BoofleBlog

Thought for the day:  Every driver here is an Asian driver.  That can’t be good.

Our package included a free bus tour of Singapore.  It was actually nice to be able to get a general overview of the city before we had to try to figure out what to do with ourselves. 

The tour had 5 stops, with around 20 minutes spent at each destination.  We went to Little India, the Waterfront, Chinatown, the gem factory, and the Botanical Garden. 

After the tour, we walked the 15 minutes from our hotel to Chinatown.  Mostly, Chinatown is seedy little food stalls and cheap tourist crap.  Parts of it just reek — a side effect of overcrowding, burning trash, and tropical rot.

I tried the local beer - Tiger.  It’s not bad — it tastes a lot like Heineken, but with an unusual aftertaste.  The authorities in Singapore don’t approve of alcohol, so all alcoholic beverages are heavily taxed.  A beer in a restaurant runs between seven and eight dollars.

In the evening, we went to Orchard Road — the ritzy shopping/hotel district.  It didn’t occur to me until later that, as a person who dislikes crowds, Friday night may not have been the time to go there.  It was really much too crowded for me to be comfortable, and since I was hungry and tired, it was surprising that punches weren’t thrown.

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(Only a nerd would have day 0 of a trip.  So — nothing unexpected here.)

Day Zero is the travel day.  Singapore airlines is going to take us from San Francisco to Singapore in around 20 hours with an hour long stop in Korea.

I had to go through extra screening by the TSA.  As much as the TSA is inherently evil and misguided, the woman who did the screening was brisk and professional and not at all unreasonable.  I was not touched in an inappropriate manner, I was not unreasonably delayed, everything that was being done was explained to me.  I really can’t complain, which is quite disappointing.

Next up are a couple hours waiting around at the gate, boarding, and settling in.  Singapore Air has some very comfortable planes, and their flight attendants (at least the female ones) look just like the women in the old Singapore Girl ads.  Just splendid.

During our one hour layover in Korea, we got off the plane, went through security, and re-boarded the plane.  I have absolutely no idea what purpose is served by doing this instead of letting us all stay on the plane.  Barring that, I’d think we could still just hang around the gate without having our bags and persons re-checked.  Still, what do I know about security.  I can’t understand why I can’t bring a real-sized tube of toothpaste on board.

In an extremely unusual turn of events, I managed to sleep during the flight from Korea to Singapore.  Yay Unisom!

We arrived in Singapore at 1am, then had to wait almost an hour for our transpo to the hotel, the Copthorne King’s.  Our wing of the hotel had an interestingly moldy smell to it, but what can you expect in the tropics?

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So…

I flew to Portland yesterday.  Lovely city.  Nice airport.

I almost fell out of my seat laughing when we were told to turn off all electronic equipment and cell phones as they might interfere with the navigational equipment of the plane.  I can’t carry toothpaste on the flight with me because I might be able to bring the plane down, somehow, even though nobody has ever figured out how, but I and every other person on the flight can carry on a cell phone and a laptop computer and nobody says boo.  Well, they say please turn them off, but nobody ever actually CHECKS.  Carrying more than three ounces of deodorant can get someone on the no-fly list, but “please” is enough to make us safe on the personal electronics front.

Silly old TSA.

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Day 11 was spent just slugging around the house, reading and playing with the dogs and packing.

I thought that instead of summarizing that, I’d summarize the whole trip.

The English are much friendlier than I remember, though their accents are much harder to understand than on tv. (It turns out that they don’t all sound like Judi Dench.) English television still sucks, though they’re now up to 5 channels.

Warm English beer is better than warm American beer. Actually, a punch in the nose is better than warm American beer.

In some respects, I think that most Englishmen are better drivers than most Americans. The very narrow roads force them to have a much better sense of the size of their vehicles than most Americans have to have. Roundabouts are still a bad idea.

I haven’t said anything about my family, and won’t for reasons that I’ve explained before. I will include only one fact related to my family:

My aunt owns several Blue Crowned Pigeons. This is the one who lives indoors, known as “Pidge.”

The only thing I’ll add is that the camera isn’t giving him red-eye — that’s exactly what he looks like.

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We made the hour-and-a-half drive down to Brighton, a nice little seaside town which is supposed to be quite gay. The first stop was the Toy Museum. It’s very nice, but a bit small and heavier on the model trains than I might like.

As we wandered through town, I figured out what Brighton reminds me of — it’s a cross between Castro Street and Haight Street. There were certainly more gay folks there than I’d seen anywhere else, but it was crossed with a very strong hippie vibe. I remember passing the “Vegetarian Shoe Shop” (no leather or animal products). Mostly it felt like a lot of people determined to believe that they’re better than everyone else just because they don’t fit into the mainstream. Wow — just like the Haight and the Castro, then.

We went down the hill (through the rain) to the Royal Pavillion. It’s staggeringly gaudy. Indian and Chinese decor taken to never-before-seen degrees. If I understand right, it was George IV’s summer cottage while he was running the country and pretending that his father wasn’t that crazy. The best bit, and the only bit that wasn’t cringe-worthy was seeing Queen Victoria’s WC. I had expected the royal throne to be more impressive somehow.

Then back to Richmond, where I managed to catch the overtime of the FA Cup in the pub.

– Wrapup —

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