Donating Blood in Singapore

First, a quick warning. This post is about BLOOD. It also has a picture of blood in a bag. If this grosses you out, please don't put yourself through it and scroll past this post!

(they even have a mascot!)

Back when I lived in Ohio, I made it a point to donate blood as often as I felt up to. I'm blood type O+, which always seemed in critical stock in my area, and since I fit the criteria in the States it seemed a necessary evil, even though I'm actually terrified of needles. And blood. Even making this post is kind of making me queasy, but it's for a good cause! Seriously though, I'm a huge baby and cry nearly every time I go- my parents can tell horror stories about me running through doctor's offices to escape the poor nurses tasked with updating my vaccines. Fortunately, I haven't yet run from anyone at blood drives, so I consider that progress.

At any rate, since I moved to Singapore about a year and a half ago I haven't attempted to donate blood, but after seeing a site detailing the current low stocks of type O blood, thought it was about time I gathered my courage again and went for it. It looks like at the moment the stocks have been raised out of the red and into the yellow, which I'm going to attribute to my own fearless bravery stop laughing now. 

(see, be nice. jerks.)

You would think that donating blood anywhere in the world would be relatively the same, but as there are a surprising amount of different criteria and things to keep in mind, I thought making a blog post and hopefully rallying a few more people to go to their nearest blood drive might be worth it. So first, a few of the facts to keep in mind:

• You have to weigh at least 45kg to donate, which is about 100lbs. If you weigh between 45 and 50kg you'll donate a smaller amount, but as the minimum weight for donation in the US is 110lbs, it's quite a big difference. 
• For most blood drives, you don't need to register. I walked in at the Pasir Ris East CC blood drive and it was so empty I was literally through in under an hour, and if I wasn't such a baby could have been through in about 30 minutes. 
• You can find a listing of upcoming blood drives here or head to one of the few blood banks in the country (Bloodbank@HSA or Bloodbank@Woodlands) any time.

Aside from the few differences in criteria, even the process was a bit different. Like in the States, first you have to read information about donating blood and pages that talk about who can't.

However, they also shorten the process by having you answer that long list of repetitive questions about your health and history yourself through checkboxes, rather than having a nurse ask you or take time answering on a computer. Locals will need to bring along their IC for identification, and although it tells foreigners to bring their passports, my EP was all I needed to get through.

(by this point the terror was just starting to build, you can't read more than a hint of horror in my eyes)

The procedure after that is all normal. You talk to a nurse who checks out your info and makes sure you have no questions, go through the dreaded iron test (actually not bad, I had a great nurse and it didn't even sting a bit) and take a seat on the long chairs to await the donation. 

Since it was seriously dead, they were pretty much waiting on me to get there and sit. Luckily it was all the same after that too, my extreme twitching and attempts to keep myself from crying even got the same response here as back in Ohio! That's when it gets different. Usually at this point in Ohio they'd stick me with a needle and I'd spend the next 5-10 minutes trying in vain to ignore the weird feeling and slight discomfort and do my best to not pass out after glancing at the slowly filling bag to my side. But Singapore is a haven for people like me, and instead they actually give you a local pain killer injection first. That may not seem like a big deal, but when you're as terrified of needles as I am, not having to feel the needle in your arm during the process is pretty much the best thing that could possibly happen.

(look, they even gave me a sticker since it was my first time in Singapore!)

 I'd been really hitting the water a few days before donating, and I guess it thinned my blood a bit because my bag was almost full after about 2-3 minutes and I had to lie down to not pass out.

 

(serious, this was just barely more than a minute since starting)

But in the end I did make it through my first blood donation in Singapore and came out alive. I'll probably take a while to get my courage up again, but since it's a minimum 12 weeks between donations here, rather than the 56 days in the States, I've got a while.

Useful Links- 

Everything you need to know about donating blood in Singapore- youtube video

HSA requirements and information

Donorweb blood donation pledge form

Good luck with your donations and feel free to share any experiences giving blood in Singapore or around the world!

Go to Hell (in) Haw Par Villa

The only reason I even knew about this place was because Michelle heard it was closing down. Not once in any guide books or tourist attraction brochures have I even heard of Haw Par Villa, and... well, I guess that's why it's shutting down: due to the lack of advertising and its respective revenue. Still, even though mid-way through the process of getting shut down, Haw Par Villa is still a highly-enchanting, though rather bizarre, site for anyone looking to experience Chinese mythology in full-color sculptured glory.

