Singapore

Singapore is an interesting place. Tom started working there last Monday. His office is situated in the office complex "The Gateway", 2 trapezoid shaped buildings east of the centre. The buildings have very sharp edges which is apparently not very Feng Shui (the sharp corners are like sword blades) for the people outside the buildings, but those inside should be fine... The view from the office (37th -top- floor Gateway West) is impressive (picture 1). Next to the office, DHL has put down a huge balloon (similar to the Belgacom balloon in Brussels last year) where you can go up to 150m to enjoy the view (picture 2), it's on the to do list. Singapore is a very clean, well-organised and modern city. The whole country (an island) is about 700 sq.km in size, similar to Bahrain, which is bigger than e.g. Andorra but smaller than a Belgian province (W-Brabant is about 1000 sq.km). Official languages are English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Temperature is around 32ºC year-round, with high humidity levels also year-round (around 70%). There is a wide variety of food available from all continents. The most popular local food is Chinese-inspired. 1 S$ is worth about 0,5 €. And to conclude the short list of facts, an interesting trivia: the national television concludes its broadcasts (around midnight) with the Singapore National Anthem ("Majulah Singapura"). This reminded me of the Thai tradition of screening the Thai National Anthem (with pictures of the Royal Family) at the start of a movie in the cinema (the audience is expected to rise to show respect). We witnessed something similar in Bombay, where the Indian National Anthem is also shown before the movies in theatres. More news later!