Liberty Market is closing. That's rather sad for us. This is the one grocery store here that has aisles large enough to fit people and carts through, and it's the place we count on to find otherwise rare items such as fruit roll-ups, Mrs. T's perogies, and shake 'n bake chicken seasoning. Not that we NEED these items, but it's nice to have them once in a while. It's funny what you miss from home. Lately I've had a tremendous craving for Cheerios, which I couldn't find anywhere until today (at Liberty). Lots of things are available if you search around for them, but it's very rare that I can find all the items I want in one store. Usually shopping consists of hitting several different stores in a week for all the different products we crave.
Here are a few other things that are different here than at home:
1. We have to turn on our water heater when we want hot water.We don't have a big tank that's left on all day, just a small tank that's only turned on when necessary. This isn't too much of an inconvenience, but it has led to a couple of cold showers when I forgot to turn it on. Luckily a cold shower is almost bearable in Singapore.
2. We have two air conditioning units in the house, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. They're wall units, which is kind of similar to window units in that you only turn them on when you're home, and when you need them. Central air conditioning is not typically done here aside from businesses.
3. The oven and stove and all the sockets have switches to turn them on when needed. Otherwise you leave them off.
Electricity is definitely treated as a more valuable resource here. These little differences probably save a lot of electricity per day. I'm not sure why they haven't been implemented in the States yet.
4. Eggs aren't refrigerated in the supermarkets here. I guess they don't need to be, but it still seems kind of gross to me.

I'm sure there are hundreds of these little differences, I just can't think of any others at the moment.

Kind of interesting. Some of the flyers that are being dropped onto Iraq.

Back from the Stones. Quite a show. We were a little too far away from the stage to get totally into it, but no complaints; they played a long and energetic show. At one point I tried to imagine they were some new band I was hearing for the first time; it was totally impossible! I mean, there's Keith! And Mick! And they're playing "Let It Bleed"!

Keith poked fun at Singapore at one point by bringing an ashtray up to the mike to put his cigarette ashes in, making a comment about having to keep things clean.

We got most of the big hits: Brown Sugar, Street Fighting Man, Honky Tonk Woman, Tumbling Dice, Sympathy For The Devil, Gimme Shelter, It's Only Rock and Roll, Satisfaction... Some new stuff, some unfamiliar stuff. Angie was a nice surprise. Jumping Jack Flash was the encore.

Crazy news rolling in, just as we're ready to head off to the Stones concert... Apparently Marjorie's school will be closed until April 6th because of this tropical disease SARS. She's on the phone trying to frantically call all her students' parents about it. There was a big school concert that all the students were supposed to be involved in tomorrow too. No reported cases, just a precautionary measure. I told you this country doesn't mess around.

Some of the weird fruits you'll find downstairs at my favorite fruit store, the Sun Moon:

Buddha Fingers. Really strange looking. I was going to try this but it turns out they're all rind and no fruit, and so are only used for cooking and display.
Jambu. Like mini pears. Haven't tried yet.
Dragon Fruit. Very strange. Tried this in Vietnam and it tasted like kiwi fruit. Tried it back in Singapore and it didn't taste like anything at all.
Mangosteens. Haven't tried these yet.
Breadfruit. These don't look edible to me for some reason.
Jackfruit. Same with these.

They don't sell durians, unsurprisingly. These are the infamous delicacy that are widely banned from trains and hotels because they stink so bad. They have them in open air markets, and you immediately know it when you walk by a place that's selling them. (Marjorie and I have been known to accuse each other of smelling like durian.) I've tasted it before, back in Atlanta; an accurate description I heard was that they taste like orange custard soaking in toilet water.

740 people are now quarantined in their houses here in town due to exposure to SARS. The government here doesn't mess around. Let's hope nobody has to be put down.

Awe. I think it's something everybody needs at least a little of in their life. I never realized that until Marjorie pointed it out to me. She gets it, mainly, from being at the ocean, I think. I guess my main source is reading science or science fiction books.

Now that things have settled into a bit of a routine here, I've been needing it more lately. And with a twenty minute train ride both too and from work each day, I have the opportunity to indulge these days. I just finished a good nonfiction book called A Shortcut Through Time: The Path To A Quantum Computer, which is about the quest to build an entirely new kind of computer based on strange, utterly non-intuitive behavior of subatomic particles. The idea was proposed by late physicist Richard Feynman, but the field really caught fire after this unlikely looking character proved it would actually be feasible for solving real world problems. If they ever manage to build one -- and it's an extremely difficult endeavor -- it will be capable of some really incredible things.

Science fiction I like is harder to come by. Look in the science fiction section of your bookstore, and you'll find that about seventy-five percent could be classified as "fantasy", (e.g. Lord of the Rings knock-offs), which no longer interests me. Another twenty percent is Star Trek knock-offs, which tend to be light on science (e.g. the ubiquitous and unexplained "force shields" and "tractor beams") and heavy on the morality lessons. My brother once said, the only way Star Trek could be worse would be if it were sung, and (with apologies to my father-in-law!) I agree...

It's only in the remaining five percent that I find anything I like. In good science fiction, humanity itself is the protagonist, and like a good literary character, should learn and grow and change. Science and/or technology is just the catalyst. A good example is found in the book I just finished, Steven Baxter's Manifold: Time. It has the broadest scope of any science fiction story I'd ever read, and does an admirable job holding it all together (though it does seem to strain at the seams occasionally).

Right now I'm in the middle of Greg Bear's Eon, one of the few other "hard" sci-fi books I've found in the local bookstore, but it just hasn't engaged me.

Tomorrow night we see the Rolling Stones, but we're both surprisingly unenthused. I hope we'll be happily surprised. Keith Richards still has the occasional power to awe me.

