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.