Three Day Weekend

We've had a very full weekend, and it actually started on Thursday when we went to the Raffles City Mall, which is one of about a thousand malls they have in Singapore. We needed to get a cooler for the weekend, but we also wanted to take a look at some stores that one of Mike's coworkers had told us about. On the fifth floor of the mall there are four stores in a row that all sell the most awesome action figures and figurines I've ever seen. It was amazing, and I'm going to have to geek out for a bit, so please skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear me wax lyrical about Star Wars memorabilia. Not only did they have life sized statues of Yoda and Darth Maul, but they had huge and detailed Alien figures, Predator heads, and a bust of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn that I am very tempted to get for a friend who needs some cheering up. They had really detailed figures from Harry Potter that were clearly hand crafted by very talented and very lonely men. They had action figures of classic X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Hellboy--just pretty much any nerdy cartoon or movie was represented. I think my favorites were the bookends of Han Solo and Greedo with their guns drawn, and the Lost Boys action figure of Keifer Sutherland. That one came with two heads that you could switch out; regular Keifer, and vampire Kiefer. If I am ever in a position were I have around six hundred dollars to blow on a bust of a T-600 (that's a Terminator, mom) I know exactly where I'm going.

Even though Memorial Day isn't celebrated here (a tragedy), we still got to have a three day weekend. Friday was Vesak Day, which is a Buddhist holiday that commemorates the birth and enlightenment of Buddha. Since most Singaporeans are Buddhist, our whole neighborhood smelled like incense all day, and we saw a lot of shrines set up in people's yards. A few of Mike's friends from work invited us to go to the beach with them, so we packed up the cooler with some beer and snacks and headed out to Sentosa again.

I have to say, Australians are really fun people. All of the ones that I've met have been cheerful and outgoing, and we had a great time at the beach with them. It's nice to be able to talk to people who have gone through everything we're going through; most of these guys moved here sometime in the past six months and were full of useful information and funny stories. One of the things that we've been kind of annoyed with is how we tend to get overcharged for things like taxi rides and beer because we're not Singaporean, which everyone else could sympathize with. Somehow just trading stories about feeling out of place makes everything funny instead of frustrating; laughter always takes the edge off. Anyway, I'm very excited that we have friends now, and the boys have been really nice about including us when they go out. I'm thankful for that, and hopefully we can return the favor with the next batch of newbies.

We spent most of Saturday just hanging out at home. Mike checked out some movies from work, and we dedicated the afternoon to watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We've been in a classic American cinema kind of mood, and nothing says America like a film shot in Spain by an Italian. We went to the grocery store for a meal to accompany the movie, and snagged some chili and the ingredients to make tortillas. I tried my best, but they still didn't come out as good as I'd hoped. Someone has promised to email me their mother's recipe (I'm waiting, buddy), so next time they'll hopefully be mas delicioso. We're seriously jonesing for Tex-Mex over here; what I wouldn't give for some carnitas from Curra's. Mmmmm. But on the bright side, we got some chips and salsa, which should hold us over for the time being.

Yesterday we braved the Singapore Food Expo, which was pretty insane. It's basically an opportunity for merchants to showcase and sample their products, which I guess is helpful since there are thousands of places to eat in this city and it's hard to narrow down where to eat. Singaporeans take food very seriously, so the turn out was no surprise; there were so many people there, it was hard to move. There were so many stands, we really only got to see probably a third of what was there. And they had stands that seemed only tangentially related to food, like one stand that sold oils for your body and a few places selling medicinal roots and herbs. The whole Expo center smelled like a combination of smoked meat and seafood, and there was steam rising everywhere. We got a bunch of food to try, including a pork sandwich, a sort of seafood sausage, chicken satay, and pan fried pork buns with mango custard. The seafood sausage was very different; it was kind of like someone mashed up a bunch of fish and shrimp, and then cooked it in a banana leaf. The consistency was kind of mushy and soft, like a paste instead of something solid. It's hard to describe the taste beyond "fishy"; I think it's one of those tastes we're just not used to. The pan fried pork rolls were absolutely delicious, though, and I could have eaten at least a dozen of them. They were sweet and salty, with a crispy bottom and little green onions and sesame seeds on top.

