Does Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi have the best hair of any politician living or dead, or what? I predict in the future politicians' hair will be measured on the Koizumi scale. "Oh, he'll go a long way as a politician, but he'll never be president with that 0.6 Koizumi hair."

More naycha. After a visit to our neighborhood grocery on Saturday we spotted a flock of long-tailed parakeets, which was cool. Then on the way home we spotted four or five of these sulpher-crested cockatoos, which aren't even listed in our bird books as residents. Marjorie says they've been hanging out a block from our house over for a while now.

Sunday we went to the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve to see some more stuff. We got up too late, as usual, so missed most of the bird action, but did see some sort of storks which we couldn't identify, as well as sunbirds, egrets, and sandpipers. Along the path we spotted this snake, as well as turtles and giant mudskippers. The mudskippers were interesting -- they blink by rolling their eyes back into their head, and do it one eye at a time, presumably for safety's sake. They had several signs up warning of crocodiles (or caimans, maybe). At the end we climbed their aerie and spotted not a crocodile, but rather this giant water monitor lizard, lazily swimming up the canal. He was a good 5 ft / 1.5 meters long.

We recommend the place -- there's a whole ton of blinds and such built just to make your nature spotting easier. But go at dawn or dusk.

Once again I have been passed over for a MacArthur genius grant. Once again, they gave them out willy-nilly to people who actually accomplished things. If I don't get one next year, I am going to write a very sternly worded letter.

I now officially have two jobs, which is nice, but I've been running since we got back from our trip, so this is the first chance I've had to blog.
Tokyo notes:
*There are VERY LARGE crows there who say "caw" as if taught to crow by humans. It's as if their hearts aren't really in it. "Caw, caw", it almost sounds sarcastic.
*Toyko-ans are a very well groomed lot, and they seem to be big on hats, which is cool with us because Mark enjoys it when I try on hats on our vacations. He thinks I look good in hats. For many of the vacations we've taken together you can find a picture of me trying on a hat
*We went to an interesting temple/cemetary, the Zojoji Temple, in which there where several rows of Jizobosatsu statues, which are the protectors of the souls of still born or otherwise aborted babies. Their parents write messages on tablets that hang near the Jizobosatsu statues; one of the messages was in English, it was a letter to an unborn child from berieved parents, very sad and touching. The statues themselves are dressed in little red bonnets and surrounded with little toy windmills. Some people might find the place very bizarre, personally I thought there was a really beautiful gesture in the whole idea.
*One of my favorite excursions was to Shimo-kitazawa, a really cute and funky neighborhood that took us away from some of the neon overkill of Shinjuku or Ginza (not that we didn't love that). The neighborhood seemed a bit like East Atlanta or Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a bit less expensive than other areas in Tokyo, but still cool and trendy.
*We purchased the new Rufus Wainwright Cd when we were there. I'm really enjoying it. Rufus rocks the house.
Overall, we both really enjoyed ourselves in Tokyo, and found the subway system much easier to negotiate then we expected it to be. Tokyo's well worth seeing if you have the chance. Hopefully we'll get to see more of Japan in the future.

As Marjorie mentioned, we just got back from Tokyo, and boy are our feet tired. We thought we walked a lot in Singapore, but we earned our Urban Hiker merit badges this weekend.

It was a very short trip -- a day traveling, two complete days there, and a day traveling back. It was all we could afford to take off at this point. We never realized before, that it's as far from Singapore to Tokyo as it is from Atlanta to Anchorage, Alaska. When I was living in Atlanta it was inconceivable that we would ever bop up to Anchorage for the weekend, but now that we're so far from everything we've developed an amazing tolerance for spending a day in a plane. What's bad is that we seem perfectly willing to bankrupt ourselves in the process of taking these trips; as soon as we get a few hundred saved up, it seems, we wander over to Travelocity.

We had a teaser visit to Tokyo once before -- a one day stopover two years ago. We coulda shoulda woulda stayed for longer but we were chicken. We loved our one day there, and it wasn't that scary, so we decided to go back, for TWO whole days this time.

ANYway. On the bus ride into town, we oriented ourselves by the Tokyo Tower, which we remembered from last time. It's Tokyo's answer to the Eiffel Tower. We lost sight of it eventually, until we got to our room, open the curtains, and it was RIGHT THERE. Across the street. Crazy.

Our first day was spent figuring out the train system, which we handled pretty well during the trip, as long as we had two brains and sets of eyes working together on it. Many of the signs, quite rudely I must say, didn't even have English translations. We rode out to some of the funkier districts and shopped all day, then had a few Bass Ales (which we had been missing) then tried to find the restaurant in Roppongi that we ate at last time. No luck -- they seem to have moved around the streets and buildings or something. So we just picked a different one at random and had another fantastic meal.

