Our "Thanksgiving" was indeed successful. We managed to turn out a reasonably tasty turkey breast, as well as mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, fruit cocktail, sweet potato souffle, salad, and a gravy of questionable beginnings but that managed to be good in spite of itself. I even baked a pumpkin pie. And nothing sucked. And we didn't fight during the cooking process. We were amazed at how well it all turned out. It might have even given us the confidence to attempt this again.
I even managed to avoid the hangover (caused by two bottles of red, one bottle of white, and a six pack of Foster's between four people) by drinking a lot of water and taking an aspirin before bed.

Ah, crapulence. Thanksgiving was a success. Even using what amounted to a single toaster oven on steroids, we were able to cook up a complete Thanksgiving meal. My boss and a cow orker of Marjorie's joined us in the gluttony.

The comic strip B.C. I usually find enormously unfunny, but I still read it for the same reason I rubberneck at traffic accidents. The author, Johnny Hart, is getting a lot of heat this week due to this strip. Read it first, and see if you a) get the joke, and b) understand what might be offensive about it.

Give up? The crescent moon is a symbol of Islam. Too, there's the word "SLAM" written vertically, like an I. (Get it? ISLAM.) The strip appeared right in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan as well.

Hart's politics are usually pretty transparent in the strip, and pretty stupid usually. But I have to think this was just an accident. People are saying they don't get the joke, and therefore the only interpretation is an attack on Islam. But I still see a sort of dry humor there, even if there were no moons and SLAM. And come on, the only way to laugh every day at B.C. is with nitrous oxide.

Now the BBC has listed 50 places you must see before you die. Let's see how I do. The ones I've seen are in bold.

1 The Grand Canyon 2 Great Barrier Reef 3 Florida 4 South Island 5 Cape Town 6 Golden Temple 7 Las Vegas 8 Sydney 9 New York 10 Taj Mahal 11 Canadian Rockies 12 Uluru 13 Chichen Itza - Mexico 14 Machu Picchu - Peru 15 Niagara Falls 16 Petra - Jordan 17 The Pyramids - Egypt 18 Venice 19 Maldives 20 Great Wall of China 21 Victoria Falls - Zimbabwe 22 Hong Kong 23 Yosemite National Park 24 Hawaii 25 Auckland - New Zealand 26 Iguassu Falls 27 Paris 28 Alaska 29 Angkor Wat - Cambodia 30 Himalayas - Nepal 31 Rio de Janeiro - Brazil 32 Masai Mara - Kenya 33 Galapagos Islands - Ecuador 34 Luxor - Egypt 35 Rome 36 San Francisco 37 Barcelona 38 Dubai 39 Singapore 40 La Digue - Seychelles 41 Sri Lanka 42 Bangkok 43 Barbados 44 Iceland 45 Terracotta Army - China 46 Zermatt - Switzerland 47 Angel Falls - Venezuela 48 Abu Simbel - Egypt 49 Bali 50 French Polynesia

Thirteen down, thirty-seven to go... Actually I've only ever flew over the Grand Canyon, but I saw it, so I'm counting it.

Lucky for us our friend Ashim, whom we know from Atlanta, had a layover in Singapore today on his way to India so we had a chance to catch up. In three hours we managed to take in Thai food at the Golden Mile complex, check out the Raffles hotel and Raffles City, then walk over to the Esplanade to have a drink while admiring the Merlion in the distance. It was great to see him, and even luckier, he's coming back with his wife and son for four days in December before heading home. Can't wait to see them again.

We watched the finale of Joe Millionaire last night. I mention it here only in hopes that by publicly embarassing ourselves, we might refrain from ever again standing under the broken sewer main of American reality television. What an eloquent pair Joe and the Pyrrhic victor made. At one point Joe described the time he had with one woman as "really neat". They gave them a million dollars at the end (darn, I gave away the surprise). My comment was that with that kind of money, maybe they could buy some chemistry.

The Veteran

When I was young and bold and strong,
O, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
Come out, you dogs, and fight! said I,
And wept there was but once to die.

But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, "The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won ~
The difference is small, my son."

Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.

--Dorothy Parker

So what did YOU do to mark World Toilet Day? Some Singapore-based company declared it such. The article claims that Singapore toilets are among the cleanest in the world. Don't you believe it. Generally, they're okay, but occasionally... I'd rather not finish that sentence.

I have a free hour or two to work on this story I'm writing. And yet, I'm not. You can't make me.

I don't think I have what it takes to author.

I'll finish it, by the end of the month, because I said I would. I'm still plotting it out and such, but I've lost my head of steam. I'm looking forward to the actual writing of it about as much as writing a term paper.

How great are my parents? I mentioned not being able to watch NFL on Thanksgiving, and what came in the mail today from the other side of the world but a video cassette of one of last week's games. True, it turns out they are going to show one on TV here, but they aren't showing a game I'm interested in. Now I have to scare up a VCR. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

We're planning on doing Thanksgiving next Monday, which is good news; as Marjorie pointed out to me last night, they've been showing the NFL Sunday night games here on Monday early evening, which is perfect. It's only Redskins vs. Miami -- eh. But I can't complain too much.

