Singapore Day 2

I've always been a morning person, but yesterday I woke up at 4:30 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Of course, I had gone to bed at 6 p.m. the night before, but needless to say my circadian rhythms are still catching up.

What do you do at 4:30 in the morning? Martha Stewart comes on at 5 a.m. on one of the two English channels available on basic cable. BTW, TV here kind of sucks (which is fine for the most part, since I don't plan to spend the next three months sitting at home watching TV).

After that, I decided to go to the gym. Might as well get in a workout after practically a full day of sitting before that, I figured. Since Singapore is really close to the equator, it generally gets light and dark around the same time 365 days a year - apparently around 7 a.m. and 7/8 p.m. Most of my work out was in the dark (literally - the person already in there on the treadmill hadn't turned on the lights, and not being the first one in there I felt kind of bad doing that, so I just watched NewsAsia and kind of watched the sun come up.) The gym is on the 31st floor, and here's a snapshot from just outside the gym. I didn't want to take one inside the gym and have the other people working out think I'm weird (I know I wouldn't want my photo taken working out!) Cloudy, not not a bad view, huh?


My Singapore manager has been very flexible in letting me get settled though I did go into the office to take care of some administrative details, have lunch with my manager here, brainstorm a few ideas and take a conference call with our client here. It was nice to meet some of the people I'll be working with over the next few months, though several people were out of town.

After work I walked around a bit, did a little more food shopping, and took a few photos of things I found interesting in the Central Business District (CBD). These are by no means representative of all things Singapore, but they struck me as I was walking around and I thought you'd find them interesting, too.

I'm not sure what these are called here, but I'd call them row houses. And literally, there are rows and rows of them. Most of the first floor units are restaurants, stores or bars. (UPDATE: I asked a colleague. They are called shop houses.)

O'Bama's Irish Pub! I have to go there at some point.

7-Elevens are everywhere. Seriously. So are American fast food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, Carl's Jr. and Subway.

Bridal stores are also really prevalent in this shop house area. Not sure if you can see the signs but there are four in a row here, and I walked past an area where eight of the nine stores were bridal boutiques. I wonder if there is really that big of a market?

Here's the fruit market where I bought some apples and clementines. So much cheaper and better I'm sure than what's available in the supermarket.