Nesting

Not to break the fourth wall or get too meta, but I just wanted to say hello to everyone reading this blog. Considering I was excited to have 5 people interested in my nonsense, it's pretty astounding to have 22 followers. And that is not at all negated by the fact that I am related to most of you. So thank you for reading along, it makes it feel a lot less like I'm yelling into the darkness. I think that's why I always had a problem with diaries; it's like you're talking to yourself about yourself. I know myself quite well, and I'm not that entertaining. I can talk to my reflection, but it's going to be a boring conversation. At least when I had an imaginary friend, she had a different personality. Her name was Ari, and she was naughty. Anyway, I'm glad I have an audience to direct my inane ramblings at; as long as you keep reading, I'll keep babbling.

We found this little chain of stands called Old Chang Kee, which is kind of like Singapore comfort food. Everything is breaded and fried, so obviously it's good. They have fried shrimp on a stick, which Mike is partial to, and we're both obsessed with these little pies they have, called Curry Os. It has a flaky outer crust stuffed with potatoes and eggs in curry, and it's absolutely delicious. They're really addictive, and now every time I go to the grocery store I reward myself with one. Luckily, they have them at pretty much every subway station, so no matter where I go I can get my fix.

We've been searching for some lamps for the last week and a half or so, but we hadn't been able to find them anywhere. We looked at two different malls, but no luck. We finally gave in, and set aside Saturday for will hopefully be our last trip to Ikea. I'm fairly certain now that this store is actually a massive psychological experiment dreamed up in equal parts by Stockholm scientists and Loki, the Norse trickster god. We, the unsuspecting public, are the rats placed in this giant maze, and they're trying to see how long it takes us to either figure out the exit or turn on each other in desperation. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to navigate that damn place. It doesn't help that Singaporeans have a habit of buying their children shoes that squeak every time they take a step. I can deal with those blinking lights shoes, I can even handle those moronic shoes with wheels, but I draw the line at shoes that make a high pitched squeal with every step. Do you know how fast kids have to walk to keep up? Because I sure as hell do now. I don't know what parent would willingly place those on a child's feet. They must be sadists. All I know is that Mike and I were ready to kill this adorable little girl if she didn't stop running around squeaking up a storm.

We got our lamps and high tailed it out of there as fast as possible. I think our apartment is now pretty much as homey as we can make it. We got a big bed spread to drape over our couch so we'll stop sticking to it. Who buys a leather couch in this climate anyway? I felt like a giant suction cup on that thing. But it's cozy with the cover, and we got some pillows and a rug. The lamps help a lot, and now I can read in bed with out the overhead light bothering Mike. It's strange; we'll be watching TV or reading on the couch, and I'll forget that we live in a different country. I think the honeymoon phase is officially over, though it's still nice to think that we can go explore new parts of Singapore and hack our way through the jungle. But now that we're settled, there's a real comfort in being able to stay home and eat pasta while watching a movie. I know we could be doing something more exciting, but to be honest, we've always been happiest at home. And besides, excitement...that's what weekends are for.

The Art of Losing

Everything here is so ALIVE. Every time I go for a walk, I see a new creature: ants, butterflies, big snails, red centipedes, frogs, lizards of varying sizes and vindictiveness. I'm always about to step on something that's crawling across my path. And it's not just animals, it's plants, too. There are so many types of trees, and other than the palms, I have no idea what any of them are. The leaves are thick and glossy, and so many vines hang from the tallest ones, I'm tempted to try and swing on them. Even the air feels alive; it's so hot and heavy that smells seem to solidify and hang. There's the flower smell, usually honeysuckle or something like magnolia. Of course all the food smells delicious, like curry or fish sauce, garlic or roasted duck. Then there's the sickly sweet smell of rotten fruit, when they fall from the trees and swell on the ground. I swear there's one corner that smells exactly like jalapeños. Everywhere we go, everything we see, is just teaming with life.

