As planned, I took out my mom and aunt to Orchard Road today, to see the Christmas deco. After an evening of walking around, taking pictures, window shopping, escalator riding lessons and general chit-chat, I asked my aunt who is in a foreign country for the first time, how she liked Singapore.
I expected her to go WOW over the deco and the malls and everything bright and shiny that she saw around her. Instead she said that all those things were of course, very nice. But what really wow-ed her were the extremely clean, convenient and fast buses and trains and on top of it all, the fact that every road and every residential building seemed to have every single bulb working!
Well, she had a point there. Coming from a small town in Kerala, where it is not the most pleasant experience to take public transport and where there is never a road with no damaged lamp post, that must have been quite an observation for her.
It used to be quite an observation for me too, now that I think back. Of course, I love my country India and all that it has to offer but I used to appreciate the convenience and standard of life Singapore could offer, even if you were strictly a "middle-class" person. But over the years, I guess I have started taking things for granted. And her comment made me stop in my tracks for a couple of moments.
971 more to go.
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