Singapore....a little late I admit

OK, so yes I completely agree it has been a rather long time since I last blogged.  And yes, I had all these intentions of blogging on a weekly basis, updating you all on the amazingly brilliant life that is mine. But alas, I am so bloody tired by the time I get home that I have little energy and zilch creative forces left in me.  But, tonight is the night, when I sit myself down at the laptop and get back in touch with all of you Mutterers.

Tomorrow marks the third week of being here in Singapore and I have another two to go, flying out on Monday 11 August for Canada.  So let me give you some details of my life in Singapore. Well it's certainly not Larnook, nor even Lismore, for that matter.  I live in a housing block comprising many tens and tens of high rise apartment buildings at a place called Lakeside, which is almost as west as the train line runs - from memory there are only four stops after Lakeside. Central to the city it isn't but it only takes 40 minutes on the train until I reach the CBD and I've only been going in to the city for a treat once a week. It's about 45 minutes via two trains and a bus to get to the Zoo/Night Safari/River Safari which is where I do most of my data collecting, which again is fine.

The public transport system in Singapore is, of course, superb, and very inexpensive, and all I have to do is tap my EZI-Card when I get out of the trains or buses and away I go.  It's just a matter of topping up whenever I start to go low on credit.  $20 usually lasts me a bit over a week.  Most of the time I have to stand on the trains - they are usually quite full, but always orderly and ultra clean. Many times when I'm making a connecting train I simply walk out of one train and across a few metres of platform and into the waiting train.

I am living with a very nice fellow called Ross, who studied in Australia at the ANU and then lived in Sydney for another 13 years. I have the second bedroom. I have breakfast here, then take a Pink Lady apple from New Zealand for lunch (Zoo food is way too expensive) and I eat dinner at one of the many food places within the housing complex.  My dinner usually comprises rice with a selection of meat and vege dishes and comes in somewhere between 4 and 5 Singapore dollars.  I usually have a can of Tiger beer (upping that to a 600ml bottle on Friday and Saturday nights).

The work I am doing has been very interesting though parts of it are now quite tedious.  I have three studies I am doing: one is to examine the extent to which visitors to the Zoo and River Safari 'engage' with 8 different signs each of which has an overt conservation message. It is all observational so I basically sit myself down where I can keep the sign under surveillance and then record whether visitors walk past the sign and not see it, see it but keep walking, or stop and read it (I time them at this stage). I also record whether they touch the sign, point at it, read any of it out aloud, talk to their kids or companions while at the sign etc).  I set my sampling goal at a lofty 1000 visitors per sign and I will make this.  It has become pretty tedious though because after about 500 people the patterns of engagement had become pretty obvious.  But you will have to read the journal article I will subsequently write if you want to find out more.

I have become quite good friends with Omar the male white tiger - the interpretive material near the tiger exhibit is one of the things I am looking at, so I usually spend an hour or so each day and watch him and his good tigress when there aren't any visitors occupying my attention.  Unfortunately he actually killed a man who jumped into the enclosure in 2011. The death of the man at the jaws of Omar was actually filmed by someone who witnessed it and is posted on YouTube if you want to see it. I am drawn to the video for some reason, as macabre as that sounds, and drawn to looking at Omar and wondering what he must have thought to have been presented with this unfortunate man (who apparently jumped in because he wanted to suicide).  Anyway, most of you probably won't want to watch this - and don't worry I have no desire to join Omar.

The next study is when I get to stalk visitors in the Australian Outback exhibit.  This requires me to skillfully and stealthily follow an unwary person around while they are in the exhibit, timing how long they spend looking at each component, what they do, how many photos they take etc etc etc.  No one appears to have noticed me noticing them so far.

My other study is a broader one examining the way in which the Singaporean tourism industry frames animal encounters - how do tourists encounter animals within Singapore, how do animal encounters become incorporated in the destination marketing of Singapore etc.  For this one I have to visit all the animal-based tourist attractions, captive and wild, as well as other more obscure animal-tourist interactions such as the fish spa I am going to tomorrow on an island called Uban, which is a 20 minute bum-boat ride from Singapore proper.  I'm actually going to camp on the island which should be fun and then on Monday (which is a public holiday because it is the end of Ramadan) I am going to one of Singapore's nature reserves to observe visitor-monkey interactions.  Then it's back to the Zoo, Night Safari, River Safari for the rest of the week.

I do data collection every day so as I said, by the time I get home, I am knackered.

I have collected a sh*t load of data, however.

OK, well I think that should do for now.  I'll post again before I leave and include some pretty pics and then I shall post from St Catherine's in Canada.