Foodie alert. Here's a nice long piece on eating in Singapore from (of all places) the New York Times. I only know where to find about two of the places they mention. We've been missing a lot, it seems.

Trial by lack of supervision. Today is my first day in our big new office, all alone, as I will be for the next two to three months. Party time, right? Wrong. I am much happier when working productively and getting feedback. There is a constant temptation to slack off that I must overcome. The fact that our new neighborhood is borderline magical doesn't make things any easier. There are something like seven temples within two blocks of me, and a veritable cornucopia of food sellers.

I am determined to resist tempation and be productive. Woops, probably shouldn't be blogging.

Slow boat down under. We've mailed off our paperwork applying to migrate to Australia. A twenty page form, plus about as many pages of marriage records, proofs of employment, CVs, passport photos, all stamped, certified, and checked over four or five times... Together it all weighed exactly as much as a back monkey.

Optimistic estimate: six months to process. Pessimistic: eighteen months. Realistic: twelve. (Relativistic: negative six months. Sorry, geek joke.)

Art is dead. Apparently geckos don't have to be alive to stick to the wall. I knocked him down just awhile ago. He was already starting to decompose. Poor guy. He was alive a couple of days ago, wiggling around the kitchen. I wonder what happened to kill him.

Wildlife adventure, living room stylee. Marjorie knocked the tail off a gecko while vacuuming this afternoon. I held the tail in my hand while it twitched for over a minute. It was trippy.

There's another tailless gecko in our kitchen that's been sitting high up on the wall for over a day in the same position. We've named him Art. He looks like a Matisse cutout.

I'm still here! Generally, when I take a long break between posts it's either because a) nothing exiting is happening in my life or b) I'm really busy. This time it was B. I'm finally (semi) employed, working three days a week as a classroom facilitator for a child with special needs. I'm in a class with my charge and about 12 other three year olds. I love kids at that age, they're so funny. They are just getting beyond the babyish stage to the point where they're able to do a lot of things for themselves (like feed themselves and use the toilet), but are still so new to the world and have these fabulous observations and comments.
I'm also still volunteering at the education information center. My time there is really valuable to me in what I'm learning about Singaporeans. I'm hoping that (soon) my volunteering will turn into a paid part-time position.
On other fronts, we're both jonesing to get out of S'pore for a few days in the very near future. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a great deal to Tokyo is going to magically appear.

We watched 'Bounce' the other night. Why is Ben Affleck famous again? We kept thinking they should've had a stunt-actor, to step in whenever some real emotion was required. There was one good scene, where he was almost mauled (and upstaged) by a rottweiller.

(Then again, last week we watched 'Shakespeare In Love', and it pained us to admit it, but he was actually good. He needs to play more pompous asses.)