I’m beginning to think that three weeks is about my “hump” for being away from home.  I’ve been thinking the whole time about Nicholas and Susan and home, but it usually happens at about the three week point that it gets a bit stronger and I start longing for home.  Maybe it’s just that I’m in the final stop on the “tour”, so I know that home is that much closer now…  Anyway, whatever it is, to everyone at home I want to say I miss you and I can’t wait to see you.

Last night we arrived in Singapore after very smooth flight from Frankfurt.  Surprisingly, I managed to get some sleep overnight and I’ve felt quite good today (on my last legs now but!).  Today in Singapore had us visiting a number of shopping areas for various things including of course, a visit to IT-geek-heaven, Sim Lim Square.

The transition from still-in-cold-winter-mode Europe to balmy tropical Singapore has been fairly smooth — no doubt aided by the air conditioning in the shops we’ve visited.  We went for a walk before the shopping trip though, and that was horrendous.  I guess that was the short sharp drop into the deep-end that set up up for the rest of the day (either that or I sweated so much during the walk that there was nothing left to sweat for the rest of the day).

To me, traffic in Singapore is disproportionately bad.  I can understand Dublin, where population growth has outstripped predictions and left road and public transport infrastructure gasping.  But Singapore has really good roads and one of the best public transport systems in the world (well, to me the MRT is fantastic); yet, the roads are always full of cars.  Not only that, but demand for car parking is unbelievable in some places.

As usual I’ve spent too much money (only saying that, I haven’t really).  Sim Lim Square is just 6 floors of pure and utter temptation (ladies, imagine the ground floor of your downtown Myer or Macys or Marks & Spencer repeated six times in the one building and you’ll get an idea of what Sim Lim Square is like for a geekguy).  I think I’ve done well to get away with the little I did pick up (a couple of memory cards and a spare battery for the camera, and some more memory for the home server)… having said that, the bed is strewn with the price lists from all the shops I visited, so that I can build a shopping list…