Dear Mum,

Sleet, snow, pelts of icy rain - during our last phone call, Dad told me the family was experiencing the usual wintry mix back home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Here in Singapore, winter has arrived, hot and humid. The day before Christmas, all through my friend's flat, the air-conditioning whirred.

The only thing icy here is breath spray. It's icy-mint flavoured.

I used Listerine strips in the United States. But not here.

I had two packs when I landed at Changi Airport four months ago, but did not use a single strip from either - the heat melted them, leaving only a mini ball of mint-flavoured yuck on my fingers.

I walked into a cobweb earlier tonight getting off a bus, a hefty one at that. I was at the end of a long queue to exit. I was the only one who hit the web.

I'm tall here. Not freakishly tall, but enough that screaming babies in strollers on Orchard Road fall silent as they look up, up, up at me with curious eyes.

I've hit my head multiple times on the hand straps dangling in buses and subway cars, sometimes playfully and sometimes painfully. I stoop now without noticing when getting up from an MRT seat.

I also wince in anticipation. Getting off the subway here is blood sport.

Commuters just hate waiting for anything. The moment the doors of a public transit vehicle open, especially during rush hour, incoming passengers zoom in, leaving exiters like me to plot a teeth- grinding, grrr-whack-whallop of an escape.

Natives call this compulsion to be the first and never left behind 'kiasu'.

The word is common here.

What's rare is that citizens have not shortened it.

You see, almost everything is reduced to an acronym in SG.

I shop at NTUC. I bank at POSB. I teach and learn at NTU. I visit friends' HDB flats. I travel on the MRT, or at times get rides on the PIE or AYE. And I respect the governing PAP and PM and MM Lee.

I will write you again soon about my attempts to date in Singapore and why my name is not Dan here.

For now, I'll leave you with a choking, coughing, spitting, sputter-filled vision of me at a local wet market on a sticky Saturday morning.

Please tell my four younger brothers that I have lived up to the challenge they threw me as I boarded the plane to Singapore in late August.

I have now eaten durian, and have lived to tell about it.

Your loving ang moh son,
Dan

Dr Daniel Reimold, 27, is a Fulbright research fellow serving as a visiting scholar at the Singapore Internet Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on December 29, 2008.