We have a pet, sort of. There's a mynah that comes and sings to us everyday from the porch opposite ours. I occasionally go out there and tweet or whistle back at him/her and he/she responds by looking over and tweeting or squawking back. It's a great little interaction with nature.

One of the consequences of living here and having friends and family back in the states is that nearly all the blog comments, email, and discussion list postings we receive occur while we sleep. Mornings we check it all in one fell swoop.

In other words, all of our social interactions now come in digest form.

Life is unfair. We're ordering cable TV. I tell Marjorie I can do without the sports channels option -- even though I was addicted to watching soccer while we were in Vietnam (there's never any coverage in the US). She says, "Really? I'm getting HBO." (She's loves "Sex and the City".) So I say, "Okay, I'm getting the sports, then."

Cable has been installed. Turns out, HBO doesn't show "Sex and the City" here. Not hard to figure out why. Nor do they show "The Sopranos", or "Six Feet Under", it seems. Maybe it's just off-season.

But I get lots of soccer. And rugby. Mwu-ha-ha-ha-ha...

I guess I should be saying "football" instead of "soccer". We're gradually catching on to the Britishisms they use around here. I've successfully used the terms "taking the piss", "queue", and "lift", but "boot" (for "trunk") and "mate" (for "friend") still sound weird to me.

Surprised to see that a band I recently started to like is actually playing here in a couple of weeks -- Suede (aka the London Suede). Tickets are expensive (about $40 US), but the service fee is only a buck! I'm so used to bending over and taking it from TicketMaster in that regard...

Still setting up house. We went to Ikea last night. I'm glad to see Marjorie is not as in love with that place as she used to be (I've always referred to it as "Icky-Uh", which we've found is pretty much how Singaporeans pronounce it. They're a wise bunch). But it is convenient for some simple, cheap household purchases.

Today we get cable TV and cable modem. Currently our TV only gets some very wacky Asian channels. We do seem to get all the Bollywood we want, though.

Residency. We found an apartment, and have moved in. Our moving van was two taxicabs.

It's a smallish but nice place, quite near to some major shopping areas. We have a six month lease.

Are we officially ex-pats now? Maybe not until I get my work permit. We're working on that. My job so far has consisted of shopping for parts for the computer I'll be using, and assembling it. This is all work-at-home, so far; I haven't yet been in to the office where I'll be stationed.

We witnessed a rare Singapore occurrence last night: a crime. While in a taxi, we came across an accident, where a guy in a car knocked over a woman on a motorbike. They were arguing about it, and then the guy got angry and tried to karate kick the girl in the chest. Unfortunately he was about six inches too far away to actually make contact (I think he was drunk). Then he grabbed her jacket and tried to wrestle her to the ground. Our cab driver jumped out and helped another guy subdue him.

Shall we dance? You're walking along, through a crowd. Somebody coming the opposite direction has a trajectory that leads directly into you. You look up just before you run into each other, then start to move to one side, just as he moves to the same side. So you start to move the other way, again, just as he does. You smile at each other, and gesture with your eyes to one side, and finally, you move around each other.

It happens thousands of times in every life. The other day, though, I had that experience with a buddhist monk, in full robes, coming out of the subway.

Consider the lilies of the field. I start to work tomorrow. Why is it that a man should have to work? Aren't we the most advanced species on the planet? Why is it that only we toil away at jobs?

While we're at it, it's the 2000's. Aren't robots supposed to be doing all the work for us by now?