two years in singapore

Time has really gotten away from me the last two months and now it's already just over two years and one month since I moved to Singapore with now, less than a year's time to finish my original contract. It really seems like time is running out and though I've been lucky enough to see a lot of the region this year there are still a lot of places I'd like to see.

Over the year I took quite a few trips:

Indonesia - to Bali twice, Jakarta and Cianjur on central Java, Lombok and Gili Trawangan, and Batam

Malaysia - Penang

Scotland - Tain, Edinburgh, Inverness and Loch Ness

London - England

Spain - Barcelona

Thailand - Bangkok twice and Phuket

Philippines - Boracay and Manilla

Cambodia - Phnom Penh

USA - San Diego, LA and Visalia, CA; Sedona, AZ; Portland and Corvallis, OR;

plus a few other places... Actually, looking at this makes me wonder when I had the time to take these trips. Pretty much every holiday weekend, and many others, I took advantage of it and got out of Singapore.

The places I'd still want to go this coming year? Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, back to Java, Japan, Hong Kong... ... too many to even start listing out

After living here for two years in many ways this feels like home but in many other ways it feels like just a temporary place to live... not really knowing where my home is since I have no family in the last town I lived in - San Diego for 9 years and also no house or apartment there. Like some say, home is where you lay you head (or hang your hat?!) but there is also something to say for living near family to make it feel more like home, too. It was nice to spend a lot of time with so much family over the holiday time this year. I think living here on the terms of a contract makes it feel temporary as well; maybe if i didn't have a contract and were just working here I would feel differently since it's a similar situation to when I lived in San Diego... it's just a different country.

For many people Singapore is a very transitional place in that they come to work on contracts or are stationed here but can be pulled at any time by their company to move back. Being a person in this situation as well, it's difficult to feel fully integrated knowing your contract will be coming up and many of the people you meet and friends you make might leave at any given time as well. Nevertheless I’ve made some very good friends over the last few years- some of which are still here and some of which have already moved on from Singapore.

Singapore itself is a very interesting city. It really has a lot of layers and faces to it. You could just as easily spend hundreds of dollars at a trendy restaurant or just a few for a meal from a street hawker and be satisfied with either. There are some malls with more than two Starbuck’s coffee shops inside while across the street you could get a stronger cup of local coffee for less than a dollar at open air shop. Walking down many streets and areas in the city, things are so new and orderly there is no sense of history or feeling that you’re in Asia compared to some other capital cities like Bangkok, Delhi or Jakarta. It’s really easy to see only this part of Singapore, too, but there are other neighborhoods not as sterile and orderly where it becomes much more clear that you are a foreigner and different no matter how much you try to assimilate… the language barrier (while normally not a problem in Singapore can be much more apparent in some places) being only part of it. And still, there are some things I doubt I’ll ever understand or be accepted into - the least of which are the seemingly endless amounts of karaoke lounges!

This coming year should be interesting as I decide what to do next after December – one thing for sure is I know the time will go fast. Too fast.