2/24/13 - The Little Things

12 days and counting in Malaysia.  We're right in the thick of it, but the good news is we are hopefully nearing the downhill side of the slope. I maybe starting to lose my grip on reality, but I've still got at least 9 fingers firmly grasping on and as always, my usual sense of humor (or lack thereof).  It is funny what becomes important when spending this much time away from home.  Every day I get back to the hotel to see what my free treat from the mini-bar will be.  The options are not varied, Kit Kat or Peanut M&M's.  Yep, that's it.  9 times out of 10 its Peanut M&M's, which is a good thing, but when its a Kit Kat.... man, what a bummer.  Not to disparage that wonderful wafer treat, but its a different formula here and doesn't taste the same as back in the States.  Somehow, the Peanut M&M's are even better than the US... I think they found bigger peanuts in Thailand.  That's where the candy is arriving from of all places.

Today, sadly, there was nothing.  I shouldn't care because its a 50 cent piece of candy, but when you're looking forward to the little things in life.... well, you're looking forward to the little things.  The combination of the lack of chocolate covered peanuts and my morning routine got me thinking back to a speech I gave 13 years ago.  The little things in life really are great and in this instance it gives an insight into my daily routine, which upon further reflection, at least for me, is kind of entertaining.

Each day I stroll out of the hotel, Starbucks tumbler in hand.  I wave at the guys at the taxi stand whom of course all now know me now as the gangly foreigner who is a little off and has to go get coffee in the morning before coming back for a taxi.  I hit the bottom of the driveway at the hotel and the pungent sting of incense immediately hits me.  I've been doing this for 7 months now... I still can't find the source of it. Its one of my new goals before heading back to Singapore ... who is burning this at 8 in the morning (Starbucks doesn't open until 8, its a nice excuse to arrive at work a little later) and where is it coming from?

Once past the incense smell I look left and right multiple times - traffic is coming from the wrong direction of course and this is where the frontage road turns into what I guess you could call a strip mall.  The cars and scooters come flying in pretty quickly and I'm fairly confident the pedestrian does not have the right of way.  Once successfully navigating the mini death trap its time for my favorite/least favorite part of the walk (round trip its about a quarter of a mile).  There is a little restaurant on the corner that is always a hive of activity in the morning.  People chopping, peeling, cutting, getting ready for the days activities.  Right next to the restaurant on the sidewalk is a pathway of hanging vines with flowers and bushes that smell incredible.  The freshest, most invigorating aroma helps to wake you up, but then 2 steps forward and the smell of garlic and vegetables and some other items that seems to attract a bunch of stray cats wakes you up for a different reason.  Every other step - good smell, bad smell, good smell, bad smell... until you get to the end of the sidewalk and have to play chicken again with scooters, cars and buses this time as they head past the mall.  Scooters don't scare me, the cars are slightly larger than the electric cars you can win on The Price is Right, but I won't mess with a bus.

Ok - we've made it past the incense, past the good/bad smells, even avoided traffic at multiple stops.  Coffee is in our sight, but the final game is about to begin.  Is it open or not?  The sign says 8 AM, but it should really say 8 AMish, emphasis on the "ish."  Ahhh, today is a good day.  They are here on time, coffee is actually brewed already - that only happens 2 out of 5 days - and since its the weekend I decide I might as well pick up a chocolate croissant as well.  Back towards the hotel to get a taxi - once again playing a human version of frogger in the street, good smell/bad smell, good smell/bad smell thinking to yourself.... "where is that incense coming from" and yes! a blue taxi (a KIA of all things) is waiting for you.  Twice the leg room as a local car, air con is going to work, even if you're heading to work on weekend, you're rolling in style.  Like anything else in life, its the little things.  Keep it simple everyone.

2/17/13 - Sunday Family Dinner (Penang Style)

Busy season has officially arrived which means a lot more Malaysia time and a lot less Singapore time.  It also means a lot more work and less time for adventures (or random life events worth commenting on) to occur.  This week was no exception as I managed to hit the office on a daily basis.  I did find the time for a good old fashioned Sunday dinner with my 'work family' at the end of the week.  It really wasn't that much different than busy season back in the states when our 'work family' would set the pencils, calculators and green eyeshades down for dinner every night.  Back home we had a solid rotation of Greek food, Mexican food and BBQ, so much so that Mondays turned into 'Greek Mondays' and Thursdays became 'Famous Thursdays' - after Famous Dave's of course.  In Penang, Sunday's might turn into 'Campbell House Sundays' because at the end of a long week, which really is just rolling into a new one, you need some Italian comfort food.

First, I had to get out and go for a run Sunday evening.  Too much sitting in a climate controlled air-con environment was having the same effect on me as sitting in a climate controlled heated environment.  The run had the added benefit of horribly dehydrating me and doubling my appetite at the same time.  I think I drank 2 liters of water before we even got to dinner.  Luckily on the weekends the taxi to Georgetown only seems to take 20-25 minutes vs. 45-60 minutes.  Considering its only about 10 miles away, this is a win.  We even scored a larger win in getting a taxi with leg room in the back seat.  When I say leg room, think Toyota Corolla vs. a golf cart that happens to have a back seat.  Although with how narrow the streets are in the historic part of Georgetown a golf cart might be better.

