First Day - Sunday

WINSLOW We landed on time at the Singapore Airport at 5:45 AM and quickly passed through immigration with another flight form Amsterdam. A hotel taxi was waiting for us in the baggage area and we arrived at the hotel where intelligently, Donna had pre booked a room for the previous night so that we could settle in upon arrival. For better or worse, the hotel had botched the booking and did not have adjoining rooms and with a little jet lag aided intemperance, Donna had us upgraded to the presidential Suite overlooking the fireworks competition our first night. After shower and some breakfast, we commissioned a private driver for $35 Singapore dollars an hour ($15 US) to give us a whirlwind tour of the city so that we could get oriented and not fall back to sleep. We also took a Provigil to keep us from totally crashing- which worked great until about 3PM when the twins, whom we had only given a half dose hit the jet lag/ sleep deprivation wall. Having not been to Singapore in 17 years, we immediately noted how much the city had grown up both with miles of high brow lined shopping areas, and how much more Western the majority of the areas had become- equatorial Boston post the Big Dig- polished and ready for action, but at the same time, lacking a bit of the clean third world charm that had previously made it one of our favorite cities on the globe. The Hawker food stalls were now relegated to a small area that was more a side show for the 5th Avenue shops and the open market wet markets in Chinatown no longer had the live exotic animals for display on the side streets. I did find my way into a more authentic Chinese wet market in the basement of a large commercial building and was quite put off by seeing beautiful live American bullfrogs that were being skinned alive, having their snouts chopped off often enucleating one or both eyes- trying to jump out and escape. I asked the butcher why he was doing this, trying not to sound too judgmental and he said the customers want proof that they are buying fresh. Our taxi driver made some very interesting comments on life in Singapore, a very centrally controlled country. You could only keep a new car 10 years (and commercial vehicles 8). After that you had to pay twice the road tax and also needed to get the car inspected every 3 months. The residents therefore sell all used cars to Indonesia and Malaysia. Eighty percent of the residents of Singapore live in government subsidized housing. The general population is made up of a diverse group primarily of three origins. Seventy percent are ancestrally Chinese; twenty percent are Malaysian, seven percent Indonesian, and three percent other- primarily of Indian/ Sri Lankan/ Bangladeshi descent. When a new very modern public high-rise goes up, they accept applications- and match the countries ethnic population to make every building ethnically identical to the population. They then have a lottery making sure that the individual apartments are filled randomly so that there wont be a block of any one group monopolizing a floor of the building etc. Lastly, we discussed the problem of childhood and adult obesity. The state had recognized the potential public health implications and had proactively done four things- 1, identified overweight kids at risk. 2, required that all kids participate in a sport at least one trimester in the school year. 3, made overweight kids who were not playing a sport to stay 15 minutes after school for a required exercise event, and finally, 4, required overweight kids to miss the first 15 minutes of recess to attend weight management discussions. I haven't seen a heavy kid yet-

MktFood Originally uploaded by DonnaM123.