Very fun. Last night we hooked up with friends of our friend Dean who live in town. Ended up at a karaoke bar -- the "Woody Green"? -- where our group were the only "ang mo", but these people were regulars there. The rule was, when the wrong lyrics appeared on the monitor for the song you're singing (which was often), you had to sing them. We did room-clearing versions of "You're So Vain", "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", and "Oh, Darling". A very fun bunch of folks. Dean, Rob says to tell you that you're a "pooftah".

Marjorie got us tickets to see the Rolling Stones here in March. Woop!

I figured out today that my phone number here is "93-SEXILY".

Baby Gecko In Da House! Apparently they can make they 17 floor climb. This guy's quick too. I spotted him/her on the floor and it promptly ran under a cd case, but when I lifted the case the little fellow was nowhere to be found. Oh well. Hopefully he'll eat all the little black bugs I've seen flying in the house lately...I think these came in due to our orange plant. The orange plant is gone, yet they remain, but hopefully not for long now that Lizard is on the job.

Not much to report today. Marjorie went off to a movie tonight, giving me a chance for some quality time with my guitar. We've resolved to run off to a beach somewhere, Real Soon Now, as exploring's what we really came here for. Just finding the right time to go is the issue, with my work.

Hopeful: I woke up this morning with no real job prospects, but, lucky me, I got a call around 10am asking if I could come in for an interview. Yea! I'm not going to jinx it by talking about specifics, but the interview went well. Money was discussed, which is a very good sign. And it was more money then I expected, which is GREAT!!!! So wish me luck. I'll let you know more as soon as I know.

Yuck. I've gone off before about the ridiculously-named Speak Good English movement here. Recently I've decided that what they really need is a Stop Picking Your Nose In Public movement. Seriously, it's disgusting. I spot people on the buses and trains all the time, in practically up to their wrist, without an iota of self conciousness. Their ears too. It's obviously just a different set of standards for acceptable societal behavior, but -- eesh.

Konichiwa! With only a few hours advance notice, I found myself sitting in a three hour Japanese class tonight. It was the very first class, and it's "total immersion" -- meaning, not a word of English was spoken by the sensei (teacher). To overuse a metaphor, I was drinking from the firehose... The coworker I'm taking it with and I are both of the opinion that a little English up front might be helpful, but then again, my French teacher in high school did the same thing, and I still remember a lot of the language.

A rainy Sunday. Soccer later will be soggy at best.

The worldwide war protests yesterday had a decidedly different flavor over here. Word was spread via cell phone SMS messaging, but only five or six people showed up to protest at the US embassy. They were "discouraged" from doing so, as they didn't have a permit. In fact, they were taken down to the station for questioning as to the source of the cell phone messages, but not charged (yet). Read all about it.

Wonder how they would have reacted to a US citizen with a placard? The words "next plane out" come to mind.

Here you go Matt: This is something you're not likely to see in the States: While walking through little India today, Mark and I spotted t-shirts with Osama bin Laden's likeness on them with "Attack on America" written. Nice.

Taken for a ride. Trying to go out to dinner last night, we told the cab driver to take us to Robertson Quay. "Robinson...?" It was like he never heard of it. And this is not that obscure of a place. We should have jumped out right then. But he acts like he knows where he's going so we don't press it. After ten minutes or so, though, even I know enough of the layout here to see that he's not going the right way at all. I ask if he really knows where it is, and he pulls up and says, "Yes yes, here we are, Robinson Drive." Nowhere near. He offered to try again, but we figure our chances are better with some other cab driver who might have a clue. We gruffly pay him off; he may have been conning us, but he did at least give me back more change than he should've.

It takes us at least a half an hour to hail another cab, during which time I realize that my cell phone has gone missing. It apparently fell out in the first cab. Yay. A report has been filed, but I don't hold out a lot of hope.

Anyway, at least I have today off to spend with my sweetness.

Ever feel like you have a theme song for a particular experience? This Soul Coughing song seems to rattle around my head a lot in Singapore:

White Girl,
Market at Van Ness,
Heels to drag,
Discombobulated.
Air all soft around,
Hear the man singing,
Inclines and wires,
Telegraph Avenue.
Look away and she's eastbound, out of sight.
Dropped here,
By the hand of the Astronaut,
Builder of the pyramids,
The man from outer space.
Innocent farmgirl,
Raised by the aliens,
Out in Northridge,
Out in the larger world.
Look away and she's eastbound, out of sight.
WHITE GIRL! WHITE GIRL! WHITE GIRL! WHITE GIRL, WHITE GIRL, WHITE GIRL.

Trust me to open my mouth... Okay kids, I need to apologize for the previous blog, nobody's trying to "prohibit a flag" what's really happening is the State legislature in Virginia are considering passing a bill proposing to DISPLAY (note, not prohibit) the South Vietnamese flag at "official" events where other countries flags are flown. This IS pissing off the Vietnamese government, and maybe rightfully so, but it's not the issue I was upset about.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you don't research your sources and you blog when you've had beer. Oh well.

