IN JAMAICA

Sudoku Contest
Crazy shopping everywhere
Nonstop mega mall

Greetings from Changi Airport, the most amazing place you can lose yourself in and lots of time. I’m here for the day, and am tempted with all sorts of things around me. Giant XBOX to my left, Fendi and Burberry to my right. The real temptation here is the desire to miss my flight to SF- there’s a Sudoku Championship Contest later today but that’s when I have to board! The setup is SERIOUS!

I really have to give it up to the Singapore Tourism Board- they provide free rides (and a bus tour guide with a microphone!) to the city, and pick you up too. It’s a great way to see the city for a few hours and uh…do a LOT of shopping. Since Singapore just celebrated it’s birthday (I forget which #) on August 9, there is tons of pride in the air, flags everywhere and NONSTOP SALE MADNESS. Every store has something on sale, and there are more stores that I can even count in Singapore.

Today I went to Little India-already homesick (for India), so I went straight to a South Indian Pure Veg restaurant to get my daily chai and rest for awhile. After that came shopping madness, so much that I am back at the airport a few hours earlier than I planned because my feet do not work anymore and I am out-shopped. Imagine SF’s downtown shopping zone Union Square madness to the 100th power, and you are close to what Singapore’s shopping experience is like. IT IS MADNESS!!

One thing I love about Singapore is hearing people talk the many languages that buzz around here. My favorite is the interchange between Malay (which sounds like crazy Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog to me) and English. For example, I walked into a cheap jewelry store where the lady working was so involved in her heated phone conversation that she did not see me the entire time. I could tell from her body language and hand gestures that she was clearly upset, but her language definitely confirmed it to a certain degree. What she was speaking was a Malay+English hybrid, often referred to as SINGLISH.

Singapore people say LAH all the time, like “This what you want, lah?” Lah before everything and at the end of everything. It is useful in many situations, just like the Indian Bobblehead! One girl tried to tell me that she did not understand what I was saying today by saying LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH until I got it- she didn’t get me!

Cheap jewelry store lady’s conversation went something like this:

LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH MUKTI LAH
YOU BACKSTABBED ME AGAIN AND I CANNOT TAKE IT
LAH LAH LAH MUKTI MUKTI LAH LAH
GREEN TEA MILKSHAKE LAH LAH LAH LAH
LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH MUKTI LAH
BECAUSE OF THIS I WILL NEVER SPEAK WITH YOU AGAIN LAH MUKTI LAH
LAH MUKTI LAH LAH IT IS UNREASONABLE, ABSOLUTELY LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH LA ROTI PRATA MAYBE SHRIMP CURRY LAH LAH LAH LAH
LAH LAH LAH HOW DARE YOU DON’T EVEN THINK YOU CAN DO THAT LAH LAH LAH LAH

I’m sure you get the idea- either way, I figure it was some sort of conversation about infidelity/commitment issues and what they were going to get for dinner tonight. Now I have time to rest before the flight. I went to The Body Shop and put some perfume on so the poor person next to me will not suffer (hopefully) with my India-Singapore Summer Heat Shopping Inferno B.O.!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 3:16 pm and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.