"Singapore Scenery and Life"

This past Sunday two more people joined CERC through confession of faith.  Both came from outside CERC, and we welcome Zong Jie and Poh Har to our fellowship as confessing members!

But with no pictures of that and nothing else happening lately, it's time to dig through one of my computer folders and post a "miscellaneous" blog.  I have a growing folder on my computer called "Singapore Scenery and Life"--pictures of what life is like in Singapore.  It includes pictures you have already seen, such as the scenery, the idolatry, some local funeral customs, all the high-rises, etc.  And then there are daily living experiences we would not have in the U.S.  Here are some of those...

First, a few pictures from our flat.  One day our building was tested for leaks in the bathrooms--would water from the bathrooms leak into the flats below?  Each bathroom of each flat got tested.  In the following picture you see all the sealing that was put around the outside of the bathroom and the drain; then the guy filled up the bathroom floor with an inch or so of water, left it for a couple hours, and then came back to check on things and drain the water.

Living in a high rise, everyone has trash chutes.  Ours is in the kitchen.  Every few months these chutes are fogged for cockroaches.  Notices are placed by the elevators downstairs so that we know to tape our chutes completely.  If we don't do this, cockroaches trying to escape the fumes will come into our flat.  As it is, when the tape is pulled away, a few dozen dead and dying cockroaches fall onto our kitchen floor.  I am never anywhere near the kitchen when this is going on!!

The corner of our kitchen while the fogging is going on--windows shut, 

chute taped--and that cockroach trap is always on the floor there.

At the bottom of the chute outside--The outside downstairs is always 

littered with dead cockroaches after the fogging is finished.

Home repairs don't seem to be done quite the same way here either.  This is the wall in our bedroom after some air conditioning repair was done:

Next, some pictures of the car wash we use--all done by hand.

Drying by hand

The vacuum area, and under the red canopy in back is the employee break room

A few pictures of "sticker shock" at the store (right now one U.S. dollar = $1.33 Singapore):

$23.85 for 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream on sale

(And I'd thought it was expensive at Meijer!)

$78.80 for a box of cherries

$53 for a small "log cake" at a local restaurant

$10.50 for a big box of Cheerios

With a lot of people in Singapore and little room for everything, the grocery store aisles are narrow and crowded.  Here are the checkout lanes one day--and another day I counted over 40 people in the express lanes at another local grocery store!

I have more, but I will save them for another time. :-)