Two more weeks before we leave Singapore. Today is a particularly nasty air quality day here as the entire island is covered with a smoke haze blown over from fires in Sumatra, Indonesia. The fires are apparently started by farmers (slash and burn agriculture anyone?)and are technically illegal, but clearly the government is unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
I've been thinking a lot about our time in Singapore,trying to compartmentalize the experience into things I've learned, things I still have no clue about (and I'll never know what I missed, will I?), and things that have become "normalized". There are so many things that seemed bizarre when we first got here that don't even phase us now, for instance:
Many people here use umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun, this is partly for shade, and also partly to avoid tanning. Skin whitening creams sell big here.
There aren't many dogs in Singapore. It's very rare to see stray dogs here (although they're common in other places we've been in Asia). Lots of people are afraid of dogs here and will literally cross the street to avoid them. Cats on the other hand are very common. A lot of food centres have cats that hang out. The cats here look different than north American cats too, the cats here have smaller heads. I call them the "microcephalic cats".
Most of the time Singaporeans don't know where we're from based on our accents. I've had many people ask me if I'm British or Australian. This seemed odd to me at first, but then I realized I was being stupid and that I would have no idea where in Asia a person might be from based on the way they spoke English (although I'm getting better at this).

There are a lot of things like this, most of which we've probably already written about. I'm so ready to leave here at the moment. I wonder what we'll end up missing.