crossing the street..

in singapore, even the simplest thing can turn out to be complicated and - first and foremost - regulated. like crossing the street.. to start with, there are of course restrictions as to where you are allowed to cross. if you see this sign, you are not in a good place to make your way across the street.
then there is the sign that tells you to use the crossing. as well as the other sign, this one means you are not allowed to cross (except for when using a crossing).
once you find a crossing, there are some other rules to adhere to. there are the general ones..
note how this tells you to 'press for green man'. you would have thought this was simple, but it can of course not be done in any careless way. there are also some specific rules on how to press. or how not to press.
i'm not sure if there is a fine for pressing the button the wrong way, but if you are caught crossing the street somewhere where it's not allowed, i've heard the fine is SGD 500 (which is about £250 or 2,500 kr). worth it?

tokyo

a couple of weeks ago, takenori and i went to tokyo on a business trip. i still can't really understand that i get to go on business trips. guess it has something to do with not realising how old i am either.. hmmm..

anyway. i really liked tokyo. the people were very friendly, the city clean, modern and relatively easy to get around. i had to take a picture of the very comprehensive underground map. what complicates things slightly is the fact that there is the underground and then there are several different train services, who apparently have the same colours as the underground lines.
i also really like the japanese language. only managed to learn a few sentences and words, such as 'i'm elin', 'nice to meet you', 'thank you', 'hello'.. the usual, but what i really liked was the fact that in japanese the consonants are important, just like in most european languages and as opposed to for example chinese and vietnamese where the vowels and tonation matter more.

one thing that i had really hoped to see was the sakura - cherry blossom. mid to end of march is normally the perfect time, but due to an unusually long and cold winter, the trees looked like this. everyone told us they would bloom any day..

this street is called something like 'cherry blossom lane' and is apparently incredibly beautiful when the trees are in bloom..

since we were there for work, we didn't have that much time to do all the touristic things, but thankfully takenori knows tokyo quite well and knew what to see and how to get around. so we..

pretended to be adults and dressed up in business clothes. funnily enough, i think we managed to pull it off, at least with some people..

went to a shrine - a japanese temple. before entering you had to wash your hands and mouth

vistited shibuya and shinjuku

ate shabu-shabu, a local dish where you boil meat and vegetables in a pot of broth, similar to the chinese hot pot

strolled around at ginza

had sushi at the fish market near by

went to akihabara, aka geek town, where i bought a portable/mobile battery for my phone
- best buy ever!

saw the buddhist temple in asakusa

and the asahi brewery

went on a river cruise

had some okonomiyaki, a japanese pancake with cabbage, ham, cheese, prawns - a bit of everything. if i remember correctly, okonomiyaki means something like a bit of everything fried and the idea is similar to the swedish pyttipanna
(shoko, this one is for you, but your okonomiyaki is miles better)

after getting off the boat, we went to a park where i could finally see some blossoms. they weren't sakura, but i'm not a botanist either so as long as they are beautiful, i'm happy..



also love the contrast between the nature and the buildings

japan is a high tech country and i just had to take a picture of the advanced toilet options. i especially like the the flushing sound button. i think they are on to something here - having a button making a flushing sound prevents people from flushing the toilet excessively trying to disguise other noices, which in turn helps saving the environment - klockrent, as we say in swedish

there are also stands where you can leave your umbrella - free locks are provided!

vietnam

just have to start this blog post with fantastic news - today, 1st april 2012, amie's and arnold's little baby girl alice was born. congratulations to all three of them!

a couple of weeks ago, i went to vietnam over the weekend to meet my brother and his family. just the thing going to vietnam over the weekend is quite amazing to me. to be able to meet calle, phuong, nhu and ludvig in a small village in vietnam is incredible.

the village is where phuong grew up (and nhu spent her first four years) and i was really thrilled to be able to go there. phuong wanted to show me paradise islands and other more touristic things and couldn't really understand why i wanted to come to the village. i, on the other hand, think it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to see vietnam from a more local perspective and not just as a tourist and am really pleased to have seen it and met all her relatives. and believe me, there are a lot of relatives!

wise people say a picture is worth a thousand words so i'll let the them speak for themselves:

to keep all the mosquitos and other bugs out, i had this lovely mosquito net. we stayed in a very nice guest house, where they had lovely wooden furniture, just as they did in every household we went to

nhu and her cousin bin having breakfast at the breakfast café

breakfast day 1: noodle soup with beef, really nice!

ludvig, phuong and phuong's grandmother. a funny thing was that whenever phuong was carrying ludvig, people came up to touch him and look at him. as he was a caucasian baby in their eyes, they were amazed by how phuong could be his mother. at one point, some people thought that ludvig was mine and calle's baby and that phuong was our maid - quite understandably, that really pissed her off!

