This is me filling in my arrival card at the airport in Singapore:
Name: Crystal
Citizenship: Irish
Place of birth: New Zealand
Country of embarkation: Switzerland
Address for disembarkation: Singapore
Permanent residence for next 12 months: Australia
Heh…
Did you know that staff of the United Nations get issued with light blue United Nations passports? These accompany their normal passports for business travel to help them overcome any nationality-specific issues that might arise when entering foreign countries. I didn’t know this until I got to the UN. Unfortunately interns aren’t eligible for a UN passport though though. I like the idea of having a UN passport! Citizen of the world!!!
So I have arrived in Singapore.
Singapore is the place where I come to not sleep. It’s currently 3:30am here, which is five hours different to New Zealand, three hours different to Sydney and seven hours different to Geneva (the other way around the clock). I came here on the way to Europe from Sydney in November, started processing my jet lag on that trip and now I have returned and am doing the same thing on the way back. Singapore has become my ‘standing on my head’ place; my melatonin-crashing-through-my-veins place; my don’t-know-when-to-eat and body-feels-like-sh*t place; my escape-from-one-place-on-the-way-to-another place.
Primarily I come here to visit my brother, his wife and my nieces (and to lie by the pool in the ever so consistent humid 30 degree heat) but not sleeping seems to be a bonus activity that gets added to the agenda in either direction. Sleepless in Singapore. Hello Saturday morning already, it’s not so nice to see you again!
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There is no softer wake up than the world’s cutest 3 year old whispering “Do you want to come out and play with me and my sister?” My Sydney body clock says yes, but my Geneva body clock says no! I feel like my body is being pulled in half by the two axis of the earth. Arrrrgh.
Thanks for waking me; of course I will come and play! Just give me a minute to finish digging myself out of this chasm of sleep I’m in. Jetlag is totally. not. cool.
But hanging with family is! My brother’s girls are super cute. Happy, dozy days.
Girls out for lunch with their Mum!
