anderswo

China is very different. From what I know, heard, but also from what I imagined. People have been exceedingly friendly towards me. No one has stuck a camera in my face yet, and I haven’t had problems finding edible food, or even shopping in the supermarket. And that even though no one speaks english. Not like european hyperbole where “no one speaks english in france”. I mean like blank stares at a 5-star hotel front desk and taxi drivers not stopping for you cause they can’t be bothered trying to understand where you want to go. The people in France who “don’t speak english” are about on the same level as the customer support team here with university degrees in english.

Wuhan is extremely well developed and the parts that I’ve seen look almost like any other city I’ve been to (except for the gigantic flashing Neonlight signs with big chinese characters, of course). Little RFID card readers in busses (next to a box where you stuff in a 1 yuen note if you dont have a card) are just as commonplace as expensive cell phones and cars. Lots of cars. During the day a haze of pollution will settle over the city that makes it hard to see a building 30 meters down the block. Later in the day this eases up a bit until the evening when you can start to see clearly again. Pollution in general is a subject that everyone seems to be blissfully unaware of. We’ve all read stories about this of course. But the other day witnessed people swimming in the Yangtze River. Think 100m long industrial freight ships, brown water with unidentifiable black flakes bobbing on the surface. The Spree x10. My translator told me people swim across the river frequently.

I’m not a hygiene freak who keeps sanitizing his hands wherever he goes after touching things (met some of them), but the chinese amaze me in this regard. Ok, “amaze” might not be the right word. They hark and spit freely wherever they please, even inside buildings. If they change their mind in the supermarket, they will just leave deepfrozen meat in the closest rack to taw. And suffice it to say, kids don’t go inside restaurants to ask if they can use the bathroom if they’re out in the street playing and suddenly feel a need… in fact, just a few days ago I saw a couple sitting at a table in a restaurant, holding their child up so it could pee on the tiles. Right in front of a dozen people who didn’t give a damn. I was shocked… nevermind science and education (which they have an abundance of in Wuhan, a city of 80+ universities…), common sense should start nudging you in the side when people do their food consumption and waste disposal in the same spot…

Noise is another thing. I get honked at about 20 to 30 times a day here. Cars don’t stop for pedestrians and pedestrians don’t stop for cars. You can imagine the outcome. Add to that the fact that sidewalks here are also widely used by electric scooters and as parking spots for people with expensive cars. So.. several times a day I will have a big Audi or VW (which is kind of a luxury brand in Asia) pull up onto the curb right in front of me while I’m on my way back from the supermarket or something, and they have the nerve to honk me out of the way. Bastards. The same with electric scooter drivers. They just honk at people even when there’s more than enough space for them to just pass.
I don’t like being honked at for no reason.
Speaking of noise. Wuhan doesn’t have a train system. You’d think a city of 10 million would and should have one. But it doesn’t. Not so long ago, the government decided to start working on fixing that. They are carving out tunnels for the first subway line right as I am writing these lines. The problem for me is, that they seem to do it by blowing out huge parts of the tunnels with explosives. Every half hour or so there’s a huge detonation, that shakes the walls of my 19th floor hotelroom. It’s eating away at my nerves. I’m very sensitive when it comes to noise pollution. To me, a few explosions every hour during the day practically equals war on my ears.

I’m here four more days and it seems utterly unbelievable that my four weeks in China should have passed so quickly. I am truly grateful for this opportunity, but If someone were to ask me tomorrow if I’d stay another month for twice the salary, I’d decline. I can’t wait to get out of here. Now that I’ll finally be done with all the working, I want nothing but a white white beach with blue blue water. And Bread. Man, I can’t believe how much I’m craving good solid bread with some substance. I’d go on to say how presliced soft white toast, packaged in plastic bags and with that faint sweet taste to it is gonna bring about the downfall of all civilisation.. but I don’t want to sound dramatic.
Instead I’ll just slip away and dream of a freshly baked loaf, still warm, and with a real crust, lightly salted and preferrably made from 15 million different grains. mhh…..

I am in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, which has been fantastic so far. I  met alot of really nice folks here. There are a few germans here as well, but I haven’t really met many of them. Either way, I’m enjoying my time off, I actually get to relax and forget about all my stuff for the first time since I arrived in Asia.

