Siven oye foive

The OC has mastered the art of international relations. She grew in confidence with the locals and got over the huge smiles she would get along with the many ‘hello little girl, where are you from?’ from elderly Singaporeans with their natural sense of ‘family’ She got to the stage yesterday where she would ask for the key at reception after each trip out and about. I think the crew at the reception desk just loved to hear her talk because I’m sure they made her repeat the number of the room at least three times (all the way grinning from ear to ear) before handing over the key to our room: Room 705

The Hotel in Little India. Naturally there’s a channel devoted entirely to things Indian. And by Ghanesh it’s boring. Always talking heads and you just know it’s worthy. You feel exhorted to do things, you don’t know quite what, but you know you’re going to be better for it.

Then there’s the SPORTS channel. You know that’s being stolen because there’s been no sound for three days. We’ve seen figure skating, beach volleyball (no audio needed there) and then there’s the fashion channel…from Pakistan. I note no mention of what the cricket team’s wearing…or the coach.

And then there’s CCTV9. The same as you get on SkyTVNZ by the looks of things along with CCTV4 which is another worthy channel and again, I know I’m being exhorted to do things and I’m not quite sure where I’m going to end up. Who is “MediaCorp,” Is this Rupert Murdoch in disguise? Two or three of these channels show hard core soap operas and by GUAN-YUN-CHANG ! the Chinese seem to be into Soap Operas big time…which is kinda cool because I ‘do’ drama!

The Malaysian channel shows nothing but the worst of TV – several of which are in English dubbed into Malay. YC isn’t as much interested in learning Malay as he is Dora teaching him Espagnol. One exception is that one Malaysian channel seems to be devoted entirely to all things Islam and we managed to catch a cool and interesting doco on Cat Stevens/Yusef Islam.

And don't forget the MediaCorp channel that shows the lowest common denominator stuff like "America’s Funniest (Not) Home Videos" to "Skating with Celebrities" (Nancy Kerrigan et al). OC entranced *sigh* And of course “Survivor” somewhere in the world other than Singapore (thank any God).

I was lucky enough to catch the Singapore national anthem at 6am. The YC seems to have sorted his time zones out and we were all up singing at 4.45am. Bless him!

Looking forward to seeing the ads in England. The Singaporean ones didn’t seem too different from what we’re used to. Perhaps products and their ads are universal?? Naturally I expect the English ones, and the programmes around them to be on a higher plane *snort* We shall see!