Human jerky. Today was for visiting Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of the Human Body. It was really, really interesting. The bodies are actual human volunteers, "plasticized". Different displays showed the muscles, the nervous system, the circulatory system, the digestive system, and the reproductive system (snigger snigger). Sometimes the organs were left intact; sometimes they were shown in cross-section. And they had many examples of unhealthy organs next to healthy ones. (The coal miner's lung looked like a lump of coal.) Most fascinating, and disturbing, was the cross-section of the pregnant woman. An interesting and edumacational excursion; highly recommended.

Tonight we are planning on our first visit to Zouk, Singapore's biggest and most famous discotheque, with our out-of-town friends. I don't know if we'll be drinking, though, after seeing the liver with cirrhosis earlier.

Friends good. Our Atlanta friend (and his wife, son, and mother) are passing through town. We did dinner with them last night at Boat Quay and are going out on the town with them tonight. Woop!

Marjorie and I have that psychic connection (that's so annoying in other married couples ;-), where we know what each other is thinking, often saying things at the same time, and being instantly able to read each other's moods. Which is why it was so surprising to me tonight that for the first time in forever, while we sat and watched Love Actually, I totally misread her body language, and got up as the credits rolled expecting her to totally love it. But despite the chick-flick theme, I was the one who dug it, while she apparently couldn't wait for it to end. Strange. So, go see it, or, as Marjorie would advise, don't.

Squeaky wheel gets to bitch: Fed ex isn't very express here. My lovely father, who has been very good to us lately in our attempts to scrounge up information for Australia, fedexed a package to me on Dec. 3 (or was it the 2nd Dad?). Anyway, I understand that there are time differences and weekends, but after checking their website today and seeing they claim to have attempted to deliver my package at a time when I was here, I called to complain, and no, tomorrow morning isn't good enough, it's supposed to be express damn it. Anyway, they're supposed to try again this evening. I'm not holding my breath.

Selfish gifting promotion: Anyone (family) looking for ideas for gift ideas for us, we both have amazon wish lists. Just FYI.

After the movie we set off for Chinatown and ended up having a round of drinks with a group of merchant seamen. Things got a little hazy after that. This morning I woke up down along the docks smelling vaguely of fish sauce, and with a new hole in me.

Actually, we just went to a department store and had it done, but the first way to tell it was better, don't you think?

We found a bit of "Christmas cheer" yesterday: We saw Elf. Will Ferrell is very funny, and this movie has the potential to be a huge Christmas classic. It's funny, without being cynical, and there's no reason the kid couldn't see and enjoy it.
We also got an early present for me (us?), by way of altering Mark, but I'll let him blog about that.

Am I really that clichéd? MSN is listing the ten best spots to propose. The place where I proposed to Marjorie is listed there (Ile.-St Louis in Paris). What can I say, I'm a sucker for the classics.

Movies, bad and good. I recently remembered two movies to add to my worst movies list, "The Net" starring Sandra Bullock, and "The Lawnmower Man", with Pierce Brosnan. Be sure not to rent these stinkers sometime real soon.

We went and saw Igby Goes Down the other day, which was a little gem of a movie. We also rented Hulk and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, which were bad and "meh", respectively.

I've been so depressed by the weather here lately. I'm sooo sick of being hot, and at this time of year, when Christmas trees and decorations are everywhere, it seems wrong that it's not at least a little chilly. I can't wait to be home and be cold. Of course I'm sure I will complain about this too. The countdown's started though, it's going to be a long month until I get on the plane homebound.

Write write write. I started writing my story today. Finished only 520 words in an hour and half. At this rate I would have had to put in about four and a half hours a day to win NaNoWriMo.

But it's a start. The beginning was the part I thought I had fairly well worked out, but it proved challenging to lay down the basis for the story while at the same time revealing just what sort of strange world it is where it's all taking place. I suspect things will speed up, but not by all that much. As you can guess, I've given up on finishing by the end of this month, but at least I haven't given up altogether.

Today marks one year here for us. For me, it has been one year in which I haven't set foot in the United -- what is it again? States? Not something I thought I'd ever do.

Yesterday Marjorie and I went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Just a very nice, peaceful respite from the city proper.

Then, to celebrate Buy Nothing Day, we went and bought $300 worth of groceries.

Don't know much about art, but I instantly recognized the painting that this cartoon is based on. They say it's Goya, and I remember it as a painting of Zeus devouring his children. It's driving me crazy that I can't remember WHY I know this. At some point in my childhood I encountered this painting and it burned into my cerebral cortex. (Here's the original.)

I wouldn't call it art, but I just got back from seeing Master and Commander: The Far Side Of The World. It was definitely enjoyable -- the battle scenes especially -- but there were certain Hollywood touches I could have done without. (I'll give Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany passing grades if they promise never to make a movie together again. No, scratch that "together".)

Weird scene on the subway on the way to the movie. A grey-haired Chinese lady started talking inappropriately loudly. After a few seconds I realized she was railing about me, but I didn't understand what she was saying. She just gestured towards where I was standing and occasionally gave me the evil eye. Another grey-haired lady who was sitting next to her got up and moved away. At some point, or maybe it was all along, she seemed to switch to English, and finally she turned to me and said, "Take money, naughty boy. Take money, naughty boy".

Give a hoot. Read a book! Because I found myself only in the middle of three different books, I had to add a fourth; Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I chose this partly just because it was in the bookcase (Marjorie picked it up a while back), and partly to right a wrong I committed in 11th grade Russian Lit.

I'm surprised this book is ever chosen for high school reading. Not just because the writing can be a bit dry (five pages to describe a dream; another five or so for a letter from mother), but because in the first fifty pages it takes you into the mind of a killer trying to psych himself up to kill someone, and for essentially intellectual reasons. And then, a graphic description of the murder. I'm certainly not saying that it should be banned, but I'm just surprised it's not.

Australia apparently now only accepts immigrants who have ulcers. How else can you explain that our 50+ pages of applications and documents were insufficient -- they want more, as we were informed by mail today. They want more explanations as to hours and employment, profit and loss statements from my business, pictures of us in the shower... Ugh. The sure have swung a long way from their earlier simple entrance requirement of just a criminal record.

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.