Invasion

Two weirds things infringing on my sense of privacy in the last two days.

1) My girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's mother lives in my apartment building. Still with me? Weird weird coincidence. I only met him for the first time last Saturday and then saw him coming out of my lift. We said hi, but I think we were both a tad unsure whether we were actually seeing reality or not.

This bugs me largely because I like to believe I live in a bubble removed from everything I know in the outside world. Not connected to girlfriends, co-workers, friends, families or any other associated things. So I know it's ridiculous, but having a 6-degrees style someone I "know" living in my building freaks me out a little bit. I enjoy the anonymous stranger routine. Someone did say shortly after I arrived in Singapore that it is a very very small place and they're right.

2) My neighbour, who is also my landlord, called and said she wanted to take a serviceman into my apartment to check the airconditioner. This is a perfectly reasonable request (which I granted) but got off the phone feeling all insecure and funny inside because she was going into my apartment when I wasn't there. Admittedly there's nothing to hide in there, though I may have done something about some of the beer cans. The rest was actually very clean, right down to only having one dirty plate and one knife in the sink waiting to be washed. I'm pretty sure that's some kind of record for a bachelor. Guess I'm just the type who doesn't like to have my things rifled through. It's one of the reasons I don't have housemates.

Do you like it here?

It was asked in all innocence. An earnest desire on the part of the speaker to see what the future of life in Singapore may hold. Truth be told, it's highly likely I asked exactly this question of others after I arrived. The answer? Well, that's a tad more complicated. As with any place there are things that irritate me here. There are things I really enjoy. I answered that I did like it here and that part of that is because I have a better quality of life than if I did the equivalent job back in Melbourne. For all the drawbacks, the benefits are able to heft their way weight around in a sumo knockout. I meet a lot of people here. I meet the SPGs who desperately want to leave Singapore even though they don't even know why. I meet the locals who are never leaving and don't see anything beyond what Mediacorp tells them. I meet the other locals who see the trees, the forest and the whole damn ecosystem but know there's nothing they can do to affect change in a country that requires any regular gathering of more than 10 people to be registered with the government. And then I meet the foreigners. Not the Bangladeshi workers filling the backs of utility vehicles on their way to and from work each long, back-breaking day. I mean the Western professionals, usually male and often white. Or the fat cats as I call them. The fat cats are an interesting lot. They dine in nice restaurants, drink in Clarke Quay or Dempsey Hill and never tire of complaining about rental prices and the effects of the American economic crisis on their precious little bubble in Singapore. The irony of their complaints about rent and cost of living is that their company usually pays their rent or at least gives them a rental allowance and that in actuality they don't struggle for anything. Oh for a life where economic crisis meant only going to Bintan or Malacca once a month instead of twice. Then there are the foreigners who don't actually earn all that much - still very high by local standards but not enough that they are partying at Emerald Hill 5 nights a week. Yes, I meet all of these people, and that probably factors into why I'm comfortable living here. It's not a matter of loving it, because I'm not sure it's possible to genuinely love a country like this (despite all the flags adorning apartments right now), but it's a country where you can be. Find your little niche, your way of doing things and the places and people you enjoy and just get on with your life.

I did something this morning I haven't done in a long long time. I checked out a host of Singaporean blogs I'd let lie dormant for a long period of time. Geez, I really don't know why I bothered. They're either middle-aged white men chasing barely legal girls around the island while laying claims to some philosophical or intellectual height (sorry, you're just pervy old men that are impressive to girls in their late teens and very early twenties) or 30-something Singaporean women discussing shopping and singleness. The latter I have less problem with as there's at least an element of interest there but the former are just so transparent that even the blind have no trouble seeing through them. So I'm sticking back with the one Sg blog I occasionally read and will try again in a few months and see if there are any new ones worth reading.

I think I should go buy a board game and have a games night. I'm totally burnt out on going out. I like Trivial Pursuit. Scrabble... depends on who I'm playing with. Not much interested in playing Scrabble with people who use a Scrabble dictionary in which words that are NOT part of the English language (or any other for that matter) are acceptable fodder. Guess Who? Too short. Twister? Feels a bit Swinger-ish to be playing that at my age. Operation? Again too short. Monopoly? Can be too involved in the sense that if people don't want to trade then you just end up with a long, boring, dead game. I've never played the Game of Life but have heard good things. Similarly Clue but I'm not sure about this one as I've heard tell of some co-workers who have Nights at their house in which they all dress up and be the characters. I still giggle about that.

My football team are an inconsistent blight on my happiness. They're on the verge of not making the finals this year so they conceded a game last Friday night before it had even begun. Our defensive arc is made up of relatively inexperienced players. They've done/do very well, but against powerhouse ega-forwards, they're going to be shown up. That's life, no problem. However it was decided that our our only remaining elder statesman defender would be "rested" for the week. Honestly, who rests their best defender for a game which has so much riding on it? It broke my heart to think that my team conceded a game before it had begun. And there's nothing they did on the field that night that could convince me otherwise.