The official entrance is located on an uphill slope that takes you all the way to the very top of the site; other paths leading to sub-routes split from the main path.

Originally known as Tiger Balm Gardens, Haw Par Villa (which translates to "(the) Villa of the Tiger and Leopard" in English) was constructed in 1973 by brothers Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par, the developers of the heat rub Tiger Balm. The villa is open daily from 9.00am to 7.00pm, and true to its namesake, you'll come across many statues of tigers and leopards scattered about the site, one of each often flanking either side of a path or an entrance. Admissions to Haw Par Villa is completely free (although there is a small and fairly new section inside, The Jade House, that requires an entrance fee: the House exhibits the vast collection of jades that the Aw family has collected over the years).

There are more than 1,000 statues depicted in the villa, all of which are vibrantly colored and still look rather well-maintained. Many of them are very detailed dioramas depicting scenes in Chinese folklore.

The sculptures in the park are "centered around Chinese folklore, legends, history, and Confucian ideology", and the attractions include but are not limited to the Laughing Buddha, the Goddess of Mercy, as well as painstakingly crafted scenes from Journey to the West. However, the most popular and well-known attraction is unarguably The Ten Courts of Hell:

The imposing entrance to The Ten Courts of Hell, flanked by horse and ox guards. Apparently, this used to take place inside a 60-metre long dragon trail; the pictures here show the entrance in its original glory.

This section of the site is particularly disturbing and definitely not for the faint of heart (I still have nightmares). The Ten Courts of Hell are exactly what it sounds like: "purgatory where a person is sent to be punished for the sins and misdeeds of their past life. A sinner must go through all Ten Courts and in the tenth, final judgment will determine his form of reincarnation." A judge or Yama precedes over each Court, and with each progressive court things get a lot more gruesome and bloodier. Sinners are depicted being thrown in a pool full of filthy blood:

Getting sawn in half:

 Dismembered:

...the list of horrors go on. (I actually felt a little sick to my stomach just walking through the cavern.) You can go here to read a more extensive and detailed list on the Courts of Hell, but really, nothing beats walking through that hellhole and looking at the hundreds of mutilated plastic bodies laid out before you first hand.

The rest of the villa really isn't so bad though!

There are just way, way too many statues in Haw Par Villa to feature in a single post. You'll see a lot of weird stuff in Haw Par, like a woman-headed crab and chicken-people eloping, medical rats and giant gorillas, and even the Statue of Liberty (don't ask what it's doing there), but overall, it's more than what words can describe. I hate to be cliché and say you'll have to see it for yourself! but I really feel sad that such a decoratively elaborate and beautifully cultural place has to be shut down. It's definitely worth a trip if you're looking for an eye-opener, and trust me when I say there'll be more pictures than you'd like to take here.

Pictures like this, for example. Now we're definitely going to have a lot of good luck coming our way, thanks a lot Mich

If you're like me and can't get enough to reading up about Haw Par Villa, here's a site with tons of pictures of almost every statue in the villa, and detailed information on... well, almost everything (I realize I've referenced it a lot in this blog post, they're seriously hardcore on this).

Don't forget to purchase your heat rub!

The Japanese are insane (in a good way)

Hello again! (If anyone's still reading this?!) We're really sorry we haven't been updating so much as of May! We just got back from our vacation to Michi's hometown in Ohio and then straight back into work and unpacking and all that lovely stuff, so things have been real hectic. We should get regular again starting this June though!

There's so much to blog about but (1) my laptop broke (it's the one with the photoshop program so... no nice pictures anymore until I get it fixed) (2) we have too many pictures, so I'll make a really short post about... Japanese toilets.

...no, seriously. Japanese toilets.

Japanese airport toilets, in any case. We had to make a transit in Narita/Haneda on our way back to Singapore, and with a twelve hour layover there really wasn't much to do but admire the toile-- I'm kidding. But really, look at that toilet. Porcelain white and clean and smelling like cleaning agent, no spills on the floor, nothing. Perfect toilet. Except... what the heck is that thing sticking out on the side, you say? No way, a remote control? For the toilet?

Now with butt, intimate, and fake actions!

