Fourth of July Celebration

According to the US presence in Singapore, yesterday, June 30, was the 4th of July. For those who know me, you know I don't really go in for most of the "America is so great!" stuff that most of us were fed since we were kids. Yes, I live in a reasonably nice country. Yes, I have a reasonably nice life. But somehow celebrating the fact that I have plenty and others don't is rather stupid to me. Kind of like when your mom used to say, "Clean your plate! There are starving kids in Africa!" and you'd think, "So? I'M not a starving kid in Africa, and I don't WANT to eat these vegetables!"

Anyway, I do sincerely enjoy Independence Day celebrations, especially the bad food and fireworks. I kept the bad food to a minimum - had root beer, a corn dog and corn on the cob - but the fireworks were quite nice. A little too short of a show, but nice. The best part of it was how close they were. A. kept collecting bits of the cardboard shells and I got bonked on the head with bits of firework debris on multiple occasions.

Today I went to St. Andrew's Cathedral for service, as I was under the impression that it was a Catholic church. In actuality, it's Anglican. My first clue was when half the words to the prayers were from a different translation, but what really convinced me I wasn't in a Catholic church is when the visiting speaker mentioned his wife and granddaughter. Last I checked, that wasn't allowed. Nice church, though, and a fun praise band. Next week, I'll check out the actual Catholic church, which is across from an old convent. The convent has now been turned into shops and restaurants and bars. Kind of ironic.

Today I went exploring in Singapore, as Sunday seems to be a good day for me to have off for all of us. I went to Orchard Rd, the shopping artery through the "old" part of Singapore (there's maybe two or three old buildings left, all the rest are new high rises), and bought some nice stuff. I'm most pleased with my new silk pillow covers. Very classy, very simple yet elegant design. And they were cheap! Then I spent lots of time reading a book seated in the courtyard at the Raffles hotel. It's still a hotel, but it also has a gift shop, a Tiffany's and some other stuff. The main thing I learned today is that Singapore is, by and large, a shopping tourists haven. Not much else happening here other than the nature preserves and zoo, which I also intend to visit.

Side note: I have seen MANY, MANY mixed couples with a white dude and an Asian (here meaning anywhere in Asia plus the Indian subcontinent) woman. I saw so many, in fact, that I began to wonder why I saw no white women with an Asian dude. Today, I saw one such couple, and he looked half Indian, half white. There were lots of single white women walking around, though. I have a couple hypotheses as to why this is:

• there are more male expats than female expats, so men turn to local populations of women rather than fight for the limited quantity available of "their own kind"
  
• women are more capable of being alone for long periods of time than are men and thus do not feel this need to turn to the local populations
  
• women are more racist in their choice of partner/men are more sexist in their choice of partner - I'm going for hamburger B, having heard enough comments about Western women not acting like "real" women
• women care more about scent - meaning the Asian women will probably smell fine to the Western man, but the Asian man may not smell so great to the Western woman. Here, I am referring mostly to laborers, but this was true even of nicely dressed men in Myanmar. They ALL smelled. A lot.
• I just haven't been searching in the right places

I also found it interesting that there are almost no Americans to be found on an average day in Singapore. Nearly all of the white people I've seen so far have been non-English speaking, non-language-I-know-speaking, meaning that they're more than likely Scandinavians of some variety. Apparently, I have to be satisfied with my helping of American culture and food from last night's celebration. Somehow, I'm not too sad at the prospect of not running into very many Americans for the next couple of months.