I feel like it is a necessity to pay some tribute to the important people in my life, halfway round the globe, 8 time zones away (+1 daylight saving hour = 7 time zone at the moment), who relentlessly put up with my must-try-to-talk-for-one-hour-more-worth-it rants about my life, going non stop and most of the time boring and/or confusing. Yes, you.

I’m sorry I don’t do emails anymore. I really hardly have time for it.

Anyway, don’t think your effort is going unnoticed. I love you for that, for always being ready to talk to me, asleep or awake, boyfriend or no boyfriend. And if you are always ready to hear me out, I’m always here for you. Just a text message and your phone will be ringing. You don’t even need to call me.

I don’t suppose this is trying too hard to stay connected to home. Too hard is too harsh, in it?

Anyway, I love you I love you I love you for that.

And to finish off this warm and fuzzy entry, here is some light hearted tales from the new friends I’ve made so far:

Asians? Oriental?

See the last time I recall, Singapore IS part of South East Asia. Besides calling ourselves Singaporeans or Chinese, we can also call ourselves Asians. But here, Asian is generally reserved for people from the Middle East and maybe from India. Well, mainly (pardon me for not being exactly very politically correct) the darker ones. Chinese, Japanese and perhaps Koreans (who I have started to detest because they are really annoying) are more affectionally known as Orientals.

Pants? Trousers?

Basically, pants IS underpants. Underwear. Knickers. Panties. Anything that covers your legs, no matter what material it is made of, ranging from corduroy to denim to leather to nylon to latex, it is trousers. It also doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman or in between.

Tights? Stockings? Leggings?

Singaporean understanding of stockings are well, stockings. Here, they call it tights. What we think are tights (like bicycle tights) are known as leggings.

The banning of the chewing gum

Nobody seem to understand why chewing gum is banned. Whilst I tend to agree that it does indeed sound like the stupidest thing on Earth to ban (and it seems like we are the only country in the world who does that), I look at the walkways of the streets of London with all the chewing gum stuck and turned black like failed patterns on the ground on what should have been beautiful stone pavements, I convince myself that there is some truth in the ban (nodding my head silently at the excellence of our government, spitting the gum on the pavement, leaving my permanent mark on the street).

Crime rate is zero in Singapore

Some ridiculous bloke asked me if it is true, that there are no crimes at all in Singapore? Then, rumours has it that people who are so so restrained from these laws kind of exploded with rage and formed gangs who chop people up into pieces (which must then mean, that it cannot be zero crime rate, right?)

Capital punishment and drugs

The death penalty is such a debatable topic. Some wished England (and Ireland) has such laws, some couldn’t believe at this day and age there is still the death penalty. And when I mentioned how if you traffic drugs it’s the death penalty, they just shook their heads with a mixed look of surprise and disgust.

My comments? I think having such strict controls may be stifling, and fact is if you have never been through experience, you wouldn’t know what innocence is. Perhaps you can say if you have never lived in a country where freedom of speech is so highly regarded that they do not ID the people who lives in this country (there is no such thing as an ID card, or IC in our local context, apart from driving licenses), where binge drinking is number one in Europe, where drugs are almost legal, you probably wouldn’t think of what you have had your whole life is stifling. When there is nothing to be compared with, you wouldn’t know. Which also means don’t know anything about the world at all.

I have met people who started taking drugs at 15, sold them illegally to make money to take more drugs, got busted by parents who raid their rooms and found packs of Es, and that makes me wonder if this is the kind of lifestyle you want your kids to grow up in. Not that these people I’m talking about are now scums of the society who lives on benefits – they managed to get a decent Bachelor and some are onto their Masters and earning at least thirty thousand a year – and if I may say, contributing quite a bit of tax to the scums of the society – although still drinking and getting drunk every other day of the week.

And at the end of the day, you still get doctors and lawyers and engineers and architects and policemen and firefighters from this crazy city. The society does work (even though their food sucks). The square mile I am working in is still the richest square mile in the entire world; London is still a place many people want to live and work and visit.

So there, welcome to England.