Drafted when I lived in Singapore, so sometime in 2009/10.
Children act like children, though the children in Singapore are generally better-behaved than children elsewhere (and Asian babies are so cute!).
Saw an ad for a local children’s daycare. All these cute little Singaporean kids and the one token white girl.
Gyms still pressure-sell and everyone gets suckered in, then regrets it—as evidenced by some discussion forums I’ve looked at.
Cabbies add unexplained charges to the meter, pretend to not understand you or just act lost.
Women, no matter naturally tiny they are, still want to lose weight. As evidenced by all the weight-loss products and advertisements here. Or maybe all this stuff really works and that’s why they’re all so skinny. Or maybe not.
Women with straight hair want curls, women with curly hair wish for straight. Take this one to the bank.
Asians flock to stores to buy branded goods, the more expensive the better. Westerners flock to markets looking for knock-offs, haggling for the best bargain.
Nobody likes illegal immigrants working in their country. And yes, the browner-skinned people are always the “immigrants.”
Technology is imperfect around the world.
Hotel maids move my stuff around too much for my liking no matter where I am.
Regardless of where I am in the world, when I travel alone, I invariably end up in the next room to a fighting couple. She always starts crying. Then he either leaves or starts hitting her. Eventually, it stops. In case you’re thinking this leads to hot make up sex, it doesn’t. Sex never follows these hotel-room abuses. Fortunately. I’m not sure I’d want to hear the sex that follows abuse.
non-universal opinions
I’m still not used to the metric system. It’s utterly meaningless. What is 100g of something? An ounce? A pint? A teaspoon? It’s just a number divisible by 10. Okay, so I’m very Imperial. I’ve been told Australia successfully switched to metric in recent history and I don’t believe anyone died. I still like Imperial. It means something. It was created to measure real-life scenarios. It’s not sterile.
The only metric measurement I know is the weight of my checked bag. I can guess it to within a kilo, though I still can’t guess its weight in pounds. My goal was 10-12kg, but it regularly clocked in at 12-15kg. No getting around it no matter how I tried to skim the weight down. Even now in the US, I’ll check my bag’s weight and ask them to change the scale to kilos for me. But I can’t weigh anything else in kilos, if it’s not my bag, then I have no idea how much it is in kilos (and really, not a very clear idea in pounds either).
I still love US greenbacks. They feel like money. They smell like money. They sound like money. I think we have the sexiest currency in the world, but maybe it’s just what I’m used to.
Australia and Singapore and other countries have plastic money. It’s slick but not papery. No smell. Singapore’s currency is graduated by size, each denomination is radically different in color, it has a clear plastic window on the bills (which is cool) and a Braille system so the blind can easily handle it. It’s as progressive as currency can get. But it’s not sexy.
