A Week's Worth of First Impressions

I've been in Singapore for about five days now. I arrived early on Monday morning and checked in to the Grand Park City Hall Hotel, my home for the next few weeks (see link to Google map). I will be looking for an apartment to live in longer term. But for now, I'm in this hotel. It is a pretty nice place, but I made the mistake of having a bit of laundry done here. A few shirts, a pant or two, and some undergarments cost me S$90. I could have bought new clothes for that much!

I also started at the CDM office this week. I gave myself monday to recover from the long plane ride and began work on Tuesday morning. CDM's Singpore office is located in the HarbourFront Centre. This is an interesting building and one that is representitive of how land and buildings are used on this small and densely populated island. It is a multi-purpose building with the first three floors being a shopping mall, the next few floors are car parking, and the top-most floors are for office space. Our office is currently on the 9th floor -- but in April we will be moving to a larger space on the 12th floor.

My free time so far has been pretty quiet. In the evenings I have been exploring the areas immediately adjacent to my hotel. Jet-lag has prevented me from doing anything too exciting, but my hotel is not very far from the Singapore River and two prime dining locations known as Clark Quay and Boat Quay. These are each made up of a string of restaurants and bars overlooking the river. The variety of cuisine there is truly remarkable -- Thai, Chinese, Indian, American, Japanese ... all next to one another. The ambiance is quite nice. This area of the city is right beside the downtown, central business district so the lights and profiles of the city skyline reflect beatifully on the river's surface. And with the cool, damp evening air, it makes for a very pleasant experience.

And I'll conclude with my mental state... I have been surprised how easy the adjustment to Singapore has been so far. I feel I have been comfortably settling in -- despite much of my life still being ambiguous and up in the air. I have been enjoying the overall fact of my existance here. It is neat to be walking among different city streets in a different part of the world. I like hearing all of the different languages spoken among people around me. Much is surprisingly familiar (this comopolitan city has every retail store imaginable, with familiar brands and logos everywhere I look). Other things are refreshing and new. All of this optimism leads me to expect a big forthcoming crash... as culture shock finally settles in and I ask myself 'what have I gotten myself into!?'. But so far, not yet. And maybe not. I have plenty to keep my busy - with work and looking for an apartment. So I guess I would say everything is going well.


Alek (in Singapore)