cindyandmike.com

Ok, so this will be the one and only time I complain about the heat.  Or the humidity.  But it’s worth mentioning at least once so you get a picture of what it’s like.  It’s hot.   And humid.  About 90 every day and 90% humidity.  We sweat a lot.  Even the locals look hot and are fanning themselves with newspapers.  Ok, no more talk about sweat.  Thank goodness Cindy packed me so many shirts.

Which brings me to my next point, which I forgot last night, but it was a funny story.  Mohammed had a single carry on.  He’s a big guy, I’d reckon (reckon is ok if you live south of Calumet City) about 6”4’ or so.  Anyway, he has this one duffle bag.  As we were waiting for our luggage, I jokingly said, “Hey, you get all your stuff in that one bag?  Pretty light packer.”  He did.  No luggage.  Just his carry-on duffle bag that looked like he has two pairs of shorts and maybe a shirt in.  So I’m waiting for my large bag to come off the luggage ride (looks like it would be fun to ride, cannot recall the official name right now), and I’m waiting for the second bag.  Yes, I had two bags, plus my backpack.  Mohammed saw me grab my second bag, and I say nothing, because I know it is coming.  He says, “Hey, what the heck?  You pack like a girl.”  Well, that’s the funny part.  I said, “Yeah, well that’s because my wife packed me.”  Everyone got a real good laugh.  I’m sure it was much funnier if you were standing there at midnight in the middle of Changhi airport after a 28 hour flight with no alcohol (long story) and 5.5 hours of sleep.  I of course am very glad she packed for me.  She’s a sweetie.

So I woke up at 7am, was tired, and went back to sleep and woke at 10am.  Good I thought, I sure did get past the jetlag fast.  I had no plans for the day.  I like that.  This is an area where Cindy and I really understand and appreciate our differences.  She’s the planner and would like an itinerary for the day.  I’d rather have no plans some days and just wing it.  Very different from my work life, where project planning is critical and required.  But I think when it comes to vacations, it’s ok to have a day or two where you have no plans.  Increases creativity and spontaneity.  Plus there’s no pressure to be somewhere at a certain time.  Cindy and I do a little bit of both now when we go on vacations.  But I digress.

I try to get on a wireless signal again, to no avail.  I’ll have to find a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.  I’m jonesing the Internet after just 36 hours.  I’d never make it on Survivor.  Well, that’s obvious for a lot of reasons, just not the Internet-craving thing.

So I knew from reading about Singapore that the local breakfast custom is a fried dough pancake called a Roti Prata.  I decide to take my backpack, laptop, camera and go adventuring.  I’m going to have a coffee and a real Singapore breakfast.

My hotel is on Orchard, which I would describe as the Michigan Ave of Singapore.  But in a tropical setting.  Lots of shopping, tourists.  Fancy stores, selling things at prices I would not pay (did I mention the exchange rate?).  But the amazing thing is, they air condition these places.  So there is incentive (my micro prof Gibbs would be proud) for passersby to stop in and cool off.  I took advantage of that often.  By mid-day I’ve lost a minimum 2 pounds.

I wondered how many blocks I would get before I would see a Starbucks.  Any guess on how many blocks from my hotel it was?  Two blocks.  Thinking that was boring and not wanting to have the same thing I have at home, I finally found a local coffee shop and had a frozen mocha.  Better than Starbucks, what a treat.  But alas, no wireless.

Before I knew it, the time had passed and it was 1:30pm.  No pancake and I’m really hungry.  I had been jumping in and out of malls to look around, some nicer than others, when I ran into the basement of this gigantic mall called Ngee Ann City.  It was a huge mall, 1.1mm square feet.  They had the biggest food court I’ve ever seen.  Probably three times the size of the Marshall Fields on State (old habits die hard Mr. Macy… I’m still not over it.)  They really had a lot of different foods packed into this area.  Plus they were having some sort of food fair.  I’d venture there were at least 100 different food vendors including the fair.

Singapore is known as a food mecca.  I just had to check out every single choice before I made a purchase decision.  Decided on Indonesian, which consisted of BBQ fish, BBQ chicken and what I think was saffron rice.  Good stuff, but not too daring.  Admittedly I had to pass on some ‘interesting’ dishes… let’s just say that you really can eat any part of a pig.

Eventually made it home after a few purchases and showered before the evening plans.  First up was the Singapore Flyer with some of my classmates.  It is 34 stories high and looks like a giant Ferris wheel.  You can see the port, the lighted golf course (something about it’s too hot to play during the day), and much of the city and surrounding area.  Singapore is either the busiest or second busiest port in the world.  Hong Kong is the other.  You could see the cargo boats lined up for miles.  Were they doing more exporting or importing?  Will have to figure that out.