I didn’t really expect things to change this quickly. 3 hours after I posted the last entry, literally, I got contacted again by Jeremy, who asked me if I wanted to go to China for them… while I have to admit I’m not too enthusiastic about working for another month during my “vacation”, this will be a great opportunity. China is a massive and growing market for artists shows no signs of slowing down. Work experience with, and even IN china, is like a little gold plate on a lead artists resumé. Companies love people who can link the asian and western work habits and bridge cultural gaps and prevent misunderstandings.

After what happened in the embassy I was  a bit reluctant about china, but I’ve heard amazing things from people who’ve been there since. This might be a good opportunity for me to get a sort of “China - the guided tour” where the company will take care of my well being for a month and I don’t have to worry too much. I might even improve my chinese a bit, to the point where i can start to actually use it. On the other Hand Wuhan is way inland and not a tourist spot at all.. I will stand out like a rainbow-colored poodle with a peacock feather hat on a flying bike. It’ll be scary. Two english girls who’ve just arrived here from a month in China told me people were trying to take their picture wherever they went. To the point of people casually walking next to you while another guy photographs the “landscape” behind you. “Look, that’s me on the left, with a white girl!” A strange thought that the tourist would become the attraction. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.. only a week now… next thursday I’ll be in the Great Land of China. I can’t wait to swim in their culture and drink up the “real” Asia, far from the millions of tourists and western influences for the first time.

I know they currently have facebook blocked in China because of some riots that the government would like to keep quiet, so I might not be able to update a whole lot from there… I’ll write about things here though.

Strange how a tiringly frantic and chaotic life leads to less writing to describe said life. I guess that’s in the nature of things. Writing about oneself, the summit of all self-congratulatory activities, had better be but a means to kill time and relax, for someone leading a life worth writing about. Not that what I’m doing is of any consequence to the world at large. The reason why time should be taken off other activities to write about one’s life are the people for whom the writing is intended.

In this last month in singapore, that was forced upon me (see june 7th entry), I slowly moved towards the decision to stay voluntarily. The reason being that an idea for a small project has come my way, that could potentially turn into a business, if all goes well.
Up to now, not all is going well. I’ve been trying very hard to find a new room to stay for another 2 months. It is not easy. short term leases are not common in singapore (I think I talked about this before), and many landlords have additional requirements, such as a tenants gender(female!) and “race” (chinese!), even though I found singapore to be very open when it comes to ethnicity in general. Rooms are also not cheap, if you want to live anywhere in the inner districts of the island. I was incredibly lucky last time I looked for a place and found Sivam’s. Long story short, I couldn’t find anything that I found acceptable. Thus, I have decided to go back to the original plan and travel. I will still work “on the road” with my little laptop and I’ll return to singapore every once in a while as long as I’m in SEA, to catch up with friends and maybe see the national day. It is very conveniently located, until I start moving further north, towards china and japan.

So much for my current Plans. I had always kept the itinerary vague, because I anticipated it would change a little on the way, but I hadn’t expected my passport to get stolen and a great can’t-wait-til-I’m-back idea to fly my way. Inspiration works in strange ways. So now this is the new plan. My flights are booked (cheaper than bus!), and Kuala Lumpur will be my new host city come thursday.

What the future holds from this point on, I know now less than ever. I am considering a return to Berlin at the end of this year, to sort out some things at home, before continuing next year in the other direction.

I also want to take this moment and correct what I said in my initial entry. Please - do not invent eye cameras. Never! Ever! The day the eye camera is invented will be the day privacy dies. Singapore has given me a grotesque look into that future:

No thanks.

Recently I’ve started to spend too much time reading webcomics. They are little four panel comics drawn in a simple style (all the way down to stick figures) with lots of recycling(=copy+paste) to allow for easy mass output (daily, weekly, etc).
They usually contain mildly funny, or ironic stories, either out of the lives of the those who make them, or just on a certain topic. They are made by people with too much time on their hand.

So. While I’m waiting for my new passport, here is the first (and hopefully not last) of my insightful little comics. Narcissistic though I am, it is about me. I mean I.

Well. My last week in Singapore turned out to be more exciting than I had expected.

