OK... I'm sitting in Changi (Singapore) Airport bumming some free wireless so I thought I ought to blog about the past day.

I was delayed by 30 minutes out of DUnedin on the way up so connecting to my SQ flight @ CHC was a bit of a rush. Didn't get much of a look @ CHC international.

Flight over on SQ was a bit strange really. The scenery was great. Have some photos of Ayers Rock (Uluru) from 30,000 feet which is really cool. I was a little disappointed with the much vaunted Singapore Girl cabin service to be completely frank. THe crew were not particularly friendly and they duffed up the meal service something cronic- I missed out on half of my second meal :-( Food was OK though... as good as one can expect in coach. The entertainment system was pretty cool variety was great but the UI was pretty cludgy and slow- anyone want to tag team on a CE based plane/hotel video on demand system?

Singapore has been a blur. Arrived and took a Taxi into town with the guys I was sitting next to on the plane. Stayed @ the Furama Hotel booked via Rates To Go. Hotel was well priced (internet access a little expensive) and about 4 Star standard in NZ terms. Location was OK. I used the Subway (MRT) to get around- be sure to print out a copy of the subway map from the MRT site- it was very useful.

My body clock woke me up at some ungodly hour this morning but I had been well advised that most places don't open in Singapore until 10am. The exception is the 24 Hour Mustafa Center. I went there at about 8:30 following a brief buffet breakfast @ the hotel- worth having. The Mustafa Center is exactly what an Indian owned shopping center should be like- colorful and hideously over crowded. The stock ranged from complete junk through to high end (D70, EOS300D) cameras. I didn't buy anyhing there, but, it was worth a visit to scope out the prices. To get there you want to get off the subway at Farrer Park and follow your nose.

From here I went to Sim Lim Square- bad move. Unfortunatly, while the “things don't open till 10am adage” is broadly correct, Sim Lim doesn't open until about 11am. So I had an hour of going up and down the escalators waiting for the place to open. Sim Lim is hilarious! Imagine, if you will, taking all of the 'dodgy little IT shops' in a city the size of say Sydney and sticking them in a Six story early 80s era building. That is Sim Lim. It is well worth a look but I'd probably go to Furama (see below- Furama is more Department store style shops and less 'Neons and Quad Cooling Fans in your Case' style like Sim Lim) first. Anyway I kicked around Sim Lim looking at most everything. In the end I settled one of the larger (but no less dodgy) stores to buy my goodies. The arrangement g@ Sim Lim is interesting- the Wholesalers for the goods and the retail stores are in the same building. THe wholesalers will only bsell to the public @ a fixed RRP whereas the retailers can be squeezed a bit. The Wholesalers (being somewaht more professional) open earlier so I had already scoped the upper level of pricing before I started shopping proper. I bought some parts mainly:

• D-Link WiFi Router- 'cos my Nokia isn't powerful enough to cover my whole house.
• Wireless Powerpoint Remote - Paid a bit much for this really, but, needed one for Tech Ed and was getting sore and grumpy by this point.
• Hauppage WinTV PVR250 Card- So I can build a Windows Media Center box.
• 512MB CF Card- It was much cheaper that buying @ home- Got a SanDisk one too....

When it came time to pay my bloody Amex wouldn't work on their machine. THe Mag strip was stuffed- Mag strip is a stupid technolgoy IMHO anyway. Despite much coaching/coaxing by me to get them to manually enter the number it ended up going on my Visa Debit card== no airmiles and no interest free period. Needless to say I was pretty pissy so I got on the blower to Amex in USA then Japan then NZL. NZL rang Singapore and arranged for a replacement card for me to pick up that afternoon. Now that is was I call service! I was bloody stoked with Amex actually- they were most helpful.

Prior to going to pick up my card I wandered theough the Chinese Mal next to my hotel. I wanted to grab a digicam for Dad and ended up getting him a DSC-W1 @ S$699- which I thought was pretty good as it also had the international warranty and a free bag and 128MB memory stick. They guy was so friendly that I went back and got a Samsung Camera for my brother later in the afternoon.

When I went to pick up my Amex card the Taxi driver dropped me off in slightly the wrong place. This was great becuase I stumbled across a dive store. I had wanted to find a dive store to buy a new dive computer but hadn't rated my chances with only 24 hours in town. Anyway I went and picked up my card and came back down and purchased a Mares Airlab AI computer for S$731 which IMHO is a steal for the latest model AI computer- that's about 1/3 of what you'll pay for a Suunto Cobra in NZ. The AIrlab has IR computer integration and a proper RGBM algorithm to boot. VERY HAPPY with this purchase.

Went from here back to buy my brothers camera and finished the day with a chinese foot and back massage before catching the MRT to the airport.

Had a great time in Singapore. The shopping is so good that I am going to ban my girlfriend from even contemplating a trip here. Save for the Taxi drivers I didn't find Singaporeans overly friendly or helpful. Finally in Singapore there seems to be a prominently displayed penalty for pretty much any indiscretion that you can think of. Yet there seems to be little to no enforcement capability.

More from me tommorow. Gotta go and grab a feed- fli9ght to PEK (Beijing) leaves @ 1:30am *groan*