It seems cruel and ironic, then, surrounded by all this life, that death rears its ugly head back home. My friend's father passed away last Wednesday; he had been sick for a long time, but somehow it still always comes as a shock. As hard as it is to be away from everyone, it's that much harder when you can't comfort the people you love. I feel so helpless, unable to reach across and hug someone. It's frustrating to feel so distant; I actually paced around the apartment, which until now I thought was something only done in detective novels. This is the first time since we moved here that I've felt truly isolated. All this time, I expected I would need to be there to help my friends through this grief. It comes as a surprise that, selfishly, I need them to help me through it too. It kills me that I can't be home right now, to give comfort as well as to take it. I can't imagine the pain of losing a father, and I don't know any words to make it better.

Death is such a calamitous event. It's like an earthquake, and the aftershocks send ripples out to touch everyone. Death hits us retroactively. Not only do we feel the loss at hand, it reminds us of all those we lost before. It's a cumulative grief, made up of all the sadness we've known in life. We carry those losses with us, like a shell. With every fresh hurt, the weight becomes heavier, until it seems impossible to go one step further. It shouldn't have to be like this; it seems so unfair that human beings carry such burdens. We're only skin and bones, after all.

And yet, even with all our pains, our knowledge of our own mortality, we are resilient. We have to be, to endure. I am consistently amazed at the capacity human beings have for love. Amidst all this heartache, I see amazing strength and composure. My friends know I love them, just as I know they love me. I can hear it in their voices, even if I can't see their faces. It's a small comfort, but I'll take it.

New Developments

So there was a sighting of public enemy number one, aka the lizard on Friday morning. Mike saw him wandering around the living room, but he had to leave for work before he could catch him. By the time I got up, he had disappeared again. But we finally cornered him that evening in the kitchen; he was behind the drying rack full of clean dishes. I angrily rewashed all the dishes so they didn't have lizard germs on them, and Mike managed to force the mean thing outside. Success! It was a short-lived victory, however, as I found a new lizard in the bathtub when I went to take a shower. Now I don't even know if the one we got rid of was the one I saw. I think they're organized, and I think they're taunting me.

Saturday we spent running some errands; we returned our broken fan and got a new one, and went to the grocery store to stock up on staples like mac and cheese and tuna fish. As we were waiting at the MRT station, there was this kid sitting close by us making noise. It sounded like he was shaking a box of tic-tacs or something equally annoying, but then Mike nudged me and I looked over at him. This ten year old kid was going to town on a Rubik's cube; he was moving the pieces insanely fast, and solved it in a matter of seconds. He was timing himself, and once he solved it, he just reset the cube and did it again. Mike seemed pretty depressed, because apparently it took him eight months to solve his Rubik's cube. He felt better when I reminded him that WE can buy beer and could totally beat up that kid and take his cube if we wanted to. Take that, nerd!

We spent a better part of the weekend just walking around our new neighborhood. There's a park that's close to Mike's work called Changi Business Park. Although it sounds like a venue for outdoor board meetings, it's actually very pretty. There's a couple of ponds and a trail, and we only saw three other people the whole time we were there. We saw some mice that were living in a palm tree, and a bunch of huge snails. We thought we saw the Ikea from the path, but it turned out to just be a big blue and yellow building.

Yesterday we were thinking about going back to the beach, but the sky looked pretty foreboding. Instead of chancing getting caught in a rainstorm in the ocean, we thought we'd just go check out our big swimming pool. We put on our swimsuits and walked down to the pool and picked a shady spot to set our things. Mike was putting on some sunscreen when the security guard that watches the pool wandered over. We thought he was just coming over to say hi, or to make sure that we lived here, but it was something else entirely. Apparently there's a reason that guys here wear speedos all the time: men are not allowed to wear loose fitting swim shorts in pools. I'll just let that sink in for a moment.

