Been in Singapore for a number of days already, and the paper and presentation I've been working on for the past few months is over and done with. Not my best performance, I felt, but still the topic attracted some attention and a number of people were genuinely interested in knowing more. So since yesterday, after I finished what I came here to do, I've just been taking things slow and easy, even skipping a number of the panels of the conference to play a little tennis.
To be honest, it's not been an eventful few days here, and the most exciting is seeing old friends and being abroad with people I study and work with back in Canada. You really get to know people better when you travel and live with them, in ways good and bad. I'm staying at a lodge nearby the airport at Changi. It's quite comfortable, and the best thing is it's right under the flight path of planes landing, so I can just sit at the window and watch all these planes and airlines go by and try to identify them. Other than that, there's only the nearby village with a few shops and a food court, a dirty beach (where once thousands of people were beheaded by the Japanese during the world war...), but nothing much else. And the food isn't all that great either, lots of grease and not a lot of greens, so nothing really special compared to things back in Taiwan...
Maybe it's because I've been to Singapore too many times that I find things kind of dull. The organisers took us on a "city tour" in the afternoon, basically bus-ing an hour away to ride the Singapore Flyer, and then taking us to a big food court before taking us all back to our accommodations again. That's as much as the tour of Singapore was. Sure, there are impressive skyscrappers and stunning architecture, dazzling lights and lots of glitzy restaurants, shopping malls and casinos... beyond all that, is there much else?
I'm looking forward to my trip in two days, to riding my way away and out of this little island....
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