio brand (IMHO), so I would expect them to be better than the others. Unfortunately most are in-ear or on-ear, I would so much rather over-ear. For me all in-ears are too big for wearing for more than an hour or so, they start to hurt. And same with on-ears; they start to get painful after an hour or two. Could I sleep with earphones on? It would probably force me onto my back, thence to choke on my own tongue as it fell down my throat. Honestly, one of the worst things about getting old is that I am snoring more. (That, and the having to get up in the middle of the night to pee. But that's only 'cos I have so much trouble getting to sleep, so getting back to sleep takes too much away.)

All of which highlights how miserable life is right now. I have two months of my rental contract here until the six month point for the diplomatic clause, plus a one month break fee; so five and a half thousand to pay if I want to pack up and go back to Oz. Still, if I can arrange a contract to be returning to then it won't be too much hassle, and at least I will have both an income and something more meaningful to do with my time. Then I can work for a year or a two, build up some reserves (more than I had for the try here), and go try Hongkers. 'Cos I am seriously considering that Singers was a bust. Wasted too much time in this place.

Of course, I could ask why do I exist at all?

The Day After Yesterday

Hi, just keeping you in the loop.
Just posting to keep my blog alive.
Absolutely nothing has happened to comment on.
But I will still. After all, this is a commentary...

Did some ironing. Did four shirts before getting into the ones that I brought back last time I was in Oz. Decided they needed washing again, so saved from doing more ironing. Have noticed that the kitchen floor drain, which sits vertically like a semi-circle below the kitchen sink, is making a little puddle every time the kitchen sink is emptied.

It is getting hotter. It is 28 inside rather than the usual 26, and my air-con is set at 23 rather than the usual 25. Something that I will just have to get used to.

Have tried a new protein drink, EAS, got from GNC. I am a member so I get them 2-for-1, but chocolate whey protein was only available in the larger, 5 pound, containers, so two of them. Didn't want strawberry as I don't like artificial strawberry. The GNC brand vanilla is okay, and okay to mix with chocolate. But I wanted to try a different brand, it was slightly cheaper, but the taste is not as good as the GNC brand. Not that any whey protein drink tastes that great, and I will be mixing this with Milo to make it palatable. That is 'Australian formula' Milo, which does not quite taste like Australian Milo, but tastes a hell of a lot better than the foreign Milo - which tastes like Ovaltine. It's kind of like comparing Vegemite (which, you guessed it, I am missing soooo much!) with something like Promite or whatever.

I would like to try the soy protein drinks, but you don't get the member's 2-for-1 deal therefore they are, effectively, twice the price. But I just won a 'buy one item at half price' draw at the GNC store - I could, therefore, try the soy protein drink. Except that I now have ten pounds of EAS whey protein drink to get through...

Am trying a new sleeping pill; a tiny little red one. It seemed to work last night, but the bitch next door wasn't too bad. I think that I might have gotten to sleep before midnight, I was certainly awake before six (as was she). It will be a minor battle to re-establish my sleeping patterns after the week-long illness threw them totally out of whack.

Have discovered that I have close to sixty thousand in my AMP super. This means that I have earned a bit over $600k in the last eight years contracting, and most of that will have come in the second half - for the last few years my income was roughly doubling every year. Now this is not an amount that will make one jot of difference to my future retirement, and with technically about twenty years to go until said retirement is officially on the cards there is no way at that rate that any decent amount to retire on could be amassed. However; if I get a job here then I have reasonable cause to use the 'never returning to Australia' clause and get my hands on it directly. In that sense it could be a useful amount. It would be more useful right now, but that is not an option - unless I lied, which I am not of a mind to do, ever.

I have at least one other super account, the one via the Hays agency, and I should get that rolled into the AMP account to simplify my life one tiny little bit.

My Adult Friend Finder account runs out late this month. A gold account and I paid for standard members to be able to contact me free. So far this has been a big disappointment, I did it on the slight chance that I could nab a girl friend before arriving in SG. Naturally that did not happen. Nor have I nabbed a girlfriend with it in the six months of being here. I thought it was running out end of last month (they gave me a free extra month) and so wrote it off in my mind, but now that it is there for that little bit longer I am actually using it differently. I am using it to contact girls (no kidding...) for friendship rather than explicitly for any sexual/emotional relationship. Just nice, sane sounding people to communicate with.

Oh, and a hot Russian babe. But that's a different story...

One of the SG blogs that I often check out is Mr Miyagi (aka Benjamin Lee) a (how shall I put this) self-gender focused guy that seems to really dislike Xianity. (I really don't like saying 'gay' because the word has a meaning in the English language that I don't want 'queers' to hijack.) Normally I find his site okay and I don't mind the anti-Xian stuff that emerges sometimes because, as you know, I totally hate Xianity. But I read a letter by a young boy to the Straits Times the other weekend complaining about a play that Mr Lee has written that makes, according to the letter writer, a lot of negative comment on Chinese women that marry Europeans (I also hate the term 'Caucasian', which is used in the letter). I had never noticed this in the Miyagi site, but I am concerned if he might be another anti-White racist that Singers seems to have so many of. I have kind of gone off Babe Logic and Sheena's Little Fragments of Time because of the anti-men stances they sometimes take. After all, why read a blog by someone that doesn't like you?

