Welcome!

Hello guys!

It has been almost two weeks since my arrival in Singapore. That means there is PLENTY to catch up on. Well, I thought it would be just an easy and (to be honest) convenient way to start a weblog to communicate with all of you. I would love to write plenty of emails...but that would take away lots of time to explore Singapore and its surroundings..and isn’t this what you actually want to hear about?

By the way, the best way to contact me would be via skype: I should be online pretty often in the future. My nick: europe80. Additionally , for all of you from Germany: it is incredibly cheap to call me on my cell: just preselect 01077 or 01079 , followed by 6581653510 (where 65 is the country code). It will cost you just about 1.6 Cents/Minute.

I would also like to encourage you to write comments as much as you like. Any weird, unpleasant, political incorrect behaviour will be censored though..this is my way to contribute to this country’s kind of freedom of the press ;-)

So far so good..I will just give you my address before I finally get on.

Maik Schroeer
Mandarin Gardens Condo
5 Siglap Rd, 02#42
448908 Singapore

'WAH LAU'..WHAT'S THAT?! YOUR NEW LAST NAME?

Well, you probably wonder what it means. So let me explain this to you, because there is indeed some meaning behind it. The Singaporean population constitutes itself mainly from people with Chinese (about 75%), Malay (15%) and Indian heritage. Singaporeans (not very politically correct as I heard: 'Singis') themselves often say that they can neither speak English nor Mandarin properly. The spoken English has of course some accent, which is not so bad. The funny part is that English is very often combined with a language called 'Singlish' (1). It supposedly comes from Hokkien (a sub-ethnic Han Chinese group originating in Fujian, China). I think I'm going to throw in a few words from time to time...not just to confuse you, but to give you a taste, what the local language is like.

'Wah Lau' is actually the pretty and much more polite version of 'Wah Lau Eh', which happens to be one of the most used expressions here. 'Wah Lau' means something like 'Wow', 'Damn' or 'Bummer' (I stick to the first interpretation though..), you can look up the inpolite version when you click on the first bookmark in the footnotes..(1) no comment anymore ;-)

Aayoh..I hope you enjoy reading this..I think I am going to update this blog around once or twice a week, depending on mood and time. Again, feel free to comment as much as you want. Let's see how this works!

Maik

(1) http://www.talkingcock.com/html/lexec.php?op=LexView&lexicon=lexicon&alpha=W&page=1