Yep, that's what it is. A remote for the toilet, and pressing a button either plays a flushing noise (for the embarassed ladies who don't want others to hear them do their doo-dah), washes your intimate areas, or jettisons your rear end. And let's not forget the stop button to put an end to any of that. There's even a water pressure selector and a volume control! It even comes with instructions for those of us who unfortunately don't have one of these beauties in our homes:

...needless to say, we tried it out. The verdict? Pretty cool to look at and to hear about, but not really that great of a deal and really unnecessary overall. In fact, the bidet and butt-washing functions felt more like someone was gently peeing upwards onto my nether regions with cool, clean water than doing any actual cleansing. Still cool though in any case, I mean, how many people do you know have sat on one of these?

And that was just one toilet cubicle. This is the handicapped washroom. Isn't it the most awesome handicapped washroom you've ever seen?

This Was Not A Fun Post To Make

This blog post is about pests.

It will have pictures of bugs and creepy crawlies.

The back-button is at the top-left.

And now that you've gotten your fair warning... To be honest, I'm not even sure why I'm blogging about this topic since it's such a common thing to me, but I guess what's common to me might be news to others, so. If you're a local reading, sorry to bore you. If you're an expat living in or visiting Singapore and you're reading this, and you haven't had the opportunity to come across these lovely creatures yet, I'd like to introduce you to...

THE COMMON COCKROACH

...it seriously is really common here. The common cockroach in Singapore can grow to as large as the size of an adult thumb, and they are near impossible to kill. You can smack them with newspaper or bugspray them and the little buggers just either reanimate, respawn, or come right back. Even better, a lot of them are apparently psychic and they'll run straight at you - instead of away from you - if you try to attack them directly.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a non-blurry picture
of a cockroach that's running toward you while you're simultaneously
running backwards away from it

Not only are roaches invincible, they're everywhere too. You'll find them scuttling between the shadows, hiding in the drains, feasting in the garbage bins, hanging from the ceiling; they even ride the bus to work with you and fly into your hair. More than once I've witnessed full-grown cockroaches creeping along the windows or poles of the public buses while riding the commute to work, and the latter happened to me only a mere week ago. (I got rid of it by doing a impromptu three second rain dance on the sidewalk and then just stared after it as it continued to lazily fly away.)

As disgusting as I've made it sound though, be rest assured that a large majority of the public buses (and Singapore in general!) are roach-free, and while they do fly roaches normally prefer to creep along flat surfaces than take to the air. Most places are regularly fumigated every couple months too, keeping the roach population in check (although the only downside to that is having to pick your way through the hundred of dead bodies carpeting the floor the next morning).

And next up is...

COMMON HOUSE LIZARD

Often found on the ceilings of bathrooms, in the corners of room ceilings, under the lights on the wall and behind the automatic kettle on the kitchen counter, the common house lizard reaches various sizes depending on how stable its diet of flies is and is also very likely the source of that weird chittering noise you hear above your head while sitting on the john. Nearly transparent, they move in short, zig-zaggish bursts of speed and may or may not drop down on you from above instead of running in the opposite direction while being chased. Young lizards can be as tiny as the first joint of your thumb and well-fed adults can reach the size of an outstretched hand (from the tip of the middle finger to the base of the palm).

They're always hiding somewhere. Always.

Some of my personal notes on house lizards: hosing them with hot water from the showerhead will not melt them through the shower stall drain, and fishing their partially liquefied bodies out after is not a pleasant task at all. Also, the tail stays alive for up to ten minutes after dropping off the body and it will somehow continue wriggling menacingly towards you even long after the lizard itself has run away.

And last but not least...

STRAY CATS

You heard me. These fuzzy little cuties are considered pests in Singapore, mostly because of the noise they make during heat and during fights, and even though the Singapore Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) have taken measures to stop them from breeding via neutering, they somehow keep multiplying. You'll find at least one cat in the void deck of every HDB building there is in Singapore. And despite numerous signs telling the general public not to feed the strays, people still do because face it, cats are cute. (I haven't really heard of anyone getting fined for doing so though, seems like most people close an eye to it.)

You can tell if a stray cat's been fixed by looking at its ears. After it's been picked up by the SPCA, the cat in question will be dewormed, vaccinated against rabies and common diseases, and neutered before being returned to where it was found, with one small difference - a little slice of one of its ears removed. It sounds painful, but it's done while the cat is under anesthesia (with a hot metal wire, very quick and efficient) and it doesn't affect the cat's hearing at all. It's also very common for most stray cats here to have a kink in their tail or two, but not to worry because this is actually a genetic defect, and not a result of abuse during kittenhood as I had previously thought. (According to Michelle, all the cats in Ohio, USA have long straight tails. Now that was unusual to me!)

And that ends the post on pests for now. Have a kitty.