S$

Wondering what the title symbol means? Well, that is what I was wondering yesterday. Read on, dear friends, and you will find out. If you already know, you will find out how unobservant I have become!

So, on Friday I was surfing the internet looking for a particular item when I came across the perfect website with exactly what I wanted. Since I had my nearly 4-month-old daughter by my side, who is very fun but quite distracting, I overlooked that all of the dollar signs had a mysterious "S" in front of them...and procceeded to order.

Well, yesterday I decided to revisit this site (which is in perfect English) and see what else they have to offer. Lo and behold, I noticed that one item had won an award "Voted Best in Singapore in Year 2006"! Hmm, could this be a Singaporese (?) site? I continued on and saw "All prices are listed in Singapore Dollars"! GAAH!! How much is a Singapore dollar worth!?!? I had ordered without truly knowing how much I was spending...what if the currency rate was really high? This is a country where chewing gum isn't allowed in public in order to maintain cleanliness. Surely, their money is worth something. I quickly found an exchange rate site and calculated what I'd spent. The current rate is about O.7USD per SD. Whew! I actually spent less money than I thought.

Now, I must muse, how is it that Rebekah the Observant One managed to not notice she was in a Singaporian (?) site? I noticed the pig on the Neiman Marcus St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital benefit fashion show poster didn't have a tail , but it did on their pamphlets! But I didn't realise I was in a Singaporean (now know because I looked it up on wester.com) website! That, my friends, goes to show that a woman's mind truly does turn to mush after childbirth (hence the reason so many moms can't remember their children's names).

An interesting factiod I learned after discovering my bumble yesterday: English is one of Singapore's official languages. Did you know that? I knew that the king in "The King and I" wanted all 92 (or some other outlandishly absurd number) of his children to learn English and that is why Anna and her son went there, but not that it still is a significant language to these people. Question: Is "The King and I" based on an actual event? Reason for my asking is that the video store here has it in the "History" section.