I'm excited to see Master and Commander will be starting here soon. It does star Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, who combined earlier in A Beautiful Mind, and were annoying together well beyond the sum of their individual annoyingness. But on the plus side, it's based on a good book (which I've actually read), it's directed by Peter Weir, and I understand that it breaks a Hollywood taboo as far as the love-interest story, in that it doesn't have one.

Other people's blogs: I've noticed that we have been popping up on some other people's blog links. It's strange, especially if you've never seen the blog before. That said I certainly enjoy many other people's blogs and even in the worst mood (as lately. I blame hormones) three in particular always seem to cheer me up:
I am the monkey- she's Australian, frequently hilarious, and rather warped.
Eeksy-Peeksy- for a silly name, the man is clearly brilliant. He seems to express the biggest thoughts using the most succinct words. Subtle, eloquent. I'd love to read a novel by him.
Metamorphosism- Very witty, and doesn't take himself too seriously. He almost never fails to put a smile on my face with his wry humour.
Eeksy and Metamorphosism are both professional writers I believe, and expats living in Europe. Our blog seems very clumsy to me sometimes after visiting theirs.
Note to Margaret Cho regarding her blog, the Elliot Smith lyrics you misquoted from St. Ides Heaven are "the moon is a light bulb breaking", not "alive. Ball breaking" and are published in the liner notes.

Feeling rather depressed today. Listening to KCRW on-line I heard Elliott's new single, and was reminded that there will be just a few more new songs from him, and then nothing more. Sucks.
The real reason for my low mood though is that it's just so lonely here for us. Mark and I rely so much on each other, and we both need friends. We have a few nice acquaintances we see socially on a semi-regular basis, but in general we don't get out much and the social isolation is getting to me.
At home when I felt lonely, I could always go to my parents house and borrow a buddy (Beau or Sadie or both) for a few days. No doggies here to borrow, and I'm not sure the land lady would allow it anyway. Sigh.

Mark's description of what happened at my office is flattering, but inaccurate. I'm very grateful he was there though. What really happened (as far as I can remember) is that the client, who had been suspected of surfing porn on our computers-which led to many porn pop-ups coming up on our computers at random times, including once while I was helping another client find information on a school (very graphic pics, I was mortified), anyway, the client came into the office and I told him he needed to leave as he had abused his membership privledges and was no longer allowed to use our computers. I based the decision to eject him on the proven fact that he had recently been rearranging our office equipment when we weren't looking even though he had been expressly told not to do that.
Long story short I told him to leave and he refused for a seemingly long time, he lingered for atleast 15 minutes, continually interrupting a session I was having with another client and basically really upsetting me. He's a freak, with a long history at our office of being socially inappropriate (i.e. interrupting sessions with other clients, continually asking the same questions, basically being an ass). I'm really hoping he doesn't come back, but I wouldn't be surprised if he shows up again.
Also for clarification I didn't tell the other student that Mechanical Engineering and Criminology would be an "odd" major, I said "unusual" and difficult due to the course load in most Engineering programs. I did make the McGyver comment though when asked what you could do with the combined degrees.

We also bought badminton racquets today, in an effort to be more Asian in our recreation. We had a little indoor how-many-times-can-we-hit-it-back-and-forth session in our living room, which was almost as fun as the time in Marjorie's old place when we moved aside all the furniture, put "Dancin' Queen" on the stereo, and discoed around in our rollerblades on the hardwood floors.

I've been helping Marjorie out at her job where she counsels students who want to study abroad in the US. I've proofread a few student essays now -- for some reason, I just love to proofread -- and it's an interesting perspective on at least one segment of the population here. Today I went in to help with their computers. Apparently they've been getting a lot of pop-up ads and such from websites of ill repute, so I installed some various scanning software and pop-up stoppers. Ad-Aware found a LOT of nefarious things going on on their system. The suspicion is that people have been treating the place like it's their internet cafe, or worse, their free peep show. Actually, they suspect it's mainly one kid in particular -- and he came in while I was there. So I got to see Marjorie take him by the scruff of the neck and send him crashing out through the plate glass window. Well, almost.

Marjorie had the quote of the week there that I overheard while she was helping out another student and his mother. The kid was looking to maybe double major in Mechanical Engineering and Criminology. Marjorie commented that that was an odd major, "unless you want to maybe be McGyver or something". They were Turkish, but they seemed to catch the reference, and laughed.

Zoophilia. The Singapore Zoo is considered one of the best in the world, with good reason. We went again yesterday. We're getting pretty familiar with it, but there's still new things to see every time. Among the new behaviors we spotted were a very bizarre ostrich dance, where he repeatedly banged his head on one side of his body, then the other, and a jaguar swimming underwater. I had no idea they did that.

