Wobble, bobble!

My client team is about as multinational as you can imagine – Chinese, Indian, Malay, Dutch, English and American. And everyone gets along very well. But one cultural oddity really had me scratching my head for the first few days – the Indian head bobble.

For those who haven’t experienced it, this gesture is a side-to-side tilting of the head – which at first I took to mean “no” as per when a westerner shakes their head. But that meaning didn’t make sense in the context it was typically being used, when someone was listening to someone else speak. So I did a little research to confirm my suspicions…

The meaning of the bobble is myriad but is usually in response to another individual’s request or comment. It usually signifies an acknowledgment of something or a sign of enjoying something immensely (usually accompanied with a wide eyed look). Other meanings it could have include:

• “You’re welcome,” or “of course”
• “Goodbye”
• “I don’t know” or a shrug. Usually accompanied with hands turned up and a shoulder shrug.
• “Ok Ok”
• “I’m giving you the answer I think you want to hear”
• “I hear the words that are coming out of your mouth”
• “I really want the answer to be yes…”

In other words, it means all things to all men and is highly dependent on the context. Which means I’m bound never to understand…

Singapore harbour, just after sunrise

The Durian Convention Centre, which looks a lot like the fruit!

A sea of cranes — there is construction going on everywhere in Singapore

It’s another nice morning in Singapore. Friday night was a bit of a wash-out. We were all tired from a long week, so after a few quick beers with my client after work, I headed straight back to the hotel and into bed. Life looks so much nicer after ten hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Today is all about doing some sight-seeing around Singapore. Gina, my colleague, is taking me out for some dim sum (yes, this is the same Gina that is responsible for taking me out to Steamboat on the first night and ensuring I spent the first few days of the trip feeling quite ill). She lived in Singapore for ten years and is keen to show me the sights, although knowing Gina the sights are likely to include quite a lot of the shops along Orchard Road!

I did a little shopping myself the other day. I needed to set up Skype so that I could call back to the UK without spending a fortune. After a somewhat disappointing first attempt using the built-in speaker and microphone, a colleague insisted that a good quality headset was the key to reliable Skype communications. So I headed out in search of a Sennheiser headset, which took me to Funan IT mall (and solved my Skype problems!). I’m sure for anyone who lives in Asia and is surrounded by new technology, this sort of mall is commonplace, but for me it was a little overwhelming. Imagine a seven-storey mall full of nothing but IT shops. For a gadget guy like me, there is temptation everywhere. Only my upcoming trips to Hong Kong, where technology is even cheaper, has kept me on the straight-and-narrow…

I’m really warming to Singapore. It’s cleaner than anywhere else I’ve been in Asia by a long way – so clean that it loses a little bit of its character. It doesn’t have the same buzz as Hong Kong or Bangkok – the pace of life is much more sedate. The food is wonderful and there’s a huge variety, all of it very cheap. Taxis are ten-a-penny, inexpensive, and make it very easy to get around the city. Customer service is just as refined and friendly as you’d expect it to be. The fact that everyone speaks good English means that it’s really easy to communicate and make yourself understood.

If Disneyland created countries, they’d have created Singapore.

A Singapore Taxi

Ken Livingstone, take note: If you want me to give up my car, adopt a public transport system like they have here in Singapore. A taxi from my hotel to nearly anywhere in downtown costs less than £2 and they’re readily available. That’s cheaper than a one-way Zone 1 tube ticket, and a lot more comfortable and convenient. They’re licensed, air-conditioned, clean, smoke-free and the drivers are generally very friendly.

And honest. The driver of my cab yesterday told me that he was driving all the way back to the airport to reunite a businessman with his Blackberry. Apparently the drivers get points for returning lost property to its rightful owner, and the driver who collects the most points at the end of each month is given a prize!

I’m slowing making inroads into the role of ‘global traveller’. I still find it slightly surreal being 15 hours ahead of the US (essentially knowing how the day’s going to end before my family and friends even know how it’s going to begin). I installed Skype for the first time today, and I find myself wondering how anyone ever managed frequent travel around the world before the internet.

I had an interesting experience at lunch today. My Indian colleague took me out to a place that he raved about – nominally, it was a French place – but one taste of the food told me that it had come straight from the packet and straight into the microwave. I wonder if my palate for Indian food is similarly underdeveloped, and I’ve been guiding people to the worst, least-authentic Indian restaurants in the UK all these years?

It’s all a trade-off, of course. If you want good, authentic food, you’ve got to risk a dodgy stomach (as I can attest after my visit to the steamboat place on Sunday night and my subsequent visits to the loo for the rest of the week — turns out I’d spoken too soon with my previous post). If you play it safe, you end up with microwaved crap at a mock-French bistro. Or sitting in your room ordering room service…

I’m looking forward to the weekend, when hopefully I won’t be so tired or under pressure to get something out the door, and can explore everything that Singapore has to offer properly.

I couldn’t face going out tonight, so I let the hotel bring dinner to me. One of the nicer room service meals I’ve had…

Much nicer than hawker food…