8/26/12 - Back Home

I got off the plane Thursday evening and at immigration in Singapore went through the line that said "Welcome Home."  Not sure if the "home" part has fully sunk in yet, but its getting closer.  At the very least it sure helps at immigration that I can just scan my passport and thumb print and be on my merry little way.

What is helping on the home front is the condo really is coming together.  Here's the little mini tour with a moderate level of comments from the peanut gallery/editor in chief.

Dining room/study area.  The teak bookcase in the background  was left by the owner and was custom made in Indonesia.  Hoping to be able to find some similar items to bring back to the States when our tour is done.

Can you tell a full-time student lives here and has claimed a spot to study?  As Sarah says, school went from 0-60 MPH over night.  Or 0-100 KMH for those of us still trying to learn to speak metric (thanks US school system for not making that an innate mental calculation).

Living room and balcony - essentially where we spend the rest of our time.  Project #1 today is to do some cleaning.  Project #2 is set up the TV that is sitting on the floor in a box.  We can then move the TV the size of a computer monitor to our room.


The badger football has regained a prominent position in the living room!  I just need the Thanksgiving Turkey Day trophy now.  I did meet a fellow Badger at a party at Sarah's school last night.  He's from Indonesia, has been living in a India for awhile and knew more about what Mike Wilkinson and Kirk Penney were up to than I did.  So he just scored an invite for when basketball season starts.  And yes I realize those two names are probably meaningless to most people, but sure made me smile.

Kitchen is just a touch smaller than our previous one, but if you were to chart out its time usage about 80% would be to make coffee.  The market across the street has fresh produce, but only until about noon.  So to get that from a cooking standpoint would involve us being a little more active in the mornings on the weekend.  We did make it over there to eat the other day and the ramen soup with dumplings in it for $3 might be my new favorite lunch.  Both of us even finished our bowls with chopsticks and spoons only - progress is being made.

Our bedroom is the coolest room in the house - literally.  Its the only room where we run the air con each night.  Otherwise you are constantly going between cooler and warm and humid and is shock to the system.  Sundays, however, are the day of the week we run them in the other few rooms just to keep them working.  So once it really heats up today its off to the pool and then a little air con in the afternoon.

Thats about it.  The bathrooms are outside....... just kidding, there is a master bath as well as a guest bathroom and guest room.  We're all set up for visitors.

Speaking of visitors, Sarah got her first visit from a gecko last week and I'm on ant destroying duty.  Apparently they are just a way of life here.  We'll see if a little American ingenuity can't keep them at bay.

8/21/12 - Weekend in Penang

Due to work I ended up spending the weekend in Penang which allowed me to see a little more of the island.  Friday night was spent on the 31st floor overlooking the Straights of Malacca and some of the hillier parts of the island as one of our colleagues had been nice enough to invite us over for dinner.  He had spent some time in Texas and while there acquired a taste for BBQ and has become quite proficient with a smoker.  He's even gotten to the point that he had staked a claim to a tree that had fallen down on his way to work so he could replenish his wood stock.
We all had a good laugh trying to figure out how long it would take for the wood to dry out enough to use, but he knew what he was doing.  Wasn't expecting to have smoked ribs and sausage for dinner that night, that is for sure.


After that meal I figured I better get back in the pool the next day and crank out some laps, but there were kids everywhere. I was shocked because the hotel pool is narrow enough that I can practically stretch my arms across the entire width.  It almost looked like the scene from Caddyshack when they let all the caddies into the pool, it was that full.  This weekend was the Hari Raya (end of Ramadan) celebration in Malaysia though, and just like the US it seemed like people thought it would be a great idea to check into a hotel just so the kids could go swimming.  Sufficiently stymied (and still not ready to go for a run outside) I got lazy and figured reading Sports Illustrated might count for something.







Saturday evening we again headed up just past Georgetown for dinner. We were about as far from BBQ ribs though as you could get.  If you're going to constantly be surrounded by water you might as well eat at a fish market, right?  You could pick out your own shrimp, crab, lobster, fish and a couple other items that I had no idea what they were other than they were seafood and you could eat them (allegedly).  Someone would just run and grab what you wanted, they would bring it back to the kitchen and a little while later out came our meal.  Apparently we should have bargained more to get some better prices, but still cheaper than back in the States.

