Wildlife spotting. Today we took the bus up the road to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Cool new bird spotted for the life list: the greater racquet-tailed drongo. He let us walk right up under him. He seemed to be intentionally hanging out in the vicinity of a small squirrel; not sure what was going on there. Supposedly, there are pangolins there, which I would love to see, but they are rare and shy. There are supposed to be monkeys there, too, but we didn't see any -- that is, until we left the reserve and were waiting at the bus stop for the ride home. I looked back into the trees lining the road and spotted a long-tailed macaque. He poked his head out and let us get a good look at him.

I'm such a stinker. At one point while we were at the reserve, Marjorie said, "They have those flying snakes in Singapore, don't they." "Yeah," I said. (They do.) "Huh," she said. I could see she was thinking about them as we walked on. So a few seconds later, as I was walking behind her, I just touched her neck lightly. She about threw herself on the ground in reaction. She was ready to kill me.

In other news, you might remember I was debating whether to start taking language lessons in Cantonese (as is spoken by Chinese people in Hong Kong and the United States) or Mandarin (as is spoken by pretty much everyone else). Well, I've decided. I'm going to learn Japanese.

We had quite an eventful evening, in a low-key kind of way. We had dinner at Wala Wala Cafe in Holland Village. After a quick stop at the Haagen-Dazs afterwards, we were meandering to the taxi stand and spotted Kristen of Krisalis (I recognized her from her picture), a blog we've been reading for the better part of a year. We made quick introductions, met Kristen and her fiance Mark, and also met Andrea another blogosphere neighbor. Coolio. We then caught a cab and had the absolute BEST driver ever. Our driver asked where we were from (we said Atlanta) and then proceeded to tell us about his personal experience staying in the Travelodge in downtown Atlanta. He knew all about Peachtree Road having walked all the way from downtown to the Fox in an attempt to walk the entire length of Peachtree Rd. (not an easy feat). He was great. He then proceeded to tell us all about his travels through the U.S.A. The man has been to more places then I have. Really, puts me to shame. He'd been to the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite, and San Diego, and "to your poor cousin Mexico" as well. Hard to explain why, but in many ways this man exemplifies the charm of Singapore. We're so happy to be here, and are so utterly charmed with the people here. I'm sure we'll have many more stories to tell.......

A list of my top 20 movies can be found here. Having a Merchant/Ivory film as my #1 doesn't make me gay, does it? (Not that there's anything wrong with that).

We've got full power, Cap'n! At long last, I have my own power cord for my portable. I had to get one from Ebay, after five fruitless attempts to attain one through the Dell branch in S'pore. Those guys are utterly useless. It'll be nice to be able to surf without the Sword of Damocles battery indicator ticking down at the bottom of the screen.

Question of the day. How long before Bush gets a dog? Presidents always do it at times when they need a soft news piece to be run on them. He's been slipping in the polls, and the election's not too far off, so it'll have to be soon. I have half a mind to set up a betting pool web site where people guess the time of the announcement and the type of dog.

Censorship We knew it happened here, but had yet to observe until yesterday. In less than an hour we experienced two acts of censorship: First, Mark observed that the article "a day in the life of a porn star" had been sliced out of the British Marie Claire I had purchased (interesting he noticed it, huh). Second, I was watching HBO waiting for Sex and The City to come on, it got up to the "and now the HBO original series Sex and The City" and then blip, some dumb movie with Alan Cumming. Looks like you were right Greg, no S&TC for me here. Altogether damned inconvenient but, we knew censorship happened here. Oh well.

I now know enough about what I'm working on that I can actually describe it.

If you've ever called technical support about anything, you'll notice that the tech support guys guide you through a series of questions. This series of questions is not something they have written down sequencially on a sheet of paper; too much depends on your answers to previous questions, and there's a wealth of possible outcomes. My friend out here has a startup company that plans on building software that helps the people who man those lines figure out what questions to ask, and what diagnoses to suggest, using an artificial intelligence technique.

The technique has a lot of broader applications, but technical support is a boom industry out here. Many times, when you call tech support from the States or Europe, your call ends up here.

To overuse an analogy, I've been drinking from the firehose since I started working. I've already learned heaps, and there's no end in sight. The hours are long, but I'm not forgetting I have a lovely new bride. Fortunately, she goes to sleep before I do, so I can spend the few hours after she goes to bed in the evening (that I used to spend jacking around) working. Like I should be doing now, I guess... Being "actualized" is a good thing.

Food update. Had lunch today at Mos Burger. As you can tell by the site, it's a Japanese chain. The menu, in English here in Singapore, starts with hamburgers and cheeseburgers, then gets progressively weirder. Eventually it gets down to a unagi burger (which is eel meat), where the bun isn't a bun, it's a sticky rice paddy. Yummy. I went with the plain hamburger.

Had a business dinner tonight at the BrauHaus, a German place, as you probably guessed. It's right up the road from us, and has the best beer selection I've yet seen in town. We had the mixed sausage plate, and the half pig-knuckle. Pig-knuckle is a first for me.

We saw the nastiest thing for sale in a wet market here last weekend; a pig face. The eyes, brains, hair, and skull were removed, and it just sat there on ice in the display case like a soggy mask.

I'm excited that there's a place right downstairs from my work that sells nothing but fresh fruit. I'm going to snack on fruit every day. Starting tomorrow. Today, I opted for the Mrs. Field's chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie.

