Spaceships & Cat Cafes in Singapore

Strange to think that it's been 5 years since I last visited Singapore (rather than just passing through). A great deal remains the same: the airport works smoothly, taxis are cheap & abundant, and the sun at 4pm still cuts you like a laser beam.

There's some things that have fallen into disrepair & are being renovated: I used to rely on Chijmes as a nice choice of upmarket eateries, but it's both under repair & somewhat downmarket (Hogs Breath Cafe is not really fine dining). 

Then there's the new stuff - great swathes of newly-reclaimed land, boasting spectacular constructions, like the Sands Marina Bay hotel, with its flying-saucer "skygarden" on the 57th floor (generating the obligatory late night laser display).

Across rhe river from the Sands, tucked away on the 2nd floor of a building  on the popular Boat Quay restaurant strip, is Neko no Niwa - the Cat Cafe.  Don't worry, the moggies aren't on the menu; instead this is a place where you can get coffee and cake, and $12 buys you an hour in the play den along with 13 ex-strays. The place was at capacity with 25 humans when I visited, and had a big queue waiting. Good stuff!

One thing that hasn't changes is the vast variety of food options, although individual places keep opening & closing all the time. Clark Quay is much expanded, with perhaps five times the restaurant options of my previous visits. My find of the trip was much nearer my hotel, on Purvis St. A brand new place called Sprig - only open a week - and enjoying the first blush of food generosity that new restaurants seem to have before the accounts come home to roost. The toasted baguette slices served with truffle-oil drizzled butter were spectacular; I hope it lasts til I get back again.

Deja vu All Over Again

I'm in a brauhaus in Singapore, somewhat morosely quaffing my second wiessbier alone, and eavesdropping on the  conversation at the next table.

It's a familiar situation: a group of people from an IT vendor (no idea which), with one obviously out of town caucasian guy - a visiting expert - being educated about the asian market, customers & partners.

Funny because I've been there - first as the visitor & later as the guy helping with the education of other visitors.

Also funny to wonder just how many times the same kind of conversation is repeated around the industry & around the region...

Extra Time in Tokyo

For the first time ever, I actually got to spend some free time in Tokyo, over thr weekend between one corporate event & another. I could't have been luckier witht he weather - bright, blue autumn skies,  a crisp frostiness in the air that made walking around easy and comfortable, and no significant wind chill that would necessitate heavy coats.

As per usual I spent the extra time walking... a lot... If I did this much walking at home I'd probably be 20kg lighter :/  Saturday was Kamakura, one-time capital of Japan & home of the 2nd largest bronze bhudda in the country. Kamakura is a country town not far from the sea - there were actually tsunami awareness signs posted on telephone poles: "7m above sea level - be tsunami aware". The town is about 1hour by train from Tokyo central station - and it seems like house prices aren't that outrageous (around 40,000,000 yen gets you a 3br house), although I could have been looking at some dodgy properties...

With a multitude of temples & shrines dotted about a fairly picturesque little town, Kamakura is the classic historical walkabout of the kind that I would have hated as a child Maybe if, as a child, I'd been more into photography; or if ther was the same instant gratification that you get with photos these days, those wlakabouts would have been less dull.  Clearly I still lack the killer instinct for a good candid photographer, since there were a couple of wedding parties who would have made great subjects if I had the nerve to ask for a pose - just got the one snap.

Dinner was in Ginza. I didn't find the shabu shabu place that I went to about 10 years ago, but I found another instead which was pretty good - all you can eat in 90 min, which was a good deal considering I didn't have lunch.

On Sunday I took the subway again to Asakusa. The fine weather & Sunday crowds made it a vibrant place to go, and I was seduced by the smell of fresh baked something to a little store selling sweet Japanese bread & apple pies, and playing a 40's recording of japanese boogie-woogie music to the long queue of people eaiting to buy. It was fantastic! Crispy & biscuty on the outside, light & fluffy on the inside, and warm. So good I had eaten it before I even thought about taking a picture.  I'll have to go back next time for, ahh, "research". 

Another long walk through almost deserted backstreets to Ueno park, also lovely in the fine weather. There seemed to be some kind of koi fish competition going on, with some available for sale: 80,000 yen for a goldfish? 

I trawled through Akihabara & found the little video adapter gadget I was after, but nothing else stood out as being super-cheap.  The area seems to be as much about maid coffee shopes and anime model stores as electronics these days. The fashion market on the other side of the river was probably a better find.

