Happy Birthday To Me!
Last weekend marked the quarter century minus one for me or “two dozen” as my mom said. What a weekend it was! In traditional Singaporean style, the weekend was marked by food, food and more food.
On Friday after school, I walked home (40 minutes) and Dan met me near the midway point to escort me the rest of the way. We were all sweaty when we got home, so we quickly jumped into the pool for a little dip. Soon we were ready to start cooking and whipped up a wonderful Japanese curry. It was our first time cooking Tofu. We then proceeded to sit on the couch and watch Survivor Guatemala.
After a nice sleep in Saturday morning and some chats with family I went to a High Tea with some other teachers from the Elementary campus. It was held on the 72nd floor of the Swiss Hotel so there was an exceptional view of the cities busy waterfront. Us ladies filled our bellies for a good two hours before I headed off to a friend’s place (Laura) to host our joint Birthday party together. Many came for drinks, snacks and music. Nicole even baked us a birthday cake!
The big day (Sunday) arrived with bright sunshine coming in through the windows much too early! Daniel made us french toast on banana walnut bread with strawberry sauce. Yes ladies, he cooks too!
He then proceeded to present me with a computer printed itinerary of the day ahead. Next up, a one and a half hour massage at a little place 5 minutes walking distance from our condo. I felt like goo afterwards and I’m glad I only asked for medium strength. Who knew such a small person could have so much in them for my tight muscles?!? When I came home from the massage Dan had been out to pick up a coffee cheesecake. Nice lunch if I do say so myself! Later in the afternoon we wandered Orchard road (downtown) and grabbed a little dinner at the Marche or Movenpick which is a restaurant filled with German food stalls. Delicious.
When Monday arrived the parties weren’t over because a wonderful package arrived from home filled with special treats and cards. Thank you Mom, Dad, Krista and Kim! Friends were also wonderfully thoughtful with their gifts, emails, letters and cards. The parents of my students also came in at the end of the day with flowers, cards from the kids and a birthday cake. We had a JK party! One of the little girls smartly noted that at my real Birthday party there wouldn’t be any kids 
With lots of leftover cake my plan was to pass it out to the other teachers after school. After coming back to my locked classroom when the students had been delivered to their bus lines, I found one of my students with her older sister in my classroom licking all the icing off the cake. They had crawled in through a window facing the playground! What a surprise.
Commute Reconaisance
This morning I went on a little “commute reconaisance” adventure. For those of you who don’t know, commuting is generally the act of “traveling regularly from one place to another, as from suburb to city and back.”
Now, from this, some of you may be able to deduce that
The company is located in an area of Singapore called Science Park II which is full of technology and biotech heavyweights. The building is very nice, and so are the offices. They also have a WICKED-AWESOME espresso machine in the kitchen, which I plan to take full advantage of.
Alas, it also means I am going to have to return to the world of commuting, which looks like it’s going to be about an hour each way. There are so many buses and different ways of getting from place to place to place here that I actually have already tested 3 distinct routes to and from the place.
1)Bus 173 to Bukit Batok, MRT to Jurong East, then Bus 51 or 143 to Science Park II
2)Bus 173 to Clementi, then Science Park Shuttle
3)Bus 172 to Bukit Batok, MRT to Jurong East, MRT to Clementi, then Science Park Shuttle
So far, it looks like Route #2 is going to be the winner, but I’m gonna have to buy me a few novels for reading on the bus, methinks.
Also – just for kicks, I was trying to find out a few population / geographical statistics for comparison. So for all of you in the Lower Mainland:
BC Population ~ 4.2 million (stats canada)
Singapore Population ~ 4.4 million
Size of Burnaby (sq km) ~ 98.6
Size of Delta (sq km) ~ 336
Size of Singapore (sq km) ~ 692
So Singapore has about the population of BC, and is about twice the size of Delta.
For the record though, Singapore is a big urban city, where you can have Butter Chicken delivered to your house… It’s not way out in the boonies like Delta (apologies to Terry and Michelle / Elliot and Seija). Although, being in Singapore does make it difficult to grab a coffee with said friends in Delta.
