It’s a good thing I don’t wear makeup…

…aka Singapore First Impressions.

Well, I’m in Singapore for 10 days (in the middle of our Sydney stint) for our office expansion project, and Ben’s home in CA for seder, grandpa’s birthday, and Kirkwood Halloween (fresh snow this very weekend!)…oh yeah, and a product launch for work. That too.

When he’s in Kirkweed and I’m here, our climates couldn’t be more different. Somewhere in the middle of those extremes is perfect weather…oh yeah, that’s the bay area. (heh.)

Boy howdy, this weather takes some getting used to. I’m sure you could search the internets and find thousands of blogs by white people about adjusting to Singapore weather, so here’s my contribution to the cannon.

First of all, I’m home sick today. Good thing it’s a holiday anyway (Easter Friday), so I’m not abandoning Tanya to the task of setting up the new floor by herself. I’m suffering from my typical reaction to mad over air-conditioning; when it’s 30C outside, do the interiors of office buildings really need to be 17? Really? I so cannot handle the drastic, immediate change in temperature — kinda like the SoCal high desert or even Pomona/Claremont, where it can be 90 during the day and then 40 right after the sun sets. That, combined with the sheer moisture difference (what’s an analogy for like walking into an ice-cold hair dryer?), is an instant cold-bringer for me. Bleah.

My first commute to work was a teeny inicator of the incredible amounts of energy being put into climate over-control inside office buildings all around this island. As I walked down Shenton Way, sweating like a truckdriver changing a tire in the Mohave, I’d pass by lots of entrances to fancy corporate buildings — banks, consulting companies, etc. etc. As other people entered those buildings, with each Whoosh! of an automatic door came an accompanying POW! of insanely cold air…each building was essentially a cold-air factory bleeding product into the outside world. What’re you trying to do, air condition the entire outdoors?   BTW, it’s not working. =^P

Despite the crazy sweating (how do local women manage to keep makeup on in this humidity? If I were wearing any, I’d have about 5 rings around my collar at this point…), I do enjoy the moments when it essentially reaches 100% humidity and starts dumping rain. Today we had a spectacular mid-afternoon thunder & lightning show, the thunder was so intense it rattled windows. I felt like I was in the middle of a pipe organ, where the pipes are actually supersonic jets. I was on a video chat with Ben at the time, and some of the lightning striked caused fuzz in my headset; my own personal localized EMP. As long as things don’t go all Dark Angel, it’s still a novelty.

Also, there was a little lizard in the apartment today. CUTE! But my Indian roommate said that there’s a cultural prejudice against lizards in India…they’re considered disgusting, sortof like roaches are in the US. So I don’t think I’ll tell him next time I see one skittering around the floorboards.

Anyhoo, it’s very lush, the birds sound beautiful, and black pepper crab is YUMS. We’re going for dim sum tomorrow, we shall see if I have the guts to try and order in my hodgepodge mandarin in the middle of Singapore. Probably not.