Hello from Singapore

Hello from Singapore! It has been an almost awesome trip home if it didn't immediately start off with a ten-day stomach flu.  Now that that is finally out of the way, there is plenty of catching up to do; relatives to visit, friends to meet, places to go, and things to eat ... so I'm afraid the updates for the VFD will have to wait till January.

Meanwhile, here are snippets from my trip so far, which I hope will distract you for a bit ...

       It has only been about four years but so much has changed that I am feeling like Wilma Flintstone stumbling onto a District 9 movie set.  And it hit me right when I landed at Changi airport, as I was trying my hands on one of the self-service immigration terminals that read local biometric passports.  Fortunately, an immigration officer standing nearby came swiftly to my aid, spared me the infamous (and thankfully, now outmoded) condescending chuckle, reinserted my passport into the machine correctly and got me through in a matter of seconds.


Our first drive into town was nothing short of jaw-dropping.  Over half a dozen new malls have sprung up along Orchard Road, the few miles that pretty much make up main downtown in this little island country.  

How exactly the new sentinels of Orchard Road - the Ion mall and the gazillion-storey skyscrapper, the Orchard Residences - emerged from the ground while we were gone is baffling to me.  But they certainly look uber modern standing right across the street from the oriental building where Tangs, Singapore's own version of Bloomingdales has remained strong and vibrant for the last fifty years.

Aiyoh, I feel so sua ku. 


More to come ...