I went to get my Visa from the chinese embassy on Friday. I was told I should get it sorted out while I was still in a country where they would speak english. A sensible suggestion. Except that they didn’t.
So I was fiddling with the documents (It’s the first time I was applying for a Visa I think) and running back and forth between the waiting area and the counter, where the lady tried to answer my questions by repeating the descriptions on the document to me word by word. So after my fifth or so journey to the counter and back to the seats I was contemplating getting a blank form and redoing the whole thing, because my original was starting to look like my class papers  in 3rd grade. The woman wanted a plane ticket from me, even though I repeated to her many times that I would be arriving through land. I was tired and frustrated. A nice elderly man who wasn’t asian, but of some spanish, or close to spanish speaking country came over and asked if he could borrow a pen. I gave him my Pen and he wandered off with it.
I was still considering my options when the nice man returned, but instead of giving me back my pen he asked me if I could help him with his Form. Oh boy. He spoke little english himself and he pointed at his name in his passport and said something like he has trouble with reading/seeing/writing. What was I thinking? You don’t fill in someone elses form for a Visa application. You have to sign the document afterwards. There’s a special section just for people who helped with the document. That dawned on me as well while I was writing down his name for him. So when I was done writing his name I gave him back his form. He tried to convince me to fill out the rest for him. No way. I declined, and after trying to convince me he quickly disappeared again with my pen. What a strange fellow I thought. Then I turned back around and saw that my passport was gone.
After looking around the place for a second I went straight to the security guard at the entrance. He didn’t understand me. So I went to the Receptionist who had handed me the form when I first arrived in the embassy. She insisted I had to bring my passport to apply for a Visa. No I brought my passport with me. It was just stolen - You have to have a passport to apply for a Visa. At that point I called up sean and explained the situation to him and told him to translate for the security guard. But the security guard wouldn’t take my phone. So I gave it to the receptionist. They talked in chinese for a bit. Then she handed me back the phone. “So what did she say” - “She says you have to bring your passport to apply for a visa…” This is useless I thought and went back upstairs. to the woman at the copy machine. “stolen?” she says and looks alarmed. Finally someone who understands me. She says I should talk to her boss, he could help me. Finally a boss of someone. She points me to a room on the other side of the hall. I walk over and it turns out her boss is… a photographer who takes visa and passport photos for those ill-prepared applicants who are surprised when they read “attach Passport size photo here” on the forms. Either way, I’m desparate, so I barge in and ask the guy if he is the boss of the woman at the photocopier. No he is not, he says. Go next room. That way. I leave the room and go in ‘that’ direction. Two empty and unlit conference rooms and then a dead end. These people have to be ffing kidding me.
There is no help to be got in the embassy. They either don’t understand or don’t want to. So I call the German embassy on their regular line, after trying their emergency hotline. I explain this to the guy who picks up, who takes the time to explain to me like I’m the only guy in the world who doesn’t know that the emergency line is always off during regular office hours. Yes silly me. He puts me through to the passport division. Finally a friendly person who is actually trying to help. She tells me what I should and what I can do. Almost nothing. I go to the police, they file a report. I have to go to the ICA (Immigration and Checkpoint Authority) and hand over a sealed envelope from the police. They require my thumbprints and an employment letter from my company. To block my passport. Of course I happen to carry an employment letter with me wherever I go. Shit. So I had to wait until saturday before they blocked my passport. What a completely pointless and stupid system. I don’t even want anything from them! It’s just to block my passport so it can’t be abused. Imagine you’d have to provide proof that you still work when your credit card is stolen. “sorry sir, but before we can prevent people from abusing your identity, you have to proove to us that you are working.”

Ahh long story short. My last week in Singapore turned out to not be my last week after all. A German passport takes 4 weeks minimum and I will apply for it on monday… I’m such a prime target for this kind of thing. I guess I should have taken a class or two in street smarts before I left. What a drag.

Ok. I admit. I haven’t written anything in a loong time. Half the people probably lost interest already. Oh well. At least there’s pictures this time.

In my defense, I have been writing alot of mails and some personal stuff, it takes some of the writing power out of me.  I can only write “… and when they move, they move into a flat two stories below their parents!” so many times, before my brain goes into self-imposed writer’s block.

Also, singapore doesn’t change too much: Public transport fare went down 2 cents per ride since I last wrote. Yay! The Chloride in the pools bleached my Swimming trunks from bright Orange to a color I’d like to call Memory Orange. And I moved.

My new place is further away from the centre(people here don’t go out much anyway) but closer to the office. It’s more expensive, it doesn’t have a pool (cause it’s a HDB) and the people there are a bit reserved. Sivam and his family were awesome hosts, they were fun and we went out to grab dinner every once in a while. He even gave me one of his Sarongs as a gift, when i asked him where i could buy one. The new Family is not as strong in english and maybe that’s part of the reason why they are less comfortable in a conversation. Either way, they are still very polite and I have a large, empty room all for myself.

