Singapore Routine

Well, I think I have settled into a comfortable routine of eat, sleep, work, etc.  I have been able to get downtown  twice more, including Chinatown today.  The small streets lined with shops and restaurants were great fun.  But unlike Chinatown, in say San Francisco, there are few establishments that sell all the exotic food items, like dead ducks hanging in windows.  Most are eating places.  And not just in Chinatown either.  Besides a multitude of traditional restaurants, there are food plazas all over the city where food is sold from permanent stalls, about the sixe of an 8X8 tent all crowded together side by side.  It's bazzar.  These places are called "hawkers."  However, the food is uniformly good, cheap and safe, or so they say.  This entire city, I mean country, of 4.5 million people is food obsessed!  I think there are even more food places than taxis.  Does anyone ever eat at home?  Half the population must be employed in the food service industry.  Anyway, I'm in heaven.  If only the beer was cheaper.  I stopped outside of one restaurant today and scanned the prices on the menu.  A little expensive I thought, but not too bad.  Then I realized I was looking at the beer menu!!   Anyway, Sharon is due in to Singapore tonight around midnight, so I'm excited!  It's a long gruelling series of flights from St. Louis, Chicago, and Tokyo, but there will be little time to get acclamated to the 13 hour time difference. There is so much to see and eat while she's here!  Time to say goodbye now.  And, oh yes, I missed last night's 3 a.m. full eclipse of the moon.  It would have interupted my sleep routine.