Yup, Mike has to get a speedo if he wants to get in that pool. At first I was really angry, because I wanted to go swimming damn it, and the guard wouldn't let Mike get in the water. He also couldn't seem to give us any reason WHY he had to wear a speedo, or what possible difference it would make. So I grabbed our things and marched back upstairs to pout. Mike looked online, trying to figure out some explanation for all the madness, and we came across some interesting knowledge. I guess in Europe, especially in France, this is a pretty common rule for public pools. The reasoning behind it is that the pools often aren't chlorinated, and they don't want people swimming in shorts that they could have worn around all day. I always thought Europeans just LIKED wearing speedos, but I guess there really is a reason behind gross old men insisting on wearing them. I still think it's a stupid rule for our pool, though, since it isn't a public one. Thanks a lot, Europe, way to be a bad influence. Not only do they drive on the wrong side of the road here, but I have to buy my husband a banana hammock.

So now I'm not really mad anymore, it's just funny. At least, it is for me. Mike is less happy about this development, but I think he'll get over it once he realizes how freeing a speedo can feel.

Under Siege

So apparently the local creature population did not take too kindly to my last post, because now there is a lizard living in my bedroom. Allow me to relate the course of events.

Yesterday I decided to be a good wife and make dinner for Mike. He's been taking life drawing classes after work on Wednesdays, so he gets home pretty late. If anyone wants a sketch of a naked Asian man, we're getting quite a collection. So I brought my big cloth bag and went to the grocery store to load up. Again, this is when it sucks to not have a car. You can't just get a bunch of food and drive it home, you can only get what you can carry. I was planning on making something like meatloaf, but the McCormick's salt and pepper grinders were $8.25 each, so I scratched that idea. I know we'll have to get those eventually, but something in me balks at paying sixteen dollars for seasoning. So instead I got some chili and a cornbread mix, and I found Mike's favorite chipotle Tobasco sauce. I figured this would be a hearty Texan meal to remind us of home.

I'm still figuring out the oven, but I'm slowly coming along. The temperature dial is in Celsius, so I had to do some converting. Also, it's only labeled every 50 degrees, with no lines in between, so it's a little tricky to try and cook something at 204.444. I did my best, and dinner was decent enough. It may be a lot cheaper to go to a hawker stand for food, but sometimes you just need to eat at home. Plus, I think I'm gaining weight from eating out all the time, but I can't really tell because our scale is in kilograms. Thanks a lot, America! Way to be the only industrialized country to not use the metric system. It's really helping me out overseas.

But I digress. After dinner, Mike fell asleep, and I stayed up to watch the end of Law and Order: Criminal Intent because I like seeing Vincent D'Onofrio be creepy. As I was opening the door to the bedroom, I saw a lizard as least as long as my hand dash under the bed. This is not okay with me, so I ran and armed myself with a cup and a broom. I didn't want to kill it, I just wanted it outside. Unfortunately, when I got back to the bedroom, I couldn't see it anywhere. It wasn't under the bed, it wasn't on the wall, and it wasn't on the window. I figured maybe if I stayed still, it would relax and move again. This is when Mike woke up, and I think seeing me kneeling motionless on the floor holding a cup may have freaked him just a little. I tried to explain I was hunting a lizard, but I don't think that helped.

I had to give up eventually and go to bed, but I know it's still in there somewhere. Waiting, biding it's time. It's probably hiding in my closet, going through my clothes, touching my underwear, waiting till I leave and then walking on my pillow. This isn't over, lizard. Not by a long shot.

Adapting

It's funny to think about how much I took for granted back in Austin. Not that we were spoiled, but you get used to having certain things in your life that you don't even notice until they're gone. Whenever you move to a new apartment, you alway assume it'll have a dishwasher, central air, fans, and an oven. I remember growing up without a dishwasher, but until we moved here I totally forgot what it's like to go without one. And our fridge and oven are so minuscule compared to what we're used to. I feel like a rhinoceros in our kitchen sometimes. (Not the best feeling when you're looking for food.) I think a lot of it has to do with energy conservation; Singaporeans are very concerned with saving money and energy. So all the apartments have AC units instead of central air, and you just turn them off when you leave or when you're not using the room. And all the outlets have to be turned on before you can use the power, and the same goes for the water heater. As I've discovered through trial and error, that one is kind of important if you want to take a shower. I think the biggest adjustment is the AC, since we only have units in the bedrooms and living room. It gets pretty hot in the bathrooms and kitchen, which to me seem like two places you definitely don't want to be sweaty. Other than that, it's just a matter of habit--it's not that hard to dry clothes outside or wash dishes by hand. And if the Matrix taught us anything, it's that we rely entirely too much on THE MACHINES.

