Singapore

Saturday, May 02, 2009

I am so happy to be done with airplanes for a while. We got to Hong Kong airport and then we turned around to fly to Singapore. It was actually quite depressing to be in Hong Kong because that is only the first of four times that we will be in the Hong Kong airport. I really enjoyed my airplane ride to Singapore. I ended up sitting next to Stan and Dee Fawcett the program directors. I have had a number of opportunities to talk to them; however, this was the first time that I was actually able to have a long chat with them and to really get to know them. Of the three hour flight I would say we talked for about two thirds or it. I really admire my director. We ended up talking a lot about life and how God has a plan for us and we have to do everything in our power to do what we can however, in the end he has things in store for us that we can’t even imagine. We also talked a lot about business and the global market that it is. It was really fun to get to know them well.

Singapore is an amazing city. I had heard many things about how modern and how clean the city is but I really didn’t comprehend it. Singapore is a tiny island with about six million people. It is truly today’s modern melting pot. There are people from all different cultures. The population is split roughly into thirds: The Malay, Chinese, and Indian. The other ten percent are just a hodgepodge of other people. I was so surprised how many foreigners (By foreigners I mean ‘white’ people) that saw. Most of the people here speak two or more languages. All Children are taught English and Malay in the schooling system and if they excel in those they are able to learn a third language. Because of this we really had no problems with speaking English. Honestly it didn’t really feel like I was in a foreign country. It really just felt like I was in a really really clean large city. Everywhere we went was immaculate. Chewing gum is against the law. Littering is illegal and strictly enforced. I saw two pieces of trash on the ground the whole time that I was here.

When we got into the city went to the hotel and then turned right around to leave and go to our first business visit. I was really excited for this visit. We went to the regional distribution hub for DHL. It was really a fun visit. It took a while to get through security and get things situated. DHL was located in a large warehouse on the airport property. When we showed up it really wasn’t anything to look at from the outside however, they offices were very mince and modern. We met in their conference room that we very modern and nicely furnished. It was interesting to hear them talk about their operations. I was completely unaware that DHL holds the market share for shipping in Asia. They said that they don’t have their own airplanes in Asia but instead subcontract out their shipping. However, they own about 50% shares in three Asia air shipping countries which they mostly use for their air freight. They said that at their facility there are 60 inbound flights and 65 outbound flights. After their presentation they took us on a tour of the facilities. We first went to what they call their Quality Control Center. The QCC is where they monitor all major shipments going in and out of the Singapore hub. It was really interesting to see how they managed the various flights and adjusted for different situations. They made mention that they had recently been doing major software system upgrades to hopefully give them a competitive advantage. In their presentation they showed the different modules to their system and they had over 30 different modules to handle all of the different tasks for all the steps of their business. After our stop in the QCC we got to go down stairs and see the real action happen in the warehouse. The most surprising thing that I saw there was that they didn’t have an automated sorting system. All sorting to of the 55,500 packages that go through that facility each day are manually sorted my hand. It was really fun to see the packages going around on the different conveyor belts and being sorted by people. After our visit we still had to take public transportation back to our hotel. It was about an hour back to the hotel between a combination of buses and trains. Their public transportation system here is pretty amazing. I have never seen cleaner subways. At this point we were all super tired. We hadn’t had a break until that point we went straight from the travel to the business visit. We got back at about 9 pm and some people went to bed some of us were crazy and decided to go out and explore the city. It was really fun. We went to a little Chinese eatery that we good. Then we just went and wandered Singapore at night. The city was really nice in that I never felt uncomfortable and unsafe even while walking around at night. Our hotel ended up being a few blocks away from a real happening part of town that was open late at night and we wondered and enjoyed ourselves.
The next day was a free day for us to all go out and explore the city. First and foremost it sure felt like the Philippines as far as hot and humid. I seriously just felt like a leaky facet. It brought back memories of being soaked in my own sweat. We had a really enjoyable time exploring the city. We went to an island that had a tower that you could go up and it would over look the city and the ocean. It was amazing to over look the ocean and see the hundreds of ships just anchored in the port because they don’t have any cargo to ship because of the global economic conditions. Singapore is the second busiest port in Asia. We went and saw all the major tourist attractions. It was really fun. There wasn’t anything that was exceptionally amazing; however, the city as a whole is amazing. It is so hard to get past the beauty, modernness, and cleanliness of the city.

Unfortunately we only had a short period of time in Singapore. We woke up early this morning so that we could leave at 7 am to take a bus ride to Malaysia. The bus ride is only about 4 hours however; it has taken us about 6 hours. It took us almost 2 hours to get through the Singapore and Malaysian custom and immigrations. Because of the Swine flu they required us to all go through an medical screening/interview before they would let us enter Malaysia. It was kind of a pain. It would have been nice if we could have done this trip three weeks ago as to avoid these problems. However, it is okay it is all part of the fun. Well onto the next adventure. Malaysia!