My friend wrote: 'Where would you rather be?
' I thought you would have been speeding back to the sunshine of Singapore. I’ve never been there and unlikely to now, but it looks very different from here and I am just wondering what you feel about the differences in the two places, and your two homes..... what do you miss about Singapore when you are over here, and what do you miss about London when you are over there? Which place are you happiest in?
'Nosey? Well, that’s a writer’s prerogative. 
'
WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT LONDON?
I love London. My family and many long term friends are in London. I like the semi-detached houses in the suburbs, the art deco, and grand Victorian buildings, the cultures.
British Food
Yes, and the food.
1 I miss British food. Potatoes.
2 Proper porridge. The cheapest private label will do.
In Singapore porridge oats comes from Australia and most is precooked. The raw stuff is not milled as fine so we give it a few seconds whizz in the liquidizer. It took us a while to work that out.
In London, Waitrose supermarket provides all the British favourites, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Other supermarket have Scottish shortbread, porridge oats, and all kinds of potato. Thick cut marmalade. You can also buy Thai soups and Indian food.
4 Fish and Chip shops
5 B & K Salt beef bar and restaurant. Salt Beef - eat in or take away. Fried fish balls. Lokshen pudding. (Noodle pudding, like a cake, cold or hot, with lemon and sultanas.)
WHAT DO YOU MISS ABOUT SINGAPORE?
Singapore Food and Drink
1 Chicken Rice/ Duck Rice
2 Indian food served on a green banana leaf.
# Durian Ice Cream and Durian Cakes and Durian Paste (like green toothpaste) on Desserts.
Mandarin oranges and lanterns for Chinese New Year. Mooncakes in autumn for the harvest festival.
Singapore
Toastmasters Friends
I have even more friends from Toastmasters in Singapore,
The trains run on time. Above all, weather wise, in winter I would rather be in Singapore. Summer sun all year. Longer days, daylight. 7 pm all year.
Christmas Lights
As for Christmas, yes Christmas in London means pantomime and outdoor ice skating. The must see lights are in Oxford Street, Regent Street, and the stores such as Selfridges, Harrods, and Hamleys toy store. Many suburban streets also have lights. The big Xmas tree in Trafalgar Square is the focus of many photos and activities. Hot chestnuts are sold from kiosks in the streets.
America has the biggest and best decorations. Individual houses with scenes on the front lawn, rooftop displays. Blocks of flats and offices with a cross and bow of neon to make an oblong building look like a giant parcel.
Christmas is good in Singapore. Because the streets are full of shops and filled with seasonal lights, all along Orchard Road. With multi-cultural areas in addition, you have lights for Indian/Hindu festivals, as well and the Chinese and Malay communities - and Christmas. But the lights for Christmas come down on what in England is Boxing day, Dec 26, changing to a Chinese or other festival, whereas in the UK light often stay up until January 6th.
Religions in Singapore
Singapore is geared to shopping, like New York run by the Chinese (who are the majority, from nearby China. China has whole cities geared to providing goods. At least one city is like a huge industrial estate, supplying the UK Poundland type shops). Singapore shops employ multi-national and multi-racial shop assistants. Anything which can promote the buying of goods and services is promoted. As a result, every festival is a chance to attract shoppers with lights.
Halloween in Singapore
Halloween is also big in Singapore. In shops and Toastmasters clubs.
However, in Singapore, the devout Christians may refuse to partake in Halloween.
All Saints Day is a Catholic celebration, in France. (I learned from my Catholic French au pair girls who stayed with us in the UK when our now adult son was small).
The Protestant countries and Church of England and Anglican groups do not have saints days or name children after saints.
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day is a big event in decorations and meals at hotels and restaurants and shop windows and shops and online in Singapore.
But Muslims, especially those from neighbouring country Malaysia, are told that it is not a Muslim event and encourages promiscuity and fornication and they should not celebrate it or partake in it so they do not participate in table topics (impromptu speeches) on what did you do for Valentine's Day at toastmasters meetings.
UK & Irish Names
So in the UK, you would find a Catholic Irish maid called Teresa, but from Northern Ireland an Irish, Northern Irish, girl called Elizabeth. (So I was told by an Irish friend at the Writers Circle in Harrow, NW London, when we were discussing choosing appropriate and popular names of heroines and major and minor characters in novels set in England and Ireland and worldwide.
Jews and Hanukah in London
Jews and Jewish festivals are a feature of shops and restaurants in NW London (and New York and US cities). The best Jewish food, in my opinion, is from B & K in Edgware and Hatch End. Salt beef and , or Kosher Chinese Kuo Yan in Edgware. (In Edgware where Anne Franks father lived postwar, unknown even to local liberal and Reform Jews).
You see the orthodox Jews in the big black hats in Edgware and Golders Green, and on Saturday everybody in their fine clothes with ladies wearing smart hats going to synagogues.
At Hanukah a giant menorah has been lit outside Edgware station, in NW London.
Jews and Hanukah in Singapore
The synagogue in Singapore in heavily guarded and it is no longer easy to get in like it once was to admire the architecture, take a tour, pay in advance for a meal and look at the shop.
In Singapore in 2019, a giant menorah was lit in Orchard Road.
Valentines Day in England
Heart shaped everything in London.
Valentine's Day in Singapore
Heart shaped everything in Singapore.
The government policy is for everybody to join in everything.
The devout Muslims may refuse to attend or decline to speak about Valentine's Day. I was once asked by a Chinese Singaporean (Christian?) why a Jewish man attending a meeting declined to join in Singing Christmas carols. I was unable to explain why. (Now I can see why. In Singapore the Muslims I know see Jesus as just another excellent prophet, who pre-dates their religion, but was not The Messiah. The orthodox Jews recognize carols as hymns, many of which refer to Jesus in the manger or the messiah being born,'the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head and so on) and in Europe, I think at the time of the Inquisition, maybe as late as WW2, Jews were forced to convert to Christianity and in some cases then promptly killed to ensure they went straight to heaven to prevent them recanting later.)
