Leaving for Vietnam tomorrow. I think we're mostly ready. I'm a little apprehensive, about the corruption, scams, and squat toilets that we'll encounter, mostly. We'll deal just fine though.

Despite a tentative offer to stay where we're at in Singapore for a while, we've decided to start looking for a place of our own when we get back. We'll be making less money, and housing is expensive, so we're probably going to have to settle for less. Working to our advantage, though, is the fact that most Singaporeans don't seem to like older apartments, whereas we have no problem with that. We'll see. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a high-rise apartment building around here, but we're not really interested in those. Something like 70 percent of the population lives in one though. That's crazy.

We're just running odd errands around the city. It's very easy to get around, once you get the lay of the land. It's rainy season, but that's a good thing here, because it's a good bit cooler. We miss the old posse. They had a party here the other day, and the next day, there was still beer left in the fridge. We thought, the posse'd never let that happen...

Also spotted around town: You know, I've been meaning to go vegetarian, but I didn't want to give up abalone. Looks like my prayers are answered.

What Marjorie didn't mention about the ice kachang was that you don't realize it has any of the weird stuff (except the corn) until you eat your way down past the part that looks like a sundae. I like surprises, but not when I'm eating...

So far, everything I've thought we would have to do without (cheerios, our favorite salad dressing, etc.) we've been able to find. So it seems adjusting to life here will be relatively easy. Another positive, I found a bookstore that "rents" books. You buy a book for a listed price, and they buy it back from you if you return it later for another listed price. I'm so in love with this idea! Why hasn't this been done in the U.S. yet?
While we are very happy to find some things from home, we have been partaking in some interesting local cuisine. Last night we had some Indonesian cuisine, some yummy dumplings and some ice kachang (a dessert with corn, red beans, gelatinous noodles, and some round gelatinous stone thing) Yummy! Also while shopping we've stumbled across some other interesting products such as this.

We went to the S'pore zoo yesterday, it was fantastic in ways that no zoo in the U.S. could begin to emulate. They have many no bars exhibits where there is NOTHING between you and the animals. For example, one area called Fragile Forest contains flying foxes (bats), ring-tailed and ruffed lemurs, tree kangaroos, a two-toed sloth, many different species of birds and butterflies, and there is nothing, I mean nothing, between you and the animals. It's truly fantastic. Another interesting tidbit from the zoo, they have lots of North American critters that we would never think to put on exhibit, i.e. raccoons and squirrels (you have to go to the zoo to see squirrels here!). We're members of the zoo now, as we were in Atlanta, it's those little things that make you feel more at home.
Another interesting tidbit, on the bus ride home from the zoo I saw a macaque hanging out on the side of the road, so I guess S'pore still has wild monkeys too.

I had been telling everyone that we are exactly twelve hours off from Eastern Standard Time here. Right now, because of Daylight Savings I guess, we're actually thirteen hours ahead. So if it's 8 pm there, it's 9 am the next day here. Just FYI.

Some other random observations:

I've ridden the bus more in the last week than I ever did in the states. They have a kick-ass subway system too that we've been taking a lot. And a ten-minute cab ride runs you only about USD$ 3.

This place must be the toe-stub capital of the world. Workers layout out sidewalks and architects designing houses seem to have no problem with leaving one- or two-inch rises or drops in the footpaths. I have no idea why that is.

For a week now I've had no idea what time it is, nor even what day it is. Nice way to live.

Some random observations from around Singapore:

I'm feeling very tall.

There are at least a dozen karaoke bars within easy walking distance from where I'm at. Not the same without Tommy White though.

It's pretty durn hot here.

Hooray for mass transit!

Businesses spotted:
McDonald's (of course)
Starbucks (ubiquitous)
KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell
Long John Silvers
Orange Julius/Dairy Queen
Swenson's
Border's Books
Kenny Rogers Roasters (yay! My favorite)
Subway
Burger King
Hooters (believe it or not)
Haven't resorted to American food yet. Still loving the hawker centers where you can get a huge plate of food for like two dollars.

We're booked to Vietnam. For a while today we thought we got on it too late; we went to one travel agent who told us there were basically no flights we could take anywhere within the date range we wanted. Then we tried to book online with Travelocity and Expedia and they both said they couldn't send paper tickets outside the USA. Finally we went by another travel agency that was recommended and they got us everything we wanted at the price we wanted. We leave on the 9th and are getting back on the 30th. We're coming back here, as opposed to going on to Cambodia and Thailand, because it looks like I'm going to have work here come the start of the year. That's great news! I'll be working on some graphical interfaces at the local pay scale (which is apparently lousy) but it's a foot in the door.