We had dinner plans with the group.  And the food was, you’ll never guess, Indonesian food!  They did serve Indian and Malaysian food as well.  Was called Villa Bali.  Cool tropical setting with pretty waterfalls, plants, and straw roofs.  Was supposed to look like Bali I guess.  I ate a little bit of everything, including some octopus, fish, some Indian chicken, satay, etc.  Afterwards we went for drinks at the top of the Swiss Hotel, which at 73 stories used to be the tallest hotel in the world until Dubai took off.  We went to a nightclub where I ran out of steam.  Was in bed around 2am.

My first full day was exhausting.  But very interesting.

I thought it might be interesting for some folks to hear what I’m doing in Singapore.  As part of my MBA program at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (“GSB”), I get to study abroad for two sessions.  I’m spending a week in Singapore now and a week in London in August.  My understanding is the GSB is the only MBA school with true campuses in the US, Europe and Asia.  Those of us in the Executive program get to alternate campuses and mix with the students on the other campuses.

Don’t want to spend too much time on the GSB, but if you’re interested there’s tons of info on the www.chicagogsb.edu website.  One of original MBA programs, 60+ years ago, tons of Nobel Laureates, etc.  If you’re heard of the “Chicago school” when people talk about economics, that’s the same Chicago.  Free markets, incentives, free markets, incentives.  Merton Miller, Gary Becker, and tons of other amazing and bright individuals.

Cindy dropped me off at the Indy airport on Friday at 8:30am.  From Indy I flew to Chicago, then to Hong Kong, then to Singapore.  That’s four airports if you’re counting.  I arrived at my hotel at 12:30am Sunday.  Singapore is exactly 12 hours ahead of Indy, so that means I was traveling 28 hours.  I cannot imagine too many people travelled longer than that.  It actually wasn’t that bad really.  I managed about a 90 minute nap on the flight to HK, then another 4 hours later in the flight.  It was a 16 hour flight.  Stayed awake on the 3.5 hour flight to Singapore.  I was trying to stay awake as long as possible so I would sleep when I got to my hotel in Singapore.  Airplane food was ok, nothing to write home about, but the crab meat salad was good.

So Day 1 was really Friday and Saturday for me.  I had a hard time figuring out what time and day it was until I arrived in Singapore.  You’re trying to stay ahead of the sun when you’re flying west like that, but I guess the earth must spin faster than 600 mph because eventually it got dark after being sunny for most of the flight.

I was in the HK airport about 3 hours, so I didn’t get to see much outside of the small mountains around the airport.  Very scenic if you looked past the runways and planes.  Lots of upscale shopping in the airport, e.g., LV, Burberry, etc.  They are big on foot rubs in this part of Asia, but they call it reflexology or something similar.  I chickened out and skipped the foot rubs.  Saw a guy vacuuming the carpet with a normal size vacuum.  Wouldn’t normally be that weird, but the space he was vacuuming was enormous, probably wider than a football field and several hundred yards long.  I’m thinking he vacuumed full time every day all day.  I noticed he had a pattern he was following.  Weird things you notice when you have lots of time on your hands.

Wi-Fi was free at the HK airport, which was nice.  Not free in Chicago.  I was able to send out some emails and read the news.  Walked around a little, and was going to buy some candy, but a bag of Starburst-like candy that probably would have cost $10 in the US was $40 or so.  They must really like Starburst.  Nuts.

Sat upstairs on the 747 on both long flights.  Luis, who is in my international group, sat next to me on the HK-SG flight and pointed out that maybe we’d see a new Airbus A380 at the airport since Singapore Air was the first to get one.  As soon as he said that, we saw two, and we parked next to one of them.  Double-decker plane the whole length of the plane.  Sits something like 600 people.  Can’t believe that thing gets off the ground.

Customs was fast.  Changi airport is known for being very clean, efficient.  But I was so exhausted I didn’t notice much other than it was clean, new and spacious.

The exchange rate in Singapore is $1 = SG$1.3.  I guess that’s at really good level for the Singaporeans, but a bad exchange rate for us folks from the US who in the past have enjoyed a strong dollar.  Gotta talk with Bernanke about that.  Still, taxis are cheap.  I split a ride with Mohammed from the airport for about SG$30.  Stuff is expensive to buy here.  They don’t expect tips, but it is a habit that is hard to break for me, so I tipped anyway.

The autos are mostly Japanese and Korean brands.  Saw a few BMW’s and one Jaguar.  Have not seen a single American car.  I noticed the version of the Accord and Civic are actually slightly better looking here, more stylish head lights and tail lights.  Plus leather seats in the Civic.  They drive on the left side of the road since Singapore used to be a British colony.  That’s dangerous as you need to look right then left when crossing the street… hard habit to break.

Normal US-type hotel room except for the Asian painting above the bed.  No wireless access and wired Internet was $21 per day.  Double nuts.