I was out in the rainforrest/jungle (only part of it is actually considered rainforrest) two weeks ago. That was an amazing experience. Here are some pictures. There’s monkeys everywhere! Especially where humans are, close to streets. And spiders and mosquitos and these cricket like creatures. And Greeeen. You can guess what it looks like from the pictures, but the sound is just indescribable! It’s an amazing cacophony in there. All those little insect guys, shouting for the little insect girls to come mate with them. The symphony of thousands of horny instects. It’s deafening.

Here are some pics. I color-corrected some of them since it’s quite challenging to get exposure right in the jungle. So here goes:

Damn I’m white.

So

I’ve got two things to write about. The first one is the title story. It makes the first page of my personal newspapers for personal reasons. Ants are emerging from under my keys as I type these words. I am quite surprised about this. However messy and uncaring I have been in the past about typing instruments in general, I have to say this laptop is the one electronic  device I have never
1. eaten in front of
2. drunk in front of
3. left any sugar or carbohydrates in any form whatsoever in front, around, on, inside or on top of

For the above stated reasons it is perfectly BEYOND ME why my keyboard, my screen, my bed and the fan are crawling with ants. Sicne it’s warm everywhere in sing, I dunno why any ant would want to live inside a plastic housing with just a single fan and lots of hot CPUs and HDDs.  It’s no laughing matter at all, and I’m sure I would be writing much less heartily about this if I wasn’t drunk.
Which leads me to my second topic.
If you are one of the people who I know from in or around Berlin (the greatest city in the world by far) then you will not guess how much money i just spent on 4 glasses of beer.
To give you some context: A full local meal in singapore will run you about 2,00 to 4,00 S$ thats about 1,00 to 2,00 €. And that’s eating out, not storebought stuff thrown into a pot and stirred. A drink of Lime Juice or Ice Tea to go along with this costs anywhere between 1,00 and 1,50 S$ ( 50-75 € cents).
Now the amount I spent on the aforementioned 4 beers is.. (drumroll).. 68 $
That amounts to ~35 €. In Berlin you could go to the theatre for that money AND have a glass of wine during the break. You could also hospitalize yourself with alcohol in a regular bar(where a beer rarely costs more than 2,50 - 3,50 €; to non-berliners), or kill yourself with store bought beer and/or vodka, depending on preference.

That aside, tonight was definately the most fun I’ve had since I arrived here. I was out with a group of crazy indian guys. We all had hours of fun ridiculing Apu and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even though I explained to everyone that Arnie was actually Austrian, not German, I still ended up doing the best impression of ‘I’m a cybernetic Organism sent back from the future’.
The next thing  that singapore is behind with compared to berlin is public transport. I’m used to being disapointed by PT in other cities, but in singapore the busses stop running at 11:45. On the weekend. On the Weekend. On The Weekend.

So… I took a taxi with Kevin, a guy from work. The good thing: the cab ride from the city center to my place (about a 20 minute ride) cost 12 $. that’s 6 €. And that’s not even the shared price yet. Say What? So for one Beer I could take a cab halfway across the country?

So today one of the aforementioned downpours happened early in the morning. I was actually wading to our office through ankle deep water. Owed to the fact that our office is located on a hill, the water was also going in the other direction. The steps looked very much like a miniature waterfall. It was quite the experience. When I got up to the office the thunder set off the alarm of a car in the parking lot. Now stop a second and think about how eardrums work. You get the picture…

I read monsoon was supposed to be over in late jan/early feb in singapore. This seems a little early since monsoon lasts til march in malaysia and singapore is right in between peninsular and borneo malaysia. Seems unlikely that singapore would end the fun on it’s own a full two months before the surrounding region, no? Unless they have their own weather system! They proabably do. It works with RFID no doubt. There’s a card for each type of weather which you wave in front of the great Weather machine. The government keeps the cards, of course. Both of them.

So what’s the deal with all the RFID? Singapore runs on that stuff. Seriously. I have not had to stick a single card into any slits, save for my bank card. Bus? Wave card. MRT? Wave Card. Wanna get home but the door’s locked? Wave Card. Need a drink but don’t have any cash? Wave Card. Borrow a book? Wave Card first, then book. Driving down a main road on a busy day? No Card waving needed. The ERP takes your money all by itself.

More photos coming soon. I haven’t had much of a chance to be a tourist yet for some reason. I hear they have Huge Nature reserves here with monkeys that steal your food and women. Or something like that.

