Monday, November 20, 2006

Life In Singapore.....

It's been a long while any post come up from us. All we have posted for last few months is little bit happenings in life, or we are coming back kind of posts :P, although wanted to post a lot but first didn't had net access at home, then joined a job (A week ago) so couldn't get time for this. Have missed everyone's comments and of course missed reading all of your posts. But now am covering that by reading posts one by one of all you guys.
As all of you know we have shifted to Singapore some 3 months back. So facing lot of changes in life, job, daily routine. After coming to Singapore one biggest change of our life is "Me and Sachin have become active :D " Jokes apart, seriously we have to walk a lot be it for going to office, or for shopping or even going to local grocery shop. When we were in India both of us were dependent on our lovable car, wherever we had to go, we just took out our car and headed towards it. Be it our office or a shop located at 50 meters from our apartment :P I don't remember we ever used bus or auto's for traveling there, But now car is beyond our capacity to afford here, car's parking is much costlier than the fuel here :D
Thank goodness transport system here is worlds best, so traveling is much easier and now don't feel bad that we don't own a vehicle here. MRT systems and buses are really good here. Singapore is most people friendly nation, so they have taken care of every minute needs of people and made life easy. Now I feel our goal to reduce weight is not far away :D In India I remember only place I used to walk was from my apartment floor to lift gate, from ground floor lift till car, Get down at office gate, walk till lift and be seated at my place and same while coming back :D
I guess we'll be fitter while we'll come back to India.

Feels Good :D

Other major change in life, LIFE has become very BUSY. Hardly get time and now I understand the actual meaning of TGIF Where we eagerly wait for weekends so that we can get up at 10 am. My day starts here at 6:30 a.m. I never thought I will ever get up so early in my life, even for exams also I never got up so early :D
And then we cannot afford maids here so all work is done by us only.
Even we don't get dhobi's here so have to iron our clothes ourself. :D Life became hectic.

Unlike India don't have the lunch facility in office, so have to prepare lunch in morning, then rush for MRT, it takes 1 hour for me to reach office, Sachin is lucky his office is at
20 mins run. MRT system is amazing here. But one can see the same amount of rush during the office hours, but still I wonder how people manage to walk without knocking anyone :D, without pushing in trains, :D:D

Amazing thing is people don't honk horns on traffic lights, infact I don't remember if I had heard any horn voice in last 3 months here :D People are patient enough to wait for there turn. People are punctual for time, reach office sharp at 9 a.m. and leave dot at 6 p.m. :D They don't stretch like Indians, and in my office as 75% are Indians they still sit stretch till 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m.

FOOD IS HORRIBLE HERE
This place is not at all meant for vegetarians. Veggi's cannot survive here until and unless they know cooking and cook for themselves.
People here eat weird food, that stinks also. And when our neighbors are on cooking spree, we have to close our windows and doors :D
(People usually do not cook here and therefore that explains huge chain of food courts here)
Although we do have some Indian restaurant here but they have limited things on veggie menu and yes VERY EXPENSIVE too And yes even when buying vegetables, one has to look again and again to find out what vegetable is this, hardly find good Indian vegetables

One thing we learnt here is FISH IS CONSIDERED AS VEGETARIAN FOOD
Howcome don't ask me ;)
We feel strange too

So make sure on your visit here, don't end up eating fish sandwich, if u ask or pay for vegetarian sandwich :P

Place is very neat and clean and to find dust here is almost impossible

While taking a home on rent here common trend is you get a fully furnished house with all the necessities you can think of. other thing I liked here is people are very generous and courteous. If you happen to look into eyes of other person (who is completely stranger to you) It is expected that both of you should greet each other with smile.
(If this practice you follow in India, and some guy do this to any good looking girl he will definitely end up with some chappals :D)
So people keep on greeting others in lift, trains or buses, malls, etc.
Coming to malls, huge is the word I got to say Amazing

Oh yes I forgot to mention about the number of escalators in MRT stations. The total number of escalators in one MRT interchange must be much more than total number of escalators in India.

As I told this place is people friendly and is most disabled friendly nation. You will find lifts, escalators, walk ways at every 50 mtr distance in the interchange. Then special phones are installed for disabled people who sit in wheelchair for their convenience. Everywhere you will find ramps for wheelchairs.

One thing you will definitely notice is number of mobile users here, be it a train or bus, mall or road, you will find people walking with earphone plugged in their ears, listening to songs and phone in their hands. If not listening to songs then definitely typing sms messages.
Here person gets his or her first hand phone at the age of 5 , isn't that strange, school kids taking mobiles in their prep class. If it is a family of 4, all four will be having individual phones :P
And yes all of them having trendy mobiles, kids having PDA too
:(
Another thing noticeable here is people like reading a lot. You will catch people reading novels and other books in MRT, even if they don't get seat to sit, still they will be reading while standing, walking also.
Height I have seen is a kids mom is shopping in a mall, kid is walking along with from one floor to another but reading a book while walking :D
now what shall I say about that kid :P

Eating a bubblegum is a criminal offence here, and you are not suppose to give tips to waiter or else you will land up in soup
There are very good places from tourist point of view, which I will mention in my next post, abhi ke liyey itna hi, I guess I wrote quite a long post this time :D

~preeti

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Here I come

:) So am back with bang in blogworld......... to start with a fresh new template

Lot of our creativity put into place in this template

Sachin helped a lot with images and placing right picture at right place

Some Efforts from my side too
Love to have your comments

Coming up soon...........

Life in Singapore

Keep Logging in
:)
~preeti