SLS + Butter Chicken + Starbucks
Yesterday afternoon, Carly went out to the Equinox (fancy shmancy restaurant here) with some of her girlfriends / co-workers for high tea. While they were doing whatever it is they do at said event (I’m sure Carly will blog about it sometime), I headed down to Sim Lim Square for the first time (lovingly referred to as SLS by local geeks). For those of you in Vancouver, imagine 200 NCIX’s all crammed into a 6 story mall and all competing for the lowest price, then add some stores that sell high end audio equipment, more digital cameras then you could count in a lifetime, plasma TV’s ad infinitum, a ton of people, a food court (where I got butter chicken, naan, and rice – enough for 2 people, for $6.50), and well – there you have it: Sim Lim Square.
Following my stint in geek heaven, I meandered along North Bridge Road back towards City Hall MRT. I passed a cool looking little Apple Strudel place on the way, which I’ll have to go back to check out some other time – was still full from the butter chicken.
Back at city hall, I grabbed a double-tall-non-fat-caramel-macchiato that ran me $6.55 (more than my lunch?) – but enjoyed it nonetheless as I sat in the nice little courtyard area for a while before heading home.
Canadian International School
It is hard to believe I’ve been teaching my own Kindergarten class now for 6 weeks. I never thought I would be teaching Kindergarten! The kids are slowly settling into their routines and we’ve been having lots of fun with our first unit on Stories. Everyone has brought in their favorite story. I must say how neat it is being at an International school because the students bring such rich cultural experiences to the classroom. The books have been in different languages and come from all over the world. Furthermore, just listening to the children talk with each other during snack time and hearing about their travels, elephant rides, favorite holiday spots, etc. is so humorous to me. The other day, one of my students told me that her favorite mango came from Bangkok, Thailand, but her least favorite mangoes were the Philippine mangoes because they weren’t as sweet. She is four years old!
I have been coaching Kindergarten soccer now for a couple weeks. Really, this is just trying to guide the masses as they chase a ball around the field. I am coaching with another teacher and we were both surprised to have 97 Kindergarten students sign up for this ECA (Extra Curricular Activity) where last year, apparently, there were closer to 40 students signed up.
Dan and I have also been playing basketball with some of the other teachers on Thursday nights. This has been great exercise and lots of fun. I don’t recall my body hurting so much when I played in high school?!?
One hard thing to overcome here in Singapore is the “fogging”. To keep dengue fever, among other things, under control, the government “fogs” or exterminates three times a week at the school (and all over the city at other times). Literally, men come by with hand held machines that blow out this fog mixture. It is a little disconcerting trying to get away from it or walk through it when it’s on the street. For example, they started to fog during our basketball game last night and I quickly developed a headache. Dan and I took off fairly quickly with towels over our mouths and noses.
Sibu, Malaysia
Last weekend, Daniel and I escaped to another tropical island full of palm trees & coconuts and surrounded by soft sands & waves. We were at Sibu island just off of Malaysia’s East coast. As we traveled by vans out of Singapore over the causeway and along Malaysia’s monkey lined roadways we felt ourselves unwinding from a busy week. The drive was around 3 hours and then we took a small speed boat ride for 20 minutes to the island shores. We waded through the shallow waters off the boat with our backpacks and up onto the torch lit beach.
The cabins were rustic and we were thankful for our mosquito net covering our bed.
We spent much of our time enjoying reading on the beach and floating in the water. Our snorkeling expedition seemed more like an episode of Survivor than a relaxing time shooting the breeze (er…waves) with the fish. After being abandoned on a small island 20 minutes off the coast of Sibu (boat driver unloaded us and took off without so much as a goodbye or hope you can swim) we had only begun to see a few fish when an ominous black sky seemed to appear out of nowhere. None of us being particularly fond of being struck by lightning, we decided to get out of the water. The winds were very chilly! We were hoping this storm would quickly pass but the rains soon followed. These rains pelted down so hard we ended up crawling back into the water to protect our bare shoulders and to try to stay warm. Much to our dismay, our boat never came back for us as the other boats came to collect their clientele. Over two hours later our boat showed up. Later when asked why they left us out there, the answer was “oh, we saw the storm and thought about you guys…but decided you’d be fine.” Well, we were fine after a shower, tube of pringles and a couple glasses of red wine.
The food was amazing (do we see a recurring theme here?)! The highlight was Saturday night’s BBQ which consisted of chicken/veggie kebabs, lamb, grilled red snapper, corn on the cob, garlic bread, and baked potatoes. After dinner there was plently of dancing…and maybe a few boring games for the quieter folk