Due to the rather large appetites we tend to show up, we've started a new tradition, pizza appetizer. If you're going to do a Sunday family dinner, you might as well do it right with cheese, garlic and mushrooms.  After some antipasti, pizza and pasta we were starting to slow down a bit, but then the rain came.  Not just a little storm, but a good tropical soaker.  So much so that the street started to flood..... and flood and flood.  It looked like we wouldn't be going anywhere for awhile, so we ordered another bottle of wine and toasted to our Venetian restaurant and the 'canal' that we now happened to be dining beside.  Eventually the rain subsided and after an after dinner limoncello from our gracious hosts we jumped in a taxi and headed back to the hotel.  A boat may have served better as some of the streets were still flooded and you felt like you were fording a creek in the Outback at times.

I was just starting to drift to sleep when the rumblings started.  Thinking the rain was back I didn't pay it much attention, but then it just kept going on and on and on.  I poked my head through the curtains and in every direction I looked, fireworks were exploding.  I had forgotten that we were still in Chinese New Year celebration territory and it was apparently time to celebrate.... at midnight.  Wishing we had ordered another bottle of wine at this point I pulled the covers up high and likely fell asleep with a grin on my face as I was lulled (forced) to sleep with the 'boom, boom, boom' of another celebration of the year of the snake.

2/10/13 - Singapore Delivery (The Good The Bad & The Ugly)

Foiled again!  I woke up on Friday excited for some burgers and beer on the patio on campus that evening and some afternoon pool time on Saturday.  Work is about to get extremely busy so one final fun weekend would be necessary.  Unfortunately, the anti-rain dance I did was unsuccessful and combined with my snarky cold weather post from earlier in the week, a good deal of the precipitation from above made its presence known this weekend.  The flight back on Friday was delayed an hour due to weather and when I finally found myself in a car headed home the sign on the expressway was flashing yellow with the words 'Massive Jam.'  Personally, I didn't even know that you could use the adjective massive to describe an official traffic incident like that.  Needless to say, Friday's plan at this point was toast.

We are resourceful people though, possibly from re-scheduling all those events in the winter back home (take that Mother Nature) and met up with some friends at their place.  This is where the good, bad and ugly side of Singapore food delivery comes in.  They had ordered pizza from Dominoes about an hour before we arrived.  We all realized this was a mistake, but the Canadian Pizza (eternal 2 for 1) had stopped taking orders for their neighborhood already.  After a few phone calls and another hour of waiting, the two pizzas finally arrived.  Due to the massive delay (see, I can use it too) Dominoes agreed to give them the pizza for free.  This would be the 'good' part of the story except that the two pizzas they gave us were not the two they had ordered, both had meat on them (our host is vegetarian) and they forgot the breadsticks.  Yikes.  We'll call this the 'bad' part of the story, at least the food was free.

While a few of us started eating and playing Mario Kart it was back to waiting on hold for our friend.  Once he finally got through and explained what had happened (again) they eventually agreed to send a cheese pizza over, still for free at least.  At this point we all started placing side bets on what time it was going to arrive with 'not at all' being the most popular.  Ultimately, about 90 minutes later it did arrive looking like a taco pizza.  No, not a delicious taco pizza with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, etc.  Literally, a cheese pizza that had practically been folded in half.  Kevin from Home Alone would not have been amused.  4 hours of waiting for 3 wrong pizzas, yes we have officially reached the 'ugly' zone.

Sunday yet again has brought more rain, which after being out later on Friday and Saturday (combination of good friends both nights + inefficient pizza delivery system Friday) was a good thing and let us sleep a little later.  We were in a food predicament though.  Most of the market is shut down for the next few days due to Chinese New Year.  We had stocked up on some lunch/dinner food, but were a little short on breakfast options.  It was time to dig into the bag of tricks that had not been used since our move in weekend - McDonalds Breakfast Delivery!  I still think this is one of the five greatest food concepts of all time and that the US is behind the times on this one.  Plus, on the weekends they take orders until 11:45 AM.  This would have totally ruined one of the funniest scenes from Big Daddy, but is great news for us.  I'm just happy we haven't gotten to the point where we are using it regularly.

I pulled up the McDelivery ap (what else would it be called?) and within 30 seconds had two egg mcmuffins and hash browns getting cooked up and thrown on a scooter for us.  The crazy part is, 10 minutes later the door bell was ringing and our food was here.  I didn't even get to use the tracking function on their ap, it came that fast.  I guess it shouldn't surprise me (or anyone that noticed the opening photo) but the golden arches came out as the 'good' part of this story.  OK, 'massively good.'

Time to top it off with the Badger basketball replay win over Michigan on the BTN to go ap!  Just another piece of technology that needs to go in your expat survival kit.

