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?

If you could invite any three people, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be? goes the old cliche. Until recently, my hypothetical dinner table had one empty seat (the other two being occupied by Richard Feynman and Benjamin Franklin). But, judging from my latest read, the last little place setting card will read "Dorothy Parker". She's best known for her satiric light verse ("Men seldom make passes/At girls who wear glasses"), but she did great short stories as well. And literary criticism. Did she invent sarcasm? Probably not, but the case could be made the she invented modern sarcasm. She was way ahead of her times. Dig this, from a review she wrote in 1927:

The professor starts right off with "No matter what may one's nationality, sex, age, philosophy, or religion, everyone wishes either to become or to remain happy." Well, there's no arguing that one. The author has us there. There is the place for getting out the pencil, underscoring the lines, and setting "how true", followed by several carefully executed exclamation points, in the margin. It is regrettable that the book did not come out during the season when white violets were in bloom, for there is the very spot to press one.

Love it.

We just got back from a live gig of original music, yes, original music, in Singapore, at The Substation. And it was really good. It was a listening room type of thing, and was packed to the gills too, leaving us to sit on the floor. Our uncomfortable seating arrangement drove us out before it might have, but we saw about ten songs by couple of bands.

Tomorrow is for WOMAD, which I'm excited about...

Elvis has left the building. If you know me, you know I've been a rabid Elvis Costello fan for years (I used to run this web page). Well, I recently procured an advance copy of his latest album, North. And wow, it really lacks goodness. He's trying to do some slow neo-classical lounge music thing or something. The word "godawful" springs to mind. It's not that I hate all his experiments. The Juliet Letters is my desert-island disk, and I really like Painted From Memory. But holy cow, he is going to be savaged by critics and fans alike with this new stuff.

Wireless world. During a crosstown taxi ride I encountered today's Something New -- on-demand taxi TV! A little console in the back, where I could bring up news, sports, city guides, or, much to my driver's chagrin, music videos (on MTV Asia, again). Probably not many sixty-year-old Chinese men like the White Stripes. I kept the volume low.

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps. But they appear on MTV Asia, occasionally. We just caught Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" video, which was partially censored, but lots of things we didn't expect slipped through. MTV is often a whole lot better out here than back Stateside -- there are hints of what MTV used to be, back when we and it were cool.

We're surprised sometimes here, like the other day with The Secretary, which was apparently not edited either (according to Marjorie, who saw it in the States).

Maybe we'll go pop in "Do The Right Thing" now.

I forgot to mention that many of the animals in the zoo were feeling friendly as well. We saw some mouse deer (mice deer?) and a couple of some kind of monkey getting the freak on, always good for a giggle (we're so immature). Also saw some mild territory dispute amongst the lions with some territorial spraying for good measure. Mark also really appreciated the naked mole rat exhibit. They're pretty strange little animals; they have colonies sortof like ants and bees with a queen mole rat who is the only breeder. I love the zoo.

Mark and I went to the Singapore Zoo today. We're "friends of the zoo" here, as we were in Atlanta. The zoo here really is amazing. Many of the animals are in cage-free exhibits, including the howler monkeys, and large african storks.
We've resigned ourselves to being here in Singapore a bit longer than we originally planned. We're starting the migration process to Australia (truly painful) and have estimates that this process could take anywhere from 6 to 20 months. The reality is that it's not at all practical to move back to the States before going on to Australia; it just doesn't make since financially, especially since Mark has a relatively stable job here.
I've been keeping myself busy lately volunteering at the United States Education Information Center. I answer questions about U.S. colleges and universities. It's rather interesting, and it's amazing how many Singaporean kids think they can go to Harvard (not likely kids). I've also been taking Spanish classes " Yo soy alumna de espagnol". Still, I'd prefer to be busy with a paying job. I'm working on it.