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Just got back from a visit to Jurong Bird Park, and it was excellent!

Aside form the very typical Singaporean boast of the “largest manmade waterfall in the world” the park contains some real wonders, set out along very easy-to-follow lines.  Sometimes that’s by region, and sometimes by order; for example “African Plains” is one area while “Parrot Paradise” covers a form of bird found in many places.

They also have a regular set of “shows”, including watching birds being fed and also some set in an anphitheatre.  We caught an excellent one – supposedly for children – that demonstrated some of the intelligence and playfullness of a series of parrots.

All in all a really nice day out, and I’d definitely rate it above the Night Safari.

We’ve uploaded some pictures of the birds.

This might sounds ridiculous, but we were cold for the first time since we arrived (3 weeks ago) last night.

We went to the Cinema – The Picture House, which is part of the Cathay Cineplex – and the air conditioning was so strong, coupled with sitting still for two hours, that we relished the baking 11pm heat as we left.  This pleasure was soon curtailed by another freakishly-strong-ac-setup in the taxi on the way home, but I guess since it makes you appreciate the heat which sometimes feels stifling it’s no bad thing.

We went to see “Welcome to the Sticks” (Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis) a not-too-taxing french comedy about a confirmed southerner having to move to … “The North”.  Given that Les Ch’tis (the name of the people and the language from the region) are thought to be rough, uncultured, french-fry-eating, alcoholic simpletons who exist in a near-frozen wasteland I sort of felt like the protagonist had in fact landed himself in the UK, and felt right at home.

When does a bungalow have more than one floor?  When it’s in Singapore of course!  Every home that isn’t a high-rise here is called a “bungalow”.

The vast majority of people live in HDBs – which are apartment blocks built by the Housing Development Board.  The better off, not all of whom are expats, tend to live in Condos, that is smaller plusher blocks with a lot of their own private facilities such as a swimming pool, tennis courts … and in our case something laughably known as a “putting green”.

Speaking of our case – we’ve put up some pictures of our flat on flickr.

One of the nicest bits of the lead-up to leaving for Singapore has been the wonderful Summer we’ve had, and in fact I’d almost recommend anyone to leave their roots purely for an excuse to see everyone and everything they care about nearby.

Between us we will have been up and down the UK, and also Spain, Italy, The Netherlands and even flew to Alderney (a Channel Island) in the space of about four months; catching up with friends and family and seeing some sights.  We even took a ride on the London Eye to wave goodbye to The Big Smoke.  Actually it was quite a lot of fun (it probably helped that it was our wedding anniversary).

We have arranged a meeting with a lot of our friends a couple of days before we leave – which should be great fun – but such things are always a case of giving each person 5 minutes of your time so that you see everybody.  It’s been really lovely to catch up with individuals and smaller groups as we’ve gone along.

Once we’d booked our flights, I set about trying to find work – mostly using www.monster.com.sg – and it didn’t turn out to be too hard.

I was offered a job working for a local startup company, whose business is in rich media and financial reporting.  Since I’m working for a local company, and haven’t been sent to Singapore by a large corporate, I don’t get all the package benefits that such people do (accommodation paid for, flights ‘home’, etc).

That being said, my wages should be fine for us to have a good life on, and if L should do some work (currently she’s thinking about retraining) it would just be a bonus.  Also we’ll be keeping our flat in London, and renting it out, so all in all we’re in a fairly stable position (credit crunch notwithstanding).

The other option for us would have taken quite a bit of doing.  The most likely route would have been to start getting work for financial organisations here in London, instead of mostly media ones, and then work on a posting out to Singapore from there working for the same company.  This could have taken years and would not have been much fun – so all in all we’re pretty happy with the way things have worked out.

Oh yes, I also get some stock options in the startup so if things do go well and the company floats then we might do very well indeed!