it's not the heat, it's the humidity

In trying to convey the day to day experiences of our new life in Singapore, I've decided to start a blog rather than essentially write the same thing to every person I know every day. Before we moved here, we were told that Singapore is hot, humid, clean, and expensive. Let me start first with the weather.

If you look on a weather page, it will say that the daily forecast in Singapore is 88-90 degrees, with a little thunderstorm icon, and a 60% chance of rain. That would seem fairly uniform. In actuality, the weather can feel different every day, primarily based on whether or not that 60% of rain really does fall. We've had pretty comfortable weather here, nice "cool" evenings, and when it's cloudy, it feels good. Yeah, it's always humid, but I come from Minnesota where it's really humid. So far, the weather is treating us well.

As to the clean description, well, I came from urban east asia. Anything is cleaner.

And expensive? Apparently I also lived in an expensive part of Asia, because this seems pretty equitable to the states to me. It is pretty shocking to pay normal prices for produce - no more 10 pounds of vegetables for $2. This morning I had the interesting shopping experience of Mustafa Center, which is located in Little India. As you might imagine, there were many Indian products there I was previously unfamiliar with. I feel like a kid at Christmas here - after five years of minimal shopping, I can walk into a store and find sour cream and tortillas and maple syrup. You really have to live in a place where you can't have something to appreciate it when you do. It's hard to feel the pull of consumerism again. It was so much easier when there just wasn't an option to buy.

Last week I talked with my dad on the phone. I asked him if he was working in his garden a lot now that he is retired. He said he is waiting for it to frost. That is incomprehensible to me here, in the land of perpetual summer. Ask me again if I enjoy the constant warm weather in December when I'm dreaming of a white Christmas and desperate for a reason to drink hot chocolate.