Another lesson of Tokyo on weekends: Akasaka is pretty much closed. Only one restaurant in four was open, and I eventually grabbed a basic meal. Maybe near Ueno or Roppongi would have been a better option. 

The next lesson was to check other flight options than just from Narita (which is 90 mins from the city by bus). My flight to Beijing left at 8:20am, which meant I didn't have time to transit from Tokyo & has to camp at an airport hotel overnight. Not the greatest hardship in the world, but it basically wasted an evening with colleagues. 

My last view of Tokyo this time was the ground crew lined up waving goodbye to the plane - surprisingly uplifting & not something you'd conceive of in most places.

 

Finally, one unexpected bonus of the flight from Tokyo to Beijing (and the fine weather) was the epic view of Mt Fuji. If only I'd asked for a window seat!

Return to Shanghai

Another trip back to a place I'd been before, yet has changed so much.

Last time I went to Shanghai was late 2004 or thereabouts. I stayed on the Pudong side, when Sun Microsystems still existed and still had the budget to blow of serious marketing - like projecting the company logo onto the side of the 40-storey hotel building during the event. I was able to enjoy the airport maglev in its full glory of 410km/h (for about 3 minutes), which would have been much more impressive if it hadn't taken 40min to reach the station by taxi.

Things have proceeded apace - as expected. For one thing, there's so much more of it: vast tracts of reclaimed land were visible as I landed, with huge farms of wind turbines dotted out to sea, and some amazing scultping of the land for housing and government retreats. The Puding side has sprouted out, thanks to the world expo in 2008, and no longer appears to be a small bit on the wrong side of the river.

It still is, on the wrong side of the rivier, though - all of the really interesting stuff is on the old Bund side. The Bund itself has been totally rejuvenated - as expected, the crumbling ruins of former colonial glory have been ressurected & turned into swish hotels & office buildings. It was ripe to happen, I just wish I'd had a spare few hundred million back in the early 2000's to get into proerpty development...

The cool feel that was showing in ritzy places when I last visited is much more abundant now - whereas last time the bars and restaurants were all on the super-elite side of the price scale, now there's some really good stuff available at decent prices.  Or maybe the Australian dollar has just gone up in the meantime.

i went to a partner office at an extremely funky area probably most closely resembling an incubator park for startups; it also happened to be within a sculpture park.

All to soon, had to leave again. It remains my favourite city in China - too much more still to explore.

Subways and Cicadas

Watching The Karate Kid in an hotel in Tokyo - very strange for some reason...

Just back from an Okonamiyaki restaurant - great stuff.  It's really nice to have people join you for dinner when you're travelling, and even better when your colleagues ake you to good places to eat. After three evenings & three good meals I really appreciate their generosity. 

Tokyo has been massively humid - well over 30 degrees each day and well over 70% humidity. The cicadas are out in force, with that twanging kree-kree-kree that distinguishes them from those we have back home (and raises the feeling of being in a Miyazaki film). It still seems bizarre that my last trip was 8 years ago, but it doesn't seem much has changed, except perhaps more internet access around the place, and maybe a few more English signs here & there.

The one big thing that was different during this trip was the number of taxis we took: at least one or two every day - a complete change from when I at was Sun taking the subway & I've used cabs more on this 4-day trip than all my previous visits to Tokyo combined. The guys said it was a special case for foreign visitors, and considering the humidity I was grateful for that luxury. Ironically, though, the fares don't seem that far removed from what you'd expect to pay in Sydney for a similar duration... an interesting comparison of the way the economies of the two countries have been over the past few years.

Green and Pleasant Land

I've spent the past week in England, my first visit for twenty-five years, and a slightly strange experience. Everything is a little bit familiar, but odd enough to remind me this isn't home. Ironically, having so much family around makes it clear this isn't Australia.

The weather certainly isn't giving a clue this is England - temperatures pushing 30 degrees continuously since last week, and the sky spectacularly blue. In characteristic fashion, some Brits are starting to complain about it being too hot...

So Much for Upgrades

Landed in Dehli last night at 10pm, grinding my teeth that I didn't decide to get on an earlier flight from Mumbai, but then realising that there wouldn't have been anyone waiting to pick me up from the airport if I was early (and the hotel was half an hour's drive away).