Now this is disturbing: According to today's Straits Times (the English newspaper in S'pore) "Vietnam angered by flag ban in Virginia"...apparently Virginia has passed a bill prohibiting the flying of the Vienamese flad during public ceremonies....WHAT?!!!!! Is this not the United States where freedom of speech and expression are guarenteed rights? If this law is really in effect it really shouldn't be. I believe it would be rather unconstitutional. These kinds of policies really piss off our friends abroad, and I fear most Americans, including myself are probably totally ignorant of their goings on.
On a positive note, there was a pro-American peace rally in South Korea yesterday. My parents told me the only news they saw in the States from Korea was of the anti-american nature (and they watch a lot of news). So far, all I've seen reported in the Straights time are pro-American stories such as the latter. The truth probably lies somewhere between.

Valentine's Day approaches, and it has a decidedly different flavor this year. Not just because we're abroad, or married. We also share a bank account. In previous years, even if I didn't pick Just The Right Gift, at least I could fall back on saying I care by spending a lot of money. Now, I'm just spending her money, and she's spending mine, so no substituting "pricy" for "thoughtful" like a big dumb male.

Of course, Marjorie's already bought herself a nice robe, which she says can be my Valentine's gift to her, but I'm not THAT stupid.

I have the day off, so hopefully we can get away somewhere nice; maybe Pulau Ubin.

Football match #2, today, and all the jogging paid off. I'm still not a great player but I'm improving and having more fun. The second half was played in pretty much a torrential downpour, the kind where the ball just decides to stop at random points when it hits a puddle. I "took one for the team", diving for a clearing header where I ended up lying in a mudpuddle. Almost made up for the stupid accidental handball in the first half -- I got the only yellow card of the day. It's a stupid instinct, but hard to overcome when you haven't been playing, to stick your hand out when the ball is going by you. Luckily, not in the penalty area.

Afterwards, Holland Village for dinner. We found the place there that rents DVDs; there are only one or two in town (everyone just buys them, it seems). Turns out this place has a branch right near our house.

The job hunt has begun in earnest for me now, and it appears that my prospects are good. Singapore, like seemingly everywhere else in the world, needs teachers. The only real dilemma is should I look for a full-time position? I'd like to be able to go with Mark on possible business trips (there is already talk of Hong Kong, Japan, and Tasmania), and truthfully, I really wasn't happy teaching the two years I did it. But, a large part of me wants a full time position, it's just got to be the right one. Luckily, Singapore does appear to have a few early intervention programs so maybe I'd be able to continue to work where my heart is....with the babes and toddlers.

I've upped my productivity. Up yours! There've been less postings lately because I've set up a separate login on my computer dedicated entirely to Work. Less distractions, like links to the blog, mean higher productivity and greater job satisfaction. I've been producing mountains of code lately. I highly recommend this approach. Working with an internet connection at the ready is like when you used to try to do homework sitting by the window where you could look out into the street and see kids playing.

The winners of the 16th annual International Obfuscated C Code Competition have been posted. This is the highly geeky contest that I've won five times in past years (once in collaboration with a friend). The object is to write the most bizarre but still functional computer program in C.

I submitted no entries this year, but I have an entry almost ready for next year's contest that I'm pretty confident will win.

I also have the idea for a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest submission, but I need to work the words out just right. The object of this contest is to write the worst opening line of a novel. It's named in honor of the author who started his book with the line "It was a dark and stormy night".

We had an enjoyable evening. We went across the street to the Newton Circus Hawker Center (a hawker center is a food court with vendors selling local fare), and purchased four dinners. Not because we were starving, but the first three weren't that great, and at $3.50 Singapore dollars a plate we figured why settle for mediocre. On the fourth try we hit the jackpot: Mark ordered tiger prawns with chili sauce, and the sauce was soooo good I ended up ordering a small plate of rice to go with them and just poured some of his sauce on it as my dinner. YUM! After dinner we stumbled upon a dancing dragon. It's Chinese New Year so the Dragon puppets that go unanimated most of the year (except practice) and their peeps get the chance to do their thang.

We just watched our first DVD (L.A. Story). We're hip with the 90's! Woo!

Today was like the day after Thanksgiving back in the states; nobody was working because of Chinese New Year's, so everyone was out shopping. So Marjorie tells me, at any rate; I had to work, and from home, which I hate.

We still occasionally have exchanges where one of us will suddenly say, "We live in Singapore!", and the other responds, "I know, weird, isn't it?"

Here's where the space program should go from here, IMHO. As Marjorie pointed out, I used to work at Kennedy Space Center, and have more than a passing interest in the subject, but only enough knowledge to be dangerous.

1. Investigation of Jupiter's moon Europa. Widely cited by scientists as having the best chance of sustaining life in the solar system besides Earth. Under all its ice there's believed to be an ocean warmed by thermal activity. Exploring it will pose some interesting technical challenges. If we were to find life there, it would eclipse all the combined scientific achievements of the space program up to this point. And we would have to come to the conclusion that, if life could spring up separately twice in the same solar system, it must be ubiquitous throughout the galaxy.

2. Investigation of other potential life-sustaining moons, such as Callisto, and, I think, Ganymede?

3. A comet landing. Comets have played a crucial role in the evolution of our solar system, possibly even seeding our planet with the necessary raw materials for life, and have also been the likely cause of ecological disasters.

4. An asteroid landing. Probably the best scientific bang-for-your-buck.

5. Exploration of the outer planets. This is our best picture of Pluto and its moon.

All of these should be unmanned. Not that this is cowardice in the face of disaster, but because man in space hasn't been a good idea for a long time. Launching humans is just an expensive conceit. I don't know, maybe it's necessary to keep public interest and therefore public funding, but to me that just says that public opinion needs to change...