Monday we explored more districts, including the one famous for its "love hotels", that have hourly rates posted. We made a late try for the Imperial Palace only to find that it's closed Mondays. So we just wandered some more, cleaned up, then went out to the Ginza district for dinner. Ended up in "Yakatori Alley" which is lined with small sidewalk eateries serving up fried
veggies and meats and other animal parts. The "pig intestine" was bad enough, but then you read down the menu and see "pig intestine END". We found some safer sounding things to order, and it was all delicious. Much to the amusement of some surrounding customers, Marjorie tried to pay for the meal with about $700 worth of yen. We are lucky the lady was honest!

So mostly it was just random exploring and shopping, but Tokyo is one of those cities where just being there is enough. There's always something to look at or smell or taste or listen to. We even had an exploratory conversation about trying to move there, but I think we really can't afford to make the move right now.

There was a special treat on our final day. We awoke right around sunrise to catch our plane, and when we finally opened the windows, we caught a rare glimpse of Mount Fuji, right through the supports of the Tokyo Tower. It's not often that the air there is clear enough to see it.

We just crawled in, back from Tokyo. We had a terrific time and will definitely write more about it after a decent night's sleep. Tokyo is definitely among the world's most fun (and most expensive) cities.
Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings here and via e-mail. I appreciate it, especially now that we're so far from home.

I've a little money and a take-away curry... Strange new find of the day: Indian fast food! It's vegetarian, too. A place called Komala's. I had to at least try it, so I got a veggie samosa, which wasn't half bad.

Still here. Uneventful week. Working a lot.

Anyone else getting slammed by this new worm-of-the-week that's going around? I'm having to empty out my junk mail folder every few hours as I'm getting about five of these huge, fake security upgrade warning emails every time I check. Hanging is too good for the writers of these things! We must come up with something more slow and painful.

Now, I know you are all going to watch the Women's World Cup of soccer, right? And not because Brandi Chastain might tear her jersey off again. Well, not just because of that. Watch it because you will see sports as they are supposed to be played -- without the egos and selfishness and poor sportsmanship. The level of play might even surprise you. These girls are good.

Things are looking up! I found the super cheap Tokyo flight that I was hoping to come across (S$418 ea.) so we're off for Tokyo for a couple of days soon. I'm very excited about our trip. Mark and I spent a little over 24 hours in Tokyo two years ago and loved it! It will be great to have a bit more time to poke around.
Other good news:
* Our friend Jen is coming to see us in mid-October. She'll be our first visitor and is lucky enough to have scheduled her visit around Thimithi, a Hindu festival in which some of the faithful walk across fire in Little India. Should be weird and wonderful.
*My volunteer position will probably turn into a paid position sometime in the next two weeks (keep fingers crossed).
Other things I'm hopeful about and are looking forward too as possibilities:
*Mark's possible contract in Tasmania. If he gets it, I'll go down to spend atleast a week with him. Hopefully we'll have a chance to check out Melbourne too.
*Coming home for Christmas. We haven't booked our tickets yet, but should have them in hand by early October. It will be Mark's first trip home in a year, and my third. Guess who's more home-sick?
If all these things happen I think the next 3-4 months might be pretty cool.
Things that suck: We heard back from Australia, with an acknowledgment of receipt of our application. They told us to expect the visa processing time to be 50 weeks and not to contact them in that time because they're busy and BTW may put your application on the bottom of the pile if you harass them. Oh well, I can't say we were surprised by the 50 week estimate. Still sucks though.

Wreid. Tihs bolg mkeas a good pnoit. I wlil bet it denos't hlod ture for sueliapidseqan wrdos toguhh.

Holy places. Today we wandered a bit through Chinatown, down near my new workplace, with a camera. Check out some of the holy places we passed by. We still haven't learned the proper etiquette for visiting these places so the shots are all external ones. I don't think they like you taking pictures inside anyway.

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.)

New digs. I've been having a pretty hectic week. We're moving into a new office, and my boss is going to be splitting the country this weekend, for two, maybe three months, so we're having to get everything set up. The office is in a really great location -- a place called Club Street on the edge of Chinatown. There are restaurants, pubs, and all sorts of other interesting things within a block or two. I promise to do a photo series of the area once we're settled.

Thank God for the internet! Really, life would be so much harder and less pleasant for us if it weren't for modern technology. My latest joy is listening to KCRW on-line. KCRW rocks the house, NPR and good music too(I'm listening to radiohead now) what more could you want? I discovered them in LA on my most recent trip through (thanks again Kristina). They must be one of the coolest station in the world, guess I should subscribe, huh?