I (marjorie) am taking a break at work (my second to last day!) to post my first blog. I struggled with what to write and then accepted the truth that a blog is a basically narcissistic endeavor and I could probably get away with writing whatever I felt like since you're basically reading my/our diary. The whole thing is rather exhibitionistic (real word?). So.......In a nod to other blogs I've enjoyed, I'll tell you some of the superficial interests of the hosts (Mark and Myself). Mark covered our wanderlust, so I'll ignore that for now.

Other things we enjoy are:

MUSIC-we're huge power pop fans. Favorites include Elvis Costello, Neil Finn, Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, The Beatles, The Kinks, JellyFish, Billy Bragg...the list could go on and on. One of our great concerns about moving to Singapore is the lack of concerts, local bands-this is one of the many attractive qualities that Melbourne has to offer though.

TRIVIA - Mark is rather brilliant and I like to pretend that I'm equally bright so we go play trivia to keep our egos in check, though sometimes we win which has quite the opposite effect.

BEER - Tiger beer is frankly another frightening aspect about moving to Singapore. It's really not very good. Truth is we've both been trying to drop a few pounds and have switched to Amstel Light for most occasions (though this is by far not either of our favorites) and I'm pretty sure it can be found in S'pore.

BOOK STORES - we seem to spend a lot of time in bookstores, and honestly in the weeks before our move, while we are trying to eliminate, rather than accumulate possessions, I have a difficult time not buying more books (even though I have at least five that I haven't read yet. Mark is almost as bad as I am with regards to purchasing books, but is no where near the magazine whore that I am-some of my favorite mags are "JANE"-guilty pleasure, like watching Friends. "BUST"- like Ms. Magazine but with fashion spreads. "WallPaper"-very stylized, also very expensive, I only let my self buy it before a very long flight. "National Geographic"-needs no explanation. "Martha Stewart:Living"-even though I could never be like Martha, I like pretending some day I could be that organized.

HOME MOVIES- It's a cartoon of the "Adult Swim" programs on Cartoon Network. It's truly hilarious and worth checking out.

SNORKELING - Love it! Although, since we live in Atlanta, we don't get to do it often. Mark has semi-regular, very sad dreams about getting ready to go and then having multiple obstacles impede him before getting in the water. Snorkeling is definitely something we plan on doing more frequently if/when we move to S'pore, though not in/around S'pore since the water looks pretty murky there. We went to Tioman Island last year and the snorkeling was amazing, we can't wait to get back.

WATCHING TRAVEL SHOWS AND MAP QUIZ(S) - This stems from our love of travel mated with our love of trivia. Basically map quiz consists of listing every country/region/capital/etc. that you know from a particular region. Travel shows about areas you've recently read about are particularly fun, then you can predict the next area they are going to discuss and impress your partner.

BIRD WATCHING - We aren't fanatical about it, but we definitely enjoy it. We are both getting better at identifying regional birds. S'pore has Jurong Bird Park, which we enjoyed last year, it helped us appreciate the red-headed woodpeckers we see all the time in Atlanta because there's nothing like them in Southeast Asia.

That's just a brief overview of some of our likes-here are some of our dislikes:

"ORDINARY F**ING PEOPLE - I hate 'em" and don't we all.

TALKING ON THE PHONE - generally, I like talking to my friends, especially people who live in other cities that I don't see everyday. However, generally, I really don't enjoy it, and neither does Mark. We have notoriously bad phone conversations with each other, with long lonely silences, because we're not phone talkers. Really long phone messages are a pet peeve too.

SLOW DOWNLOADS - Everyone hates this. It's probably like saying you hate traffic.

I can't seem to come up with anymore dislikes that we share, other than extremely obvious things. I suppose I don't keep a running list of the things I/we don't like because I don't like them.


One last like/dislike to end this rant:

Like-checking things off our to-do list

Don't Like-looking at the to-do and acknowledging all the things that haven't been done and not knowing when/if they have to be completed by.