We have a pet, sort of. There's a mynah that comes and sings to us everyday from the porch opposite ours. I occasionally go out there and tweet or whistle back at him/her and he/she responds by looking over and tweeting or squawking back. It's a great little interaction with nature.

One of the consequences of living here and having friends and family back in the states is that nearly all the blog comments, email, and discussion list postings we receive occur while we sleep. Mornings we check it all in one fell swoop.

In other words, all of our social interactions now come in digest form.

Sorry for the irregular postings on my side. We still don't have a plug here for the portable, so Mark has to charge it at work, which gives one only a short window to web surf and such. So....sorry. Things are slowly moving along for us. Mark is working crazy hours, which is to be expected with a new project, but leaves me alone for way too much of the day. My days have been filled with running to the Cold Storage (grocery store) several times a day to stock the house with goodies. Or I run off to some shop to buy whatever home item it is we need. Not too stimulating. I need a job. I'll probably try to volunteer some of my time next week, seems there are a number of good social organizations here related to special education that would be happy to get a few hours of my time.
Other than the boredom and loneliness, which is typical of not working anywhere, Singapore is great so far. The people are relatively nice. The food is great. Almost anything you want from home can be found here. Even the weather has been kind lately, with today's weather staying in the mid-80's and breezy, just how I like it.

Life is unfair. We're ordering cable TV. I tell Marjorie I can do without the sports channels option -- even though I was addicted to watching soccer while we were in Vietnam (there's never any coverage in the US). She says, "Really? I'm getting HBO." (She's loves "Sex and the City".) So I say, "Okay, I'm getting the sports, then."

Cable has been installed. Turns out, HBO doesn't show "Sex and the City" here. Not hard to figure out why. Nor do they show "The Sopranos", or "Six Feet Under", it seems. Maybe it's just off-season.

But I get lots of soccer. And rugby. Mwu-ha-ha-ha-ha...

I guess I should be saying "football" instead of "soccer". We're gradually catching on to the Britishisms they use around here. I've successfully used the terms "taking the piss", "queue", and "lift", but "boot" (for "trunk") and "mate" (for "friend") still sound weird to me.

Surprised to see that a band I recently started to like is actually playing here in a couple of weeks -- Suede (aka the London Suede). Tickets are expensive (about $40 US), but the service fee is only a buck! Here's hoping TicketMaster doesn't discover this place.

Still setting up house. We went to Ikea last night. I'm glad to see Marjorie is not as in love with that place as she used to be (I've always referred to it as "Icky-Uh", which we've found is pretty much how Singaporeans pronounce it. They're a wise bunch). But it is convenient for some simple, cheap household purchases.

Today we get cable TV and cable modem. Currently our TV only gets some very wacky Asian channels. We do seem to get all the Bollywood we want, though.

Residency. We found an apartment, and have moved in. Our moving van was two taxicabs.

It's a smallish but nice place, quite near to some major shopping areas. We have a six month lease.

Are we officially ex-pats now? Maybe not until I get my work permit. We're working on that. My job so far has consisted of shopping for parts for the computer I'll be using, and assembling it. This is all work-at-home, so far; I haven't yet been in to the office where I'll be stationed.

We witnessed a rare Singapore occurrence last night: a crime. While in a taxi, we came across an accident, where a guy in a car knocked over a woman on a motorbike. They were arguing about it, and then the guy got angry and tried to karate kick the girl in the chest. Unfortunately he was about six inches too far away to actually make contact (I think he was drunk). Then he grabbed her jacket and tried to wrestle her to the ground. Our cab driver jumped out and helped another guy subdue him.

Consider the lilies of the field. I start to work tomorrow. Why is it that a man should have to work? Aren't we the most advanced species on the planet? Why is it that only we toil away at jobs?

While we're at it, it's the 2000's. Aren't robots supposed to be doing all the work for us by now?

Shall we dance? You're walking along, through a crowd. Somebody coming the opposite direction has a trajectory that leads directly into you. You look up just before you run into each other, then start to move to one side, just as he moves to the same side. So you start to move the other way, again, just as he does. You smile at each other, and gesture with your eyes to one side, and finally, you move around each other.

It happens thousands of times in every life. The other day, though, I had that experience with a buddhist monk, in full robes, coming out of the subway.

WESTERN UNION IS AN EVIL INSTITUTION AND CAN BITE MY BUTT!!!!!!!!
Mark and I have made some mistakes during this move. One of these mistakes was not setting up a bank account as soon as we arrived in S'pore. What can I say, this is a learning process and we've been under a lot of stress, and some important things have been neglected. So, anyway, now that we've found an apartment (maybe) we needed to put down a deposit and needed lots of money immediately. Enter Western Union and my father, who is wonderful and able to access our account from home.
So, my dad gets money from our account and wires it to us here in S'pore using Western Union. Thanks Dad, really, we appreciate all your help. That said Western Union sucks!!! They charge a fee for wiring the money, it's an outrageous fee, but its published upfront and that's not what I'm complaining about...what I'm complaining about is the crappy exchange rate they give you without giving you the option to pick up the money in the denomination sent (in this case USD). So, they STOLE about $50.USD from us, which is over $100. SGD by giving us a horrible exchange rate ($1USD = $1.707 SGD it should be $1 USD = $1.74 SGD). I've sent them an e-mail asking how they determine this crap rate and asking for my money back, but I don't there will be any recourse. They really are evil, you know? I mean most of the people that use their service are poor. And I imagine most people sending currency across borders are immigrant workers sending money home to their families (in the States perhaps mostly Mexican and other Hispanic workers, here in S'pore, probably mostly Indian laborers or Filipino maids sending money home) only to be charged on both ends by this corporate monster with no scruples. Bastards.
Aside from that I'm happy to be moving into our own place (fingers crossed, hope, hope, hope!!) soon. Living in someone else's house is hard. I don't mean to be ungrateful, but I don't feel at home here and it's a subtle little stress in our daily life. Our host has been wonderful though, and we are very fortunate to have somewhere so nice and spacious to stay.