♫ "vi har det bra, vi har bak i bilen, och vill ej va med om nån krock.." ♫

dinner

breakfast day 2: another type of noodle soup with beef - again, really nice! i actually liked the noodle soups with beef so much that i am currently looking for a place in singapore who serves vietnamese food so that i can have it again

ludvig and i

the breakfast café

calle, ludvig, phuong and phuong's grandmother at the breakfast café

grandmother lent me her rice hat - "dep" (not sure about the spelling, but it means nice)

i decided to do a permanent hair straightening. a little bit worried considering my hair is thin, fine and blond and these people are used to thick, black, good quality hair, but it turned out great, it doesn't even curl up in the extreme humidity in singapore. and it costed me about £10 or 100kr

ludvig thought the whole hair dresser business was tiring and fell asleep

bin and nhu

ludvig, phuong, me, ludvig's cousin (can't remember her name), phuong's sister thao and their friend alex

in vietnam, there are motorbikes everywhere and the traffic is absolutely mad. there is only one word to describe it - chaos! i tried to capture it in a photo, but this does not in any way illustrate what it's like

local beer - ba, ba, ba. one thing i learned in vietnamese: mopp, haj, ba - yo! (means one, two, three - cheers! and i do not take responsibility for the awful spelling)

say hello to my little friend..

everyone who knows me also knows that i am not very fond of animals and don't really see the point in having a pet. i am also ridiculously afraid wasps and don't like bugs in general. with that in mind, i guess you understand why i am not at all pleased that a little cockroach has managed to find his way into my apartment..

i first met him about three weeks ago. he just walked in under my door one late night. some stomping made him realise he was on the wrong track. a couple of days later, i found him walking around close to my new chest of drawers, i.e. about two, three metres into the apartment. the broom told him off, just a little bit more harshly than i had done the previous time. obviously not harshly enough though as yesterday, when i got back from japan, i found him walking around in the apartment again. this time exploring my shoe shelf. when i stomped and went to get the broom, he hid under the sink. i managed to get him out again, but it feels like he is getting a little bit braver and more established for each time.

sooo.. right, i thought. time to get this little fellow to understand this apartment is not his home! i went to the supermarket, which i am sure you can imagine, is a paradise if you're looking for this kind of things. this is what i found:
might be a little bit ott for only one little cockroach, but i think it's better to put my foot down straight away before he tells his massive friends to join him. i've seen them around and wouldn't want to meet any of them in a dark alley. or anywhere else for that matter. so now i am waiting to see what will happen next. stay tuned for more updates.

a colleague!!

after almost eight months on my own, i finally have a colleague. his name is takenori and he's here on a three months secondment from our new york office. he arrived two weeks ago and i'm just over the moon to have him here! we had just met very briefly once before as he only just started working with us around the same time as i left new york. still it feels like we've known each other for ages.

his arrival also happened to coincide with my parents return to singapore after an adventurous trip around south east asia. i did of course do my best to combine spending time with them and at the same time making takenori feel welcome. needless to say - they are now best friends.

roxette

just been to the most amazing concert - roxette!! for me it's like the ultimate concert, i know just about all their songs and they're just so amazingly great.

i had planned to go to their concert at slottsskogsvallen in sweden last summer, but turned out it didn't really work out timing wise with my little trip to singapore. my friend rebecca and i called that concert cool - concert of our lifetimes. guess how happy i was when i found out roxette would actually be coming to singapore as well!

i think almost all of the swedish community in singapore was there. to be honest, i was a little bit hesitant about whether or not i should go at first, considering the lack of atmosphere in other concerts i've been to here. it's never great if people are just sitting there, not engaging at all, which was what happened at the beginning of the concert. we were even told off for standing up by the people sitting behind us!

roxette were amazing though and halfway through the concert they had everyone standing up, clapping their hands and singing along. i've clapped so much my hands hurt!

sooooo happy i went!!!

here are some pictures and videos:

valentine's day

i know valentine's day is a bit of a commercial stunt and i can't say i particularly like it (at all, whatsoever, goddamnit!). nevertheless, it's a day when i feel like doing something and not just sit at home watching tv.

on the agenda for yesterday was going to a concert with some friends. and besides listening to the music, i also observed some cultural differences..

the singaporeans are quite strange sometimes. yes, i know, that in itself is not a cultural difference, it's probably more of a personal opinion.. anyway, the band was playing latin american jazz music and despite me being a 'cold' swede and kind of non-rhythmical person, i still felt like it was music to dance to - actually the perfect music to play in a bar where some people casually sit around tables and some dance, while having a drink and chatting away. this concert, however, was in a kind of auditorium, where you would expect a concert with classical music to take place. people were sitting down and no one moved one inch during the whole concert. only when it was finished they all stood up and greeted the band massive applause. a bit of a surprise as the complete silence and lack of movement during the actual concert seemed to me like an indication of indifference or even dislike.

so difference 1 is that they even have the concert where they had it and difference 2 the way they acted.

i know you can't judge from one scenario only (which is probably the reason why this has not yet made the front page of any big news paper. besides, i am not claiming it to be scientifically reliable - just an observation), but to put one more example forward and "proof" i am not generalising (maybe only a tad), this also happened at the abba mania concert i went to. and abba is definitely not music you just sit still and listen to!

the other thing i noticed was that people just started clapping in the middle of a song, like after one of the musicians had a solo. i don't know if it's only me as i am not that used to this type of concerts, but i find it really rude to start clapping in the middle of a song. i also got backed up by my german friend. to me it screams 'stop it, you suck'. my spanish friends didn't find it odd at all.

i'm quite sure there was something else as well, but i've completely forgotten. i mean, this was yesterday after all and as we say in sweden 'minnet är gott, men kort'.

all in all, it was a good valentine's day. it was nice to do something different. i would never myself had come up with the idea of going to such a concert, but it was a nice experience. i've come to realise that it's the beauty of meeting people that are different from you - you get to do things you wouldn't normally do and see things you wouldn't normally see. the most important is not to have lots in common, it's to have a good time and meeting new people with different views and interests just enrichens your life and ensures you live your life to the fullest.

i know it sounds pretentious, but that's probably one of the main things i've learned so far in life, probably a lot thanks to travelling and meeting so many different types of people..

that is all. hasta la vista!