Singapore, here I come!

-
Barely having finished unpacking my bags after my trip to Hong Kong in January, I had to board a plane again, this time to visit INSEAD Singapore, one of the best business schools in Southeast Asia. Yes, I plan on pursuing an MBA or MSc Economics so I've been visiting business schools and interacting with people  currently enrolled or already finished with their programs.

My Singapore trip turned out to be an adventure in itself because it took me 14 hours to get there and being alone in a different country is an experience I haven't had since I went to Brisbane last (for my graduation). Nevertheless, it's fun.

14 hours to Singapore
Yes, it took me 14 hours to get to Singapore. I got bumped off my Manila-Singapore five-hour flight because the original plane was malfunctioning and the alternate plane was a smaller one. The ground crew found me a seat in a Cebu-Singapore flight, which meant that I had to catch the next flight to Cebu to make it in time! This must be how it feels like to be in the Amazing Race sans a teammate, a challenge, and a detour, I thought as I ran around the airport to get to the right gate. But when I got there, lo and behold! the flight was delayed by an hour. So I was able to have lunch and mingle with the rest of the passengers going to Cebu. Once in the plane, passengers waited another hour before the plane took off because the queue in Manila's airspace was crowded. By the time we landed at the Mactan International Airport, it was dark. 

My plane ride to Singapore. Yes. it's mine. It even has my initials. See?

I had to run (again) on the tarmac because I had to catch the flight to Singapore (which was leaving in about an hour). It's the second time for me to be on the tarmac beside giant planes but I couldn't stop this time and take a photo because of the time limit (*sigh*). To cut the long story short, I arrived in Singapore seven hours after my original arrival time. I had to take a cab from the airport to the hotel because of the late hour. It's a good thing I took a cab because otherwise, I wouldn't have witnessed the festival called "Thaipusam", in the Little India district.

I don't know what the festival is all about but the parade late on my first night (or wee hours of the morning of my first day) was an interesting thing to see.

Several roads closed so the cab driver had to take several detours to get to the hotel I was staying at. There wasn't much to see at that hour so I decided to just wait until the morning to go around and explore the area around the hotel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more