Foodie alert. Here's a nice long piece on eating in Singapore from (of all places) the New York Times. I only know where to find about two of the places they mention. We've been missing a lot, it seems.

Slow boat down under. We've mailed off our paperwork applying to migrate to Australia. A twenty page form, plus about as many pages of marriage records, proofs of employment, CVs, passport photos, all stamped, certified, and checked over four or five times... Together it all weighed exactly as much as a back monkey.

Optimistic estimate: six months to process. Pessimistic: eighteen months. Realistic: twelve.

Wildlife adventure, living room stylee. Marjorie knocked the tail off a gecko while vacuuming this afternoon. I held the tail in my hand while it twitched for over a minute. It was trippy.

There's another tailless gecko in our kitchen that's been sitting high up on the wall for over a day in the same position. We've named him Art. He looks like a Matisse cutout.

We watched 'Bounce' the other night. Why is Ben Affleck famous again? We kept thinking they should've had a stunt-actor, to step in whenever some real emotion was required. There was one good scene, where he was almost mauled (and upstaged) by a rottweiller.

Then again, last week we watched 'Shakespeare In Love', and it pained us to admit it, but he was actually good. He needs to play more pompous asses.

New digs. I've been having a pretty hectic week. We're moving into a new office, and my boss is going to be splitting the country this weekend, for two, maybe three months, so we're having to get everything set up. The office is in a really great location -- a place called Club Street on the edge of Chinatown. There are restaurants, pubs, and all sorts of other interesting things within a block or two. I promise to do a photo series of the area once we're settled.

WOMAD. By my nearest reckoning, here's what I consumed at last night's WOMAD:

Three beers.

Another whole jug of beer.

Two margaritas.

A plate of nachos.

Two plates of ribs.

A samosa.

Half a curry puff.
Now I get to go play soccer in a couple of hours. I am still tasting barbecue sauce.

The two acts that sounded the most interesting, Patrick Duff and the AfroCelts, were the most boring, but everything else we saw was great. For the record, we saw Shikisha & Tribal Tide, The Cat Empire, and Julien Jacob.

If you could invite any three people, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be? goes the old cliche. Until recently, my hypothetical dinner table had one empty seat (the other two being occupied by Richard Feynman and Benjamin Franklin). But, judging from my latest read, the last little place setting card will read "Dorothy Parker". She's best known for her satiric light verse ("Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses"), but she did great short stories as well. And literary criticism. Did she invent sarcasm? Probably not, but the case could be made the she invented modern sarcasm. She was way ahead of her times. Dig this, from a review she wrote in 1927:

The professor starts right off with "No matter what may one's nationality, sex, age, philosophy, or religion, everyone wishes either to become or to remain happy." Well, there's no arguing that one. The author has us there. There is the place for getting out the pencil, underscoring the lines, and setting "how true", followed by several carefully executed exclamation points, in the margin. It is regrettable that the book did not come out during the season when white violets were in bloom, for there is the very spot to press one.

Love it.

We just got back from a live gig of original music, yes, original music, in Singapore, at The Substation. And it was really good. It was a listening room type of thing, and was packed to the gills too, leaving us to sit on the floor. Our uncomfortable seating arrangement drove us out before it might have, but we saw about ten songs by couple of bands.

Tomorrow is for WOMAD, which I'm excited about...

Yogurt limerick.

Strawberries, Yoplait has got 'em.
Peaches, buy Dannon to spot 'em.
Mine, it tastes very
much like dingleberry;
the original Fruit on the Bottom.

I just made that up. Shel Silverstein I ain't.

Elvis has left the building. If you know me, you know I've been a rabid Elvis Costello fan for years (I used to run this web page). Well, I recently procured an advance copy of his latest album, North. And wow, it really lacks goodness. He's trying to do some slow neo-classical lounge music thing or something. The word "godawful" springs to mind. It's not that I hate all his experiments. The Juliet Letters is my desert-island disk, and I really like Painted From Memory. But holy cow, he is going to be savaged by critics and fans alike with this new stuff.

Wireless world. During a crosstown taxi ride I encountered today's Something New -- on-demand taxi TV! A little console in the back, where I could bring up news, sports, city guides, or, much to my driver's chagrin, music videos (on MTV Asia, again). Probably not many sixty-year-old Chinese men like the White Stripes. I kept the volume low.

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps. But they appear on MTV Asia, occasionally. We just caught Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" video, which was partially censored, but lots of things we didn't expect slipped through. MTV is often a whole lot better out here than back Stateside -- there are hints of what MTV used to be, back when we and it were cool.

We're surprised sometimes here, like the other day with The Secretary, which was apparently not edited either (according to Marjorie, who saw it in the States).

Maybe we'll go pop in "Do The Right Thing" now.

Interesting Singapore Factoid #871: Many Singaporeans slow down at traffic accident scenes, not to rubberneck, but to get the numbers off the license plates of the cars involved. It's for the lottery. The belief is that the license plate numbers had bad luck, and must be evened out by good luck in the future.