Little things about Vietnam keep recirculating through my mind lately: An elderly women carrying her grown son on her back in Ho Chi Minh city. He must have had Cerebral Palsy, he was very emaciated and clearly paralyzed, she smiled weakly at me as we passed in a taxi;
Tiny little children yelling "Hello!" to Mark and myself as we wandered along a river in Hue, in an area where not many tourist venture;
The "man of the house" at our homestay in Sapa keeping us up singing that Jack Wagner hit "nothing's gonna change my love for you...";
Watching some Caucasian women on the beach in Hoi An surrounded by vendors trying to sell them stuff they didn't want or need, and feeling very grateful to be in the no harassment zone provided by our hotel. Then looking towards the opposite end of the beach at the Victoria hotel's Elephant "Darling" giving guests rides up and down the beach.
Seeing so many limbless people making their livings by begging in the streets of Ho Chi Minh.
Vietnam was tough, but I'm glad we went. I saw a travel show today with a guy in Cambodia, the Cambodians on the show had the same flat affect I saw on people in Vietnam, maybe an expression that comes from living through so many horrible things lik War, Genocide and Poverty. They went to a temple and the man said he was going to pray for the same thing all Cambodians pray for: "peace and prosperity".
Singapore is nothing like it's nearby neighbors. It's more like the U.S. in many respects than those places, but not so long ago they weren't so different. The Singaporean people have worked amazingly hard to create this incredibly modern and safe city. The striking differences really make me wonder, what is the difference between a modern "1st world" city, and a "3rd world" place? The difference between Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and Singapore makes some things easily identifiable in terms of what makes me feel more secure in a city, and makes a city seem more modern:
1. Construction site regulations and dust sheets to protect the surrounding areas from all of the dust created by the building site. There were no shields in Hanoi or much of Vietnam and the cities were dusty and overly polluted because of it (Ho Chi Minh seemed to be an exception).
2. Side walks should be kept open for pedestrians. In Vietnam, especially Hanoi, the sidewalks were primarily used to park motorbikes, forcing people to walk in the streets.
3. A central agency to regulate food sales, such as a board of health. No such entity appears to exist in Vietnam. In Singapore all food vendors are required to display their health/cleanliness rating, same as the U.S. and probably all other modern nations.
4. Clean water. This is crucial. How does a country provide clean drinking water for its populace? I don't know, but it's a requirement to be considered a modern metropolis (at least to me it is).
5. Child labour laws. We interacted with way too many very young kids out in the streets all over Vietnam selling things to help support their families. When do they play?
I'm sure more things like the preceding will occur to me later. It's just interesting to thing about these things, especially now that we live in a Country/City that's made the transition in the fairly recent past. What are the conditions necessary to become a modern city? I know some of these conditions would probably not be met by many places in the U.S.. It would make an interesting study. Can anyone tell I have my undergrad degree in Sociology? I love this stuff.

Little things -- evidence that we are not in Kansas anymore:

I can't imagine this happening in Atlanta. At lunch today, at a cafeteria-style place, a woman reserved her table -- by putting her keys on it. She wasn't back with her food for ten minutes.

Umbrellas are sold at a place nearby -- S$8 (about $5 US) when it's not raining, only S$6 when it is raining. Downright unAmerican.

Commercial breaks that only last one minute.

Bought a packet of hard salami. The calorie content was listed on the label under "Energy".

Yummy! I made Thai green curry with chicken for dinner tonight using the new recipe book I found. It was soooo yummy. It's so sad that this is the most exciting thing I have to report from the day, but.......
On other fronts, I've sent my past work information to the American Association here so hopefully they'll be able to link me to an agency that could use my volunteered time. I clearly need more to do here and an outlet to meet new people. Speaking of meeting people, I'm going to be in Atlanta next week. I'd love to see the old Posse.

Like, soooo interesting. This is so spot on. My niece Abi is now at the age where she recognizes things as sarcasm, but thinks it's sooooo stupid when you use it. The article neglects to mention how much fun it is to use anyway. She's still a sweetheart, though, and that's not sarcastic...

My first real day of work in the office where I'll be toiling away. Pretty cool. Right now they have me in the conference room, which is like a big private window office of my own. Too, it's on the 24th floor, looking directly east from here. Zoom out a bit to see where on the island this is. There's a view out over the shipping lane where boats line up (er, queue) to come into the port. On a clear day, there's a chance I might be able to see Indonesia. Though I doubt I'll be in the conference room for long; instead, it'll be a desk in one of those typing pool-type offices (lots of desks, no dividers). I hate that.

Making progress already at work. Amazing how much you can get done when you work solidly all day, and how much more fulfilling it is.

Not quite the day off I'd hoped for. Our planned excursion to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve was foiled by a late start and a rainstorm. The bird singing place was pretty much a bust, and the Monkey Temple that was supposed to be nearby seems to be gone. Too, the guitar shop where I planned on getting a new acoustic was closed. It's still a lot of fun to just tool around the city randomly though.

We just watched The Sixth Sense on TV -- Marjorie's first time, my second. As far as I could tell, it was completely unedited. I was worried that Marjorie was going to figure it all out before the end. She totally nailed the Munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy part before they revealed what was going on -- she always picks up on things like that before I do in movies. Luckily she didn't figure out the... other part.