2/3/13 - Cold Weather Karma

After a full weekend of hanging out in Boat Quay and getting a taste of Chinese New Year in Chinatown we needed a day to relax.  Luckily that is what Sundays here are turning into.  Our favorite weekend pastime is sitting on the porch with our coffee and newspapers (WSJ, Economist, Facebook, Pinterest) and listening to various I Heart Radio stations.  It gives you a flavor for what is going on back in the States and keeps us in the music loop.  The I Heart Radio app has almost moved past our "iPad to TV" connection for overseas necessities.  Buying all the music we would want through iTunes would have gotten prohibitively expensive in a hurry.  We already have bought more music since being here than we had in the last four years combined.

There's also something refreshing about looking out and seeing lush vegetation, tropical birds and butterflies and then realizing its early February.  We're still in that snooty bubble that people who have moved from cold weather to warm weather geography's reside in.  We look at weather reports back home with a shiver, a smile and a twinge of schadenfreude.  I'm sure we'll get over that in the next few months (OK, probably not), but for now we do a little toast with our coffee mugs about our good fortune.

Of course karma is a vicious beast and reared her ugly head about 2 hours later.  The sun went behind the clouds and what seemed to only be a slight sprinkle turned into an 8 hour tropical shower.  One of the best parts about being here was no more snow storms wrecking our weekend plans for a portion of the year.  Well its pretty hard to go watch an outdoor concert when the lawn we were going to picnic on is likely a giant slip and slide and some of the paths to the pavilion might even be under water.  If the Singapore Chinese Orchestra played through the storm, they might have been using their instrument cases as flotation devices.  Needless to say, we did not find out.

Time for Plan B.  First, I still squeezed a swim in.  At least when its raining its still in the mid to high 70's so the pool feels good (there's a little of that snootiness popping out again).  Even better, the kids who like to set themselves up as moving obstacles will be stuck inside getting in their parents way instead of mine.  Next, it was off to our new Sunday restaurant of choice.  With a little local assistance we found a hole in the wall French restaurant that serves outstanding, reasonably priced food.  Its only one subway stop away, you can sit outside and the chef looks like he could be on a Paris travel advertisement - Gusteau would be proud.  Duck confit, spinach ravioli and some of the creamiest au gratin potatoes I have ever had.  So the day wasn't a total washout, we're getting much better at defeating rain than we ever were at snow.

You could say we've gone soft, but that would mean that we were the hardy, cold weather type at some point in our lives and everyone knows that is just a bold faced lie.  I'll leave it at that - I need to reverse this karma jinx, we want to have a pool party next weekend and want to use the umbrellas for shade, not shelter.

2/2/13 - Chinese New Year Celebration

We hit the trifecta.  A few weeks back we were dining on Arab street on a Saturday evening at an Egyptian restaurant that didn't even serve alcohol.  The signs outside said "Respect the Heritage" so it seems like the whole area was pretty serious about it.  Sure kept the price of dinner down.  The appetizer platter for $16 at Cafe le Caire might have been one of the best deals we have found on the island.  Last weekend found us strolling through Little India, inhaling the exotic spice and fresh produce aromas, not to mention inhaling our dinner.  We also saw more gold than may currently be sitting in Fort Knox.  So it was only fitting that this Saturday we were in Chinatown for a party hosted by Sarah's school.

I had only been to Chinatown once before and that was only walking through it at night after a work happy hour.  At 10 PM, it hadn't been very busy and most of the shops/restaurants were closing.  Imagine my surprise then when we got off the MRT and wondered if we had left Singapore and were suddenly in a back alley in Shanghai.  For Chinese New Year all the shops had extended another 10 feet out into the street to sell all manner of holiday items and a host of what we affectionately call in the US "sombreros" - i.e. stuff that looks like a good idea to buy on vacation but then you get home and wonder what you are ever going to do with it.

After walking by the restaurant twice and not even realizing it we luckily ran into some other friends who pointed us in the right direction.  I should have known "Feng Bo Zhuang" wasn't exactly going to jump out at us in terms of a name.  Turns out it was written in Chinese and the sign hanging outside simply said Chinese Food on it.  Either way, we walked in through the door to a feast already on the table.  Duck, spicy green beans, frog in a bamboo bowl (tastes like a cross between chicken and fish) dumplings, pork, Chinese buns and noodles.  Chinese buns are running a close second to soup dumplings in terms of my favorite Chinese food.  They are buttery, greasy, piping hot melt in your mouth dough that is just a stomachache waiting to happen.  Delicious.  Good thing I only ate two.

After having our fill of Chinese food, Tsingtao beer and watching a tai chi demonstration we were off.  We needed to pick up some "sombreros."  In our case we bought our very own New Year's lantern to hang up on the porch.  Its a nice Badger Red color, right?  Matches the UW polo I wore to lunch.  What other red clothing item would I actually own?  Its not like I could wear my Wisconsin football jersey.  Tomorrow we're heading to the Botanic Gardens to listen to the Singapore Chinese Orchestra play a free outdoor concert.  Have to keep the cultural experiences rolling.

Happy Early Year of the snake everyone!