Did not like F.E.A.R. 2, Red Alert 3, or Dawn of War 2.
Went back to playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and Dawn of War 1 SoulStorm.

Don't like either Stalker game once it goes linear. You know; when you start chasing Strelok and you can't go back into previous maps. I would like a free roaming type of Stalker. There is space on the strategic map for sixteen game maps, but they used less than half in each game. So, all sixteen regions and no over plot, just stalking, mercing, and the factions war.

I met this Duty party and noticed that one of them was carrying an MG; I think it is a PKM (with a 100 round belt in a clip-on), anyhow when you wipe out the army base at the start of the Cordon map you can't take the MG. So I thought, why not try here...
So I shot him in the head at point blank range and 'F'ed to pick it up.
Bingo! Worked, except that the rest of his party were shooting me...
So I reloaded (I had 'F5'ed just before this, of course), went off to do something with Freedom, then tried hunting out another Duty party with an PKM.
None anywhere!
Minutes before it was like every three man Duty team had one PKM, now suddenly none of them did. Just when I decided I wanted to single-handedly take on Duty. (I didn't join Freedom; well I quick saved, joined Freedom to find out what that was like, then quick loaded to go take on Duty by myself.)

I noticed that this time the bandits in the Garbage were hostile to me, whereas last time I played I could enter their base and trade. If you wipe out everyone in the base then the traders vanish, but then some more bandits mysteriously appear at the back of the shed in a few minutes and the base is back in operations again.
Also, I wiped out the Cordon army base a few times. It is a great source of rifles, and therefore a good way to build up some cash. But it only replenishes three or four times, after that it stays empty :(

As for the benefits of the last patch:
It made no difference to the sky going vomit when you enter the Red Forest map.
I did not experience bad physics like things falling through floors, but I didn't put anything on roofs anyhow, so I wouldn't have noticed.
It introduced corrupted quick saves, which I have read about, but not experienced myself before. (Not all quick saves, only a few went bad.)
It added invisible people; you can see the icon for an important character on the minimap, but not in front of you. Quick save, then quick load, and suddenly the character is standing in front of you, and there are a lot of other people standing around that were non-existent a minute before.
So, all in all, it made no improvements that I noticed, whilst it added a few new problems. A big fail. It's like these guys are amateurs, and don't do any testing. I had no problems with the first Stalker, but the second is the worst game programming I have ever experienced.
Despite that it is a great game.
Just wish they would hire a reasonable programmer.

Back in the Saddle

Been up and about again for a couple of days.
Getting used to walking again. Had to go shopping of course - I had eaten the house out. Half way through my cold I ordered in pizzas, 2 for 1, large. That did me for breakfast and dinner for three days.

I had some very sad moments whilst so sick and feeling sorry for myself.
Like about how I turned down a $1,000 a day contract for a year to come here and chase a dream and now I have wasted six months of my life. Friends say "think about the experiences you have gained" etc., etc. But I don't think they really needed six months to live through, maybe an extended holiday would have covered that part.

At least some agencies are sending me jobs now and asking me to apply for them if I feel that they suit me. But they never mention the pay, and only tell me after I ask them that they are offering less than half what I got in Oz.


According to the MSN page when I drop out of msgr SG is launching some 'be nice' campaign. Or be considerate. Hah hah, what a joke. I have had six neighbours in my short time here and five of them were (two of those being neighbours now) are what I would have previously though impossibly inconsiderate - routinely noisy to two or three in the morning. And the way people here seem to believe that they have some need to take up most of both sides of a footpath and try and force everyone else of - or is it just because I am white?

So yeah, it is a very inconsiderate society. But also I don't think that I have experienced anywhere else where people are so unhappy with their own country. Well, not anywhere else 'advanced', I have experienced it from Eastern Europeans, all sad at how their countries are economic basket cases, but mostly they were happy with other aspects of their societies. But in SG so many people keeping moaning to me about how they hate Singapore. The last cab driver I had spent the whole trip whinging about SG, and how Australia is such a better country, wouldn't listen to me trying to get in some good things about SG and some counter-points about AU.

So many people seem to be upset by living in a pressure cooker.

I haven't worked here yet, so I can't comment too much about the work pressures. Sure most people work to after six, but they don't start till ten. Shops are open from ten to nine, so if you are running your own business then you have long hours; but that is true for independent businesses everywhere. Then again, I worked from eight to six thirty in Oz; same hours more or less, and running a shop has lots of down time, whereas a contractor gets no down time - trust me, your clients always have work to load onto you.

I suppose that I am now seeing yet another side to Singapore.

I am not too sure what purpose this serves in the grand cosmic scheme.