Dear [yournamehere]

How are you? I am fine. The Weather here is kind of funny. Unpredictable. Rain is something that happens frequently in Singapore. And that’s really what rain here does: it happens. It doesn’t start to rain. Rain happens.
It isn’t  particularly cold or anything until you get back to the airconditioning in the office/bus/mall. In fact it’s more like a nice warm shower minus shampoo minus towel minus comfy dry clothes afterwards. And when it rains, it rains. Like there is no tomorrow. To stay dry when it rains in Singapore you need five things: four walls and one roof. An umbrella doesn’t keep you dry. It keeps you less wet. There is seriously no way to stay dry when rain happens. In the torrential downpours you can be glad if you find a bus stand or carry an umbrella (so you stay less-wet). Otherwise you’re going back to the office to pick up your cold.

On a related note. I’ve heard many things about singapore, before and after I came here. Mostly crazy stuff like censorship! and death sentence! and what have you. It’s not all that bad actually. The one thing that’s true is the cleanliness thing. Gardeners, Cleaners, Garbage handlers everywhere! The one thing that turned out to be not even remotely true: “Singapore is a concrete jungle.” I don’t know what country the person that said that had visited, but it sure wasn’t this one. It’s really the other way around. There’s so much Green in this city. Every time I see the hordes of gardeners, cleaners and garbage handlers working the city in the morning I can’t help but think to myself:
If these guys went on strike, the whole city would be gone within two weeks. In the short time I’ve lived here now I’ve come to appreciate the reasons why this city is so well kept, so clean:

At first nobody notices the danger they’re in. It’s just little things that change. The trash remains in the bins for more than a day. That candy wrapper in the street isn’t picked up. No one notices the signs of approaching doom. Everyone is busy at the moment.
After two days The number of insects has risen dramatically. Nourished by the remains of human food they have produced millions and millions of little offspring mosquitos and roaches and ants. On the fourth day the last Human is eaten alive next to his/her car in the parking lot,  by a 20 foot cockroach.
On the following weekend the first cracks appear in the concrete walls. Nature presses in on the manmade. The first vines make their way into the living rooms, through the kitchen window. After another week or so Nature has reclaimed it all: The pools, the fences, the security booths, the overpasses, the underpasses, the cars, the malls and the MRT. No more beeps, no more airconditioning, no more RFID cards being waved at plastic pads which helpfully display how much money that busride just cost (53 cents without AC, 71 cents with AC. All busses have AC). No more cultural melting, no more busy people, no more crowded streets or buses. A lasting tranquility resurfaces as the thin layer of high tech civilization is scraped away.

Only the upper parts of  the high rise buildings remain untouched. The HDB blocks, the Condos, the SingTel tower.
Nature has no interest in living above the third floor.

Oi.

Just a small update today. I  finally found a place to stay (at least until the end of april..). I am now living with a guy named Sivam. He seems very nice and easygoing. he is out of the house most of the time because he’s a workaholic and his place is huge. His family moved away and now he’s stuck with an oversized condo, so he subrented one of his rooms to me. I also have my own bathroom here and I am allowed to cook. yay. Cooking is not a given in Singapore when you rent just a room. Many people don’t allow it. I was told it’s because of cleanliness. It appears people here just don’t clean up after themselves. A strange thing considering the city is so clean you could eat off the street…
Anyway, so I moved out of Jeremy’s place today and I think it was about time. I kind of forced his two daughters to live together in one room because I was occupying the other one. Jeremy and his wife were very sweet and unbelievably gracious and helpful. I will make some pizza for them tonight as a thank you.
The place I have moved to now, ironically, is even more luxurious than Jeremy’s condo. I guess it’s not really seen as much of a luxury here to have four pools, but to me it’s quite incredible and it feels very much like I should be paying per day, be annoyed at the terrible room service (none!!) and walk down to a missing breakfast buffet every morning. Instead I’ll probably have to get used to the the fact that palms and pools will be as much a part of my daily life here as eating with chopsticks or my bare hands and going to work every morning. It’s strange how quickly you miss the high life though. I have been looking at some HDB (government supported) places that didn’t have pools and I have to say I was quite disappointed at the thought of not having one when they seem so common here. I’ve started to enjoy being able to dip in after a stressful day in the office or the blazing singaporean sun. In this climate it’s a good thing to have. If I didn’t have a pool I’d take two showers a day so I don’t have to go to bed feeling like a piece of prata.

Here are some pictures of singapore.They are just random pictures I took in the last couple of days here. I know our office building looks like it might take off at any moment. don’t worry though, I pegged it down with some tent rope.
That building isn’t going anywhere.