We just went to the grocery store today to load up on some staples like peanut butter and jelly. They have some crazy flavors of Pringles here: soft shell crab, lemon, blueberry and hazelnut, grilled shrimp, and seaweed. Now, I'm all for trying new things, but I really don't think I need to eat blueberry and hazelnut flavored potato chips to know I won't like them. But Mike doesn't listen to me, and got the shrimp flavored ones anyway. Guess what? They're terrible. They taste like uncooked ramen noodles. Mike claims he'll eat them when he gets hungry enough, but fifty bucks says those chips are staying in the cupboard until we move again. We also bought a fan, but it stopped working about 5 minutes after we plugged it in. I can tell Mike is pretty pissed, because he's not talking and doing this little scowly thing he does with his mouth. And now he's eating some of the chocolate cake we got at the bakery.

It's easy to forget that we're on a tropical island, but at night, all the little rain forest animals decide to make an appearance. So far, I've found two geckos in our apartment, which were very hard to catch. Those little suckers are fast. We've seen two giant lizards outside, Mike saw a huge snail, and I screamed like a girl because a rock turned out to be a frog. Also, there's some type of asshole bird or bug that lives in a tree outside our window; I swear it sounds like a countdown to a bomb exploding. It just gets louder and louder and faster, but it doesn't explode, it just starts over. I want to hunt it and stuff it. There's a big field behind our complex, which Mike can cut across to get to work, but he is no longer allowed to use it. His coworker saw a cobra on the path and it flared up and hissed at him. Yes, a COBRA. I refuse to be widowed in a foreign country.

Settling In

So we got our internet hooked up, hooray! It was actually way easier than everything else has been, we just went to StarHub (which is like the Time Warner Cable here) and they gave us the cable box and modem. Mike hooked it up himself, because he is a MANLY man. Also, he did it with his shirt off for added effect.

I would say we're about 90% unpacked. I spent most of the last couple days cleaning the crap out the apartment. Mom, you would be so proud, it looks amazing. I got bleach on my shirt, but it was a necessary casualty. Then I had to disassemble the beds, since the good one was in the guest room and we wanted it for ourselves. Something I am not good at: taking apart and moving furniture. I almost started crying trying to get that damn bed through the doorway. I set up the kitchen, although I realized I have no idea how to use our easy bake size oven. And I did our first load of laundry in our tiny washer, and hung it to dry on our new clothes rack. No one here really has a dryer, so people just hang all their clothes out to dry on the balconies. It looks really colorful when you see it from the train. I felt very rustic, hanging clothes with clothespins; it makes me want to churn butter and beat a rug with a stick.

So we've been exploring our new neighborhood. We live on the east side of Singapore, in the Changi district. We're close to the Singapore Expo, which has a bunch of restaurants and, obviously, lots of Expos. They just had the Singapore gourmet food summit there, which looked cool but made the subway super crowded. Damn foodies. We're also close to the Simei station, which has a big mall and grocery store, plus a bunch of hawker centers and food courts. We went there yesterday to eat; the trick is to look for the busiest stand and get in line, since you know it's going to be good. In this case, it was a stand called Local Specialty, and it had the best chicken rice we've eaten so far. It came with cilantro, peppers and onions, pineapple, and sweet pickles in a sesame soy sauce. Oh god was it delicious. And $2.50 a plate!