The rains came just in time for my soccer game at 5pm. It was a total slogfest. It looked like a match played between five-year-olds at times, with players clustered around the ball as it moved up and down the field, because nobody could kick it out of a puddle any further than a few meters. On one of the few times when I got a hold of it, I almost scored the game-winner from 30 yards out, but the keeper tipped it over. A guy on their team hit a beautiful bicycle kick that beat our keeper but the ball just STOPPED in a puddle about a meter from the goal line. We later did get the game winner, and I saved the match in the dying seconds when an opponent had a shot at an empty net but I beat him to the ball. Pure muddy fun.

Lush. There's a big lush somehow-untouched area of near-rainforest just a block or so from our house that we went to check out today. There are plants that look like they're straight out of the Jurassic area -- with leaves about a meter across. Lots of bird activity -- we think they were cockatoo or parakeets, but after a minute or two of trying to figure it out, we discovered that our legs were swimming in mosquitoes. Ran screaming. We lasted less than five minutes out in the real wilderness. I'm sure we're already legends among the mosquitoes living there. "Remember the time those big dumb humans came out here without any repellent and just stood there?" While we're at it, what's the first symptom of malaria?

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, usually; all the good food and family cheer of Christmas without all the bunkus. Since we're devoid of family (and friends, mostly) in this hemisphere, this year we're at least trying to do the meal properly. I've inherited from my dad -- if not love for the meal, at least a slavish insistence that certain things about it be just so. Dad always had to have the cranberry sauce that comes out in a cylinder shaped like the can. To me, the proper Thanksgiving meal should have:

Turkey, the sliced-off-the-bird kind.

Mashed potatoes.

White gravy.

Stuffing.

Green beans.

Salad.

Sweet-potato casserole, with the melted marshmallows on top.

NFL football.
That last part might be a problem, but we've been stocking up on the other necessities. We found a tiny Butterball turkey breast that will actually fit in our tiny oven. Marjorie's adding her own touch this year, her family recipe fruit cocktail.

The game. Science fiction writer Hal Clement writes:

"Writing a science fiction story is fun, not work. ... the fun... lies in treating the whole thing as a game. ... the rules must be quite simple. They are; for the reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible of the author's statements or implications which conflict with the facts as science currently understands them. For the author, the rule is to make as few such slips as he possibly can. ... Certain exceptions are made [e.g., to allow travel faster than the speed of light, but] fair play demands that all such matters be mentioned as early as possible in the story..."

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, presuming that other people will actually end up reading this science fiction story I'm working on, but for the last few evenings I've been trying to do my homework on my hard-science subject matter, for the reasons he cites. It is fun. I've only written a few actual snippets of story written so far, but I have a page or two of solid plot worked out. I've been thinking about little else these days while on buses, trains, and toilets. Only occasionally is the little doubter in my brain chiming in. I'm wondering if maybe famous people are just people who are born without that little punk. Or maybe, in the grand tradition of American letters, they just kill him with alcohol. ;-)

No smilies in my story, I promise.

Update: Too weird. I quoted this Hal Clement guy, then in looking up more about him, found that he died only seven days ago.

Singlish.
If you were interested in how much of the population in Singapore speaks, this is an excellent example of Singlish in the form of a well known fable. I personally do not understand all the Singlish words (I'd need my Coxford Singlish Dictionary). I stole this off somebody else's website, who stole it from a defunct website, so I don't feel too guilty.

The 3 Little Pigs – Singapore version

Ones apron a time got tree little pig, call them Ah Beng, Ah Seng and Ah Tee. They think they big already and no wan to liv with mama, because liv with mama sometimes quite pek chek and also can become suaku! So they say goodbye to their mama and go out of house. Mama tell them to be careful of the big, bad woof, because you know, this big, bad sabo king want to eat them. They tell their mama, "we know lah, not scared one". We build house so woof cannot get us. If he try, he will be sorry.

The first pig, Ah Beng he think he very clever, he also cannot wait one, very kancheong type you know. So he build a house very quickly. Finish very fast- how? Aiyoh, he use straw lor, just tie and tie and tie together and then very quick okay already.

This woof very clever kay see, so he pretend and say nice things and ask Ah Beng to let him to inside house. Little Ah Beng also quite clever, he say, "No way man, I know you, don't bluff. Sorry you not welcome here".

The woof say "U no let me in mare? U dare mare? I blow your house down then you know". And he blow and blow and he poon and poon and he use all his inside strength and jia lat man, Ah Beng's house come down.

...

Moral of the story :->

Number 1 - do things slow, slow, must plan, think, plan, nowsdays they say strategic planning. No lush and lush and chin chai build. Chin chai do things ownself die - never think, how can use straw build house, how can house be strong, sure kanna one lah.

Number 2 - don't be so tum sim. Blow down one house, two house not enough want to blow until all tree. Given people some face, don't be too hao lian! In the end too tum sim also kanna - woof kanna heart attack.
Same lah we all also like that, enough is enough, some people pia until they mati.

Number 3 - those who got must kongsi with those who no got then the world sure better place. Remember : if you have and your neightbor no have, kongsi lah. And those who tumpang must know cannot tumpang too long, or else. But when kongsi right hand must not know what left hand give or else no use lah.
This mean kongsi quietly, don't let whole world know you give okay.
Very chim, right?