Hello Everyone:
I have now returned to Singapore from China. I had a wonderful three months in Hangzhou and really enjoyed learning the Chinese language and culture. Returning to Singapore was an interesting feeling though... I did not know what to expect on return, but I found that things seemed very much (and strangely) the same. I suppose three months is not that long in the scheme of things, but instantly in the airport and then in the taxi, it felt almost as if I had never left -- or as though I had only been gone a weekend. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that Singapore's climate is almost always the same. We are a tropical country on the equator, and so we have the same temperature, the same sunlight, and the same feeling almost every single day. I have often found in Singapore that it is hard to judge lenghts of time. A friend will ask: "when did we go to that concert", and I find myself having no mental "benchmarks". I cannot say, "well, I was wearing a sweater, so it must have been about November", or "it was snowing on that day, so it must have been mid-January"... In Singapore there are not such seasonal distinctions, so many times and events get blurred into one-another. So perhaps this was the cause of my strange feeling on returning here from China.
Well, I do plan to continue blogging about my experiences in Singapore and Southeast Asia. And I hope to return to China before too long. And there were a few posts that I did not get around to putting up while I was in China. So you can look here for at least a couple more posts on my China trip. I have everyone has enjoyed following along with me on my trip.
I have now returned to Singapore from China. I had a wonderful three months in Hangzhou and really enjoyed learning the Chinese language and culture. Returning to Singapore was an interesting feeling though... I did not know what to expect on return, but I found that things seemed very much (and strangely) the same. I suppose three months is not that long in the scheme of things, but instantly in the airport and then in the taxi, it felt almost as if I had never left -- or as though I had only been gone a weekend. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that Singapore's climate is almost always the same. We are a tropical country on the equator, and so we have the same temperature, the same sunlight, and the same feeling almost every single day. I have often found in Singapore that it is hard to judge lenghts of time. A friend will ask: "when did we go to that concert", and I find myself having no mental "benchmarks". I cannot say, "well, I was wearing a sweater, so it must have been about November", or "it was snowing on that day, so it must have been mid-January"... In Singapore there are not such seasonal distinctions, so many times and events get blurred into one-another. So perhaps this was the cause of my strange feeling on returning here from China.
Well, I do plan to continue blogging about my experiences in Singapore and Southeast Asia. And I hope to return to China before too long. And there were a few posts that I did not get around to putting up while I was in China. So you can look here for at least a couple more posts on my China trip. I have everyone has enjoyed following along with me on my trip.
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