July 20 (Friday)

Humidity. I think I will remember the humidity the most about Singapore. The temperature is actually a few degrees cooler than it was in Florence, but it feels overwhelmingly hotter because of the humidity. Add jet lag on top of that and I'v wound up with little energy for sightseeing, so I haven't seen as much as I could have.

Singapore is an interesting study in contrasts. Everyone speaks English (it's one of three official languages), so it's very easy to get around. But while the commerce, materialism, and high tech are all very familiar (I think the only other place I've seen so many cell phones was in Finland), there are also cultural differences. More emphasis on communal or community values rather than individual rights. The trivial example is the hefty fine imposed for littering, and my assumption is that littering laws are taken seriously here. It appears that sexual mores are much more conservative than in comparably sized cities in the US. There was a story in the paper the other night of the murder/suicide of two young women, one in love with the other. The implication of the story was that death is the preferred expression for such love here. And there was another article about the failure of a single parent support group to form here - they still use the term "out of wedlock" and there's such a social stigma of being a single parent that none of the single mothers contacted wanted to risk drawing attention to themselves.

I guess I'd say it's difficult for me to get beyond my American, liberal belief system and appreciate the value system at work here, so part of my disorientation is not due simply to jet lag or overwhelming humidity but to this juxtaposition between differing value systems.

But I did manage to see a few sights:

• Orchard Road - shopping mecca
• Downtown - looking very much like all other modern city centers, with skyscrapers, and only the plethora of palm trees and signs in Tagalog, Malay or Chinese to let you know you're in Asia
• Botanical Gardens - lovely landscaping, huge collection of palm trees and other native plants
• Chinatown - where I splurged on a hand tailored suit. They won't have time to finish it before I leave, so they'll be shipping it to me in the US.

Tomorrow I'll be flying down to Melbourne, going from tropical heat to Australian winter. I'm looking forward to it, especially getting to meet several friends from my email list in Melbourne and Sydney.