The American Club

We started out our new year by visiting the American Club on Saturday to see what they offer. We were thinking about joining, but there's a pretty stiff membership fee, so we wanted to check it out nice and thoroughly.

The American Club is located in the Orchard Road area of Singapore, which is a an upscale shopping location and a popular area for expats to live. We met with their member-relations person, who gave us a weekend pass to evaluate the club. With pass in hand, we thought about taking the whole rest of the day to enjoy the club, but we already had reservations for a movie, American Gangster (which finally made it to the theaters in Singapore). So we left the club and came back after our movie.

Returning that evening, we got drinks and hung out in the lounge, took dinner at one of the restaurants, and watched some tennis on ESPN in the bar. We definitely had a great time. And we also ran into some other folks from my office who are members. They thought their membership was well worth the value.

One of thing I never expected to miss when we left the US is all those American accents. Sure, most Singaporeans speak English, but there speak it with a Singaporean accent. Its not that Singaporean English is bad English, but to my American ear, the Singapore accent often sounds like lower-classed English. It felt good to give the ears a rest and listen English spoken by Americans--the way its supposed to be spoken.

Maximizing our weekend pass, we went back the next day and ran into--guess what--more Americans! We went to the gym and hung out by the pool, made some new friends, and talked about the elections back home. We definitely liked the club, but I'm not quite ready to extend the hefty initiation fee to join. Maybe when its time to negotiate the next expat package, we'll see if we can get membership at the American Club included. Until then, we'll keep the cards we picked up from the folks we met, and try to convince our new friends invite us as guests under their membership card.