The hotel (Sheraton Delhi) is great: one of those palatial kind of places with grounds and be-turbaned guards and doorman. The lady in a sari met me and informed my room had been upgraded, which was really nice, until I realised that it was already pushing midnight and I'd be leaving at 4am just one day later. Oh well, an upgrade for 28 hours is better than no upgrade at all.

A packed day followed: meeting at the office, back to the hotel for media, back to the office for lunch, into a car to do a phone interview on the way to a customer, back to the office for debriefing. Hopefully I didn't make too much of a mess of things with the journos...

Outside a customer's IT department

Traffic Madness

Mumbai traffic is insane. This is something everyone knows, but it's something else to experience it. And I've done a lot of experiencing over the past couple of days. It's not scary so much as just all-in: everyone jostling for that little edge forward. The dumb thing is that if everyone kept lane discipline and, say, didn't run through red traffic lights, the whole system would probably work a lot more smoothly. Still, as the customer I met today said, Indians love to break the rules – to feel like they're winning something over the authorities. A sentiment we can appreciate in Australia, even if trying to drive in this mess would make most of us blow a fuse.

That's one definite upside to having a driver, quite aside from having someone who will pick you up, deal with the issues of parking, look after bags, etc. I'm thinking that if I eventually get to India for a holiday, this is a good way to do it.

There are some good roads – in fact on the first day it was too good: we took a brand new expressway and arrived at the customer site (ahem) 90 minutes early for the meeting. Still, better early than late...
The frightening thing about this 15km raise expressway is that there is no breakdown lane, no turn-offs, and it seems no way to cross over to the other side in an emergency. One broken-down car will cause a huge traffic jam. Two broken down cars will totally clog everything for hours. Fun just waiting to happen.

Far Away in Mumbai

Arrived in Mumbai after a drawn-out trip from Sydney to Brisbane to Singapore: 25 hours door to door, and 27 hours bed to bed. Left the cold, wet drizzly Sydney winter & arrived in the hot, wet, damp Mumbai monsoon season (890+ mm rain per day).

Last time I was in Mumbai was 9 years ago – but difficult to say if things have changed; at least this time, perhaps since it was so late, I didn't have two little girls follow me to the car begging for a dollar; heartbreaking, but at the time my driver said that anything I gave them would just be taken away. This time, scenes from Slumdog Millionaire were still strong in my mind since I'd just watched it on the flight, but the only thing I had to deal with was the mud & shit on the way to the carpark.

The  drive from the airport took a while – I'd foolishly booked myself into an hotel right at the tip of southern Mumbai, near the heritage district of Fort. This used to be the hub of activity, but these days high rents and the difficulty in upgrading the buildings has pushed most businesses further out (ironically, close to the airport is usually a better place to stay). The area has a very faded grandeur - art deco buildings aplenty, but all peeling and dilapidated.  A shame, and strange considering the land value is so high. Maybe there's only just so much you can do against the monsoon...

Finally Forbidden!

Thirteen years & 5 visits after my first trip to Beijing, I finally made it into the Forbidden City!  All I need to to now is get my arse over to the Great Wall at some point...

Eight years (!) since my last visit to mainland China, Beijing has changed dramatically: thanks to the Olympics there are English signs everywhere; the red army numberplated-Audis are gone, replaced by a multitude of private cars including Ferraris & Bentleys; the subway has grown from 2 lines to 10; and the only people riding around on bicycles are tourists.  The place looks more like Singapore now than the only-just-out-of-full-on-communism that I saw in 2000.

Some things remain similar – stepping off the subway at Tianamen Square I was approached by another  passenger who just wanted to chat in English for a bit. He wanted to go for a coffee (nothing suss?) but I only had a couple of hours to see the Forbidden City so had a good excuse to beg off.

Walking back around the palace from its northern gate, I saw the tourists on their bikes: two girls and a guy, youngish europeans by the look. They parked their bikes outside a little sidewalk bar jumping with live music. I had to stop & get a beer, although 30 RMB for a bottle of Laotian brew still seems a little outrageous.  It was nice, though...

n..n...n...Nürnberg...

Finally arrived in Nürnberg after spending 26 hours with my legs crunched up, followed by 20 minutes of mad sprinting to get from one end of Frankfurt airport to the other to catch the connecting flight. ffs! the absolute furthest possible gate!

Anyway, eventually got here and it's freezing! zero degrees with little flecks of soft stuff dropping down from the sky.

The Aldstadt at the centre of the city is great – an old mediaeval town turned into the mostly pedestrian shopping and residential precinct. Nicely done.