Briathrail // Albert 2MNG

This was imported from my old Tumblr blog posts.

Well, it’s creeping nearer…

Going back home for a quickie, that is.

I’m trying to keep it off my mind for at least 6 more weeks, as I don’t want the vacation mentality to affect my work. But it’s a week off for me, and probably just to tie off more loose ends I wasn’t able to do. Last time I was back in PH for two weeks, I did manage to wrap up a lot, but some I decided not to yet.

My pet cats finally get adopted by a friend of my sister’s husband, and as the adopter is experienced with cat pets, I felt they are in good hands. The female kitty, “Mimaw”, had a litter of kittens recently and the new owners are very pleased. I just hope the cats stay there forever. I’d much rather have kept them, but I’m in another country and the cats deserve a present and active owner.

So, last part. How have I adapted to this new place so far?

It’s been rough, but so far I haven’t encountered anything sh*t. Adjusting to the environment and the culture is definitely a challenge. And getting used to the new normal for me, is a bit more difficult. I had to accept I’m going to always hear things on the street that I can never understand. I had to accept obeying any and all rules whenever applicable. I had to keep a distance and a Spidey Sense for things I feel can get me in deep doodoo.

The air’s cleaner here, I can tell, from my experience straddling the roads in EDSA, where air is f*cked up. I don’t have to worry about smoke belchers here. The road signs are also pretty straightforward, and the pedestrian crossings are just right and working nicely. I haven’t seen road rage, “beating the red light”, loud honkers, or any of the sh*t I usually see in EDSA, so far. And the transportation is just marvelous. Trains are on time and air-conditioned nicely. But the buses, especially the double-decker ones, are my preferred means of transportation. They have designated routes and stops, proper means of letting the driver know to stop at the next bus stop, and the drivers aren’t “chasing” things unlike EDSA’s notorious boundary-chasing drivers. I just sit facing the window and just stare at things I see. I try to remember landmarks, hawker centers, buildings, and stuff while looking out the window. And it is nice and air-conditioned too, so there’s that. The bigger adjustment for me, transportation-wise, is reminding myself to keep a mental note of how much is in my ezLink card, and loading it whenever it drops below SGD10. Sometimes I end up forgetting it, and instead of taking a bus I have to drop by an MRT station to load it up.

Conversing in public has been a constant adjustment for me. See, SG is a multi-cultural place, so there will be people conversing in Chinese, Malay or Hindi/Tamil. But everyone can speak English, so I try to leverage that as much as I can. But my English in June 2018 was Filipino English, so my Filipino accent is very pronounced. So I had to read up on accents and watching a lot of British dudes on YouTube so I can pick up a better accent that is more familiar to Singaporeans (this country had a British history part, so there’s that). So far, I have transitioned some, but not all, of my pronunciation to use less of Filipino accents for English. But I do see the advantages of knowing to speak a third language, so one of my stretch goals this year is to take a Beginners’ Chinese class. I have downloaded a couple of apps (one is Duolingo) to help me assess this option.

Conversing with my Singaporean and Burmese coworkers is more of a challenge, at least for the first couple of months. They also have accents, so the onus is on me to pick up my ears on the nuances and the subtle hints. Sometimes if I couldn’t pick up their words, context clues aided me to an approximate of what they meant. My company boss is more used to speaking English, but a bit faster, so I also have to pick up on his words a bit quicker too. But as months went by, I was able to adjust my hearing speed to their cadence of speaking, so by now I’m more able to converse with them casually.

It is nice that I’m now gaining more experience working internationally. In my previous place of employment, the only foreigners I’m exposed to are Chinese (via email only), Indians (for company projects) and once in a while, Americans (just the IT head guy once in a meeting). Now there’s more of them around me. It’s on me to adjust quickly, and so far I think I’m in a good place.

Also, for me it’s the first time that I cared too much about my daily officewear. For the first month, as I packed lightly, I wore only jeans, with 4 shirts and 3 poloshirts that I mix-and-match depending on my mood and Fridays. But as time went on, I went – oh shit, I don’t look impressive at all – so when my boss decided to permanently hire me here in SG, I decided to buy a bit more so I can look more decent.

In my previous place of employment, I only wore barong tagalog and either brown or black office pants, with Fridays being designated casual and I just wear shirts and jeans. Now that I have more freedom to choose my outfits, it soon dawned on me that my set of clothes aren’t going to be sustainable for a while. So when I went back to the Philippines in August, I bought a few cheap (but still decent) polo shirts from the SM Mens’ in-house designs. And I went to Uniqlo and bought two jeans – one light-colored pants and one stretchable denim that didn’t need much ironing. Also a couple of hankies that looked decent, and more t-shirts that are fun to see on a Friday.  And a few months later, I went to G2000 and bought three polo shirts and two informal pants, then at Recoil for a snazzy white shirt and a warm cardigan.

Now when I do my weekly Sunday ironing of a week’s worth of office wear, I have a lot more options. And since the new office is in Clarke Quay, I don’t look out of place there.

For home food… well, I rarely cook. The food at the nearby hawker stalls are nice and cheap enough to spare me the effort on slaving in front of the stove for a meal. But if I had the hankering, I do cook. Sometimes just a nice fluffy omelette, or instant noodles. Samyang’s is my go-to, next is IndoMie. I also have some miso ramen from Nissin that I really enjoy.

For breakfast, for the past 6 months, I only cooked once. Almost always, I make my overnight oats very night and I have that for breakfast the next day. I like overnight oats – cheap and easy. I buy two packs of oats – the quick-cook one and the one with the whole grain, then I mix them in a large container. 3 heaping tablespoons from that mixture is enough, and I put that in a small plastic container with a lid. Then I put in one heaping tablespoon of my “other mixture” (I bought per-gram diced dried fruits and a seed mixture of various seeds like chia) in, and then two level tablespoons of a breakfast cereal to give it texture, then I pour in enough milk to cover it, then put in in the fridge overnight. It’s cheap too – I spend around SGD30 on the ingredients for a month.

Well… I’m still here. Hoping I can stay for another year, it’s nicer here.