Archive for December, 2008

Robbed!

If you’ve been following my adventures since I arrived in Singapore in July, you’ll know that my wallet was stolen about four days after I arrived here.  Well, I was in Bugis Market, which has a subsection called the Thieves’ Market, so fair enough.  But this time someone entered our apartment and swiped my cellphone […]

Signs in Singapore

 Singapore has certain things it wants its citizens to know, and signs are one way it alerts them.  Our university is located next to a secondary-growth rainforest, which also is a live firing range for the Singapore military.  So if you venture near the borders of the university you’ll see a sign like the one […]

Free-range Orangutans

OK, I’m not just crazy about the Jurong Bird Park; I like the Singapore Zoo as well, even though it’s a longer trip to get there.  Again, it’s beautifully landscaped and has a lot of shade built into it.  There are all kinds of meandering walkways and trees.  And sometimes if you look up into […]

Rainbow Lorikeets

  The Bird Park has an enormous aviary where there are about a thousand lorikeets, of about ten different varieties.  Here are the most conspicuously fancy ones who tend to hang out near the entrance.  That’s where visitors can buy a little cup of nectar to hold in order to lure them onto your wrist.  These […]

Macaws

 These guys are at the Bird Park, where they greet visitors at the tram station, preen on a chalk wall in Parrot Paradise, and engage in formation flying at the Bird Buddies show.  That’s really glorious to see.     Many of these specimens come not from their native South America, but from New Zealand.  They […]

Kingfishers

  There are several types of kingfishers to be seen on the NTU campus, and this is the most common one: the King White-Throated Kingfisher.  If you go for a walk at 7:30 a.m., you can see up to five of them lining the trees and fence along the drainage canal near the National Institute of […]

Immigration and Labor

You can get a foreign maid to take care of your house and/or children, and there’s a complete set of laws to protect both you and her.  The maid earns $300-$400 a month, but it costs you about $1,000.  This is because you pay for her airfare from the Phillipines (both ways), three thorough medical check-ups annually […]