OH GOD THE HEAT

...isn't as bad as I thought. But it's currently peaking, so I'm sure as hell in doors. I'm not a rabid canid or a Londoner, after all.

But there are two nice Londoners in my hostel.

Singapore. After an uneventful flight rife with fun-inducing turbulance (it's like a roller coaster!) I got in around midnight. I bought a sim card for my phone, and now have a new telephone number to use for Singapore business.

Then I went to my hostel, checked in and slept in until 8. Taking my new metro card I canvassed the areas I need to know for meetings coming up, went to the main branch of the National Library (what year was it, again, that the world's libraries decided to modernize and make all of their walls glass? 2003?) and Anderson Junior College, where I'll supposedly be teaching.

The MRT (trains) are really great. I hope to find a decent apartment near to my work fairly soon - two weeks would be great for a January 1st move-in. In the meantime I'm in a nice little hostel, the Inn Crowd, in an eight bed mixed dorm.

So far the only downside is that my right foot is acting up, and a limping 6' ang mo (trans= roughlt 'red hair' or 'red devil barbarian') like me tends to stand out pretty badly. (Incidentally I'm working in Ang Mo Kio, which translates to 'red tomatoes'. It's MP is the PM, Lee, too.)

So far it feels like New York - enclaves of ethnic groups, a little grimey, but pretty darn modern. Taking the MRT basically all around the city, most of it above ground, I got a good idea of the predominance of NYC-style apartment islands. But since the population is predominately Chinese the ethnic shock isn't very pronounced - it just feels like a big Chinatown. I mean, SF is a pretty good practice ground for Asian immersion.