A New Journey: Singapore

Welcome back! We’re on the road again, so we’ll continue the blog. Gaga has a bit less than two years left on maternity leave, so we’ll try to get to a few beautiful, interesting places and see where the grass is greenest. First stop: Singapore.

Singapore is a bit of an odd choice, maybe. But the oldest vfx house of them all, Industrial Light & Magic, opened a branch here over a decade ago, and around this time of the year the location beats pretty much any other – instead of semi-cold weather and weeks of muddy snow or icy rain in Canada, Germany, the UK or US, we have 28 degrees aaaaand, fine, some rain. But at least it’s proper tropical monsoon rain. And it usually only lasts a couple of minutes. We don’t mind, so far.

Singapore was Gaga’s idea, and I was very skeptical. I’m not a city person. Much less a country-that-consists-of-nothing-but-one-city person. But from what we could see in this first week of our stay, Singapore’s title as greenest city in the world is not just marketing talk. All in all, this seems to be the opposite of our arrival in Vancouver – we expected to be overwhelmed then, and were disappointed. This time, I expected to be disappointed, but really? It’s awesome here.

There are many stories to tell already, but for now, I’ll leave it at a quick recap of the why, how and when we got here. Which means that some of you will be bored, because we already WhatsApped, Skyped, Threemad, Hangouted or Emailed. Sorry. At least there are a few pictures, okay? (From the phone, mostly, for now. Better times will come. Promise.)

The whole process of getting the job and the necessary letters of approval from the Ministry of Manpower (!) was a bit chaotic. In the end, we were told on Tuesday the 2nd to board a plane on Thursday the 4th, and that I was expected to start working on Monday the 8th. And this after we’d successfully lobbied for a week of settling-in-time and a few days of advance notice before the flight, and we were duly pissed at the prospect of having to rush everything and not having any time to get used to our new surroundings before I had to shuffle off to work.

Things did not get better from there. The flight to Paris was almost 30 minutes late, and we only had a planned one-hour stop-over. Charles-de-Gaulle is the second-largest airport in Europe. 30 minutes is worth absolutely nothing there, even when you’re travelling alone and with only one light backpack. With two kids and five pieces of cabin luggage? Terrifying. We exited the plane while boarding for the connecting flight to Singapore was already in full swing, with 25 minutes until the gate would close. We ran, kids and bags on our arms, shoulders and backs, for the better part of those 25 minutes, and were ready to collapse when we got to the gate, which they closed behind us.

We then waited in the plane for an hour, because two passengers hadn’t shown up and their luggage had to be unloaded. Alanis Morissette, I’m sure, softly hummed ‘Ironic’ somewhere…

Things still did not get better. We knew that our reserved seats were not in one row. We thought we might get lucky and I could swap seats with some nice person next to Gaga and the boys, because my place was pretty good. But my place was already taken. Turns out, the plane was overbooked. I ended up half a cabin away, on the other side of the plane. The flight was not enjoyable, at all. But we made it, in the end. 12 hours isn’t all that long, all things considered.

We came to a completely empty immigration hall, where I decided to go to the loo first. When I came back, Albert decided that he wanted to go to the loo, too. (btw, there are kid-sized wash basins in most public toilets here, and changing tables in both the men’s and ladies’ rooms – thumbs up!) Why am I telling you about boys going to the loo? Well, when we came back again, the immigration hall was packed with hundreds of people that had turned up out of nowhere and stood now between us and a bed. We were a bit less than happy at that point, as you might imagine. But, we caught a lucky break when one officer pulled us aside, took our fingerprints, gave us our visas and led us past the waiting crowd, straight to the luggage belts.

Where there was a whole lot of belt, and not all that much luggage.

So, after skipping the one line, we waited in the next one for half an hour, in order to file a complaint about our missing stuff. (Our missing stuff being ALL of our stuff.) Half an hour is ample time to let the whole situation sink in and start whipping up a replacement-shopping list. “Ooh no, we don’t have any diapers for the boys!” – “Aw shucks, all our toiletries…” – “Boy, it’s really warm. How will we survive in our European winter apparel?” – “I just really want to take a shower, and I think something died in my mouth.” – “All the things I would give for a pair of slippers.” – “Should we pack a change of underwear in the cabin luggage for future trips?” … It went like this for a while, only with more swearing.

The tiny rest of the trip went smoothly – a driver picked us up and brought us to the Oasia, where we’ll live for the next couple of months. We were very positively surprised by the high-class accommodation. After a short exploration walk around the premises and to the playground, we fell into our beds and slept, more or less soundly, until the next morning. We went on our shopping spree, found all that we absolutely needed, including a very good breakfast, and started the process of settling into our new environment.

Right then, pictures.

Our luggage arrived a day later. Work has been starting slow and easy. We found supermarkets, food centers and cafés that we like. We love the weather. There are some stunning views. We’re looking forward to sharing more with you soon!