Appreciating Singapore

Usually I don't chat much on a plane , especially not when travelling for work as I would be trying to do some reading or chill. 


This time, it's not very different, at least initially. 

My neighbour next to me started chatting with me and I soon learned that she is from Henan and her daughter is working in Singapore. She shared with me that her daughter got married to someone from Holland and wedding took place in Bali. She also shared with me her impressions of Singapore from her various trips here and concluded that our 素质不错 :

- once she left her purchases in a restaurant ... And they were quite some distance away before they realised it and returned to get it. Even before reaching, her daughter was fairly confident that it would still be there and it was. 

- another time, she left her purchases (again( on the bench after watching fireworks). This time round they walked very far before realising and they were not so hopeful this time round as it was a public area and there were lots of people around them then and it took them a long to make it back to their original location as they were walking anti traffic. When they returned, they were so surprised that someone was standing there, guarding their bag of purchases. The guy sitting near to them guessed that they had forgotten and hence, was waiting for them to return ! She was so touched and impressed by the kind act. 

- she was asking directions from this person. And after they went separate ways, the person came running after her to clarify that the direction he came earlier was not quite right. She was so pleasantly surprised that he even bothered. After all, their encounter was already over and he could have simply just moved on. 

- another time when she was dining in restaurants here in general, she realised that it's generally quite quiet .. Especially aftree she returned to her country in an equivalent restaurant to a raucous meal! She said that the contrast was so high. As such, she thinks that we are a lot more refined. 

We talked about a lot more other things:
- working in Singapore vs working in holland 
- cpf system here versus pension system in china; increasing retirement age, why old people work in china vs Singapore etc
- Hdb vs condo in Singapore , high cost of housing here
- how Singaporean generally look younger than we really are 

 It was a very pleasant conversation. And I didn't regret that I lost one hour of reading as I have learned so much more from this chat. And I learn to appreciate what we have in Singapore even more than ever. 

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