Palamariu Family Blog

Between Bali and India, Singapore found his practical useful place. It’s quite handy to have such an organized and uncorrupted place so easy accessible from all the points of South East Asia. In Singapore we arranged our visas for India, which are harder to get than we initially imagined.

Of course, besides the administrative part of our traveling adventures, we enjoyed the company of friends. We had several board games nights, movie night at Vani’s place, Egyptian day with Yasmine. In few words, Singapore was a good relaxing preamble before India.

Moreover, we experienced Chinese New Year and its cultural side. As for other cultural events like Deepavali, Christmas, New Year etc., Singapore dressed up with lights and Chinese symbols for entering the year of Tiger. Since this is an important event celebrated by 70% of people living in Singapore, 2 days were declared public holiday; that made a 4 day weekend for Singaporeans.

The first day of the year is celebrated in very different ways by the nationalities living in Singapore. Malay, Filipinos, Indians, white people (everybody except the Chinese) filled out the parks along the sea side camping, picnicking and riding bikes or rollerblading. It looked like a 1st May celebration in Romania. I want to make a short parenthesis here: being such a small country, Singapore doesn’t have rural areas or wild nature, but it has huge parks (10+ km2). Therefore, for spending some time in the nature, people camp in the parks in the most organized way possible, being at maximum 1h by bus away from their homes.

For Chinese people, the new day of the year is celebrated together with the family – with parents’ siblings, grandparents and cousins. It’s a day when Chinese wearing very fancy clothes visit and spend time, catching up with their extended families. It reminded me about Christmas because of the family reunion, but also Easter because it was so warm outside and people shown off their best clothes from their wardrobe.

At a personal level, we had some time to evaluate Indonesia experience and its meaning but also the learning it provided us with. It’s quite interesting what we came up with: Radu sees us back to Singapore when finishing our travelings and myself I’m more and more attracted by the idea of starting a PHD in September… maybe in Singapore

We arrived in Singapore two days ago. And now that we got over the initial jet lag, I thought of sharing with you my first “second” impressions.

First contact, the airport. It is by far the greenest and most elegant I have been to. And they even have telephones where you can call numbers in Singapore for free. Cool!

Then, the transport system. Having had the experience of paying 30 euros to travel across London by train, it was a relief to get back in Singapore. Train ticket across the city: 2 euros!

Moving on to weather: hot and sunny. Same way I left it. Same way it is all year round. Having just experienced the cold and rain of Romanian autumn, I realised… living just in the summer time: not that bad actually!

Moreover, Singapore is incredibly GREEN! Despite its small size, they kept plenty of parks, huge areasof dense jungle, and plenty of bright green trees and flowers on the streets. They actually call it ”an inhabited garden”.

Then, we went out. In some areas of the city center, you could hardly talk to the person next to you. Constructions are being built everywhere. Our ears bled! Singapore is a great city…but it will be even better when it’s finished!

During our dinner at a Thai restaurant, Cristina exclaimed: “These people eat so much rice!”.
After deciding what we want, I thought it would be nice to have some desert too. Turning to Cristina, I asked her: “How about we take some sweet mango rice?”
The answer was fast to come: “What? Rice again?! No thank you!”
“But Cristina”, I protested, “For them rice is just like bread for us. That’s why they eat it with everything!”
“Yes, but we don’t eat bread as dessert!”, she continued.
Needless to say, we didn’t eat sweet mango rice.

And a final thing on Singapore: it’s political life.They have the same party in power for the last 4o years. Thus, people in the street don’t talk politics that much. Comparing that with Romania, in presidential campaign, filled with scandals and Governments falling apart, and where almost everybody is complaining and having an opinion about it, I though to myself: Singaporeans seem to have a better deal! They waste far less time on such things!