My morning beverage today looked like this:

Yes, that’s right:  if you order hot tea “take away” from a beverage stand in the morning, it comes in a plastic bag — with a straw.  Or you can get coffee in a bag (also with a straw), if that’s your preference.  You’ll see lots of people all over Singapore walking around with these things.

And then you get to work, and you wonder, “now where do I put my tea in a bag?”  Because clearly, if you set it down on your desk, you’re going to have tea everywhere.  The coffee mug starts to look like a much smarter invention in a hurry.  But the Singaporeans have come up with at least one popular tea in a bag storage location:

Sadly, I don’t have a doorknob in my office — I had to use Kristen’s for this demo.  If I become a regular tea in a bag drinker (unlikely in the mornings, given the heat of my walk and the heat of the tea), I’ll need to come up with a different solution.

My fifteen-minute walk between the bus stop and school is really interesting, because if I take the route least traveled (but most direct, as the crow flies), I walk through a warren of shops and food stands and HDB (Housing & Development Board) housing hallways and playgrounds and carparks.  I’m still learning where all of the cut-throughs are.  This view is pretty common (all of the blocks near school feature this green color):

Everything looks very much the same on a large scale, but there’s a lot to see if you look more closely.  For example, I ran into this right outside of someone’s apartment door for the first time today:

I have also found a new way into school that’s tucked right in between two HDB buildings.  It’s for pedestrians only, so the security seems almost lax in comparison to the security at the car/bus entrance.  We pedestrians have just one turnstile and one guard:

But as you can see from the barbed wire and all of the bars, we’re still working hard to keep the bad guys (whomever they may be) out.