I'm having a love affair with curries right now. Ever since I had that Indonesian beef stew, I've been craving coconut milk dishes. So I've been getting green curry chicken, which is chicken and eggplant in soupy green curry, and then Mike found a place at his work that has great laksa. It's a little fishier and spicier, and it comes with noodles. I think I may need to ease up on my food intake, since it can't be good to eat coconut milk in my food and drink condensed milk in my tea all day.

I'm finally feeling at home, now that we have our place all set up. My clothes are unpacked and in the closet, my face cream is by my sink, and my books are strewn haphazardly around the apartment. And now I can flop on the couch with the laptop and Law and Order on in the background. Feels just like Austin!

I do miss everyone a lot, though. Not in a sad lonely way, but in an "I wish everyone could be here with me way." Every time we go somewhere new, I imagine showing it to my friends. I like keeping a mental list of the places I want to take people. I hope you guys can come visit, because there is so much to do here, and more importantly, so much to eat.

Weekend news

So turns out it's really really hard to go shopping without a car. We're trying to stock up on everything we need for our new place, but as we're discovering, there is a direct correlation between how much we have to carry and how much we want to die from heat stroke.

So yesterday we decided to venture to the giant hell-scape of Ikea. It's exactly like the one in Austin, which is to say, crowded and intimidating. We took the subway as far as we could go, but since we didn't know precisely where it was, we just took a cab the rest of the way. We ate at the scary-large food court, which was yummy. The Swedish meatballs were good, but nowhere near as good as dad's. Or mine, if I may be so bold. Then we proceeded to get lost, like we always do in Ikea, but we got a lot of stuff we needed. Unfortunately, we couldn't get everything, since we still didn't know what size the beds in our new place are, and what kitchen tools it would have. But we made a good dent, and came away with three enormous white bags. I'm pretty sure it looked like we were carrying clouds, but we found a shuttle to take us back to the subway, and then had to walk back to our apartment. It was hot, the bags were heavy and cumbersome, and by the time we got back Mike looked like he was about to faint. Not a fun outing, but a necessary one.

Today started out well, we went to a place called Funan, which is another big electronics shopping center, and got a new camera! Hooray! It's a Nikon Coolpix, and I really like it despite the blatantly misspelled name. We also saw two Buddhist monks in bright orange robes buying a flat screen TV, which I thought was pretty awesome. I like to think they're watching Rambo, but Mike thinks they're watching Little Buddha with Keanu Reeves. Or the E True Hollywood story of the Dalai Lama. After that, we went and got some Indonesian food, which was one of the best things I've eaten here. I got this dish that is kind of like an Indonesian beef stew; it had chunks of beef, potatoes, and tomatoes in this sweet and spicy curry broth. I ate the entire thing, leaving only a bay leaf and a chunk of allspice at the bottom. Mike got a chicken bowl, but I think mine was way better.

After that, we went back to the hotel and played with the camera for awhile. Then around 4, we left to go meet our agent and the landlord's agent at our new apartment. It's officially ours now! We got our keys and signed our papers, and now all we have to do is slowly move our stuff over. I was going to take some pictures of the inside, but we started moving furniture around and had to stop halfway through due to small hallway space. Also the toilet in the guest bathroom is broken, so nobody come until we get that fixed. There's a lot to do, and we still have quite a bit to get, but it's really nice to know we have a home now. The neighborhood is really pretty, and it's only a 5-10 minute walk to Mike's work. I'm going to meet him for lunch tomorrow and walk over to our new place and start setting it up. We're both getting a little stressed out, but I think if we just deal with one thing at a time it'll get done. It's just different here, and things like electricity and cable and internet all need to be set up the Singapore way. But I keep reminding myself it's nothing compared to the month we had before we left...good lord, I'm surprised my hair didn't fall out, we were so crazed. So if I'm not online the next few days, DON'T PANIC. I'm simply at the new apartment and we won't have internet set up yet.

Other than the move, things are going well. Mike is having fun at work, and we got to go see Iron Man 2 on Thursday night. It was really cool, the theater was packed and everyone cheered during the credits. I felt very proud of myself for marrying a talented person. Go me! And I'm officially out of Nutella, I know everyone was wondering.