A few more days and then back to Singapore for a longer weekend.  It'll be great because I was just getting used to our bed again and got sent packing.  Will post more photos of our new place this weekend, plus we have a black and white party for Sarah's school on Saturday.  I own a white polo shirt..... hopefully that's good enough.

8/12/12 - Move in weekend

Hard to believe over a month has gone by and our container finally arrived in the port (and made it through customs).  So as of Friday we are no longer nomads and officially residents of Gallop Gables in Singapore.  Yes, based on the name you half expect Anne (of Green Gables) to come walking in across an English moor, but it definitely is a tropical location around the equator instead of a locale that happens to be hosting the Olympics right now (USA! USA!).  

It has been a busy weekend full of unpacking and I'm proud to say we are done..... make that 50% done.  The only reason we got that far is because we appropriately fueled up beforehand.  You better believe that is a McDonalds breakfast!  How many years have we been discussing how there needs to be breakfast delivery in the morning.  Can you say there's an ap for that?  Yes, in this case there literally is one.  Guy on a scooter shows up with an Egg McMuffin and hashbrowns about 30 minutes later.  He said he'd see us soon.  Couldn't tell if he was just being nice or if he knows.  Either way, this is awesome but yes this is dangerous.You would think when you shrink your living space by about 70% it would make it easier to get organized, but apparently it has not.  The important part is the outdoor furniture on the balcony is set up, the living, kitchen and dining room are organized and the two bedrooms have doors on them that can be shut.  Essentially the same as when you were 6 and had to clean your room to get dessert so you just shoved everything in the closet or under the bed.  So far a lizard, yellow bird and squirrels have been sighted off the balcony.  No monkeys, hopefully it stays that way otherwise we'll have to start closing the windows.  Sarah is trying to determine what type of tropical plants we can grow out here.  Should have a "greener" picture in a few weeks.Our reward for all the hardwork was a night out in Little India.  Found a great tapas bar after dinner and sat out under the stars on the rooftop of an old Chinese shop house.  I'm trying to get better about  taking pictures (I forgot) but its on the list for places to bring people now.http://www.tapasbar.com.sg/

The time change is finally working in my favor so time to tune into the gold medal basketball game. Back to Malaysia tomorrow.

8/4/12 - Back From China

It was a quick trip to Xiamen China and a tightly packed schedule.  The theme of the trip sure seemed to be random music that you wouldn't expect to hear over here.  I got in the taxi in Singapore at 6 AM to go to the airport and the driver was rocking out to a Bon Jovi song from the 80's.  If nothing else it woke me up enough to get to the plane.  When I was getting ready to go through security they actually asked me if I was looking for the flight to Penang instead.  Not sure if I looked out of place or airport staff is recognizing me already.

Unfortunately there were two typhoons hitting China almost simultaneously so there weren't a lot of great photo opportunities.  The rain also kept us in the hotel for dinner the first night which is how we ended up drinking mojitos in a Cuban restaurant and listening to a Cuban band alternate between covering Frank Sinatra and Shakira.  Random.  Capped off the evening with my first Cuban cigar, because, well, when in Rome (or a Cuban restaurant in China).

Our next day was split with work in the morning and early afternoon and then later in the evening until about 12:30 in the morning.  In between we successfully navigated a Chinese restaurant in the mall with minimal English.  The waitress was convinced we ordered too much food, but turned out to be just about right.  Likely to happen often with two people over 6'4" traveling together.

Since it was Friday and everything in the hotel was closed when we got back after midnight we hopped a cab to 'bar street.' This consisted of 4 bars with names like "The Londoner, The Dubliner, Berlin, and The Oriental."  The Oriental was playing Tu Pac music and had the Olympics on over the bar so we popped in there.  That stroke of fate is how at about 2 AM over a few pints of Murphy's I got to watch Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin win gold medals live, even if the broadcast was in Chinese.  Kind of fitting for 2 Americans in Asia to figure out a way to do that.

Sarah is on her outward bound Singapore excursion for the weekend as part of her school orientation.  Should be some interesting stories about her 36 hours spent on another island in the area.  I'm off to eat Chili Crab for dinner at the East Coast Seafood Centre.  Best links I could find are below.  Thanks Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilli_crab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Seafood_Centre