Shopping
Orchard Road has some expensive department stores. However, head to little India and the giant Mustapha's on two block has parts open 24 hours, and is a bargain store, crammed with foods and goods.
SHOPPING IN LONDON
What's different to buy?
Cheese
In London, UK in late 2020, the bigger UK supermarkets have more of Marmalade and Cheddar cheese and English cheese and French cheese. Some Asians are milk intolerant and Singapore has a couple of expensive cheese shops and you can get Brie. But England has more English cheeses.
Toothpicks
I also look for the triangular toothpicks by Wisdom.
Pills
Chewable Vitamin D
Chewable vitamin D tablets.
Thyroxine
Only available from a doctor. In Singapore I had an online consultation, first time for me and her. I got a pack of 50 pills, twice the 25 a month quantity.
In the UK you get a pack of 28, and if travelling can ask for two packs.
Cheap Clothes
In the UK you can buy second hand clothes in charity shops. In Northwood the cancer research shop had a washing machine so all their clothes, although second hand, did not carry the germs of the sick and elderly who had died and whose widows or children had done house clearance by giving the clothes to charity.
SINGAPORE SHOPPING
In Singapore you would look for market stalls around the suburban railway stations, especially at any festival or national holiday.
In the UK you can buy clothes at large supermarkets, not just Marks, also Siansburys and so on.
In Singapore there is often a Tesco rack inside a convenience store, like the kosher section in some supermarkets in the UK, a tiny rack with wines and sweet biscuits and savoury crackers (in London the kosher section might have matzos) and chocolates.
SINGAPORE HOMES
Homes - in Singapore most people live in high rise government built blocks which are rented out, though they can be bought with a loan from your own CPF, government administered tax into your personal savings scheme of bought on you must stay here for five years before re-selling at a profit.
Flats in Singapore often have a scullery, tiny box room just big enough for a small single bod, like the third bedroom in some small semis in the UK, for the maid or nanny or to store your suitcases, or for a baby or small child, and a toilet. The flat we rented did not have the third toilet connected. It would be a good idea to connect it during Covid-19 for any visitors. However, there are proposals to charge a water rate depending on the number of wash basins, showers, and toilets. So, whether as owners or renter, we (and you) would be paying more for water.
In the UK more homes have baths, which are warming in winter. In Singapore our landlady had converted the bath into a shower. I have got used to this. Can't waste time filling a bath, waiting for it to fill and empty, taking a bath, cleaning a big bath.
In the UK I can buy in my Tesco express. Dr Beckmans carpet stain remover with attached brush. Very handy. Works a treat.
Insects
Singapore flats have cockroaches and termites. The are outside the building and get in.
In the UK, more spiders.
The UK has adders. Singapore has many kinds of snake. Call the authorities or the local workmen who will catch it and eat it.
Covid-19
Going back to Singapore you pay a large amount of money covering your enforced quarantine in a hotel with meals delivered to the door.
If you are on homestay they can phone you and ask for a picture of your surroundings. No messing about.
heat sensors at airports to take your temperature.
Most people are law abiding. They live in government run blocks of flats and won't risk upsetting the government.
Singapore has a history of dengue fever, and according to a Singapore based Indian friend from Toastmasters, Singapore takes this more seriously than in India. We have huge banners near bus stops telling us the figues for the dengue cases in the area, with the five step mossie wipe out.
Every week you hear the noise and see the white smoke, and sometimes hear a siren, warning you to close your windows because at ground floor level workers with machines are spraying a mist of foul-smelling, choking mosquito killer spray and mist.
On my Singapore phone, in both the UK and Singapore I have opted to receive the mid-day and mid-night update on the cases of Covid-19 in Singapore.
UK Gardens
In the UK we enjoy seeing the birds, squirrels, foxes and cats.
Singapore
I enjoy the coconut palm trees.
Horrid Haze
I hate the haze, choking you with winds from fires in Indonesia when the cut down the jungle to plant palm forests, every other summer it seems to me. Our affluent friends, the really relatively rich, fly off to their second homes in Australia. You listen anxiously to the radio or TV or news online and read the reports. When it is at its worst all outdoor places close, and all those partly outdoors, the schools, the playgroups, universities. Even if the pupils could travel, without waiting at outdoor bus stops, the gardeners and gatekeepers and cleaners and car park operators and maintenance workers are not allowed to work and the buildings and outdoor food courts shut down.
Although a small number of allotments exit, most people in Singapore would grow plants on balconies. The government sent out seeds. Two packets per household, on request. One of mine was for pak choy which is a Chinese vegetable I don't like. I think it is stringy with no flavour.
British cucumber is better.
Singapore has more mango, papaya, tropical fruits, durian. I like durian only when mixed into ice cream or cake. Then I love it. A cross between banana and chestnut. Fresh it smells of sulphur.
Singapore is and and humid all year. Sometimes I look forward to returning. Not just family. Escaping the cockroaches. Singapore is hot and humid all year.
What Do I Like about London?
1 London is better in the summer, not so sticky.
In London I have a garden. In London you can grow apple trees, grapes on a vine, rosemary on a bush.
The trains during Covid-19 are relatively empty, never a problem getting a seat. I am happy in London in summer. Transport is free in London for my age group. At the moment.
In England I have a dishwasher. Most homes in London have dishwashers. Most homes in Singapore don't.
There you have it.
About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.
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