Booted. No more spiffy downtown office. The guy I work with and the bossman of the office where I was squatting got into a bit of a row. Thought it was going to get ugly, but luckily it fizzled before anybody had to get escorted out of the office. I'm going to be working at my cow orker's house for a while, while we look for a new office. Ups my 40 minute commute to about 45, and mostly by bus now, too, so I'll get all pukey if I try to read. And he has no AC. Ratsafratsa.

We saw Secretary tonight. It was good. If you've seen it, maybe you can answer me a question -- I've been away from the States for a while; are law offices typically like they're depicted in Secretary, or are they more like on Ally McBeal?

Woo hoo 80's! The concert was more fun than we expected. It was a great venue in the middle of town, with lit up skyscrapers in every direction, and it was a nice cool overcast evening. We were cordoned off 50 yards from the stage, since we bought the cheap tickets. There was a local band who opened, who did covers (natch); we were treated to their interpretations of Coldplay, U2, the Beatles, Dave Matthews, and Lynrd Skynrd. Go West was next; they were okay. I only recognized one song. Then ABC. Unfortunately, if you're in ABC, you pretty much have to wear a suit, no matter how hot your concert venue is. The lead singer was resplendent in a purple one this night. They ran through pretty much all their hits; they sounded great, and were well appreciated. Level 42 was last, boring, and enough to send us home.

Why, why, why is this town obsessed with a glam ballad that's more than a decade old? I hated it when it came out; now I loathe it. Extreme's "More Than Words". I hear it nearly every day, in a restaurant, mall, or taxi.

Then again, who am I to judge? We're going to see Level 42, Go West, and ABC tonight, on the pretext that we both kind of like ABC. Shoot that poison arrow, baby.

This is your brain on drugs. Try this. While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. While doing your foot is circling clockwise, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

What direction is your foot going now?

The forces of darkness are winning.

Worms. The new Blaster worm attacked my home computer yesterday. I didn't realize it at the time. I'm good about running Windows Update to get the security patches but somehow it still got through. If you get a warning saying that your computer will reboot in 60 seconds, that's it.

Viruses. I just got another virus mailed to me, which of course I didn't open, but it's still the fourth time in the last month.

Spam. I'm still getting twenty a day, five of which manage to oil their way into my Inbox. I love the new strategy of giving them an innocuous curiosity-inducing title, and coming from a common-but-not-too-common name, like today's batch of "Wanna know what I heard" from Natalie F. Hughes, "You forgot to respond" from Cameron Kelly, and "I don't think so" from Zoe Green. Respectively, these contained ads for -- chyeah, right, like I'm going to open them.

Pop-ups. More and more have been sneaking past my Pop-up Stopper. You'd expect that sort of thing from the likes of on-line gambling casinos, but I've been getting a bunch from Orbitz lately too.

Why can't a man surf in peace?

Bits of tid. A few morsels from the past few weeks:

Saw this giant moth (perhaps a butterfly?) at Mount Faber park a week ago.

It being full moon, there are a few people burning sacrifices in the street in front of their houses as part of the Hungry Ghost festival. One was an old lady who was feeding a rather sizable fire with fake money she was pulling by the handful out of an Ikea bag.

We took second in team trivia at the Yard the other night, and won five Heineken t-shirts.

InstallAnywhere is a damn fine piece of software. That's not a compliment I throw around lightly. Highly recommended for building installers for your software.

Had my worst soccer game yet the other day, gifting the other team a goal when I tripped over the ball instead of tapping it wide. Gave myself a nice bloody hipper in the process too. This was just when we were fighting our way back into the game, and it totally killed our momentum. I hate having to wait a week for any chance of redemption.

News! The Tasmania deal is now apparently a lock. We're just waiting for the final formality confirmation in the mail. I'll likely be heading down end of September/beginning of October. We've got lots to do before then. Marjorie will join me for a week of it, probably, and then hopefully we'll get a few days to do a side trip to Melbourne. Woop!

I just spent about 30 minutes reading the archives of our blog. It's amazing how "normal" life in Singapore has become for us. So many of the little things that were so exotic when we got here have become normalized or commonplace. I suppose that happens to everyone living abroad.
Another thing that's interesting to me, is tracking my attitude; little glimmers of culture shock denied. Singapore is certainly one of the easiest places in Asia for a westerner to become acclimated to, but it's still Asia. Is it ethnocentric to think spitting and picking your feet in public are gross? Other differences hard for me to accept are the tendencies of some people to drag their feet and/or walk slowly, seemingly oblivious to other people (painful to me when I'm in a hurry and want to get around them).
All in all, living in Singapore isn't bad. It's hot, and sometimes (frequently) I wish there were more entertainment options (I.E. good live music-not cover bands, uncensored movies, uncensored t.v., etc.), but, for the most part, the people here are friendly, it's safe, and there are plenty of great restaurants. Truthfully, I think I'd be mostly content if we just had more friends here. We miss the old posse.