Of moves and grooves

I have plenty to write. Too many. You can't move continents without having a tale to tell.

We are settling down better now; getting into the groove of living in SG. The first few months had been hard mentally. Even though we were born and bred here, we still experienced re-entry shock.

At times, we just wanted to shake our fists at the boorish behaviour here. Like nonchalantly strolling through doors we held often without so much as a thank you, the rushing for trains and buses without due care if grandmas or babies are trampled underneath, the way they try to squeeze through the smallest gap, often overstepping buggies and strollers in their haste.

A well-dressed lady on a bus walked past my seat and accidentally bung her large bag against my knee hard. She gave a cursory glance at her bag and looked away. Until I shamed her by loudly saying "Sorry?" She had the decency to look slightly embarassed and said sorry with a giggle. On hindsight, I got lucky. She could have fixed me a dour expression and looked away again.

Don't get me started on the TV and newspaper here. I've succumbed to subscribing to newsbiscuit.com for a much-needed dose of British humour as well as trawling through metro.co.uk. Come back free newspaper vendors! All is forgiven.

At times, we just miss London. The cold, fresh air, lovely blooms in spring and gorgeous colours in fall. The way the British would run out to tan in a small patch of sunshine during lunch time. The lovely, lovely parks and the fantastic museums. Strangely, I missed the kebabs at Taza and of course, Tuk Din's great cooking.

On the other hand, I am loving all the delicious local food, available 24/7. Mind you, our tastes have changed somewhat. No more dunking chips in chilli sauce for us. But we are having fun trying to find our favourite nasi lemak, teh tarik, briyani etc. again.

We are revelling in durian, durian and more durian. Perhaps some manggis for distraction and durian again. It seems to be a bumper crop this year with D24 selling cheap. With such largesse, we are now not content with poor cheap varieties, gladly shelling out moolah for top notch stuff. Frozen durian at $12 per seed is a very distant memory now.

In all, this is where we will be for the near future. Alia is speaking a little Malay now, which amuses me to no end. Her lovely British accent is slipping little by little and I felt both shock and horror when she told me one day "Mummy, I love Tom and Jelly"