After running around taking care of all that mess, we stopped at a quaint local coffee shop (cough cough) and while we sat outside sipping our beverages, a mynah bird hopped up under the table next to us and proceded to serenade us. It's the little things.

Now we have a week to kill in the Singapore area. So many options.

We're here! After months of talking about it, then more months planning, we're finally here. I had my doubts at 5:00am Thursday morning when we were told at the United ticket counter that we couldn't enter Singapore without a ticket leaving within 90 days. Our original ticket had us leaving in May, of course we're not planning on staying in S'pore straight through to May, we're planning on going to Vietnam in four days, but we hadn't purchased the ticket as we were told it would be much cheaper here....Anyways, we just changed our return date and the lady at the counter took pity on us and didn't charge us the change fee on that end (changing it back however...) In spite of the counter agents pleasantness, I'm not impressed with United Airways. The plane was older then the plane we flew in on last year on Japan Airlines, and the seats were horribly close together, 18 hours spent with no leg room! Luckily on the flight from Atlanta to San Francisco and the flight from Hong Kong to S'pore we had emergency exit seats with abundant leg room, or it would have been 25 hours with no leg room. Also not a fan of the reservation system for United, i.e. the unexpected change of planes in Hong Kong, of which there was NO MENTION when we booked the flight, and the lack of notification that we would need to have passage beyond S'pore within 90 days before getting to check-in. 30 hours straight traveling is not fun. Last year we spent a night in Tokyo to break up the trip coming and going, I think that is really the smart way to do it.

Leaving the states one of the last images we saw was the beautiful Golden Gate bridge stretched out in the San Francisco bay. Nice image to have as a keeper. Actually from the plane we saw a lot of interesting landscape including some icy mountains in the Aleutian Islands.

Overall, my spirits are definitely better now that the move and the goodbyes are behind us. Now we just need to concentrate on what we have to look forward to. So far, I'm glad to be here.

Hello from 36000 feet. Marjorie and I are somewhere over the Pacific after our stopover in San Francisco. The day had an inauspicious start; while at the Atlanta airport ready to make our departure this morning, we learned that we would not be allowed to fly with our current tickets, which have us returning next May, since the longest you are allowed to stay in Singapore without a visa is ninety days. If we could show tickets onward from Singapore, that would be okay, but we were planning on buying those in Singapore. A wave of panic hit us. But the nice lady at the counter let us change our return date to a time just under ninety days from now.

Another surprise, of the not so unpleasant variety, is that we learned that our flight from San Fran to Singapore has a stopover (which was not mentioned at all on the web site we booked it from) -- Hong Kong. Neither of us has ever been. And even though we won't have any time to explore, it'll still be cool seeing it from the window.

And in a happy coincidence, I brought along a big fat book to read while we're in the travel-around phase of our journey -- Tai Pan (by James Clavell, author of Shogun), which (at least initially) is about the founding of Hong Kong.

Anyway. I was hoping I could tell you exactly where over the Pacific we are, as I brought along my GPS. But alas, I can't get a signal inside the plane. I suppose that's not surprising, in retrospect.

At any rate, we seemed to have left the US officially now. Can we call ourselves ex-pats if we don't even have a place to live yet?

I have nothing to do, and I'm stuck in a middle seat in coach, so forgive me if I prattle on about nothing. It's a United Airlines flight, so it's all pretty Western, but they did try to serve something remotely Asian for dinner; I had the spicy chicken with rice and vegetables, that came with tiny shrimp with rice noodles and the tiniest little bottle of soy sauce (I joked to Marjorie that it was like being invited to dinner at Barbie's; she said it all looked like it had been made in an Easy-Bake Oven). They just showed M. Night Shyamalan's movie, "Signs", which I saw in the theaters, so I just watched a little without listening. They're promising to show us some movie called "A Gentleman's Game" in a bit; it's about golf and sounds pretty lame.

Now that the movie's over they're showing the plane's position on the TV screens. We seem to be directly south of Anchorage, equidistant from there and Washington state.

Off to play some video games. My old boss lent me a demo copy of "Age of Mythology" which is pretty cool. I usually don't go in for those overlord sort of games...