Some other differences about Singapore:
1. On any given evening, you can find people executing tai chi exercises outside their flats.

2. A frighteningly large number of men here keep there fingernails long and filed to a point.

3. Meat is frequently presented in "ball" form: Fish balls, beef balls, etc..

4. Some people seem very reluctant to admit they don't know something, and would rather tell you something that is complete and total pants before admitting they don't know. I believe this has something to do with loss of "face". A recent example of this would be our interaction with a waiter at a bar on Dempsey road recently. We asked him how to get to Sammy's Curry House from the bar, and then inquired if we could just walk up the road. He nodded and agreed we could just walk up the road, I asked how far it was, at this point he admitted he had no idea where it was. Truly helpful. In his defense, I think for many Singaporeans it is considered more polite to agree with someone who may be wrong then to admit you don't know.

5. Often when a person is agreeing to a possibility or looking for affirmation from you the word used is "can" as in "can this be done?" or "can" as in "it can be done" rather than saying "yes".

6. Questions are frequently asked by adding "is it?" to the end of a sentence. For example "You are American, is it?". This is probably the first Singlish expression adopted by expats here. You can gauge how long someone has been here by the number of "is it?"s they use.

7. Attentive costumer service is the norm here. It's hard to be ignored when you go into a store to browse. Even if you say you don't want any help, service people tend to linger just inside the discomfort range.

8. At the movies, you buy your tickets based on seating assignments; you can't just go in and sit wherever you want. We personally love this strategy as you don't need to rush to the theater to get a good seat once the tickets are purchased.

9. Eggs are sold unrefrigerated.

10. Meat is typically sold in packages advertised as "Frozen: thawed for your convenience". This always makes me wonder how old the meat is originally. There's no "frozen on this date" label.

A different tangent:
I was dive bombed by a crow this week. I must have been too close to it's nest/babies. The irony is that I've been somewhat obsessed with the limited number of crows I'd seen recently, as I'd heard there was a campaign to cull the crows due to their dive-bombing behavior and tendency to get into people's garbage. I'm still sympathetic to the crows, but must admit that it freaked me out having the one guy run his/her gnarly claws through my hair. The crows in question are located right next to the school where I work (which is right off Orchard road) and have attacked more people than just me. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys are killed by the cullers over the weekend.