Once again, I'm going to write as if you all have nothing better to do than read this. An intentional miscalculation on my part, but let's get down to it nonetheless.
You may see the time at which this is sent (saturday afternoon) and think "what the hell is he doing spending his saturday afternoon indoors writing an email? Shouldn't he be out corrupting the locals and taking pictures of it?"
There are a few different ways for me to respond to that. The first is that this morning I went out and, after getting lost twice, explored the Botanical Gardens. The second is that I found out I have a friend from college staying at an awesome resort here, who reminded me there's an app called What's App that effectively gives free international texting and phone calls. I had to return to the hotel to install it. Finally, a unique feature of this country is that in order to sweat out any alcohol consumed in the last three years, all you have to do is put on normal clothes and stand outside for 45 seconds. I'm drenched and need to recover. So sit back and enjoy some correspondence, damnit.
I'll start out by just saying what I've been doing, proceed to say what I think I will be doing soon, and conclude with vast sweeping generalizations I'm woefully underqualified to make. For the optimal learning experience, follow along on facebook for pictures and typically crude commentary.
So. Ugly stuff first. Work. I'm here to help with an integration test. The first one took two days to set up, failed, and took about 3 hours to figure out why. We're rebuilt, bought new parts, and are ready to go again. It made me delay my departure from here until 2AM Wednesday, but now I get to fly out via Tokyo instead of Moscow and get another passport stamp. Plus I get another crack at the $20/day breakfast buffet here, inarguably my favorite part of the Orchard Hotel. I haven't starved on this trip.
My colleagues here are all smart as shit and, I recently learned, get paid approximately half of what I do. My title is Associate Technical Professional. The guy I mainly work with here is one step up, a Technical Professional, and our team lead is one above him, Senior Technical professional. I make twice as much as the TP, and about 50% more than the STP. They both work longer hours and, simply put, do less cool shit than I do. This was extremely humbling and motivating to learn. It would be so easy for them to think and say "this american asshole doesn't know what he's doing and just kills us in the salary and dating white women departments, and he doesn't even know what he's doing!" A new career objective of mine is now to be unquestionably worth what I'm paid, now that I'm more cognizant of what's around me. I need these peoples' respect, not their disdain. Gotta know my shit.
Onto nicer stuff. Wednesday I went out to Clark Quay for Margaritas with my friend-of-a-friend, the PartySwede of Legend. Clark Quay is what the San Antonio Riverwalk would be if it were exponentially more multicultural, safer, bigger, and at least 3x as expensive. Restaurants, bars and hotels line it for miles, and I could hear live music in every direction. Every kind of food and drink I could think of was present, as were people of those nationalities. There were zero cops around, which I found interesting given the obvious party nature of the place. This was explained to me as "you just don't cause trouble here. There are no cops because there are no bar fights. No Crime." What a concept.
Our partners for this little sesh were PartySwede's work colleagues, both of which were an indeterminate species of brown, but who were both breathtakingly intelligent and could've grown up down the street from me for how westernized they were in thought and speech. I consider myself worldly enough to make racially provocative jokes and commentary, and they were beating me to the punch. One explained he was "Indian, but the dot-head kind, not the feather kind." I kindly thanked him for his clarification and asked what happened to all of his other arms. Lost in a fire. Tragic.
Between the four of us at this table, we spoke 13 languages fluently, had 7 advanced college degrees, and were, I am learning, in no way special. Singapore is a smart place. A cultured place. No one here has the time nor willingness to dick around at anything.
Thursday was a tour day. This is where pictures are useful because it's impossible to tell you how crazy beautiful opulent this place is without them. The engineering and architecture that went into the Marina Bay Sands and the Gardens By the Bay blow my mind. Unfathomable. But it still maintains a certain unique flavor and character that Hong Kong lacked because it's Chinese and the Chinese DGAF. This place is something like 30% Chinese with Malays and other various coconut islanders making up most of the balance.
Fun fact - it achieved independence at the same time as Kenya and Malaysia, both of which are poverty-entrenched, unsafe hellholes where I'd be robbed before I got off the plane. How about them apples. Planning and stuff work.
Friday I discovered that cabs don't come to Tuas (where my lab is) on their own volition, and that getting one on a friday evening is actually impossible. I walked half a mile to a bus stop (in my filthy coveralls), took two different busses to a train station, wandered hopelessly around there, and finally found a cab. Two and a half hours later I was home, in bed, pooped. I did all this wearing steel-toed boots after working all day. Bullshit.
I say this all to set up a compliment for the Singaporean people, actually. On these two busses, I didn't have any money on me (AMEX only). I had no clue where I was going. Neither bus driver would take my american money, and both said "If you don't have one dollar to pay, I will let you ride for free." They both held up their routes to tell me exactly where I needed to go. They both got up out of their seats to walk to the back of the bus and let me know when we'd reached my stop. Maybe I just looked like a miserable filthy human being, but these dudes were extremely helpful to a total stranger. When I finally reached the taxi stand the line was enormous, so I bought a beer and wrote to my pen pal. I couldn't pay for the beer (no SGP money), but the waitress gave it to me anyway, told me where to find an ATM (over 100 yards away), and insisted I take my time and go get money when I was done, then never hassled me about it. How cool.
So today I'm heading to the Marina Bay Sands to be an idiot tourist in the casino for awhile with a friend from college (Kristina Theleen, I believe several of you know her). Her father invented China and she's here for the weekend to kick it. You know, like we SMU people do. Then Papa Haake arrives for work, and we'll do more of the same. He and I are actually leaving on the same flight back to the states for turkey day. Ruling the Galaxy as father and son, Star Wars style.
So that's all for now. Feel free to forward this on if you'd like. Cassface, I don't have Cole or any of your family's email addresses handy, but I wanted to send to them too.
Keep it classy, America.
Middle Haake
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