Sure, it looks bad, but I twisted it during warmup and then proceded to play most of the game, so it can't be that bad (we lost, btw). It wasn't until I took off my cleat (er, boot) that it ballooned up. My wrists are what I'm worried about; I've fallen on them countless times skateboarding, skimboarding, and snowboarding...

Mark's ankle looks like a golf ball. Every Sunday afternoon he returns home with new injuries after playing football (soccer). He loves the game, but I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to be able to put his shoes on by himself in a few years.

Grocery store finds. We've recently bought "Pooh Biscuits" and "Collon Biscuits". They're both pretty good, actually.

Read it and weep. Seriously, this makes me cry.
They won't be the only ones getting a knock on the door.

A little reminder over to the left there of the damage we are causing. These are just civilian casualties on their side; it doesn't include deaths to our boys (or theirs). Also, this doesn't count damage we're doing to the priceless historical treasures that Iraq is replete with.

In my last job I worked on military contracts that found me working with US Air Force planners all over the world. One project I worked on involved tracking high-level objectives (like, "win the war") all the way down to individual targets, like bridges or airstrips, so that one could look up why were bombing a particular place. I'm not such a peacenik that I'm ashamed of working on that; it was important, necessary work, that is the logical conclusion of the supposition that we need to have national defense. However, I did not appreciate at all noticing one day that we had high level objectives that were focused on painting rosy scenarios for the press and the people back home. I witnessed it first hand. Our appointed protectors feel that we "can't handle the truth!" about what they are doing.

There's an interesting scene in Graham Greene's The Quiet American where a reporter, after many minutes of wrangling, manages to pin a general into reluctantly giving out an estimate of the enemy losses, in the early days of French/American occupation of Vietnam. Nowadays, the generals just hide behind a veil of self-righteous indignation when asked. Actually, they do more than hide and evade; they attack the reporter who asked, in hopes of discouraging future inquiries. It's funny -- if they're so intent on minimizing civilian losses then you think they wouldn't object to some sort of metric to tell how well they're doing. There's only one reason why they don't answer, regardless of what they say: it makes them look bad.

By the way, our military IS truly intent on minimizing civilian losses, despite what it may seem like I'm implying here. I witnessed that firsthand too. They are probably more intent on it than any other military in history. What I'm objecting to is their refusal to report on it.

Chickening out. We had an invite to go to the American Club last night. In a reverse of our traditional roles, Marjorie was all for it, but I vetoed the idea on cautionary grounds; the war had just started, and the American Club has been talked about as an obvious target here in town. Have the terrorists already won?

Hooray. The War to Encourage Terrorism has begun. Keep your head down everyone.

So where have we been the last few months? Singapore. Hanoi. Hong Kong. New York. Atlanta.

So where have they found this new killer virus, SARS? Singapore. Hanoi. Hong Kong. New York. Atlanta.

Are we "Typhoid Mark" and "Typhoid Marjorie"?

I was sent to the Principal's office today: Turns out my tattoo is a school no-no. She hadn't noticed it until today; she was relatively cool about it, but school policy says I have to keep it covered. So, now I have to wear pants everyday, which really sucks because I have some cute skirts and dresses that I only wear to work. Sigh.
Water cooler talk at work sucked today too as the conversation turned to the inevitable war and, as the only American, I was left in the awkward position of trying to defend my countrymen (i.e., we don't all want this war, don't support it, etc.) while agreeing that our president seems to be determined to be a bully without the world's consent.

On the eve of one war, some very gripping reading from the front lines of another. These are emails that Rachel Corrie, the American who was crushed by a bulldozer on the Gaza Strip, sent home. It's only one data point in a vast and complicated situation, but it's definitely worth a read...

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day: I saw a little girl in one of the kindergarten classes wearing a green little shamrock, and it still didn't occur to me that it was St. Patrick's Day. That's either how much of a non-event it is here, or how overwhelmed I am with other stuff at school. Either way, I'm sorry I missed an occasion to drink green beer with friends.

Interesting factoid: Apparently Brunei Ringets are interchangeable with Singapore Dollars. I received a $10 Brunei Ringet as change recently and didn't even notice it because it looked like one of the special edition Singapore dollars. When I found it I started to get miffed thinking someone had passed me a bill of less value, but turns out it's usable/interchangeable here. I'm not sure how that works with the federal banks of both nations, but it's obviously not a problem.

Today was fun. We set out, far too late, for Pulau Ubin, a little island wedged in the canal between Singapore and Malaysia, which is set aside as a recreation area. You get there via a ferry from Changi Village, but some apparent misremembering of the guidebook I checked beforehand led us down near the baggage area of the airport, where we were greeted by concertina wire and signs showing guards shooting trespassers. We tried to get on a bus out, but the bus only took us in, and a policeman came on board and interrogated us, and finally kicked us off. We found a bus back to Changi Village, and were ready to just hang it up and head home. We ended up spending a half hour watching the flock of long-tailed parakeets up in the trees. The ferry, we finally found, was just nearby, so we hopped on (only S$2) and made it out to Ubin. Rented a couple of bikes, and rode around basically looking at birds. There were lots that you don't see in the city; we're getting geeky enough on the whole birding thing that we could just listen for their calls, and immediately tell whether it was a bird we were familiar with. I saw a crimson sunbird, I'm pretty sure; a brahminy kite; and several other small sunbirds that we never could identify. There were some amazing loud, crazy, beautiful calls we heard at one point but never got a visual.

Back in Changi Village we had some questionable seafood; what I'm eating is the "prawns with oats", which prompted the question, "Do I eat this, or, did I eat this?"