Spending my Days in Singapore

I have found a pattern that I use for my daily activities here in Singapore. It’s convenient and keeps me active.

In the mornings, I wash some socks and undies while I shower. They take days to dry in this humid weather and I have even resorted to ironing them so that they dry. I have the best pressed socks in town. I have left a polo shirt to drip dry above the bath so I don’t have to iron it, but three days later it is still damp. Out with the iron once more!

I normally go to the hotel’s Executive Lounge on the top floor for a buffet breakfast and because the hotel only opened after covid on the day before I checked in, I am often the only guest there. I get looked after very well by the staff.

Then, if I am not going out, I’ll answer some emails or sort out some admin stuff such as travel insurance details or do some washing (hoping that it will dry sometime). Perhaps I’ll go for a walk to the nearest shopping mall (about 800 metres) and buy some treats for Jill and a couple of cans of beer to put in the fridge in my room.  On some mornings, I’ll go for a walk along the river. I’m actually running o0ut of things to see as we saw all the big tourist sights in the week before Jill had her accident.

I have not been eating much for lunch as I find that in this heat, a large breakfast will do me until dinner. I get more thirsty, than I do hungry – just as I remember from my time in Vietnam. There are some nice cafes on the other side of the river and I had a nice meal of pasts there one day. My friend Max will probably think that I am crazy to miss an opportunity for another curry, but after many Chinese and Malay meals, I just hanker for something Western to eat. 

The food at the nearby food centre is interesting and very tasty. Lots of curries, satay and dumplings, although last night I saw a nearby Italian restaurant as I passed by in a taxi and I walked up there for a pizza last night.

In the afternoons, I visit Jill in hospital. In the mornings, she is busy with medical checks and Physio, so afternoons are the best time to visit. Medically, Jill is well although she has a small infection in her surgical wound but this is looking better after a few days of antibiotics. Yesterday, she had her stitches removed.

We held a family meeting yesterday including a Zoom conference including our daughter, Cathy, who is a specialist geriatrician. We decided that if I could learn how to support Jills movement over this week, she would be ready to fly home by the weekend. Cathy will arrange some rehab care back in Melbourne. I found that flights to Melbourne are fully booked for the next three weeks but I was able to get two seats on a flight via Sydney for next Saturday night. We will arrive home on Sunday Morning.

Jill’s Occupational Therapist had her out in the garden on Friday, to feed the fish in the pond on Level 4 of the hospital. This was part enjoyment but mostly more practice in standing and balancing.

As I mentioned once before, Singapore is a very garden conscious city. Rather than have a sterile concrete environment, the government has encouraged the use of gardens in between apartment blocks, on balconies, and even on on rooftops. It is wonderful to see so much ‘green’ in such a densely populated city.

However, my hotel as a twenty seven storey atrium. By comparison, it looks quite harsh without any plants on its balconies to soften the structure.

In the evenings, I find myself back at the hotels executive lounge for cocktails and a glass of wine. Some nights when I am the only guest, I feel bad about all the canapés and food going to waste, so I have eaten enough from the buffet to substitute for dinner. With the hotel being a couple of kilometres away from the financial district with its tall buildings, there is a broad and attractive view across to the city..

This morning, the view out my window is a little different. The sky is black and we are about to have a thunderstorm. It has just started to rain now. The radar map shows very heavy rain across the entire Island with a warning for heavy rain.  This is a prelude to the wet season that starts in earnest in late October.

I am running out of things to do but on Thursday, I spent a few hours at Singapore Zoo. It was hot and steamy and a little uncomfortable. The animals at the zoo are kept in large enclosures that, for local species replicate their natural environment. There are some areas, such as where the primate are kept, that the vegetation is so dense, it is really hard to see the animals. I was able to get close enough to some of them to capture some good images.

The Singapore Zoo has two white tigers. These are not albinos or a different sub species of tiger. Their white coat, brown stripes and blue eyes are the result of a mutated gene. Both white and orange coloured tiger cubs can be found in the same litter. Apparently, the first white tiger cub was caught in India. He later produced a litter of 10 cubs with an orange coloured tigress. All of them were orange. When he went onto mate with a female from his litter they produced four white clubs. This started the breeding of white cubs under human care; all white tigers in human care today descended from that one original tiger.

It was a bit like taking coals to Newcastle, but I did visit the Australian section of the zoo and found an eastern grey kangaroo, similar to those we find in our local park. 

The zoo also has a find reptile collection and I did like seeing this chameleon. I think I have only ever seen one before.

I went straight from the zoo to our family meeting at the hospital and was very appreciative of the air conditioning after being outdoors for around three hours at the zoo. It took quite a while for my shirt to dry out.